Well...here I am, having finished 6.0. I type this mainly because if Square really wants to know what to fix about their game for new players...things like this is it. I'm sure for players who played for 10 years, having an expansion with high highs and low lows was forgivable for the decade-long emotional payoff. For someone who can count their time in months? Being asked "Has it been worthwhile?" was much harder to answer.
I remember jumping into a new world in ARR, and seeing both the world and the WoL's life change in HW. I remember being disappointed in StB, but blown away by ShB. And to play EW, as someone without nostalgia for things...yeah. This wasn't it. In from the Cold was a harbinger, if that same team decided that the proper way to end the huge, emotional climax of the final Trial was to bring it entirely to a screeching halt for one last fight with the expansion's biggest scythe-wielding lead weight, with no stakes whatsoever and no consequences except for FINALLY being done with him. It told me what I suspected - IftC wasn't an isolated incident at all.
If the devs really want to make this a story-first game and ask people to play a visual novel for hundreds of hours, then you actually have to craft a worthwhile story, caring about pacing and beats and consequences and characters. I thought people were exaggerating about how bad DT might be. After finishing EW...no, I fully believe it now. The shadows of DT's (alleged) sins are all over this expansion too.
But hey - at least going back and treating the Lv. 83 cutscene with the appropriate gravitas for its impact to the story led to the best GIF of this game I've ever taken, so I'm taking that as a win.
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2...6FK1/giphy.gif
EDIT: Joke's on me! Apparently we can't even forget about our scythe-wielding lead weight during the post-patch. And not in any meaningful way, so even those that LIKED it are probably left wondering when they'll actually be given what they want. And that's not even getting into the problems with the post-patches themselves (seriously - do the writers remember what happened from patch to patch? Watching a character go from "I'm so powerful and you will fight me for no appreciable reason!" to "Well, even though you beat me, you'll stand there and watch me somehow have enough energy to complete my plan" to "I didn't have enough energy to complete my plan, so that's why I had to lure you here!" was maddening.) Every time I try to give these writers the benefit of the doubt, it's squandered with gleeful abandon. I'm just...done. I have Dawntrail to get through, and it's going to be with the seriousness of watching a B-movie while enjoying them double down on everything they started messing up here.