Final Fantasy XVI (PC, Complete Edition) Review: The Confident, Action-Forward Final Fantasy I Was Waiting For

After the stop-start saga of Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix tapped the FFXIV leadership to shepherd XVI and wow, what a difference.

On PC, with the Complete Edition and both DLCs included, Final Fantasy XVI feels like a team executing on a clear vision: a story-first, full character-action Final Fantasy that respects your time, empowers experimentation, and brings back the political bite I loved in XII and Tactics.

I finished the base game, cleaned up hunts and sidequests, and tackled the DLCs in just over 70 hours and I loved the ride.

Gameplay & Difficulty: Full-On Character Action (and It Works)

Square’s been inching toward action for years; XVI finally commits 100%.

You dodge, parry, launch, and juggle; you weave Eikon abilities into combos; and you build a kit that feels uniquely yours.

The best part: the game actively encourages experimentation. You can refund ability points at any time, reshuffle your entire board in seconds, and save loadouts for different encounters. Try out moves, decide what you like, swap again. No buyer’s remorse.

I’m not a Devil May Cry S-rank monster, and I never found XVI punishing.

The baseline difficulty is fair and readable; the game teaches you to watch animations, manage cooldowns, and punish openings.

If you are a character-action veteran, the game offers harder modes and optional challenge paths.

On the flip side, the Chronolith trials (time-attack arenas that ask you to clear waves under strict timers) landed flat for me. I don’t mind tough encounters, but the timer pressure turned them into stress tests rather than skill sandboxes, so I happily skipped them.

Everything else (the story missions, hunts, and sidequests) felt just right.

Builds, Gear & Progression: Streamlined, On Purpose

Final Fantasy XVI’s RPG layer is lean by design.

Weapons get incrementally stronger; you can transmog to any sword model you’ve found if you don’t like the current look (great touch).

Armor is simple: two pieces, mild bumps to HP/defense.

The real tuning happens in accessories, which modify skills or shave cooldowns, and in your ability board, where slotting different Eikon kits dramatically changes your flow.

This isn’t a loot spreadsheet; it’s a moveset lab.

The DLCs add a few more interesting accessories to push combos further, but the ethos remains: keep it actionable, keep it readable, keep you back in combat quickly.

Story & World: Thrones, Intrigue, and Eikons

Producer Naoki Yoshida and director Hiroshi Takai famously had the team watch Game of Thrones, and you can feel the influence, in a good way.

Valisthea is a continent defined by Mothercrystals (towering magical resources) and by Dominants, people who manifest godlike Eikons (think: the series’ classic summons).

Nations and houses maneuver, betray, and wage proxy wars using their Dominants as living weapons.

At the center is Clive Rosfield, a prince turned fugitive whose path through conspiracies and catastrophe becomes a quest to upend the entire order.

It’s more mature than most Final Fantasies, politics, cruelty, and occasional f-bombs included.

What sells it is how grounded it feels without losing that Final Fantasy sense of wonder: cities built in the shadow of colossal crystals, ancient ruins humming below the surface, even a vast ocean crater where water pours endlessly and never fills.

XVI isn’t the most flamboyant Final Fantasy world, but it’s cohesive, credible, and special and its political stakes make every victory and loss land harder.

Characters, Voice Acting, Sound & Music: Best-in-Series Performances

This is the best English voice acting in the franchise full stop.

Cid steals every scene with a voice that somehow sounds like gravel and velvet at the same time.

Clive is earnest without being bland; the supporting cast is full of memorable performances that elevate even quieter sidequests at the Hideaway.

Sound effects sell weight, swords have bite, Eikon blasts thunder, and the ambience in cities and wilds feels lived-in.

On music, Masayoshi Soken (FFXIV) delivers a fantastic score that perfectly supports mood and scale even if, like me, you find fewer “playlist-forever” bangers than in XIV.

The magic is how often Soken threads the Final Fantasy Prelude or Main Theme into scenes; every time I caught it, I smiled.

It’s not about earworms this time, it’s about dramatic contour, and the score nails it.

Graphics, Art Direction & PC Tweaks: From Muddy to Magnificent

I’ll be honest: out of the box, the PC build looked a bit desaturated and muddy to me.

The art direction (grounded medieval with FF accents) is strong, but the post-processing took some punch out of the image.

Installing the Cimmerian ReShade mod changed everything. With that preset, the game pops with richer contrast, cleaner tonality, and a look that finally matched the scope of the set pieces and Eikon battles. Suddenly, “nice” became “gorgeous.”

Another must-install mode is FFXVIFix which I mainly installed to fix the cutscenes that were locked to 30FPS but it also includes a host of other options and fixes as well.

Performance on my RTX 4080 Super was roughly 4K/60 about 90% of the time.

The remaining 10% were odd dips, especially in a few city hubs, and tinkering with settings didn’t fully fix them.

Mid-playthrough, a DLSS update via NVIDIA’s app noticeably improved both image quality and stability; it didn’t banish every stutter, but it made the ride smoother.

DLC: Echoes of the Fallen & The Rising Tide (Don’t Skip These)

It was funny hearing “no plans for DLC” at launch when the base game clearly had two places begging for follow-ups (a mysterious door and that crystalline structure across a lake).

The finished DLCs absolutely complete the package:

• Echoes of the Fallen: a short, punchy dungeon with smart encounter flow and a fantastic boss fight at the end. It’s two-ish hours, consistently fun, and you walk out with excellent gear. Think “perfect evening session.”
• The Rising Tide: the big one. It adds a gorgeous new region (easily the most beautiful area in the game), a substantial side story with new quests and rewards, and some truly epic boss battles that push the spectacle and mechanics in great directions. If Echoes is dessert, Rising Tide is a whole course.

Together they’re among the best parts of the Complete Edition and absolutely worth playing before you put XVI down.

Sidequests, Hunts & Final Verdict: A Confident, Thrilling Reinvention

I heard the chatter that sidequests “aren’t worth it” because rewards skew toward crafting materials.

I disagree. Every quest gives EXP, ability points, reputation and gil, and the “+” quests unlock actual features (your rideable chocobo, new recipes, and other perks).

More importantly, Hideaway-centric quests deepen the cast and enrich the world’s lore.

I did all of them and don’t regret a single one.

Hunts, meanwhile, are bite-sized spikes of combat joy, great for testing a fresh loadout.

If you’re hoping for turn-based combat, XVI won’t convert you, it’s proudly, fully action.

But if you’re open to a Final Fantasy that plays like a borderline character-action showcase, rewards build tinkering, brings a mature political narrative, and delivers best-in-series voice work, this is it.

Yes, I had some PC stutters before the DLSS update.

Yes, I bounced off the Chronolith timers.

None of that outweighs how consistently engaging, cinematic, and satisfying the rest of the game is and how the DLCs elevate it even further.

Final Fantasy XVI is the most confident mainline entry in years: a sharp, story-driven epic with thrilling action, smart systems that let you experiment without punishment, and a world that balances grounded intrigue with unmistakable FF spectacle.

On PC, with the Complete Edition, it’s an easy recommendation and one of my favorite modern Final Fantasies.

View our full playthrough of the game with the playlist below:

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Images in this review are from the Final Fantasy XVI page on Steam and used under Fair Use.