I’m reasonably sure Final Fantasy 16 isn’t the longest Final Fantasy I’ve ever played, but it feels that way, for a multitude of reasons. The major one is that a lot of its quests exist to create distance between places and plot beats. They are overwritten errands such as bringing people lunch or fetching herbs or carrying letters – dessicated, MMO-ish fare, thrust into a moderately enjoyable single-character action-RPG for the sake of incremental worldbuilding and scale.