The major one is that a lot of its quests exist to create distance between places and plot beats.
The majority of quests are also optional, if you don’t mind skipping the level-up rewards.
Clive isn’t terrible company, in fairness.
FF16 does have some very charismatic characters.
And for every solid supporting act FF16 has, it treats you to a bunch of paper tigers.
Clive’s childhood sweetheart Jill, played by Susannah Fielding, is a perpetually wilting wallflower.
Nina Yndis’s Benedikta, henchwoman of a sinister, remote kingdom, is a prancing seductress.
Clive’s mother Anabella, performed by Christina Cole, is a viperish hag.
Perhaps Final Fantasy 16’s cleverest flourish is that it’s a steady deconstruction of Clive’s centrality.
Before we get into that, I guess I should talk setting.
There are the Mothercrystals, glittering mana mountains whose fragments are the source of most of Valisthea’s magic.
There are the Bearers, a despised subclass of enslaved humans who can wield magic without using crystals.
As a piece of worldbuilding, Valisthea is alright.
Its limitation is partly homogeneity, in a couple of senses.
Small wonder they feel so superficial.
And this is sort of the point.
Learning what this entails is a lot of fun.
Nor, I would argue is the combat, even though the combat is good.
FF16 is sort ofDevil May Crywith a million times the cutscenes.
The unlockable Eikon suites slowly layer up this foundation.
There’s a fair amount of theorycrafting to be done once you’ve hooked up with enough Eikons.
If the bread-and-butter skirmishes get boring, the crowning bossfights are some reprieve.
Most begin as larger-than-life regular battles, with participants fully incarnating as Eikons with distinct movesets.
The best weave in mechanics from other genres, like bullet hell and on-rails shooting.
Still, I’m not sure even cutting the playlength dramatically would have made FF16’s fundamentals essential.
But it doesn’t have the wackiness and starpower of its most obvious rivals, theFinal Fantasy 7 remakes.
Its major characters would be bit-parts in Midgar, filling out the crowd at Seventh Heaven.
Jill is the lady by the jukebox trying not to get mistaken for a mop.
Cid makes for a captivating presence behind the bar, but he’s clocking off early tonight.
