I'll always love the FF IP, but I don't know if I can say FFXVI is the "ultimate Final Fantasy".
I love the combat in XVI, I love the story, I love the music, I love the core design of it overall.....but it has some issues that are more deeply cultural or maybe based on the company or something.
1. This game likely should have just been fully open world to connect those ideas a bit better. You can still fast travel by choice sure, but it would make more sense to connect them literally so a better reason exist to actually have a ship, boat, chocoboo etc.
2. The issue with the NPC's moving was so fucking obvious, it feels like more then half of the game is Clive being told someone will meet him here or there and its like BITCH, you RIGHT HERE LOL! WE can go together, after the 8th or 10th time of this happening it was clear this shit had nothing to do with the story and some odd technical issue they are trying to have the user ignore. You lose something here, something about teamwork, working together, building bonds etc is completely lost and you feel this great disconnect. We had a mission to collect (spolier...an item on a beach, won't go into details) and one of the characters was like "i'll collect some here" and just stood there in the same fucking spot while Clive just collected all the shit and Square is like "ok bro, just pretend he did it" lol
This isn't a fucking book, this isn't a visual novel, this is a 3D modeled fucking video game, there is no excuse to not have the person animated to walk around to show they are doing something.
3. The facial animations are so bad, its like their faces are frozen or stiff or in some doll state, it hurts soooooo much of the narrative as you clearly see another team could have done a better job showing those faces expressing all sorts of emotions.
I still enjoy the game, but its not without criticism.