Zepla: Endwalker is the Worst FFXIV Expansion I have played

[Swordsman]

I don't know what's going on at CBU3, but there's clearly something off. FFXIV has stagnated and FFXVI is the most shallow, soulless game I have played in the series (having played all of them since FFVI).

The crazy thing is for a bit I thought FFXVI was a good game... right up until Baldur's Gate 3 came along and blew it out of the water. FFXVI is still sort of ok in my book, but the depth of its plot and setting pales in comparison to BG3's by a huge margin.

[Vahlnir]

The crazy thing is for a bit I thought FFXVI was a good game... right up until Baldur's Gate 3 came along and blew it out of the water. FFXVI is still sort of ok in my book, but the depth of its plot and setting pales in comparison to BG3's by a huge margin.

FF 16 is more akin to God of War in a lot of ways. For me, that is a pretty significant pro, but it definitely goes against what FF usually is.

[Theodric]

The crazy thing is for a bit I thought FFXVI was a good game... right up until Baldur's Gate 3 came along and blew it out of the water. FFXVI is still sort of ok in my book, but the depth of its plot and setting pales in comparison to BG3's by a huge margin.

I'm really eager to see how Dragon's Dogma 2 fares, on that note. Since it's also a Japanese RPG attempting to capture the 'Western Action RPG' style without losing sight of being an RPG.

FFXVI fooled me with the promise of Ivalice style intrigue but as Supersnow pointed out, it sort of abandoned all that towards the latter half of the game. Ironically sort of similarly to how FFXIV decided to throw out any story line that had genuine, lasting nuance and grey morality.

I was shocked that it took the exact same approach to side quests as FFXIV does. They've certainly had a lot of criticism over the years regarding that particular style and the amount of time spent watching rather than playing. No side content was a bizarre decision too. There's hunts, sure, but then you look at the likes of The Witcher 3 which had horse races, a card game, fist fight competitions and a tourney....and then there's older JRPG's like Shadow Hearts and Breath of Fire 4 which had a whole bunch of fun side content to explore.

[Aldath]

The crazy thing is for a bit I thought FFXVI was a good game... right up until Baldur's Gate 3 came along and blew it out of the water. FFXVI is still sort of ok in my book, but the depth of its plot and setting pales in comparison to BG3's by a huge margin.

I said this before, but FFXVI reeks of PS3/Xbox 360 Corporate Japan Stench. Remember how they made Nier a beefy ugly dude with an eyepatch for the global release because "people won't like our japanese-styled protagonist"? Or how Capcom thought outsourcing development of Devil May Cry was good because "westerners are tired of Dante"? Oh! Let's not forget what Konami did to Silent Hill!

Seriously, I thought they learned their lesson. It makes CBU3 seem disconnected from current times. I mean, how many brooding FF protagonists with sad stories and heart breaking endings more do we need? They just slapped blood, sex and swearing on the FF name and turned it into a generic Hack and Slash. For all the hate FFVII Remake gets because of its awful final part, at least it actually turned the ATB system into an interesting action and RPG blend...

[VentVanitas]

Seriously, I thought they learned their lesson. It makes CBU3 seem disconnected from current times. I mean, how many brooding FF protagonists with sad stories and heart breaking endings more do we need? They just slapped blood, sex and swearing on the FF name and turned it into a generic Hack and Slash. For all the hate FFVII Remake gets because of its awful final part, at least it actually turned the ATB system into an interesting action and RPG blend...

Okay this is gonna sound petty and purely my opinion but the """mature""" elements they added to XVI feel completely superficial, as if they based it on what a teenager considers mature, either that or their only understanding of the appeal of Game of Thrones is the gratuitous violence and sex. And before anyone calls me a weird sheltered mormon prude or whatever, I'm the biggest sailor mouth I know and the only reason why people don't witness it here is because I'm not risking a ban over an F bomb.

They just feel out of place given XVI's story is not really anymore mature or dark than any other mainline FF game (not saying that it needs to be to have sex/bloody violence/swearing of course, but there's a time and place for everything).

[ReynTime]

The crazy thing is for a bit I thought FFXVI was a good game... right up until Baldur's Gate 3 came along and blew it out of the water. FFXVI is still sort of ok in my book, but the depth of its plot and setting pales in comparison to BG3's by a huge margin.

BG3 is great but when people say that really makes me realise a lot of FF fans don't actually play other japanese RPGs. Because there was nothing original in XVI, and everything it borrowed from DMC's combat is executed with significantly less depth or flexibility.

Ever since XV all they do with FF is try to chase trends from games that were popular in the west, but barely scratch the surface of the features those popular games have that make them good. Final Fantasy hasn't been peak jRPG since XIII either.

[RitsukoSonoda]

BG3 is great but when people say that really makes me realise a lot of FF fans don't actually play other japanese RPGs. Because there was nothing original in XVI, and everything it borrowed from DMC's combat is executed with significantly less depth or flexibility.

Ever since XV all they do with FF is try to chase trends from games that were popular in the west, but barely scratch the surface of the features those popular games have that make them good. Final Fantasy hasn't been peak jRPG since XIII either.

To me the peak entries of the FF main series were 4,5,6,and 9. 4,5,and 6 were made during the 16bit console era where visuals were still important, but weren't really able to be pushed to the point where a game could sell itself on visuals alone. The titles had to rely on the quality of story telling and gameplay mechanics in order to retain any kind of relevance in the JRPG market. Something that numerous companies understood at the time which resulted in a rather large assortment of JRPG franchises despite the genre remaining under the radar for most of the world outside of Japan at the time. 9 was the final entry in the PS1 era and hit a sort of return to form throwback to the series 8bit and 16 bit days which might have been due to the experimentation done with 8's gameplay backfiring heavily. 7 wasn't a bad entry tbh but I honestly feel the reason it's pushed up so much by people is because it was the first title SE put a fair amount of effort into marketing outside of Japan resulting in it being the first entry of the entire series or even the JRPG genre for a generation of gamers. Then the PS2 era hit and that felt like when the games started shifting more towards flash over substance. 10 wasn't bad however a noticeable amount of people felt playing Blitzball was more entertaining than the main game. 11 was it's first MMO entry and kind of backpedaled from the direction 10 took by saturating the title with things to do. 12 felt like the first push towards making a more action oriented JRPG and turned into a mostly solid entry. Then we hit the PS3 with 13 which felt like multiple steps were taken backwards in favor of a visual spectacle. The original 14 hit but struggled IMO primarily due to how the game was handled more than it's design, 15 hit which had a few things new to it but to many felt like SE trying to make their own version of something like Skyrim with an open world but as mentioned they only scratched the surface of what could be done with that style of game, then 14 ARR came about which was essentially rebuilding the game as a WoW clone while staying different enough that people don't refer to it as a WoW clone. And that brings us to 16 which pretty much threw away the series' entire identity as a JRPG franchise to give us a FF flavored DMC styled action game.

I don't have any issues with them making FF titles of other genres or styled after other titles. They've been doing it for quite awhile. However those titles weren't given mainline numbers in the franchise series.
Tactics
Chrystal Chronicles
Explorers
Fables
Mobius
Brave Exvius
Etc..

There was also the 3 Legend entries and Adventure but atm i cannot remember if that was just the names used to market the games in the west or if those were the original ones. The legend series titles are actually the first 3 entries in the SaGa series and Adventure was the start of the Mana series.