Early on, I’m admittedly a little bored as the story walks through a dryly delivered political drama filled with a sea of flat, homogenous characters spouting lore. The storytelling in that introduction is a bit of a mixed bag.

That’s where the present-day tale picks up from. A bloody inciting incident would not only break Clive’s cheerful spirit but thrust him into a cold life of military servitude. I’d met him 13 years earlier as a bright-eyed member of a royal family sworn to protect his sickly younger brother, who was destined to become the embodiment of the Phoenix. Through the course of the cutscene-heavy opening, I’d get a lot of justification for why Clive follows the tortured hero archetype. That’s because Final Fantasy XVI opens with a long flashback that plays like a feature-length film. But the first two hours of the game go a long way toward building out his history. I found his generic gruff guy demeanor a bit flat and I still feel that to an extent.

I didn’t connect with Clive too much when I first met him in February. The story begins with an introduction to Clive Rosfield, who starts the tale in the midst of a military operation in the desert. The game’s explorable world, on the other hand, seems notably more compact than those cinematic cutscenes so far. If you can accept that change, you’re in for what seems like an engrossing political drama punctuated by visually stunning titan battles. Instead, what I saw was a pitch-black dark fantasy that reminded me more of Game of Thrones and even The Last of Us. If you’re looking for a classic Final Fantasy game, it remains clear that the new installment won’t scratch that nostalgic itch.

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