Endwalker was "meh" (for reasons other than technical issues)

[Kyrj]

I didn't care for the "Final Days" bit. Not one thing about it felt "Final Days"ish, not one. You don't see any other zones affected by this other than one small cutscene showing a guy stumbling around in Ishgard and most of it takes place in a few quests in Thavnair and that's it, you're TOLD about it but never experience it. Once you've done the quests you're sent to Elpis to fap about chasing an NPC that had no real point being in the story. You come back and do some crap in Sharlayan and then that's it, off to the main bad guys base of operations, no resistance, no fights, no nothing. The towers? Nothing ever came of that, if Zenos could've just gone to the moon and destroyed the seals...why didn't he just do that to begin with? What was the point of alerting the entire world with your giant towers if it was just going to fail and for you to go "welp guess we'll just have to go there and one shot the remaining seal ourselves" while our character just stands there and watches no less....

[SeverianLyonesse]

I didn't care for the "Final Days" bit. Not one thing about it felt "Final Days"ish, not one. You don't see any other zones affected by this other than one small cutscene showing a guy stumbling around in Ishgard and most of it takes place in a few quests in Thavnair and that's it, you're TOLD about it but never experience it. Once you've done the quests you're sent to Elpis to fap about chasing an NPC that had no real point being in the story. You come back and do some crap in Sharlayan and then that's it, off to the main bad guys base of operations, no resistance, no fights, no nothing. The towers? Nothing ever came of that, if Zenos could've just gone to the moon and destroyed the seals...why didn't he just do that to begin with? What was the point of alerting the entire world with your giant towers if it was just going to fail and for you to go "welp guess we'll just have to go there and one shot the remaining seal ourselves" while our character just stands there and watches no less....

There has been a lot of convenient "telling" what happened off-screen instead of showing in Endwalker, at least as far as I've gotten. So far, we have had:

* Thavnairian research team making hundreds of talismans overnight.
* Garlean prisoners being rescued almost as soon as they are locked up.
* Body swapping (at least twice), in possibly the most inconsequential doppelganger arc I've ever encountered.
* The 10th legion seeking aid from the Eorzean Alliance.
* The repairing of one of the six seals almost immediately after it got shattered.

So far I admit to some disappointment in the quality of the writing. Unlike every other expansion that came before it, I feel like I am rushing through a checklist of things they wanted to cram into the finale. I think the Sharlayan/Garlemald duality is the strongest core of the story, but with each only receiving one zone they tried to pack in too much else around that...Thavnair, the moon, the past, the final days...

Maybe I will feel differently when I finish the expansion, but everything else just feels so tight by comparison: Ishgardian v. Dragon zones; Gyr Abania v. Doma zones; alter-Aldenard zones. And here there's no real thematic or geographical unity so far...just a bunch spare threads they wanted to halphazardly tie up. I think they either should have pushed back the Ascian resolution on the Moon to 6.X/7.0, or otherwise saved Thavnair for 7.0 when we could visit the southern continent and/or the rest of Garlemald...

[ScarletDevil]

I didn't care for the "Final Days" bit. Not one thing about it felt "Final Days"ish, no.

This reads like someone who had skipped dialogues and cutscenes.

1. The severity of the Final Days was shown in Thavnair plenty good even with its own dungeon. The severity of the situation on a small island country was terrible enough to make a conclusion of how terrible it would be on a global scale. You dont need half the planet on fire and demons to just then realize "oh shit, this is bad, we need to stop it". And..OH WAIT, we were actually showed already many times how bad the Final Days are.....in Shadowbringers, the previous expansion you know. And especially in its last dungeon - Amaurot. So we (the WoL and the Scions) have already seen and experienced how bad the Final Days can be by that point.

2. No real point? The NPC that has probably the most key point in the whole FF14 universe and its story. The NPC that is a being that can sense, convey and control the most abundant power in the universe that even the ancients couldn't is had "no real point"? It is the NPC that has affect all stories and characters in the game and their existences.

3. About the towers: Maybe because destroying 1 pillar of an almost destroyed seal is easier than destroying a full seal with full pillars directly? The point of the towers was to get aether to destroy the seal which they almost did. Zenos just did the final push. You really think that Zenos could have outputed as much damage (aether) as that gathered from like at least half the planet?

4. Zenos/Fandaniel not having a point: Well yeah, that is the whole point of their story and it explained it to use very well through their characters.
Zenos never cared about Fandaniel's plans and whether or not they work, he didnt care about the Final Days, he didnt care about Zodiark or Hydaelyn or the ancients. He just wanted a challenging fight to the death with a strong opponent, which was us, the WoL.
Fandaniel didn't care ever that much about winning (one distinction with Zenos here), or living. He actually wanted to die and said so himself many times. He himself said in few cutscenes that he is his worst enemy because of the things he lets happen to his plans. Examples are: the cutscene where he is outside the workshop of the alchemists in Thavnair that were creating the anti-tempering talismans and the cutscene where he helps you to get to Zenos while you are in the Garlean soldier body.

Fandaniel wanted to die and destroy everything before dying, as he saw deaths as the only solution to everything and that nothing else mattered.

From the Elpis arc we understand that Fandaniel (Amon) was just the inheritor/part of the soul of Hermes, which explains the whole part of Amon and his deathwish. Amon was just an extreme part of Hermes' views and thoughts...it was like that part of Hermes' soul (since it was sundered) that was all about nihilism and the death of humans.