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

[Thoosa]

I felt that Garlemald was a wasted opportunity - it would have been nice to see how the city was before it was bombed out - to see the parks and buildings and civilian technology (cars, etc), even if it was in some cutscenes, but no, we get coerthas 2.0 except with some railways.

The first half of the Garlean quests felt hollow and unsatisfying - everyone saying they hate you and they felt like filler without much depth. The themes of liberators being seen as conquerors and the propaganda elements were quite good though. The second half picked up nicely with the mindjack solo duty and was fun to do.

I enjoyed the moon piece much more and the Loporitts had a really fun story and at this point to me it was starting to get really good. The fact Fandaniel tricked us into killing Zodiark to trigger the end of days was a nice trick. Even the acknowledgment from Y’shtola that the moon evacuation wouldn’t likely be the best course of action, I felt was nice. At this point Zenos felt redundant.

We go back to the second zone (from memory) and people start turning into monsters (which I found hilarious given that the monsters looked a bit like comedy muppets-like monsters) and never laughed so much in my life lol.

Now IMO I feel the story really becomes stupid - we end up going back in time (zzz) to Elpis which was an amazing zone but then we find out that Hermes creates a bunch of terminators who want to destroy the world because people must not be allowed to feel negative emotions and life as to be pure pleasure at all costs or it’s worthless living. I could handle the moon stuff, I could handle the monsters, but this was ridiculous.

It felt like the writers thought Fandaniel and Zenos were weak characters so they had to up the anti to a character we had no prior history with and something they just chucked in at the end, so for me no really big shock plot twist or surprise and it felt even beyond the realm of believability to Eorzea reality.

And as for that space ship…..

[Nataruma]

Snip

With the way the story unfolds and that this giant tower is erected in the middle of the city, while the populace is likely used as fodder for the machine, I think it made sense that we only see Garlemald as the broken husk it has become when we first go there. I also think Square wanted to punch home the post-war feeling, almost like a 1940's post-war depression era, especially with people huddled around radios and the like. I personally felt super invested since I'm a war survivor, it hit me hard and I connected with it a lot in the way they showed it.

You missed the point of Elpis if that's all you got out of it, it was basically tackling the views of nihilism and the topics of the value and meaning of life and living beings. Hermes didn't create Meteion with bad intentions, he wanted to feel like there was meaning to life and that all living beings were precious and deserved to have a place in existence, he also felt that 'returning to the star' i.e. dying was a waste of life (it upset him when it was brought up as a normal thing to happen). By sending Meteion and her sisters out to different planets he was hoping to get a positive confirmation of his beliefs, what he got instead was Meteion's inexperienced interpretation that life is without meaning or value and ends exclusively in suffering, pain, death and destruction and that all man wants is to destroy himself. It's not about life has to be pure in order to be worth living, it was that upon observing so many worlds that came to violent or 'meaningless' ends Meteion changed her ideas about life and decided to protect Hermes's emotions by getting rid of what would upset him; Eitherys and all life. Because according to Meteion, if nothing is alive Hermes can't be upset, neither can anyone else be upset or suffer if she snuffs everyone out prematurely. Granted her vision is flawed, but that is on purpose, since she's not a fully developed creature and has very elementary thought processes, almost like a child still learning things.

Fandaniel was just coocoo for Cocopuffs, but that has a lot to do with Amon's story so if you're not very familiar with it I can see how his part seems pretty small in the overall story, I also personally feel like he was added in too late in the overall FFXIV story as his final iteration.

I personally found Zenos a boring one-dimensional mwahaha villain from the very beginning when we first meet him in FFXIV and wasn't surprised he remained the same, they literally could have yeeted him out of the game and NOTHING would have been different. An unnecessary character that some people fangasm over for some weird ass reason, I mean, if you can see past the potato plastered to the centre of his face I suppose he might be somewhat attractive? Maybe? Nope, just don't see it personally. Anyhow his whole thing just... Falls flat for me.

[Accursed_Immortal]

Now IMO I feel the story really becomes stupid - we end up going back in time (zzz) to Elpis which was an amazing zone but then we find out that Hermes creates a bunch of terminators who want to destroy the world because people must not be allowed to feel negative emotions and life as to be pure pleasure at all costs or it’s worthless living. I could handle the moon stuff, I could handle the monsters, but this was ridiculous.

I understood Hermes when he thought life shouldn't be curated but left to a natural process. Even when he let Meteion go I was still on his side thinking, well maybe he wants to let his "daughters" live. But then Meteion went kind of bonkers saying all life is just suffering and it should end. I look towards Hermes thinking, "It's time to turn off the crazy and let her go... back to the aether." Nope he went full on koolaid and joined her.

The only reasonable explanation I could think of to make this story good, is that while the Ancient excelled in nearly everything, they simply haven't developed any form of psychiatric help. Hermes suffered from Major Depression.

[Thoosa]

It’s funny, when you mean Hermes, he comes over a basically a nice guy who cares about his creations and you see he can’t bear to kill off the bad creations that run around killing things, and it pains him to terminate them. So then he decides “screw this, I can’t handle this responsibility, the world deserves to burn” instead of “screw this, I can’t handle this responsibility, im going to get another job”. Feels like they shoe-horned him in at the end because they didn’t have enough story to get to 90? We also know at this point that there’s no way they will let the world burn, because then we can’t go back to the other zones and do any endgame, so for me it was kinda eh.

[LaughingBanana]

It’s funny, when you mean Hermes, he comes over a basically a nice guy who cares about his creations and you see he can’t bear to kill off the bad creations that run around killing things, and it pains him to terminate them. So then he decides “screw this, I can’t handle this responsibility, the world deserves to burn” instead of “screw this, I can’t handle this responsibility, im going to get another job”. Feels like they shoe-horned him in at the end because they didn’t have enough story to get to 90? We also know at this point that there’s no way they will let the world burn, because then we can’t go back to the other zones and do any endgame, so for me it was kinda eh.

Out of all the characters in EW, I am confident in saying that I actually hate Hermes the most. Can't stand stuck up characters like him who is so convinced about his self-righteousness that he is blinded to other things, a blindedness that in the end killed so many and almost destroyed everything.

Kinda annoyed that they included him on the nice art at the end, hahah.

[Alleo]

I understood Hermes when he thought life shouldn't be curated but left to a natural process. Even when he let Meteion go I was still on his side thinking, well maybe he wants to let his "daughters" live. But then Meteion went kind of bonkers saying all life is just suffering and it should end. I look towards Hermes thinking, "It's time to turn off the crazy and let her go... back to the aether." Nope he went full on koolaid and joined her.

The only reasonable explanation I could think of to make this story good, is that while the Ancient excelled in nearly everything, they simply haven't developed any form of psychiatric help. Hermes suffered from Major Depression.

And its not like he is much better than the other Ancients. He still creates other beings he just hates having to kill them. I can understand his position, but at the same time you do have creatures that would bring so much harm to other creatures that they kinda have to be killed.

Also he is completely fine to create Meteion and her sisters for his own sake. He sents them out to find answers too. Not knowing what dangers might await them...and at the same time he should have noticed that they were not up to the task...Meteion suffering like that just because he is angry or sad...did it never come to him that other planets would not be such a "paradise"?

I dunno wtf it is with this forum, it's so negative lol.

I genuinely don't believe that most people here talking about the story even pay attention to it or they even skipped it.
I am biased cuz MNK but especially with characters like Lyse and how people unironically think that she didn't grow as a character and people don't even understand or remember stuff that was explained ( like how Flow works ) and then hate on events in the story based on not understanding.
Even tho it's literally spelled out multiple times.

And I honestly cant believe that there are some posters here saying that someone does not understand the story or even skipped it just because they dont like or may have problems with some parts. Stories are subjective. Just look at stuff like the Twilight books or movies.

So in the end he still creates, does side projects that he does not register at the office and is ready to let every living being on the star including his beloved creatures die to the final days just so that Meteion can have her answer...