Discrepancy in lore (spoilers)

[MikkoAkure]

Have you not played other Final Fantasy games? Completely anachronistic settings is how they roll. Most FF games from VII onwards have swords, modern-looking cars, traditional magic casting, and spaceships.

As far as Eorzea not being steamrolled, Solus didn't need to take over Eorzea to do the 7th calamity. The initial attempt resulted in the flagship of the entire empire being destroyed in its maiden voyage and then they gave up for a time until Nael triggered the calamity years later, which is all Solus needed anyway.

5 years after the calamity, Gaius sends his legion into Eorzea against orders, so it's not like they have the full force of the Empire behind them and Solus' plans work better when there's continuing chaos and primals being summoned anyway. If you pay attention to the story, the whole point of the Empire is to cause as much chaos as possible without actually stopping primal summoning and bringing the world under one peaceful banner like the mission statement is supposed to be. Solus' last act was to cause the Garlean Civil War, so now they're even more splintered and the IVth legion is left to their own devices.

The IVth legion hasn't been showing all their cards yet either. The storyline in Bozja keeps hitting us with the barely subtle fact that the Dalmascan and Nagxian forces won their battles too easily, which tells that the IVth legion is letting them win on purpose and something bad is going to happen.

[Hank_Hotspur]

Have you not played other Final Fantasy games? Completely anachronistic settings is how they roll. Most FF games from VII onwards have swords, modern-looking cars, traditional magic casting, and spaceships.

Even the original NES release of the first Final Fantasy game had the Floating Castle map designed to look more like a low orbit space station. Which makes sense, because the first FF game was basically a D&D video game with the copyright filed off (and some copyright not filed off until the later rereleases) and at that point classic D&D loved to have high fantasy inexplicably meet super science or extraterrestrial tech like in the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks or Temple of the Frog modules.

Even after they changed the sprites in the Floating Castle to make it look more fantasy, they still have these warmechs walking around.