Final Fantasy 16 was announced

[linayar]

What will make XVI good or bad is not the graphics, it's how well it handles everything else. If it's just a straight and linear story it'll be no different from playing Devil May Cry. If it's a story with open world environments where you can can pick up a bunch of open world quests; have a huge selection of weapon types, a huge amount of glamour options, the ability to create your own character (as a new game+ bonus?); it's these extra features that will make/break FFXVI.

Games with a straight story don't fare well, good games these days offer you a good amount of customization; character creation (I know it's not an mmo, but any good solo rpg has a character creator now, specially Western ones), a huge amount of challenges to do in the world that build the game's lore and exploration systems.
So miss me with the graphics, I'm all about how rich or dull the world around the story is.

Uh, I want a linear/straight story in my Final Fantasy games, even more so for a single-player game.

[Amnmaat]

Uh, I want a linear/straight story in my Final Fantasy games, even more so for a single-player game.

If only I could dig up this very quote from 2010/11 when FFXIII came out. Yeah, linear story good, or so you think that's what you want. If there's one thing Yoship's good at, he knows people say one thing but they really don't mean it. FFXIII taught them that they can't just make a linear, story focused FF game. It has to have depth to it. Either through its battle system (XII with its zociac boards/LP; X with its spheres, levels, and other things, VII with its materia, etc) and/or through its world environment like in XII, VIII, and some others.You can't just give us a movie and expect that to be a good product. Some of the most memorable things about FF happen to be its battle systems and world environment. FF can't stand on story alone, the people who are good at analysis understand this.

[Shurrikhan]

If there's one thing Yoship's good at, he knows people say one thing but they really don't mean it.

I guess that's how he knows which opinions or inquiries to cherry-pick so he can address only our most surface-level conflicts or concerns while avoiding any interaction with most of the underlying issues?

Granted, I can respect that skillset.

[linayar]

If only I could dig up this very quote from 2010/11 when FFXIII came out. Yeah, linear story good, or so you think that's what you want.

Well, considering I very much enjoyed FFXIII, I guess I do know what I want. Right now, it's second only to FFIX as my favorite.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, considering I very much enjoyed FFXIII, I guess I do know what I want. Right now, it's second only to FFIX as my favorite.

It's funny how 'meta' the linearity to that game is.
Spoilers:

You're start in a world where all is linearized, optimized, and what few people enjoy any real sense of freedom only do so because it helps maintain the illusion for everyone else while they go on enjoyably with preset, catered lives, as crafted by gods made by man to serve man who and who, since they've no freedom, only want to die.
Pulse, a world which doesn't give a damn about people, is by contrast one of the most open world experiences we've ever had in an FF.

It's likewise a top 3 for me, after 9 and alongside a split between 7 and 8.
That said, 4 and 6 were pretty great too, so... it's all real close, though, honestly.

[linayar]

It's funny how 'meta' the linearity to that game is.
Spoilers:

You're start in a world where all is linearized, optimized, and what few people enjoy any real sense of freedom only do so because it helps maintain the illusion for everyone else while they go on enjoyably with preset, catered lives, as crafted by gods made by man to serve man who and who, since they've no freedom, only want to die.
Pulse, a world which doesn't give a damn about people, is by contrast one of the most open world experiences we've ever had in an FF.

It's likewise a top 3 for me, after 9 and alongside a split between 7 and 8.
That said, 4 and 6 were pretty great too, so... it's all real close, though, honestly.

I was saving exploring that zone in 13 for after I beat the game as I was more focused on continuing with the story (at least, I assumed I would be able to), but I never got around to it, unfortunately. Maybe in a future replay, I'll take a look at it.

In terms of my enjoyment of the various single-player FF games, it's largely affected by how much progress I was able to make due to various reasons (life situations and whatnot):

7, 8, 9, and 13 are the only ones I ever finished.

12, I made it near the end, but never actually finished.

Tactics, 10, and 13-2, I made it about half way.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10-2, Dirge of Cerberus, Lightning Returns, and Type 0, for these, I stopped near the beginning after trying them out for various reasons (Type 0 I just hated the controls playing on PC, so that's probably the only one I can't see myself trying again in the future).

I never even purchased 15 because I've stopped playing on console and my PC can barely handle 14 and 15 didn't seem interesting enough to motivate me to upgrade my PC. But if I ever get a new PC, I might try it out.

The rest of the existing games, I don't think I'll ever play, including 11.

I can definitely say that the four games I managed to finish plus 12 and Tactics are very enjoyable at around the same level of enjoyment, with 9 and 13 being at the top.

14, of course, is also very enjoyable to me, but it's kind of hard to rank it alongside the single-player games.

[Shurrikhan]

I was saving exploring that zone in 13 for after I beat the game as I was more focused on continuing with the story (at least, I assumed I would be able to), but I never got around to it, unfortunately. Maybe in a future replay, I'll take a look at it.

Ahh, shoot. I mean, if you still have a passion for that game (I realize it can be hard to get back into a story-centric single-player game way later), I'd recommend it.

I really enjoyed the mission systems, the back alleys, and just the sense of progression in general there. Heck, there are elements from that part of the game I wish XIV would take up.

And it's about the same here. I didn't quite finish 10, and, having lost my save, never will. Lightning Returns didn't click for me, so I stopped about half-way through. After having played a bit of XII, I didn't think I'd much notice the difference between playing it and watching a good playthrough of it, so I just finished it off with the latter. Pretty good story, though. I bought XV for my PC, which can run it fine, but it didn't quite click for me either. 11 I played when visiting friends, even raiding for them occasionally (quite a bit, now that I think about it), but I never had any desire to level through it myself past that early often nostalgia-laden period.

Oddly enough, though, XV had the least satisfying combat system of the whole lot to me. There were just too many Chekov's Gun issues, where something looked like it very clearly should be possible, but wasn't. For context, XIII was unsurprisingly the second worst, but went the opposite direction so to speak. There was certainly more I'd want XIII combat to have been capable of (and some more micro-AI QoL, such as healing targets in sequence until full instead of spamming 4 heals into the same character who needs just the one), but, like the turn based systems before it, the restrictions were at least apparent from the start. If anything, one just ended up pleasantly surprised that they could time hits and staggers or engagements and disengagements to the exact intended half-second in order to prevent certain attacks from completing or to dodge others. Both XV and XIII felt "floaty" and perhaps even unfinished, but one clearly had hand-on controls and the other made it clear you were just the tactician behind it all. The prior made it feel that bit less forgivable, especially atop the fact the game came out so much later and with so much more resources behind it.