Review: Final Fantasy XVI

Silicon Sasquatch

This is the first Final Fantasy where they can say “fuck,” and they’re very proud of that

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Throughout the 52 hours I spent wringing every ounce of content out of Final Fantasy XVI, I was all but certain I didn’t want to write about it. My reasoning is that the game didn’t surprise, delight, or infuriate me; it didn’t provoke an emotional reaction at all, really. It’s the first game in the series to fail that crucial test. And that probably says everything you need to know, doesn’t it?

But I’ve been coming back to this draft over the past few months because I feel I ought to say something. I want to warn readers, to help set the record straight. Final Fantasy XVI coasted right into an 88 review-score average on OpenCritic and an 87 on Metacritic, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s a good thing instead of a red flag.

(I could go on for a long time about how games that score in the high 80s on these sites are often the games you have to be the most cautious about approaching — in short, they’re often kitchen-sink, triple-A schlock that costs a lot of money, takes no risks, and checks all the right boxes to pass muster among the throngs of half-baked game criticism sites out there — but I’ll save that for another time. Let’s just focus on how they missed the mark with this specific game.)

The whole reason I sought out and completed every little scrap of the game’s abundant, dreary, and bland capital-c Content is that I kept hoping that, somewhere in there, I’d finally unearth the game’s beating heart. I was certain that, buried in some dark recess or another, the game’s intact soul was waiting to be excavated, desperate to be witnessed by the series’s most dedicated fans.

I regret to say that I emerged empty-handed. For the first time in series history, we received a Final Fantasy game lacking a soul.

So, just to set the scene: Final Fantasy XVI is a breakout critical success. As someone who has liked every single other game in the series, many of which also take massive risks and departures from previous entries, I despised it. What happened?

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The game is brimming with name-drops and references back to previous Final Fantasy games. In a better game, and in smaller quantities, they’d feel like reverential nods to series regulars. Instead, it just feels exploitative.

First, just to restate my credentials: I’m thirty-seven years old. Final Fantasy IV helped teach me how to read. I’ve played through every single-player main-series game to completion at least once, and many several times through. I know this series intimately. I care about it.

What I love about Final Fantasy — besides the great music, beautiful worlds, richly imagined characters, and barely-disguised goofball spirit — is that it’s constantly reinventing itself. Battle systems get fundamentally re-imagined from game to game; storytelling techniques often vary significantly; themes and core concepts are distinct and often resonant. Having grown up in a world where the media industry started out risk-averse and has only grown increasingly paranoid, Final Fantasy is the rare exception: the one mass-market game series that must reinvent itself.

To its credit, Final Fantasy XVI is a major reinvention. It forgoes party-oriented, turn-based combat for real-time control of a single character in what most resembles the “character action” subgenre. It deals extensively with heavy topics like slavery and sexual violence, neither of which has been explored in much depth in previous games. They say “fuck” in this one. And it’s by far the most depressed-feeling game in the series. That’s new, too.

The problem is that the game absolutely cannot bring any of its new tent-pole features to fruition. The combat is dull, repetitive, and dreary; the characters, especially the game’s women, are woefully under-defined, lacking in strong motivations or any plausible representation of agency. The music is awful, too! I don’t mean to be too harsh here, so let me clarify: there are Final Fantasy games with scores I don’t particularly care for, like Final Fantasy XII. I still think that game has a really fantastic score; I just don’t really like it. On the other hand, Final Fantasy XVI sounds like a run-of-the-mill TV show. It’s uninspired and bereft of heart: all pomp and no circumstance.

There’s no winning with this game. If you main-line the core story missions, you’re grinding through a lengthy chain of action battles chopped up with ponderous and expensive-looking cutscenes until you finally reach its ambiguous (but not in a particularly meaningful or “earned” way) conclusion. If you dip into the game’s plentiful and tedious side quests, you feel like you’re stuck in an MMORPG where everyone else had the good sense to log off and do something better with their time. There is very little of value to be found in those side missions in terms of character development or worldbuilding; the only motivating factors are “to get the best weapons” and “to feel like I accomplished something with all this time I wasted.” They are regressive and they reflect a dangerous misunderstanding of the game developer’s covenant with their players.

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Jesus.

Playing a game with nothing to say is like wandering into a bookstore and accidentally picking up a stack of Hallmark cards instead of a novel. Final Fantasy XVI has pretty vistas and good actors and fancy menus and all the trappings you might look for in a polished, expensive game, but it just…it just sucks to play.

Like, okay. Let me drop the highfalutin prose for a bit here. Let’s just talk, person-to-person.

As a critic, I don’t think it’s productive to label games as “good” or “bad.” Those words mean nothing without the full context of who’s playing, where they’re coming from, and what they’re hoping to get out of their experience. I’m a lifelong Final Fantasy enjoyer who’s been playing these games since I could barely read. I love this series the way people love Star Trek or Harry Potter. Despite its faults, it’s a cornerstone of how I relate to the world of human culture. It’s a big deal to me.

Now that I’ve completed every single-player game in the Final Fantasy series, I can say this with certainty: Final Fantasy XVI is the worst one. Yes, even in a modern context; I’d rather replay Final Fantasy II than even a third of Final Fantasy XVI.

Of course, you may feel differently, and you’re welcome to! But you’re reading this because you want my perspective, I assume.

So why did I write all this? Just to bag on a game I don’t like? Nah; I mean, sure, it helps to get this off my chest, but that’s not why I wrote this review. I wrote it because I’m concerned about its critical reception.

There is nothing about this game that suggests a B-plus grade is justified here. It is the worst game I’ve finished all year, and I finished Starfield. (Okay, no, I didn’t; I dropped it about six hours in. Almost all of my criticism about Final Fantasy XVI applies to that game, too, though.) And I think this game’s critical success points to a fundamental problem with the state of games criticism: it has been largely co-opted by major publishers to help them sell their big-budget games and ensure a strong ROI at the cost of providing any meaningful criticism or advocacy for artistic, creative, or progressive achievement in design and execution.

We’ve never issued review scores at Silicon Sasquatch because, even back in 2008, we saw how review scores were inherently reductive and didn’t end up serving the public in any meaningful way. The benefit of a snapshot score means nothing when the full review is ignored. The way we experience media — and life, for that matter — is messy, complicated, inconsistent, and often joyful. Reducing those experiences to measurable scores is nonsensical.

If I gave review scores out, Final Fantasy XVI would get a failing grade. It fails to honor the series’ fundamental values; it fails to tell a meaningful story with skill or grace; it fails to fulfill its contracts with the player to offer an enjoyable, deep combat system or a rich, vibrant world to explore. It is an empty, vapid, depressing experience, and I don’t wish it on anyone.