Alright, so Final Fantasy XVI is a game that desperately wants to be taken seriously. It’s got the grimdark medieval aesthetic, the brutal combat, the Game of Thrones political drama—but the pacing is all over the place, and it keeps tripping over itself. One moment, you’re locked in a visually stunning, bombastic Eikon battle that looks like it cost more than my entire existence to animate, and the next, you’re being sent on a thrilling quest to pick some herbs for an NPC who barely has a name. The game cannot decide whether it wants to be an intense, cinematic action-RPG or a medieval gig economy simulator.

Mechanically, it’s an odd beast. The combat is gorgeous and smooth, but it’s also very forgiving, to the point where there’s almost no real build variety. Clive is who he is, and there’s no real customization outside of deciding which pretty particle effects you want to spam. Gear? Stat sticks. Side quests? A mixed bag. Some have emotional depth, but most feel like an intern was told to add “content” and just made everyone in Valisthea incapable of handling their own problems. And the story—oof. It wants to be a grand, political epic, but every time it gets close, it backs off in favor of another flashy set piece. There are genuinely compelling moments, and the voice acting is phenomenal, but the game keeps interrupting itself with pointless busywork that kills any momentum. Final Fantasy XVI is an experience that constantly dazzles, but it doesn’t always engage, and by the time it’s over, you’re left wondering if all the spectacle was meant to distract you from the fact that it never quite knew what it wanted to be.

And then there’s the weird tonal whiplash. The game leans hard into the “dark and mature” aesthetic—lots of war, suffering, and tragic backstories—but then it’ll throw in a goofy fetch quest that feels like it wandered in from a completely different game. It’s like watching a high-budget fantasy drama where every so often, the protagonist takes a break from overthrowing tyrants to help some guy find his lost chickens. It wants to be taken seriously, but it also refuses to fully commit to the weight of its own narrative, which makes it hard to stay emotionally invested. At the end of the day, Final Fantasy XVI is beautiful, well-acted, and fun in bursts, but it’s also uneven, frustrating, and sometimes just plain exhausting. It’s the video game equivalent of a moody prestige TV show that gets a little too obsessed with its own cinematography and forgets to tell a story that actually lands.