How Negative FFXVI Reviews Helped Set My Expectations

FFXVI reviews are out! Overall it looks like it's reviewing very well. Some of the negative reviews have actually helped me to not expect the side quests to be very deep or the world to be super open and complex. Overall this is fine with me, I think the game is going to be great and I am stoked to start playing it tonight! Come hang out with me on Twitch tonight.
Twitch: / genjigearlive

[@dacienvegas2712]

Although I have yet to play the game, the 7 negative reviews out of 100, plus probably 2 or 3 more to come, are from unreliable sources, these include the trifecta of trash: Polygon, kotaku or eurogamer. Nobody believes them, but you are welcome to do so. That said, what I expect, and what the other 100 reviews have basically said, is the sidequests are important and world building, consistent in tone with the major arc, and many of them could be a part of it, specially towards the end.... just as they are in FFXIV.

[@genjigearlive]

Yeah I ignored all those stupid reviews. I mean I think a HUGE amount of FFXIV side quests are a waste of time. “World Building” seems to be code for fetch quests. It was the same with FF7 Remake, the quests are boring and very shallow and just expose you to a few people in a region who illustrate the state of the people in that region (which is usually miserable) The best among them are the ones that are just light hearted and fun, i.e. Hildi and the Pull Up Side quest or Johnny’s story. I think at the end of the day, these are fine but very much filler and should be noted as sub par. Games like Cyberpunk, Mass Effect, Red Dead 2, Skyrim, Witcher 3, all do side quests better, they all do “world building” better too because of it. That said, I haven’t played FF16 yet but I’m not expecting much here with side quests which will in turn let me enjoy the game for what it is instead of being disappointed for what it’s not.

[@CrusesFear]

@@genjigearlive I feel like the Witcher 3 truly hit gold with secondary missions. They all had stories to tell, and weren't just excuses to showcase the area/NPCs. Who would have thought, getting a team of writers and asking them to create stories for secondary quests/storylines actually works!

[@genjigearlive]

Yeah I agree, still hasn’t been matched at the scale and quality they did it in.

[@grygaming5519]

Honestly, I kind of feel like the 'open world' for RPG's has been overdone to the point of exhaustion. That's the fatigue I feel with open world games to begin with. So them going with a more semi-classical style of FF feels good to me at least. Then on to the 'other' controversies....telling Japanese developers who want to make a High-Middle Age fantasy that they need minorities is rich. Let alone we've already seen how destructive revisionist history can be (Hamilton, a series of BBC rewrites to include minorities that we have historical information were never there....Cleopatra....and Egypt is suing Netflix for that bastardization of history).

[@genjigearlive]

Yeah if a game isn’t gonna go all out with an open world I prefer they just don’t make it open world. FF7r did a great job. I think we expect open worlds from FF’s because of what they did in the past, but that’s a lot harder to do today and sticking to a great story and fun gameplay is such a better move for them. I hope it enables them to make the next one faster too.