This was perhaps the most beautifully crafted jrpg I’ll never finish. While the nostalgia hit me like a truck, after just some 8 hours I just felt I had played it all. The graphics and the music may be the very best in the genre, but the gameplay left much to be desired. Time-based inputs are nice (though they do get tiresome after a while), but there’s just no substance in the gameplay. Progression is slow af, and I didn’t feel there was much to unlock other than higher numbers, which are meh.

Amazing piece of art, though.

Completely intentional; you have no proof it was otherwise :P

Unlike many others here, I did enjoy Trials of Mana, so I am looking forward to this one. Looks amazing!

…except for that generic shonen hero. I am so done with games with generic shonen mc. I get that the new generation has to start somewhere, but it’d be nice to see more variaty in mc characters. Or on the very least let us create our own.

Why does the mc have to be male? I’m tired of the old male hero trope, especially when so many mcs don’t talk or even have lines. If you’re going to give us a silent mc, at least make it customizable!

Me! I never had the chance to play the first one, but this looks like the kind of game I would love.

Can we get a pixel remaster of the two portable FF Tactics Advance? Love those games but it’s very difficult to play them nowadays.

While I agree with you that the game fell flat in many areas, I think a 5/10 is a bit too harsh. Of course, it’s your opinion and I’m not telling you it’s wrong, but for me a 5/10 is a game that is barely playable, either filled with bugs, or visually an ugly mess, or just plain boring. FF16 does indeed have its shortcomings, but it is still a beautiful game that performs great most of the time.

That said, I think the game would have benefitted from a shorter story. By the end of the game I was just tired of the simple gameplay and the anemic side systems. As many others have said, the crafting is barely an afterthought, and so is the equipment and items. I did enjoy the sidequests, especially in the later half. I think they did wonders to flesh out the characters, and that’s why I can’t agree with OP’s statements that the characters were bland. If anything, that’s the strongest point in the game.

All in all, I think the game is an improvement over ff15 (although I enjoyed ff15’s weapon systems more than I did ff16’s Eikons), and it’s overall a solid game. I also enjoyed it way more than FF7, but I think many will disagree with this take.

I do think the game does not feel like a proper Final Fantasy, but it is not due to the action combat. It’s just lacking many elements of the gameplay that make ff feel like ff. No status effects (save for Shiva’s freezing), no elemental advantage and immunities, no classes, no healing, basically no party. It also feels a bit smaller in scope than the traditional ff. The twin islands feel small, and thus the stakes never feel grand, even if we go against god by the end of the game. That’s not to say the game is bad, it’s just lacking that FFesque feeling.

Finally, Torgal bestest boy ever. Fight me.