This is the extent of the game design in FFXVI

You walk forward on the flat path without any traversal or exploration opportunity
You are met with a contrived obstacle (shallow river/bushes/fork path)
You walk around slowly in complete silence until you can access the area with the mob and then kill the trash in seconds/minutes
You get nothing for doing this, 10 bloody hides and 100 gil tops
There is no cool treasure for you to equip around the bend that's being guarded by a ferocious beast that you have to use a specific strategy to conquer
There is no Moogle to pop out and play a silly game with
There is nothing at all happening except for wandering around between mission markers at a brisk jog, watching the cutscenes where the characters are finally allowed to speak, and killing mobs on a completely flat plane
Sometimes you'll find the little side path that leads you off to somewhere that could be interesting if there were any content there. But there's never any content there
It's almost always an empty boss arena for a hunt that hasn't appeared yet and that is way too easy when you do fight it
Or a gate to a "side mission" area that hasn't triggered yet (just more cutscenes and trash mobs with no reward)

There is no "game" even happening. Nothing but a vessel for cutscenes. The definition of a movie game.
There is an offline action MMO happening perhaps, without any RPG/online/social/party elements or worthwhile treasures. It fucking sucks.
There's some technical complexity to your inputs in combat of course, and there's a pretty high ceiling to that complexity.
It can even be quite fun. But there's no strategic depth to the what/when/why of it
There is no form of unique player expressions to be had. You can't make unique builds. You equip the best "gear", you wait for cooldowns, and you do cuh-razy combos and dodge.
You won't even die. If you somehow manage to die, the game will give you a freebie potion refill when you revive so you won't die next time.