I wrote about this in a completely different thread while talking about the difference in fanservice between Kingdom Hearts and FF14, god I love the format of discussing things on ResetEra.
Anyway said post is
here
To paraphrase, it's basically this:
Nothing wrong with a reference, but no need to spell it out for me, I'm a grown boy! 😅
So, for example. Something like Heavensward works as a good reference. If you remove the entire Ultimate End and screen shattering section of the Thordan fight, then "Heavensward is a Knights of the Round reference" would be the realm of 30 minute long Youtube videos made by people with names like "TheGameTheoryMan" rather than an obvious fact. They work the reference into the game so well that it's a chicken and egg thing with whether they came up with the reference or the entire Heavensward setting first.
Crystal Tower is somewhere in the middle, it's an extremely overt reference, but they work it believably into the game by actually tying it into events and characters unique to FF14. Xande is an Allegan Emperor, he caused a Calamity, Amon was his advisor, the Crystal Tower is a research facility. So even if you're unaware of the game it was from, it can still function as a unique place, and if you know the game it's from, it's a nice bonus. Things like Gold Saucer function in the same way, to varying degrees.
Something like Nier is on the bad end, there's pretty much no attempt to work it into the plot. You go from helping Dwarves commit petty crime to "it's Nier, you're in Nier land, fight this Nier stuff while Nier music plays, are you aware this is Nier yet?", there's tonal and themic whiplash, no attempt to knit together these two disparate things.
Hades is completely and utterly inexcusable, at least with Nier a detractor can work out who that's FOR. Hades is just a joke.
A lot of things added to the game barely have much of a spin added is the problem. There's a ton of straight references, or just "hey here's a boss from an old FF game." Or names. Or dialog. Or music with barely any arrangement.
I prefer reactionary based combat. Where the best action to take is constantly changing. Or where you have something available at times that completely changes how I play. I don't like having to use the rotation that some other person figured out is the ideal scenario.
This is something else as well that's been an issue with some of the references in FF14, especially when they're worked into boss fights.
A lot of the game is extremely samey, being some variant of: Do rotation as much as humanly possible while doing stack/spread/tether/dodge gimmicks to not die. For example the Guard Scorpion fight doesn't have you not hit the boss while the tail is up, you just power through your rotation while the tail laser is a dodgeable AoE. I know for a fact without even reading the encounter that something like Aire Tam Storm doesn't exist for Emerald Weapon, and if it somehow does, it'll either be some sort of enrage attack or an attack that happens partway through the encounter and you mitigate the damage of it by killing adds before a bar fills up.
I'm aware it's a limitation of the game, I don't really expect players to have to extract materia from every piece of gear prior to the fight so they don't die. But it turns the game into a "Look, it's <THING FROM OTHER GAME>, enjoy the spectacle and music while it functions like 95% of the other bosses in the game!", and then the next thing you know you're a Black Mage that's beating Ifrit with Fire spells while saying "Well it's just gotta be this way."
