Game is being review bombed by user review scores on metacritic lol. Some user reviews from metacritic
"FFXVI is a bad game and the worst FF ever made.
-Story has poor pacing, many inconsistencies and dropped plot points
-Characters are dull and some have incomplete arcs
-Performance is terrible
-The action combat has no depth and every enemy can be countered in the same way, no strategy is required
-Exploration is either non-existent or pointless since the rewards are poor
-Side quests are boring and often a waste of time
-The sex and nudity on screen feels extremely cheap and a poor way to copy from the main source of inspiration for this game, GOT
More specific flaws are: no party, no castable magic, no status magic, no build customization (clive can only be a close quarters dps), no equipment variety, 3 stats, no itemization etc...
A few of these alone don't make a game bad, but once these pile up at one point you will reach a breaking point.
This is FFXVI. This is not an RPG and it's barely a FF. "
"i was hyped for years and was disappointed.
cons:
-linear and corridor-like ff13 tier level design
-way WAY too many cutscenes. over half of the game is uninteractive
-exploration when it finally opens up 20 hours in is unrewarding and empty
-loot is terrible,
-weapons, accessories, items and build progression are an afterthought. they're nothing more than stat sticks
-lacking rpg elements and the ones present feel tacked on
-worthless crafting system
-very little customization
-no hidden things to discover
-boring mmo-like side quests with trash rewards
-horrible facial animations outside of cutscenes
-severe pacing issues in main quests
-bland side characters except for Cid
-combat is far too easy and requires no strrategy + mid boss checkpoints
-poor enemy variety
-takes too long to be able to freely customize your eikon loadout
-gratuitous QTEs
-countless squeeze-throughs
-particle effects make it hard to see what the enemy is even doing
-weak villain for an FF game
-neglected side characters ( jill especially)
-story and pacing near the end is a mess
-some themes and plot points forgotten about
-performance issues, people getting crashes/overheating, ungodly motion blur, etc.
pros: clive is a well developed MC, music is unbelievably good, the concept art is good, solid voice acting"
"Massively disappointing Final Fantasy game.
- Absolute shallow RPG elements.
- Tries too hard to be a Devil May Cry game.
- Generic, dull, boring and unrewarding side quests that actually hurt the pacing of the game.
- Tries to be so many things but fails to be the one thing it needs to be: a Final Fantasy game
- Poor performance and limited graphical settings.
- Good characters and voice acting, held back by a terribly written story that falls apart quickly.
- Cinematic battles feature Quick Time Events that give you more than 1 minute to react, completely eliminating the intended effect.
- Semi-open areas that feel genuinely lacking; they either have the same types of monsters and/or bland side quests.
"
"-Story has poor pacing, many inconsistencies and dropped plot points
-Characters are dull and some have incomplete arcs -Performance is terrible -The action combat has no dept and every enemy can be countered in the sale way, no strategy is required -Exploration Is either non-existent or pointless since the rewards are poor -Side quests
The 16 flaws of Final Fantasy 16:
1 - the game is an ignorant action that can be completed by holding down the square button all the time
2 - the framerate dancer slows down the flow of gameplay and cutscenes too often even with the DayOne Patch
3 - flat and linear level design makes corridor exploration useless
4 - the gameplay becomes repetitive already after the first three hours, given how the combinations of elements do not lead to different results of the battles, marking its disarming superficiality
5 - texture pop up is ugly to see in 2023
6 - the plot starts with rhythm and ends with boredom.
Bringing ridiculous motivations and turning many situations into meaningless bad moments
7 - there are no minigames
8 - once the story is completed there is no secret content or endgame. Only the New Game +
9 - the "dungeons" are all linear, flat and copy paste
10 - it's too easy even on hard mode. So much so that I could call it a joke even for a casual gamer
11 - there is no party, only Torgal the dog who can do 2 commands and that's it
12 - there is no World Map, but only a map menu where you can select the mission...
13 - The final Boss is an insult compared to all previous Bosses in the game.
And it's also one of the worst when compared to the Final Bosses of previous Final Fantasy games
14 - side quests are awful. Deliver flowers, escort items, collect item, etc...
15 - the "hunts" are not well built and indeed are tedious and essentially useless since they are nothing but mobs that are easy to exterminate
16 - the inconsiderate and bad use of the Quick Time Events. Because usually in games like God of War they have a more marked value to affect the game itself. But here in Final Fantasy 16 they're overdone, to the point where 99% of enemies are demolished by these Quick Time Events just to disguise a load-up between the end of a battle and the start of a cutscene
"
"The world looks great, but it's just a lifeless scenery. There are barely people you can actually talk to and if there are, they don't have anything interesting to say. The characters also look too clean for a medival fantasy game.
The battle system is again very chaotic. Once you gain more abilities there are light shows all over the screen and you barely know what's going on. It just isn't a problem, because most enemies don't even pose a threat. Except for their large health pools they don't have anything going for them. So even with blind button mashing you'll be fine. The battles just drag on for way too long.
Also it's very annoying, that you often get animation locked by your abilities. This is so counterintuitive for an ARPG. If you want to make action combat, design your skills for action combat, so that my character responds to my input and isn't locked for 3 seconds, because he has to go through a lengthy animation.
If you want to make lengthy and flashy animtions, go back to making turn based games. At least there players can enjoy those animations. In an ARPG they are just an hindrance.
The side quests are the worst type of fetch quests you'll ever see in a video game. It's unbelievable how a series known for their great side quests could turn into this.
There is barely no RPG and almost no J left in this JRPG. It's more like a character action game than anything else. The skill progression system is so shallow, they could just have removed it all together and turned the whole game into an Action game instead of an JRPG.
But the worst thing are those Eikon battles the game advertises with. They just aren't fun and fell so out of place. You see like 20-30 seconds of interesting animations and actions, but the battles drag on for 5 minutes or more. You just keep repeating the same mind numbing stuff over and over and over again, barely doing any damage to your enemy and having to rewatch the same animations over and over and over again. So after a while you get really annoyed by those animations, that were supposed to be cool and awesome. You just wish to finally get over with this fight and move on with the story. It would have been much much better if SE made the Eikon battles just 20-30 seconds long cutscenes."