[FF] Finished FF16 last night. It was pretty good and I enjoyed it mostly. I wouldn't say its a favorite but its solid

I primarily had a good time with the game systems, but if I were to gripe, I am one of those that wish we had a proper party system. There are so many characters that I see and interact with and think "oh, if I had a party, you would be in it, wouldn't you?"

Still love the characters though. Jill, Gav, Mid all good stuff

While I generally enjoyed the combat, it's both trying to be a character action but also not going to the full lengths of your DMCs or Bayonettas, and I get it, it needs to be a long RPG, but I wish the moment to moment action would like... super high flying action, yknow?

You can kinna do that with certain abilities and they're fine with regular enemies, but once you get to an enemy with stagger bars (which ultimately are the primary forms of difficulty you need to get over), they're not nearly as effectively

By the end, my combat strategy was: "Use these one-two skills to tear through stagger, then pop powerups, and unload all my multi hitting super attacks to drain the boss life bar, then if they're still alive, rinse and repeat"

and like, it was fun to see just how high I could make my number (ended up around 130,000 in a single stagger phrase) by the end of it. Just kinna wanted to have to do more.

I unno, maybe I'm just picky with my action game experience, lol.

as far as the story goes, I'm still on the fence if the game of thrones-ification was for the better or not.

In one hand, it's definitely eye catching just how terrible some of the villains are and what they're willing to do.

in the other hand, I think part of the reason that it took me so long to get through the game is that I had to take breaks from the game cause the game is both grounded and yet is very eager to show the misery of the world, which uh... I can only take so much of in one go?

like Soulsborne games are one thing, those are dark but generally most characters in those games get comeuppance, but they're also like... comically dark? It's strange how some settings are shown to be so awful that the fanbase turns it around to make it humorous?

for ff16, I unno, it's dark, but in a way that is like.... believable? Is that weird to say?

still, I did enjoy the story, I just needed breaks from it.

I suppose it was also a matter of me doing all the sidequests when they pop up and while most of them are good, there's a lot that I can mainly describe as 'kinna tedious'?

agreed overall

still need to do the leviathan dlc

having the character association map and history map was nice though

Tonberry King : that is a nice addition and while I did t use it much, its very helpful for those lore folk

also for those moments of "Wait...Whomst?"

Tonberry King : yea, there are a couple like that, for sure. the time skips don't help