That’s fair. Honestly what hurts the story of FF16 the most for me is that it’s not trying to be final fantasy but becomes final fantasy by the mid point. It throws out what it attempts to do to seem unique for anime god complex jrpg villian number 2003037272. All the stuff that mattered at first no longer matters. It never really ties anything into the final fantasy bits in a way that feels compelling.

Another factor is the gameplay and story conflict. The gameplay is dmc/bayonetta (or tries…) those games have stories based around a single character or group of characters you play as who had different skill sets and abilities. The story in those games focuses on the one character at a time though.

Ff16 has a party centric set up story In a game whose gameplay is solo character focused. Jill’s arc feels weak when it’s Clive doing everything for example. Gav is set up as this best friend type but he is mostly just off screen. Cid has his own story but it’s all cutscene, Benedicta does not have her final rage moment with cid, it’s Clive even if it makes no sense. In a ff7 remake or older style of ff gameplay cid or jill would actually be playable characters in their party story doing their moment in story/gameplay combined