YMMV / Final Fantasy XVI

• Abandon Shipping: Cid/Benedikta shippers who are put off by ships with large age gaps ended up abandoning the ship after the Final Fantasy XVI Ultimania confirmed that Cid and Benedikta were 44 and 28 after the first time-skip, respectively, as it meant that there was a 16-year age gap between the two.
• Accidental Aesop: Be satisfied with what you have; flying too close to the sun is going to be nothing but trouble. Anabella's entire scheme came about because she wasn't satisfied with being a duchess of Rosaria, despite being queen in all but name. She sold out to the enemy and violently tore apart her own family to join Sanbreque's ruling faction, not considering that said faction would treat her with scorn for being a treacherous Social Climber and already had a crown prince in the form of Dion, the Dominant of Bahamut. Even if Sanbreque's ambition is taken into account, Anabella's betrayal could have been settled with Altar Diplomacy and/or unconditional surrender rather than a full-blown massacre. On top of that, sparing Clive when she could have killed him ended up creating Sanbreque's downfall, meaning everything Anabella worked for was rendered worthless.
• Accidental Innuendo: The people who call upon the Eikons are called Dominants. Try not to think too hard about what that term usually means in the real world.
• Adorkable: This may be the darkest entry yet, in the bleakest setting yet, but it's still a Final Fantasy game. It has to have at least one or two characters who fit this mold, and indeed it does.
  • Clive himself, while not dorky in the traditional sense, has just enough endearing traits to barely squeeze him into this category. For starters, he's an Extreme Doormat to the fullest. He cannot, almost under any circumstance, refuse someone in need. And predictably, this puts him in extremely awkward and weird situations often. He'll sometimes grumble and quip about it, but he's just too soft of a touch to say no. Then there's the fact that he's a hilariously bad liar and actor - as in, he cannot lie to save his own life. A low-rent actor reading off of giant cue cards could turn in a more believable performance than Clive. Clive, for his part, had no idea about this until Uncle Byron and Jill finally told him the truth. Then there's how he convinced Byron he was still alive: A hilariously random and awkward, albeit incredibly heartwarming, recreation of a scene from his and his Uncle's favorite play. It comes out of nowhere, but it proves to be just the thing, which tends to summarize Clive in general - the right person at the wrong place, at any place.
  • Mid. If some people are sweet to the point of being compared to sugar, Mid is a bag full of Pop Rocks. Endearing, endlessly energetic, brilliant, funny, and has an even bigger capacity to bring out the best in people than even her own father, Cid. When she returns to the Hideaway, not only does she turn the entire place upside-down on the spot, she gets everyone to start working on her project. Not even Vivian or grumpy ol' Blackthorne can bring themselves to refuse her.
  • Uncle Byron. His first scene basically has him reenact a play with Clive that he used to do when the latter was a child. And later on he is more than willing to go adventuring with Clive in Dhalmekia and proves to be a jovial and competent companion in his own right despite, or perhaps because of, his eccentrics.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Here.
• Anvilicious:
  • This game really wants you to have a low opinion of slavery and anyone who partakes in it. A lot of the dark elements come from just how horrifically Clive and other Bearers are treated. The anviliciousness lightens up considerably in the second half of the game to make room for more pressing issues, but never goes away entirely.
  • The crystals themselves are pure Aesoptinium. A prized and fought-over resource that is indirectly causing a massive ecological disaster that slowly drives the planet uninhabitable, yet nobody in power wants to admit what is obviously the source of their problems, in the process ensuring their descendants won't have a world to rule? Gee, doesn't that sound familiar...
• Award Snub: While it got four nominations at the Game Awards (and won for Best Music), many thought that it was snubbed a nomination for Game of the Year despite having more nominations than Resident Evil 4 (Remake) which was a nominee. On a lesser extent, some thought that Ben Starr as Clive deserved to win Best Performance over Neil Newborn for Astarion in Baldur's Gate III.
• Best Boss Ever: Pretty much all of the fights with the Dominants and/or their Eikons.
  • The Eikon boss battles are incredible pieces of spectacle, especially the fights against Titan and Bahamut, which take place on a scale such that no Final Fantasy game has done before and have a ton of emotional weight to the story leading up to the battles; the battle with Titan and later Titan Lost has awesome music as players fight a boss that's the size of a mountain range, and Arc Villain Hugo Kupka puts up a hell of a fight before finally being put down. For Bahamut, Clive and Joshua finally reunite, battle Bahamut together in their Eikon forms, and when Bahamut powers up on the Mothercrystal and flies into space, Ifrit and Phoenix fuse into Ifrit Risen to chase after him and the battle takes place in orbit around the planet.
  • The Dominant fights, while not as grand as the Eikons, are enjoyed for being very polished fights. Players have noted how well the developers (many of whom work or have worked on XIV beforehand) transitioned MMO mechanics to a single-player game, as enemies telegraph their attack patterns and movements well enough for you to avoid them without being lax about it, and the bosses themselves stand out for unique designs and fighting styles. The result is a series of bosses that are mechanically well-designed and provide a fair challenge, demand more than a bit of skill, and are very fun to play.
  • The behemoth line, acting a lot like a modified version of its Final Fantasy XIV counterpart, having its same moveset. Special mention to the very first one, with its attempt to wipe you out with its infamous Ecliptic Meteor!
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: As Barnabas speaks to Ultima and they shapeshift into different forms of people he knows, suddenly they take the form of a dark-haired woman the player has never seen before. Barnabas lays his head on her lap and happily whispers "Mother". While certain interpretations of the scene can be inferred, such implications really have no bearing on Barnabas' actions or his characters, and the player doesn't learn much more about his mother and never sees her again in any form. Thus the moment simply comes right the hell out of nowhere to hit the player with some serious Squick at the end of what was otherwise an ominous and foreboding scene. Not to mention that for all of it, Barnabas and the different people Ultima takes the form of are all naked.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The Dominant of the second Eikon of Fire, Ifrit, is Clive. The treats it as a massive reveal, but most of the marketing of the game featured Ifrit and Phoenix prominently, especially Ifrit, all the gameplay previews showed Ifrit as the primary playable Eikon when fighting other Eikons, and a trailer even had the character shouting an invocation of Ifrit. Even if one hadn't seen any of this, the prologue of the game doesn't hide it very well and it isn't hard to piece it together before the reveal comes. Somewhat mitigated in that the real focus isn't on the shock of the reveal itself, but what it means to the characters and how it shifts their personalities and motivations.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Hugo spends his screentime being a loathsome brute of a person, namely in attacking the Hideaway after he was led to believe Cid killed Benedikta, bullying the leadership of Dhalmekia into following his every whim, and sentencing Clive and Jill to death when they return to Rosalith. Clive subsequently telling Hugo he killed Benedikta and cutting off his hands, followed by Hugo's Villainous Breakdown at losing his hands and eventually hallucinating himself being cuckolded by Benedikta and Clive goes above and beyond in giving him his comeuppance, and it is satisfying to watch.
  • Anabella, Clive and Joshua's mother, is portrayed as a character that was intentionally written to be hated by the audience. This makes it more satisfying when Anabella undergoes a Villainous Breakdown. Not only does sparing Clive accidentally make everything better for the heroes, but her philosophy and petty attempts at being a Social Climber keep getting stopped by Clive when he ruins the Empire of Sanbreque. Then, it's revealed that her Parental Betrayal was All for Nothing, because Olivier is the vessel of Ultima, and he already passed over Anabella's next child because her two sons were both Dominants. Finally, as Anabella undergoes Sanity Slippage at seeing Joshua alive again, she's Driven to Suicide just to make it stop. The way the game presents this sequence of events is Anabella getting her just desserts.
  • A sidequest earlier in the game has you witness a nobleman and his son lure Bearers to their death by the hands of their pet wolf and take pleasure in it. They try to do the same to you, but because you're The Protagonist, it obviously doesn't go so well. They get mad, storm off, and go to find a bigger wolf to replace the one you just killed. One cutscene later, and you hear their well-deserved cries in the distance as they are mauled to death by the new 'pet' they just acquired. Though, as stated below, while it's generally agreed that the nobleman deserved his fate, many feel that his son sharing that fate is Karmic Overkill.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Naoki Yoshida is not the game's director; he's the producer. Because most of the prerelease media and advertising interviewed Yoshida or played up his involvement, one would be forgiven for thinking he's the game's director, but he's not. The main director is Hiroshi Takai, known for his work on SaGa and The Last Remnant, as well as parts of Final Fantasy XIV.
  • The game's voice acting being recorded in English first made many waves among fans, which quickly got twisted into the false claim that the game's script was also written in English first. In actuality, the script was written first in Japanese, then translated into English and also underwent expected changes in localization. After the voice recording began, the Japanese script was re-edited to more closely resemble the final draft of the localized English version, and the second version of this script is what the Japanese voice actors used when they started their recording sessions.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Garuda is one of the most commonly used Eikons simply because her abilities are good at every point of the game in most every situation for any kind of playstyle; Gouge is excellent for quickly draining an opponent's stagger gauge, Rook's Gambit is a dodge-and-counterattack type move, Wicked Wheel spins Clive and nearby enemies up into the air (which combos perfectly with Downthrust or Titan's Upheaval), and Aerial Blast can chainstun groups of smaller enemies or deal continuous stagger damage to larger enemies. Plus her Eikonic Feat Deadly Embrace pulls smaller enemies towards Clive or launches him into the air if used against larger enemies, and at half stagger it can temporarily stun larger enemies and leave them wide-open for a follow-up attack. No other Eikon has an Eikonic Feat with such diverse interactions with enemy types and their stagger gauge, and on top of Garuda's other tools for both mobs and bosses, she's all-around excellent.
• Complete Monster:
  • Ultima is the progenitor of mankind and the puppetmaster of Valisthea's miseries. Introducing magic to reality ages ago, Ultima's tampering brought the Blight into existence, threatening all life. Ultima responded to the threat by creating humanity to be his subservient slaves with no wills of their own, desiring to use them as nothing but worshippers and breeding stock to one day grant him a new vessel to inhabit, "Mythos". After slumbering for hundreds of years and using parts of his essence to create the Mothercrystals, Ultima awakens in the present, so horrified that humankind has developed consciousness that he decides to punish them for evolving beyond the scope he created them for. Ultima uses disguises, powers, and simple words to manipulate various factions across Valisthea into bloody carnage. He has Hugo Kupka annihilate the Hideaway by cutting off the head of Kupka's lover and framing it on Cid; takes the form of the Holy Empire prince Olivier to push the systematic genocide of the Bearers; uses Barnabas's memory of his mother to fool him into turning countless people into the monstrous Akashic; and forcefully activates Eikons to have the users decimate their own kingdoms. Despite his claimed intention to save humanity, Ultima's true goal is to wipe it out entirely and start over with a new creation that will worship him for all eternity as the god he believes himself to be.
  • Imreann, the High Priest of Crystalline Orthodox and leader of the Iron Kingdom, stands as one of the wickedest supporting villains in the entire franchise. Imreann is the facilitator of the Iron Kingdom's Rape, Pillage, and Burn of the surrounding kingdoms, having his men move in and enslave the women and girls as Sex Slaves. Imreann also horribly oppresses and kills the magic users known as the Bearers as part of his fanatical crusade against those he deems impure to the Mothercrystals. Imreann leads the sack of the capital of Rosaria, with the men massacred and the women and girls enslaved. Finding the 13-year-old Jill Warrick, Imreann uses the lives of innocent child magic users—the Bearers—as a way to blackmail her into being his attack dog using her powers as Shiva. Imreann uses her to lay waste to other kingdoms but has been secretly murdering the children as Human Sacrifices anyway due to his fanatical hatred of the Bearers. In addition, the original Japanese localisation reveals that Imreann has himself been sexually preying on the young female slaves that he sacrifices. When eventually confronted by Jill, Imreann is unapologetic, degrading her as useless.
  • "To Catch a Thief" & "Blood from the Stones": The Cast Stones bandit leaders are a pair of Human Traffickers who lure merchants to their territory to rob them and leave them to starve and die en masse. Kidnapping children to use as bait in large numbers, the Cast Stones bandits abuse them with the threat of starvation and beatings. Fully intending to sell them as slaves and pickpockets, they gloat how the children will be mutilated and intend to make full use of them before that happens.
• Contested Sequel: It's a Final Fantasy game, so this was bound to happen. While not as divisive as Final Fantasy XIII or Final Fantasy XV, fans are still split on the action-based combat of the game, the lack of more traditional Final Fantasy elements such as Superbosses or enemies like Tonberries and Cactuars, whether the overall bleakness of Valisthea is enough or too much, the overall grittier tone compared to other installments in the series, the unevenness of the game's second half, and the underutilization of characters that aren't Clive prevents a common consensus on the game from being reached among fans of the series.
• Demonic Spiders: Many of the Elite Mooks count as this by their nature: tons of HP, powerful attacks, and large enough to be immune to pulling.
  • Imperial Cannoneers. They have a huge cannon that affords them a variety of ranged attacks, they'll swing it around for melee blows too, they'll use it as a flamethrower to spew a blast of fire that can melt Clive's HP if he's caught up in it, and they can use it to rocket around so fast that you have very little time to react before they're in your face and Clive is on the ground.
  • Aevises fly (already an annoyance, since Clive by nature is not an aerial combatant), spit fireballs from range, have a fire breath attack identical to the flamethrower of cannoneers, and a nasty swooping attack that can be tricky to time dodging.
  • Adamantoises aren't particularly dangerous on their own, but they're very annoying to fight because they're Nigh-Invulnerable to attack anywhere except their head. Attacking them from any other direction will result in your blows doing minimal damage or being deflected entirely, and they can brush off even your strongest attacks by just turning away a few degrees.
  • Undertakers are the strongest and nastiest of Ultima's Thralls. "Spirits Within" is a giant energy beam that can cleave off a huge chunk of Clive's health in one shot, their other attacks are pretty hard-hitting too, and they have a ton of HP.
• Disappointing Last Level: Not counting the Final Boss, which is faced in a Boss-Only Level, the final dungeon of the game is the Interdimensional Rift, which features an epic boss battle but otherwise is a linear path broken up by cutscenes where Ultima Info Dumps his backstory and plans on you, and there's no enemies, treasure, or exploration. Functionally the last gameplay level you play through is Stonehyrr, and while it does feature a large amount of enemies in great variety suitable for a final gauntlet of gameplay, aesthetically and narratively it's ill-fitting as a final dungeon, and the game doesn't even treat it as such (though for all intents and purposes, it is).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Some of the supporting characters met throughout the game have become just as popular as the main characters, if not more than some of them:
  • Uncle Byron is this due to him being a nobleman who goes out of his way to help the heroes, to the point of funding them to the point where he's bleeding money. There's also the fact that he's a boisterous and friendly guy in general, can also hold his own in battle even against Akashic, and acts as a positive Parental Substitute to Clive and Joshua after Elwin and Cid are killed.
  • Kihel the medicine girl is this despite her limited presence, primarily due to her catchy chant "curatives, calmatives, restoratives", and for nursing Dion back to health late in the game. Her fate being left unresolved after the destruction of the Crystalline Dominion has even been a sticking point with fans, with many wanting to see her alive and well after it.
  • Terrence's screentime is likewise limited, but him being Prince Dion's lover in one of the first onscreen LGBTQ+ romances in Final Fantasy has earned him a lot of fans, to point where many wish that Dion survived the battle at Origin to reunite with Terrence.
  • Nektar the Moogle, an NPC at the Hideaway, has earned himself fans on account of him being a cartoonish-looking Moogle who brags often about him supposed achievements in a way that ends up being endearing rather than annoying, and for speaking with the regular Moogle sound effects as opposed to being voiced in English.
• Epileptic Trees: Owing to her implied Child Prodigy status and the Contrived Coincidence of her appearances throughout the game, as well as the fact that she is somehow shown to possess fresh water while living in the slums, fans have speculated that Kihel, the young orphaned Good Samaritan who pops up several times at key moments in the story, and who nurses a wounded Dion back to health after he collapses upon returning to the destroyed Twinside - prompting Dion to request Terrence to find and care for her as thanks - is in fact the Dominant of the mysteriously absent Leviathan the Lost. Unfortunately for those who spent much time and energy propagating this theory, The Rising Tide DLC revealed its actual Dominant is an infant boy named Waljas from the lost kingdom of Mysidia who has been frozen in time for a century.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: Fix Fics where Dion survives the end of the game and reunites with Terrence or (though to a lesser extent) Clive survives to reunite with Jill and Joshua became incredibly common shortly after the game's release. It helps that both characters suffer Uncertain Doom. Peggy Sue fics where post-game Clive (or, occasionally, Joshua) are sent back in time to before Phoenix Gate are also incredibly common.
• Fanfic Fuel: There are two major story threads with plenty of meat on their bones for fanfiction - what Joshua was up to during the thirteen year timeskip and whatever happened to Leviathan the Lost (the latter stopping after The Rising Tide DLC gave us the official answer).
• Fanon: Despite her birth family being well-known for producing Dominants, Anabella's maiden name is, oddly enough, never revealed. As such, some fans have given her the surname Cole, after her English voice actress.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • The story's similarities to Tales of Berseria have not gone unnoticed, especially by Tales Series fans. Both games star aloof dark-haired Red and Black and Evil All Over anti-heroes predominantly associated with fire seeking revenge for the murder of a younger brother with a connection to a magical entity said to be undying, forcibly enslaved after being betrayed by a close family member, and who can drain power from supernatural forces while channelling demonic-looking abilities of their own. The fact that Clive also turned out to be fighting against a Physical God, with a connection to the aforementioned deceased sibling, who wants to end The Evils of Free Will by stripping people of their individual agency also fuelled the comparisons. It all seems to be in good humour, though, as you don't have to look far to find comments from Berseria fans actively expressing their excitement for the game, or even proposing a Crossover Ship between Velvet and Clive due to their commonalities.
  • Fans of Asura's Wrath are also very likely to enjoy Final Fantasy XVI, due to their shared penchant for bombastic, larger-than-life boss fights.
  • There is a lot of friendliness towards fans of the Xenoblade Chronicles series, not the least of which is due to Xenoblade being popular with a lot of fans of the older Final Fantasy games due to sharing a lot of former Square staff, when XVI is considered to be something of a Revisiting the Roots game. They also share a lot of similar themes and archetypes in common, particularly with 3 and Future Redeemed, and prominent voice actors have appeared in both games, which have further brought their fanbases together.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Garuda's Aerial Blast. It creates a massive tornado that lasts for around 30 seconds and seeks out enemies, dealing massive stagger damage to larger enemies. Against smaller enemies, however, they get caught up in the winds and are stunlocked until it ends, taking continuous damage. You can further use Deadly Embrace to pull enemies into the tornado and then pelt them with magic as they swirl about helpless, or you can use it to keep lesser enemies busy while you concern yourself with a bigger foe undistracted. Aerial Blast makes normal encounters a total joke, and it's unlocked very early in the game from the second Eikon you acquire.
  • Diamond Dust, the special attack of Shiva. Huge Area of effect with an insane amount of stagger damage, which, when paired with Garuda, results in staggering almost, if not instantly, immediately, after using deadly embrace. Not surprising you get the eikon near the end of the game.
  • Odin's Level 5 Zantetsuken kills all normal enemies, regardless of their health and distance from Clive, and deals massive damage to bosses. Though the Zantetsuken gauge can be hard to build up if you stick to basic attacks, usage of Odin's Eikonic Feats, can charge it very fast, especially Dancing Steel, which has an accessory that increases the amount it charges the gauge by 25% (and it can be upgraded to +50% when playing on New Game Plus). With such an accessory equipped, Dancing Steel can possibly fill the Zantetsuken gauge all in one use by itself, almost completely trivializing normal encounters.
• Ho Yay:
  • One of the first things Cid tells Clive is that he "didn't save him for his handsome mug", and he continues to be understanding and supportive of Clive (if snarky about it) afterwards. A random NPC, with absolutely no prompting, says that he thought Clive "was in bed with Cid", which is almost certainly meant as a metaphor but could definitely be taken literally. And after Garuda is defeated, Cid takes an unconscious Clive back to the hideout and has him chained up completely naked in a cell, with many shots focused on Clive's bare muscles. Sure, Cid says Clive "isn't his type", but it's not hard at all to read something non-heterosexual into their relationship.
  • It's very easy to interpret Gav's behaviour towards Clive (becoming flustered by compliments and Clive's attempt at physical contact) as having a crush on him. Cid even points out to Clive that Gav seems to like him, and waggles his eyebrows after saying as much.
• I Knew It!:
  • Fans were calling that Jill would be Shiva's dominant from the very first trailer, before we even properly got to see what Jill as an adult would look like. The Ambition trailer confirmed this all but in words when we are introduced to Shiva's dominant who looks like one would imagine Jill would as an adult. Following the fourth trailer, the Japanese official site updated to show that Jill is for sure Shiva's dominant.
  • Joshua surviving the night at Phoenix Gate was a popular theory following the prologue demo, taking into account that imperial soldiers Never Found the Body and across the series the Phoenix summon has represented life and rebirth.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • Final Fantasy XVI has more than a few parallels to Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, released the year before. Both are Action RPGs that got a lot of publicity for being rated M and being Darker and Edgier and Bloodier and Gorier than past Final Fantasy titles, both star an older male protagonist that is presented as being driven by anger and hatred, and both attempt to deconstruct staple series story elements, particularly the Crystals. The narratives also both see the protagonists learn that the state of the world has been set up by a race of god-like beings, and they destroy that race to free humanity from their control even if it costs them their lives and risks the end of the world. However, XVI succeeded much better at these efforts than Stranger of Paradise did: XVI actually tells a mature plot with graphic subject matter, while SoP came off as trying too hard with silly dialogue and gothic world design; Clive is a much more likeable and well-rounded protagonist than Jack with a sympathetic reason for his cynicism; XVI's deconstructions occur in its own setting and make sense within it instead of taking place within the setting of the original game and retconning its lore; and the end of the story is part of the base game and not DLC content.
  • Midadol "Mid" Telamon is one to Cindy Aurum from Final Fantasy XV. Both are blonde-haired Wrench Wenches with a familial relation to their games' respective Cid (Cindy being Cid Sophiar's granddaughter, Mid being Cidolfus Telamon's adoptive daughter), and follow the Mid character archetype (child/grandchild of Cid) previously found in Final Fantasy IV and V. However, Cindy's Fanservice-oriented design resulted in her receiving some detractors who didn't enjoy her sexualized appearance, and greatly overshadowed the character as a whole. As a result, Mid ended up receiving a much more positive reception than Cindy for being less sexualized than her, and with the focus instead being placed on her Adorkable personality that made her endearing to players.
• Inferred Holocaust: By the end of the game, Valisthea is in seriously dire straits with no indication of its current issues being resolved. For example, it's implied that the vast majority of the human population of Valisthea has been wiped out. The Empire of Sanbreque has completely crumbled, the Crystalline Dominion is completely destroyed by Origin's activation, the entire population of the Kingdom of Waloed has been turned Akashic, and Akashic monsters have already attacked the remaining human cities in a full Zombie Apocalypse scenario. Assuming the Akashic monsters disappear along with the Mothercrystals, Valisthea is still largely devastated. The Hideaway manages to avoid all of the chaos, but since they are based in a Blighted area and still need resources from the outside world, their prospects aren't looking too good either. Finally, even with the Mothercrystals gone, there's no indication the issue of the Blight will be solved, as Ultima believes it will inevitably return. The only indication that this isn't the case is the epilogue, being set in Valisthea's distant future.^note There are some hints that humanity will keep going though. The emphasis on the strong will of humanity, and the final side quests showing your scattered associates banding together to reinforce and rebuild their homes even in the worst of times. There’s also the fact that the final side quests for the Backyard show that the gardeners are now growing many medicinal flowers and fruits on blighted soil… implying that they might be able to renew and improve what’s left of the world with their new, magickless techniques.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: There are a subset of fans who criticize the game for being relatively easy compared to other action games such as the Devil May Cry series, even disregarding the inclusion of the Timely Accessories, which with the right combination you can pretty much make the game play itself. This is by design, given that the developers made it clear that they intended the game to be easy enough to allow Final Fantasy fans who may be new to the action genre to enjoy the game. While there is a hard mode that is unlockable in the New Game Plus, more genre-experienced fans believe it still doesn't go far enough.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Ifrit's Dominant is Ifrit. Hand-in-hand with being a Captain Obvious Reveal, it quickly became widely known and acknowledged after release, including by Square Enix themselves.
  • The true identity of Margrace is Joshua, who survived the fall of Phoenix Gate. While this twist was not spoiled by marketing or trailers beforehand, "Margrace" is critical to the game's plot and features in many of its more emotional and epic moments, so fanart of them became widespread and people openly talked about them addressing them by their true name, and eventually Square Enix officially revealed the character's concept art on social media because it was a clear everyone knew who they were now. Fortunately the reveal comes fairly early in the game, so it isn't that major a spoiler, and there's still intrigue in learning more about Margrace's goals and what they've been up to.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • A majority of Final Fantasy XIV players, some of whom have never bothered with the rest of the games in the series, have expressed massive interest in this game due to the involvement of many key production members of XIV here.
  • Many fans of Devil May Cry were interested once the hack and slash gameplay was revealed, as well as several production staff from 5 being involved in this game's production.
  • The voice actor for Barnabas Tharmr is David Menkin, who already played the role of Malos in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a JRPG helmed by former Square employees. Given the popularity of Menkin's performance as Malos, Xenoblade fans were excited by the news.
• Karmic Overkill: The sidequest "All Bark" ends with a nobleman and his son being mauled to death by wolves after tricking Bearers into attacking their own pet wolf and being mauled to death for their own amusement. While the father definitely has it coming, the son looks to be a pre-teen and his worldview was almost certainly heavily influenced by his father. When a minor and an adult are engaged in a common act of wrongdoing, especially when the adult is in a position of authority over the minor, it is generally accepted that the adult bears the majority of the blame, and the fact that the son is killed on the spot without any attempt at rehabilitating him being made and the NPC Raymond's attitude about the situation being "eat dirt and die" comes off as rather unfair.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Shiva overall is considered one of the worst Eikons because she's unlocked very late in the game, and for it most of her abilities are not very impressive; Rime, Mesmerize, and Ice Age all have poor damage output, are situational, or in practice are weaker versions of abilities other Eikons already had. Diamond Dust is an excellent ability and Cold Snap can be used to stun the entire enemy party or abused to pull off some crazy damage tricks on bosses, but the rest of her kit leaves a very bad impression.
  • Bahamut's Gigaflare is one of the best abilities in the game and deals absurd amounts of damage, but it can be mastered and equipped on any Eikon. His other abilities are awkward to use and his Eikonic Feat Megaflare requires such a long time to charge up (even if you exploit dodge-charging to speed it up) that the payoff attack isn't worth the trouble, and charging it in the middle of an intense battle kills momentum as you become unable to attack and just avoid enemies.
  • Ramuh's abilities are generally useful, but he's near-universally agreed to have the worst Eikonic Feat in the game, Blind Justice. It fires a ball of lightning at targeted enemies that affixes to them and "detonates" when attacked, damaging its target proportional to the attack that set it off and chaining to other nearby enemies affixed with lightning to set them off as well. While it sounds cool, the major problem is getting it off — the lock-on is slow and if Clive is hit while targeting or firing, it'll be cancelled. Against mobs of enemies where the skill can be locked on to multiple targets quickly, it can be hard to find an opening, and against stronger enemies and bosses, they're unlikely to hold still long enough for you to fully charge and use it against them. And in circumstances where you do get it off, the additional damage it procs, even with the strongest of attacks, is unimpressive. When The Rising Tide DLC came and brought a balance update patch with it, Blind Justice was heavily buffed to improve its damage output and make Clive more mobile when using it.
• Love to Hate: Anabella Rosfield takes this trope by storm. Although she's not affiliated with Ultima, fans near-universally consider her the most hateable character in the entire series since Professor Hojo.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Clive Rosfield, Dominant of Ifrit and Shield of Rosaria, is a bitter warrior hardened by trauma and bloodshed, who nonetheless maintains an earnest desire to help the people of Valisthea. Betrayed and manipulated by higher powers into slavery, Clive dedicates himself to seeking revenge on those who wronged him and his brother Joshua, becoming one of the most feared soldiers in the Holy Empire. Upon finding his old friend Jill and stumbling upon the rebellious Hideaway, Clive sheds his military position to become an outlaw and work with Cid in dismantling the oppressive monsters ruling the land. Clive works to destroy the Mothercrystals across Valisthea and eliminate magic from the realm in an attempt to stop the Blight, destroying and absorbing the power of all enemy Dominants along the way with guile and grace. Though deemed the chosen vessel to the godly Ultima, Clive overcomes the entity's attempts at possession and uses his sheer willpower to destroy Ultima, saving the entire world while sacrificing himself to an ambiguously lethal fate. Willing to get his hands dirty with chaos yet always striving to protect the weak and defenseless, Clive is one of the franchise's most devious, complex protagonists.
  • Jill Warrick, Dominant of Shiva, is Clive's Childhood Friend, trusted confidant and eventual lover. Forced to be the attack dog of the Iron Kingdom until Cid saves her and Clive, Jill devotes herself to helping Clive and finding her own atonement through freeing the world from the shackles of fate. When Clive takes the title of "Cid the Outlaw", Jill works with him to free Bearers and craft plans, leading the mission to destroy Drake's Breath with her knowledge of the area and quick thinking. Taking bloody vengeance on Imreaan, Jill and Clive plot to start a riot in the Crystalline Dominion, Jill suggesting having Gav make sure the "fires they start" keep burning. Saving Clive's life from Barnabas, Jill is taken captive, but when Clive frees her she freezes the very ocean to escape from his clutches. Giving Clive the power of Shiva which barely slows Jill down, she stays at Clive's side with faith in him and Cid's vision.
  • Cidolfus "Cid" Telamon, Dominant of Ramuh, is the snarky, charming leader of the Hideaway and Clive's Mentor. Introduced on a mission to rescue Shiva's Dominant, Cid takes an instant shine to Clive and hopes to help him reach his potential. Teasing the lad while still making sure to encourage him, Cid realises Clive is Ifrit's Dominant and with tough love convinces him to keep living to learn the truth of his brother's death. Confiding in Clive and Jill his plot to destroy the Mothercrystals - admitting it is mostly an educated guess that this will stop the Blight and how bad it will be for people and Bearers to lose magic Crystals - and convinces them this is the right course. Giving his life destroying Drake's Head and saving Clive from Ultima's clutches, Cid leaves his legacy in Clive's hands; even after death, his adopted daughter Mid finishes their design for the Enterprise ship that is indispensable to the heroes. Cheery about the notion of being seen as an Outlaw if it means humanity's freedom, his dream is finally fulfilled by Clive defeating Ultima.
  • Prince Dion Lessage, Dominant of Bahmaut, is the charming heir to the Holy Empire of Sanbreque. Dion is a skilled warrior who leads his army into helping to expand the borders of the empire. After discovering that his father has fallen under the influence of the monstrous Ultima, Dion helps to discover that his Wicked Stepmother Annabelle is responsible for spurring him into the worst acts and sets about fixing the situation. Dion uses the fact he's so well respected by his people to launch a coup against his father and take the throne to stop the madness while having Annabelle and her son executed. After he is driven insane by Ultima, Dion resolves to fix the damage he caused and helps the heroes journey to Ultima's homebase to stop them. Using his skills to lure Ultima's minions into a careful trap, Dion helps to take him on and takes an attack meant for protagonist Clive, dying at peace knowing that Clive will defeat Ultima for good.
  • The nameless Executor, main villain of the side quest An Inconvenient Truth, is part of a shadowy organisation that suppresses and destroys heretical or otherwise inflammatory literature. When Clive finds the book From a Distance detailing the Awful Truth of the history of the Bearers, the Executor confronts him, having tracked him all the way to the Blighted continent of Ash. When Clive refuses to give over the book, the Executor has him ambushed by goons, then affably congratulates him when he survives. The Executor then philosophises on the nature of truth, belief and history, tells Clive he can keep the book but they will one day get it anyway and disappears without a trace.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Clive Rosfield has become one of the biggest memetic badasses in the overall Final Fantasy franchise simply because of the insane feats he's pulled off in XVI in addition to his conviction in general, which include but are not limited to: being the first protagonist in the series to take up the name of Cid, the first mainline protagonist to say "fuck", defeating a mountain-size transformation of Titan, blocking and pushing back Zettaflare (a spell previously only seen in Kingdom Hearts), using Odin's Zantetsuken against him, and punching the resident God Ultima in the face after doing a Title Drop of Final Fantasy.
  • Jote has gained this reputation among fans, due to her outfit being based on that of the Tonberry (a famously difficult enemy from the wider franchise) as well as her no-nonsense nature when watching over Joshua.
• Memetic Loser: Hugo Kupka was built up pre-release as being a Genius Bruiser due to being Dhalmekia's economist and the Dominant of Titan, but quickly became this post-release due to falling easily for Benedikta, losing both of his hands to Clive, being easily manipulated by Barnabas Tharmr, and mentally cucking himself while under the influence of the Mothercrystal of Drake's Fang.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Misaimed Fandom: Many fans have wished that Anabella suffered a more horrific death, even though another side of the fandom feel that her death in the game was pretty poetic.
• Moral Event Horizon: The prologue ends with Anabella selling off their nation and letting mass casualties occur for the sake of a better standing with the Sanbreque Empire, not caring one bit for her husband's grisly end or sending off Clive to be a Branded slave. The one person she vaguely seems to care about, Joshua, is mentioned by her in a tone that seems less like she lost her dear second son, and more like she lost a bargaining chip of the Phoenix. Every ounce of this is to give the player about as much incentive as Clive for purely justified Revenge.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The classic victory fanfare is backed up by a low-voiced choir here, and sounds absolutely glorious. It helps that it only plays after the player overcomes a major battle, making victory feel even more like a massive accomplishment.
• Narm Charm:
  • Clive's Title Drop of Final Fantasy during the final boss fight against Ultima. It's cheesy as all hell, but its played completely straight and is done as a Pre-Mortem One-Liner against Ultima, which ends up making it work against all odds.
  Clive: "The only fantasy here is yours, and we shall be its final witness."
  • The QTE that follows up Clive mortally wounding Ultima falls into this territory, as it consists of button mashing while Clive slugs Ultima in the face, complete with a close-up shot of Ultima. It's something that would be more fitting for Asura's Wrath or God of War and can feel out of place in a mainline Final Fantasy title, but it's incredibly satisfying after Ultima spends the entire game being a Smug Snake.
• Older Than They Think:
  • People have complained about the more "Western fantasy" aspect of the setting, but they seem to forget that the very first Final Fantasy was, in essence, an almost straight adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons and, like Dragon Quest, was influenced by computer role-playing games like Ultima and Wizardry.
  • Additionally, people have taken to comparing the more "political intrigue" tone of the trailers with that found in works like A Song of Ice and Fire, forgetting that not only did Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII tackle similar themes, Tactics did so only a year after the first book of ASOIAF was published in English, and it wouldn't be until 2013 that they would reach Japanese shores. (And FFT was building off of what Tactics Ogre had previously done with tone and setting, and that game's original SNES release pre-dated any release of ASOIAF!)
• Padding: The series of quests to help Mid finish building her ship is definitely relevant to the narrative (insofar as the ship itself is relevant to the narrative), but at the same time it feels like a series of sidequests that just brings the pace of the story screeching to a halt. The fact it's split up over 3 quests rather than one long one doesn't help that feeling. At least, it gives the player a moment of respite to complete side quests while there is nothing urgent going on in the story.
• Preemptive Shipping:
  • Even before we knew his name, Clive has been shipped with almost every revealed character at one point or another, including his little brother.
  • The gameplay reveal in February 2023 let sail a ship between Benedikta and Cid. While their interaction is short, the exchange is so charged, it has been read as a spat between former lovers by a section of the fandom. Some even go as far as to include Barnabas Tharmr in the arrangement. Surprisingly, once the game released both of these were confirmed as canon, with Cid and Benedikta having been in love until he left his position as Waloed's Lord Commander while she stayed behind and got into a relationship with the King instead.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Hard Mode being locked being New Game+ was seen as a very questionable design choice for a good chunk of players, as it essentially forces players who want an actual challenge to play the game over again. Games like Devil May Cry can get away with this due to being relatively short and built on being replayable - this game, a 30+ hours story driven and fairly linear RPG, is very much not.
  • Until it was changed in a patch, the scoring system used in the arcade mode heavily weighed the use of Eikonic abilities over anything else, and scaled up linearly, unlike Devil May Cry's dynamic scoring that famously rewards precise and steady gameplay. It didn't matter if you're playing well, avoiding item usage or taking damage; as long as you consistently landed your Eikonic abilities, your score would skyrocket. This had the knock on effect of discouraging masterful play in some instances, as you being too efficient wouldn't afford you enough time to inflate your score up to an S.
  • Unlike in games like XII and XV, the Mark targets for Hunts can appear any time regardless if you've viewed the Hunt board to learn about them. This means that, while traveling in the field, you can suddenly run into Marks without any warning and no opportunity to change your ability set-up if it's unsuited for a boss battle. This is made even more frustrating by the facts that many Marks will appear in areas you're required to trek through as part of quests, ensuring you'll come across them, and if they kill you you'll have to respawn from the nearest Obelisk, which may be a fair distance away.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: From a mechanical perspective, the game really takes its time to really get going. For the first 5 to 6 hours of the game, you only have access to your basic abilities and Pheonix abilities. It takes about that long before you unlock your second Eikon. Then it takes about another 5 to 6 hours before you obtain your third Eikon, at which point your active roster is finally filled.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Despite the fact that the game is more similar to the likes of a Devil May Cry game (with elements of other action RPGs like NieR: Automata and Kingdom Hearts in terms of how the RPG elements are utilized) the overall themes, message and story have been noticed to be not too dissimilar to Asura's Wrath of all games. Both have a main character who lose everything dear to them in the beginning (Clive losing his kingdom and his brother Joshua, Asura losing his wife and his daughter being kidnapped, both in the result of betrayal from seemingly close allies) leading to both become bitter and vengeful, only to change their overall goals over the course of the game from simple revenge for the loss of loved ones to helping to make the world a better place. Both utilize their anger as a powerful weapon (Clive with the firey rage of Ifrit, Asura using the Mantra of Wrath) to fight off other beings of similar power (Eikons for Clive, other demigods for Asura). The Eikon battles throughout the game, each one being so over the top they may as well be a final boss in any other game and increase in such over the course of the game, are very similar to the way boss battles play out in Asura's Wrath (The fight against Titan even being outright near similar in escalation to Asura's fight against Wyzen, down to a second phase where Clive and Asura run up to their respective giant enemy in an on-rails shooter segment), culminating in the final boss being a corrupt God of Gods (Ultima, Chakravartin) who created humanity and the resulting Magic/Mantra being utilized by humans, often in exploitative ways (Mantra being utilized by oppressing normal humans in Asura's Wrath, Magic being used by both crystals, but also through the exploitation of Bearers and Dominants who can use Magic without Crystals in FF XVI), and intend to create a new vessel to become all powerful (Chakravartin wanting to pass down his title as the God of Gaea to Asura, Ultima wanting to pass down his power to Clive to become a True God) only to be rebuked in an epic clash that culminates in a single final punch done via a Button Mashing QTE, with the death of the top god resulting in changing the world for the better (Asura killing Chakravartin prevents Mantra from existing and in doing so, allows humanity to be free from the clutches of Gods, while Clive killing Ultima allowing him to use the power to remove Magic from the world so that it can move out of Medieval Stasis and breaking the chattel slavery system of Bearers). The eerie similarities alongside the gameplay concepts have led to the fan nickname of FF XVI as "Devil May Clive" and other similar derivatives.
  • While the "killing God" and "creating a new world" portions of XVI are something that can be found in almost every Eastern RPG game, the confirmation that the Eikons were inspired by Humongous Mecha media such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and XVI's England-based cast makes Final Fantasy XVI feel like a medieval Xenoblade Chronicles game at times. Namely when the Dominants like Clive, Joshua, and Dion lose control over their Eikons and cause massive destruction similar to how Mythra lost control over Artifice Siren in Torna and destroyed a whole continent; David Menkin and Harry Lloyd not only voicing antagonists in both Final Fantasy XVI and Xenoblade Chronicles, but ones that share specific traits with each other (Barnabas Tharmr being clad in black and wielding a BFS emitting purple energy like Malos, and Ultima being a Demiurge-inspired figure who controls an ark called "Origin" which floats in the sky and is intended to reboot the world much like how Moebius Z did); the plight faced by the elemental magic-wielding Bearers and Dominants mirroring how the elemental Blades in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 were treated as dispensable by the rest of Alrest; Ifrit and Phoenix doing a Fusion Dance akin to the Ouroboros from Xenoblade Chronicles 3; and Ultima sharing the same backstory and characterization as Zanza from Xenoblade Chronicles 1, where he created man to worship him only to be forgotten by the world due to his neglect and disdain for mankind. And considering that the Xenoblade Chronicles games are a spiritual successor to Xenogears (which itself was initially a proposal for Final Fantasy VII, thus bringing things full circle), then Final Fantasy XVI could also be a spiritual successor to Xenogears as well.
• Tainted by the Preview: Following the "Dominance" trailer being released, some in the Final Fantasy community were quite upset at the gameplay revealed. First, that it's a Devil May Cry-esque Hack and Slash as opposed to more traditional turn-based or ATB combat, or even a hybrid system like Final Fantasy VII Remake, though it does make sense because one of the gameplay devs of Devil May Cry is leading the game's gameplay department. Second, the general lack of any sort of party members left many bemoaning the excision of the most enduring staple of mainline Final Fantasy games, though it was later confirmed that the protagonist would be accompanied by one-or-more AI-controlled party members for most of the game.
• That One Achievement: While not officially a trophy, when you beat 16 certain fights (17 including the fight against Omega in the Echoes of the Fallen DLC) without taking damage, you will recieve a Medal of Valor. While there is a trophy for getting just one medal, completionists or those looking for a Bragging Rights Reward tend to go for all the medals. While some of the fights aren't too hard to do damageless and can eventually be done through trial and error, some are particularly nasty, with particularly nasty examples below. If you really are a masochist, should you choose to try for these medals in Arcade Mode (the only way you can retry for medals if you progress past the fights in the story), you can't save at all before the fights, meaning you would have to redo the whole level for another chance.
  • With Titan, you have to take no damage throughout the ENTIRETY of the whole fight. This includes the initial fight, the fight against Titan Lost, and the final fight in free-fall. All with unskippable cutscenes and quick time events throughout the fight that you will have to watch/perform again if you get hurt even once. A particularly nasty segment is when you are doing the final hit against Titan Lost, where you have to aim and fire at rocks while falling with a tendril. While the rocks you have to hit are indicated by a white burst of wind, multiple will come up and it's easy to lose track of which one is closest to you.
  • Bahamut is more forgiving, as you don't have to worry about taking damage in the first phase (both parts with Ifrit and the Phoenix segment inbetween). While it is simple enough, there are unskippable cutscenes, and the Phoenix section drags on. The second phase, the one in space where you're Ifrit Risen is where you have to not take damage. As with Titan, if you get hit at all in this phase, you will have to reload your save and get through the first phase, and go through all the tedium again just to get another chance. And Bahamut in the second phase does not make it easy, with huge laser attacks that can hit you, even if you have the Ring of Timely Focus to help you.
  • Odin (the final fight atop Reverie), while not as cinematic, is still another test in patience, as while there is only one phase, there are 3 parts to it, with long unskippable cutscenes (and one QTE each) inbetween. The first part is easy enough, but the diffiiculty ramps up in the second part, as Odin will start using larger AOE attacks that are trickier to dodge. The final part is where things get really hectic. Odin will start using 'Quieting', which gives him an aura that is visibly hard to see that makes him immune to Shiva's Permafrost ability (leading to potenital screwups), and on top of that, this part is the longest, as you have to deplete his 'attack' bar before you can hurt him again, and due to how the game works, you cannot defeat him until he does a sequence where he transforms into his Eikon, as well as perform his 'Circle of Malius' attack. Both are easy to dodge, but it makes for a long fight that punishes you greatly if you slip up once.
  • The final boss fight against Ultima could be considered the lovechild of what makes the three examples above a grueling fight to do damageless. You have to not only beat all three phases of the fight without taking damage, but there are even more unskippable cutscenes and quick time events throughout each phase. And in the middle of it all is a Eikon fight, which you will have to do all over again damageless should you fail in the last phase. The only upside is this fight is at the end of the game, so should you decide to get the medal on Final Fantasy mode, you will have access to certain equipments and builds, as well as being able to reach level 100 (105 if you get the DLC), that will at least make the first and last phase easier. Sadly, you will get no respite for the Ifrit segment.
• That One Boss:
  • The fight against Omega can be seen as this. It's a fairly lengthy fight with multiple phases (thankfully, there's a checkpoint after each phase), but the fight itself ends with Omega channeling Dimensional Compression, requiring the player to finish it off before the attack finishes. All the while, the arena shrinks as lasers bombard the ever-shrinking area. Failure to take it out will result in an instant Game Over. It can especially be difficult if the player has a loadout tailored for slower, longer battles. But even with a loadout more geared towards pure damage, you'll typically have just barely enough time to finish Omega off before the countdown ends.
  • The Leviathan fight in the Rising Tides DLC. While the fight itself isn't an issue, the problem comes when it puts up a barrier, which the player has to destroy before it can unleash Tsunami. The time limit is incredibly strict, only giving you just enough time to bring it down before the countdown ends. Making it harder is the fact that Leviathan pushes Clive away twice, meaning you'll have to close the gap to deal meaningful damage. Ad unlike the aforementioned fight with Omega, Clive is by himself with no other teammates to help deal damage.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: As a result of the genre change and decision to make Clive the only playable character throughout^note excepting one brief stint as Joshua, there are a surprisingly numerous amount of players who believe the entire rest of the cast comes off as underdeveloped by comparison, particularly since most of the potential character development they get is relegated to optional and often-tedious sidequests. These particular characters suffer from this trope the most:
  • One leading criticism is that of the story role of Jill, Clive's Childhood Friend, Love Interest, and closest companion that accompanies him through most of the game. While she has her own character arc and has the most side quests dedicated to her as a character, she doesn't actually have that much relevance to the plot apart from serving as The Face for Clive during the first time skip, leading the attack on the Iron Kingdom's Mothercrystal, and getting captured by Barnabas. Otherwise she's largely relegated to the backseat in favor of exploring the relationship between Clive and Joshua, and sits out of several major story events despite being present at them, such as the battle with Bahamut. Also, despite being the Dominant of Shiva, she very rarely uses Shiva's powers, in contrast to the other Dominants. Tellingly, when the discussion of additional DLC or patch content came up shortly after the game's release, Jill was cited by many fans as one of the characters who needed it most. She gets minor additions in the Rising Tides DLC, where she briefly mentions her father when going through some destroyed ruins and helps Shula undo the time stop on Leviathan, due to it being Shiva's powers the stopped time.
  • Benedikta is the Dominant of Garuda, has a complicated history with Cid, and she's The Vamp who uses her sexuality to manipulate those in power. She's also a member of the Kingdom of Waloed and is in on Barnabas' plans for the Dominants, and Waloed plays a very minor role until late in the game when Barnabas' ambitions are revealed. All in all, she could have had a huge impact on the story, been a means to foreshadow Waloed's role in things, and had the potential to either be a recurring antagonist or get a redemption arc. She's ultimately an Arc Villain that gets killed off fairly early in the game in a way that many have criticized as a case of Stuffed into the Fridge, and primarily serves as a motivation for her lover, Hugo, to hate the heroes.
  • Hugo Kupka is talked up in the Active Time Lore as being a brilliant Genius Bruiser which belies his appearance and would lead one to expect there's more depth to him than what appears on the surface. As it turns out, what the players see is pretty much all they get with this fellow, as there are very few instances of him getting to show off said supposed intelligence, and he spends the vast majority of the story acting just like the violent brute he looks like and pining after Benedikta to an obsessive degree, to the point that his role seems more like a Satellite Love Interest to her.
  • About midway through the game as part of the main questline, Wade introduces Clive to Sir Rodney's nephew, Oscar, and convinces Clive to take him on as a squire. Given how close Clive was to Rodney, he could have bonded with Oscar, he could have provided an additional party member, and Clive mentoring someone in swordsmanship would have provided a look into an aspect of his character otherwise not explored much, and been a parallel to the prologue where Rodney trained him. Nothing of the sort happens; Oscar spends the rest of the game standing by the door to Clive's room in the Hideaway and is never mentioned again, and at the end of the game is Put on a Bus to go help rebuild Eastpool in a conversation that is entirely optional (and yet he remains in the Hideaway anyway).
  • Despite being one of the eight Eikons, Leviathan has barely any presence in the story outside of being the one who rules over Water. The developers apparently felt the same way, as "The Rising Tide" DLC was eventually created for the express purpose of fleshing out its role. [[spoiler:Though it doesn't amount to much, as the Dominant in question is just an infant with no real personality and Ultima himself considers the fragment to be debased and no longer worth of his attention.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot
  • The game mentions that there are three "lost" Mothercrystals that were destroyed before the events of the game; one in Ash, one in the northlands, and one long ago in a massive crater now known as the Sins of Dzemekys. Their role in the narrative is merely flavor text, and even though destroying the remaining Mothercrystals is a major focus of the story, no one ever looks into what happened to these three that they were destroyed or what has become of their lands afterward. The Mothercrystal at the Sins of Dzemekys at least is explained in the Thousand Tomes as being destroyed by Ultima, but it's unknown what caused the other two to be lost.
  • The northlands were once their own kingdom with their own Mothercrystal. They were annexed by Rosaria shortly after a failed invasion that didn't happen all that long before the events of the game, and with the Blight encroaching on their territory they vanished. Despite the ripe potential for storytelling, and the fact the northlands are Jill's home, the game never goes to the northlands nor do you meet anyone specified to formerly be of their civilization. This means that a fairly large chunk of the map north of Rosaria is just a blank, empty void of Blight.^note Though players noticed there is a spot of white among it, implying people may still be living up there where there's a small bit of fertile land left, but again, we never find out.
  • A very late-game sidequest reveals that there is a secret society dedicated to burying the historical reasons for the enslavement and dehumanization of Bearers so as to preserve the status quo. They only appear in this one sidequest (in part because it's an optional sidequest just before the final dungeon), where Clive only encounters a few of their rank-and-file members out to destroy a rare book portraying an alternate interpretation of history. Such a group could have been a respectable side villain in their own right had they been introduced earlier in the game.
  • With the release of the Rising Tides DLC, Clive manages to get the full spectrum of the power of the Eikons, with Ultima even giving him a portion of his own power. However, the boss fight against Ultima is unaffected, and the ending remains unchanged, including the fates of Clive and Joshua.
• Underused Game Mechanic
  • During the prologue you briefly play as Joshua, who has his own moveset (albeit highly simplified). You control him for only a few minutes, during which time he encounters a total of three enemies that he can each kill in one hit. The only other times you play as Joshua are when fighting Ifrit at the very start of the game, and when he and Clive form a Tag Team to face off against Bahamut.
  • Early on you're forced to travel briefly through an area beset by the Blight and learn that it's a Power Nullifier phenomenon, as your party members can't cast magic in the region and Clive can't use Eikon abilities. Thing is, there are no enemies in the area, so it doesn't matter anyway. This returns in the Echoes of the Fallen DLC, where Clive and his party are forced to fight a few goblins using old-fashioned melee combat.
  • The crafting system is highly simplified. Your gear can be upgraded to slightly increase its stats up to two times, and you have the option to craft the base item from scratch instead of purchasing it from a merchant. There's only a handful of weapons that have to be crafted yourself, usually some manner of Infinity +1 Sword, and the components for them are unique items that can only be acquired from a specific sidequest. Thus the crafting system boils down to simply "purchase or forge a new piece of gear, then if you have the materials you can upgrade it for a slightly better item". It isn't even worth the effort to try crafting equipment to sell for profit, because the price you can expect to get for the item is usually about the same as you'd get for selling its raw components.

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