It’s wild how CBU3 dumped FF14 design straight into FF16 and decided it was good enough. MMO gameplay makes a lot of design compromises to accommodate for the multiplayer shared-state world, network latency, etc. None of which make sense for a single player offline experience.

At this point, Western gaming companies’ monetization schemes are becoming worse than gacha, so you may as well go play Genshin Impact ;-)

Half of this article’s word count seems to be the writer snarking about how he doesn’t care about these games and doesn’t know much about them. I guess it’s good to show contempt for your audience…

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.