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

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Review: Final Fantasy XVI The Silicon Sasquatch Podcast

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?

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...