Practices like getting Reddit to only work with Google instead of Bing are probably a big part of it.

I can see that, on the other hand you really don’t have to fight any mob in the mountaintops ir snowfield. Haligtree and Elohael are for sure harder than almost anything else From had done.

It’s very open but at the same time not level gated. As in you can stumble into areas where enemies are much stronger than before. Hell, they literally put a super strong boss in the field just outside the first door to the first area designed to beat the ever living shit out of you in an effort to teach you “yeah, he is too much, go explore somewhere else”

Sure, but what good is an IP if you can’t generate new products to attract and keep users?

Yeah, everyone knows 9 women can generate a baby in 1 month.

And you had to scour forums with dubious links to find official or unofficial patches.

I agree, if you took out the side quests and mini games you’d get another FF16 which was an absolute slog by the end of it because of how monotonous it was with lack of variety

I find it funny how many reviewers complained about the story, it’s a From game. It is the equivalent of complaining about dialogue in porn.

Completely agree 16 is not as strong narratively, merely saying the RPG style is similar, where you are role playing a very focused character with clearly defined personality and mechanics. As opposed to something like FallOut or an MMO where you can taylor your character’s specialization.

I get some of your criticisms for the game and agree with a lot of them. But I don’t see a narrow more action focused character and mechanics as a bad thing, FFXVI is basically a Japanese Witcher 3. Now you may dislike that in favor of more blank slate character development and that’s fine. What I do find a major problem in 16 is that the combat system is complete overkill for the standard difficulty as the enemy AI is extremely passive outside of the big fights. So the game doesn’t force you to really make hard choices in terms of loadout and moment to moment gameplay a la DMC5.

Also, the side quests really suck mechanically and slow down the narrative way too much.

My first was Yellow and I didn’t know you could re-order your party so my pikachu was 20 levels ahead of everyone else.