Quote Originally Posted by iVolke View Post
Watching cutscenes is playing the game. I've never understood this complaint as, this is a final fantasy game.

Yeah the start is slow, but it's just setting the stage. You're only past the first dungeon.

Shadowbringers had a more intense start because, as you said, we're thrown into a completely foreign world/dimension coupled with the mystery and urgency of finding your missing friends.

Endwalker is slower because everyone is safe at the start and there is no immediate peril.

Why assume the entire expansion will be slow after playing a few hours? That just seems kinda silly to me, especially if you've seen the trailers.
That's one hell of a strawman you built up to knock down.

Nobody is upset that there are cutscenes in their final fantasy. But I gained 2 whole levels from 80-82 without fighting maybe more than 10 creatures in the wildlife. That is ridiculous. At some point the game stops being a GAME and becomes a movie. The same thing happens later on in the story where I've spent hours just listening to people talk, escorting them around, listening to more talking, etc.

And I LOVE JRPGs. I turned off Endwalker yesterday and spent the rest of the day playing Dragon Quest XI S. Why? Because I wanted an actual JRPG, not a movie. There are a ton of cutscenes and story in that game, but the pacing is excellent always giving you time to run around, explore, fight things, craft new items, find hidden treasures, etc. I also played FFX again a few months back and, again, lots of cutscenes and dialog, but plenty of battling, exploring, mini-games, etc in-between all the heavy dialogue scenes so that you still feel like you are a part of the interactivity of the story.

Endwalker's pacing is atrocious. Even if I like each individual section of story on it's own, together it feels disjointed and so much time is wasted running errands and escorting people rather than actually doing something interactive. And every time the story begins to jump into high-gear, the rug is pulled out from under it and you go back to dialogue-heavy cutscenes like the crap didn't just hit the fan two minutes ago.

It's a slow, badly paced expansion. That doesn't mean that aspects of it aren't great. Some parts of the story are excellent. The dungeons and trials are fun. The zones are neat. But the pacing of the story could have used some polish from some editors.