tbh i think i would feel much more positive about ff16 if it was a spinoff and not the next main numbered game. like it does not look like a bad game by its own merits, it is just not in the slightest what i would want the next mainline ff to be

we still get a lot of JRPGs that are more traditional, and a lot of great ones even, but we don't really get super lavish, extravagant, high budget traditional JRPGs anymore aside from like... persona? (i absolutely adore dq11 but it's not on that level presentation-wise)

so part of me daydreamed about the ff team making another somewhat more traditional rpg with some new twists, since nobody really makes games like that anymore on that scale. but instead we're getting... a very gritty medieval character action game with some ff stuff in it

like yeah mainline ff stopped being consistent in style 23 years ago and because of that they'll never please everyone, but idk. this is really not a take that speaks to me

ah well, at least i've got ff7r part 2 to look forward to in ten years

also an extremely common sentiment i've seen about 16 is "ah, finally going back to the roots of the series! pure medieval fantasy, no sci-fi stuff" and like. buddy

like there are definitely levels to this. ff1 having a warmech is a far cry from everything in ff13. but i think the only ff games that really went full pure medieval fantasy were the ivalice games (tactics, ff12), which 16 is likely closest to thematically knowing its dev team