Pros: incredible English voice acting, combat has DMC levels of ingenuity for combos, self styled difficulty levels, somehow managed to make a game of thrones story while throwing in Godzilla monster sized epic fights.
Cons: the stagger system can feel boring, especially in mini boss fights.
I would recommend the game alone for the cinematics, voice acting, and not needing to shoehorn any diversity. The monster design and detail on even goblins to be vicious little Pygmies.
If I wanted DMC, I'd play DMC4: Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series. That's really my only primary criticism with the game. It isn't Final Fantasy, it's something else, but they slapped that label on it for marketing reasons.
But mostly just that flat, boring loser, Nero.
Nero was it’s own problem of trying to pass the torch and create new combat aesthetics when everyone wanted Dante. This game has some similar mechanics to the Nero arm in combat but isn’t the forced mechanic at all and is great for juggling enemies and damage rotation
It’s definitely final Fantasy lore, monsters, and story telling. If you want to complain about 16 having a far better combat system than 15 it’s a little nitpicky, unless you mean going back to straight timed choices turned based as of ff6 or turned based on general? Frankly the combat in any FF was always outshone by the lore, world building, and story, which this game delivers. I can get wanting to go back to a class/ party system, which can work as the latest yakuza proved, but as far as being able to control your dog assists on the move to combo, heal on the move, and using cinematic combat queues like in re4, it’s a very smooth system that doesn’t feel overwhelming to story players and lets you go whole arpg ham if you want.