Going to try and get my thoughts down as fast as possible so that I can get back to playing.
I'm up to Martha's Rest. Some of what I'm about to say was already pointed out in the Twitter thread Lulcielid shared, but it is beginning to resonate with me. I will repeat a few things and unfortunately make comparisons to Remake throughout.
Let's start with how you Stagger enemies in XVI. There's really no tactical approach to it. The bigger the attack, the more damage to the gauge. Now let's look back at Remake. Against the Failed Experiment boss, which is fought with Barret and Tifa in Chapter 13, only ice magic fills its stagger gauge. That is unless you break one of its appendages, in which case the Failed Experiment reveals its heart. For this brief window, physical attacks are able to fill the gauge. It should also be noted that only Barret's gun arm can reach the appendage, and Tifa is a beast once the boss is staggered, so you're encouraged to switch between characters throughout the fight.
Almost all boss battles in Remake have unique stagger mechanics like this. Some common enemies do as well. I fear Remake's fight against the Failed Experiment is going to display more tactical depth than the entirety of XVI, or at least rival it.
Moving on. In XVI, when an enemy is staggered, all it really does is give you a window to unload the Eikon abilities you have available. Again, let's compare that to Remake. With Tifa or Aerith in your party, you can choose to increase the stagger damage bonus, or with Cloud, you can build up his ATB to unleash Finishing Touch, which does extra damage to staggered enemies. So there's a bit of a balancing act. Additionally, in Remake the stagger damage bonus starts at x1.6, which just feels better than XVI's range of x1.05-x1.5 from a "game juice" perspective.
In terms of weapons, in XVI you either spend gil or crafting materials to increase your sword's strength. In Remake, each character has unique 6 unique weapons. Once fully upgraded, there's no clear winner between them, just different specializations. Some weapons boost crit rate, some MP restoration. Some weapons change the character's moveset, such as Cloud's Nail Bat or Barret's Wrecking Ball (the latter of which overhauls him into a short range brawler).
And that's not even getting into the Materia system, which allows you to further specialize characters with magics and passives. I get that XVI wants to be an action game, but my issue is they didn't substitute the loss of RPG elements with anything meaningful. Besides precision dodging and parrying, XVI just isn't taking advantage of the genre. Typically combos are what give action games their depth, but with XVI, you really don't have many options outside of attack->magic burst->attack->etc, then closing the distance (e.g., X+Square, Eikon ability). And all this is made worse by how spongy large enemies can be.
As for positives, I will say that XVI has a great "pick-up-and-play" aspect. Believe it or not, I'm still having fun. And if someone off the street asked me "what PS5 game should I pick up?", I'm more likely to recommend XVI over Remake because I know it looks and feels great for all skill levels. However, for me personally, I find the combat to be overly restrictive and repetitive.
)
