Spoiler, Sploilers, and more Spoilers

[hydralus]

I swear on me mum if I have to listen to another hope and friendship speech I'm going to rip my hair out.

[van_arn]

I swear on me mum if I have to listen to another hope and friendship speech I'm going to rip my hair out.

Going into the expansion expecting deaths from some scions made the cheese compelling to me, at least. They kept doing goodbye scenes throughout the entire expansion (ex, cheeseburger), only to *not* kill anyone off.

That’s not to say 6.5 will be the happiest ever, but I enjoyed the bait and switch this time. Even if the last boss’ weakness is the power of friendship, I happily accepted the ham in the second phase.

[Kolsykol]

I usually HATE time travel and I did go '' oh no '' when it was going to happen but I loved the way it was handled and loved the story.
You can dumb down any story like that, the truth is that the writers were VERY bold.

If they wanted to play it safe it would just have revolved around Zodiark being the big bad and been a simple '' band together and defeat the evil '' story.
The story took gigantic risks in Endwalker that could easily have failed horribly but didn't imo.

[Sauteed]

I dont like time travel in stories at all. To me it always comes off as a lesser quality what if thing then developers or story writers try to cling to whatever happens in this alternate time line or whatever else, slap the first time line around like nothing in it mattered.. then every single character involved begins showing signs like they are wildly proficient in time manipulation theory. Then some random bad guy pulled straight from the depths of Fecal Matter Dispenser orifice emerges as the MASTER time manipulator and he's gon destroy the world weeeeee.

Every single time ever.
Star Trek was the absolute worst with this stupid shit that I have ever seen. I'm sure there are worse.

I'd rather just log in and flirt with attractive cat girls.

[Jybril]

Going into the expansion expecting deaths from some scions made the cheese compelling to me, at least. They kept doing goodbye scenes throughout the entire expansion (ex, cheeseburger), only to *not* kill anyone off.

That’s not to say 6.5 will be the happiest ever, but I enjoyed the bait and switch this time. Even if the last boss’ weakness is the power of friendship, I happily accepted the ham in the second phase.

When they continuously bait and switch us it starts to getting redundant for me.
Y'shtola died like 5 times only to be brought back. The plot armour is incredibly annoying.

That said, I think what really just threw me off was my aforementioned Zodiark encounter.
We have been talking about the guy for years....only for him to be easily beaten within 3 levels of the expansion
and some random birb girl appears and she's the end all. I don't like it and kinda kills the wind out of me honestly.
Zodiark should not have been fought at level 83. If anything, he should have been the expansions final boss.

[Orieldis]

I couldn't help but feel unsatisfied at the conclusion of Endwalker, and the criticisms levied in this thread pretty succinctly explain why, I think.

Particularly, that scene where Meteion goes full goth and the memory wipe happens. It just feels so contrived. Why was Hermes able to restrain us after we completely bodied him? Why did Hermes have access to the super magical memory wipe MacGuffin that was never mentioned before or after this zone? Why did no one try to stop it from executing, and instead just tried to attack Hermes? Why are there random portals people can open that teleport you away from the facility? Why didn't Emet or Hythlo leave (we've literally seen emet flying, can hythlo not?) when the portal was open instead of literally standing still and talking? Why did Venat not even ATTEMPT to convince Emet and Hythlo of what truly happened? In fact, since when could we even time travel, and why haven't we done it before? Why, why, why?

And that's just one cutscene. In general, the whole expansion just left me with so many questions that, disappointingly, have no reasonable answers. The more you think about it, the more poorly constructed it all feels.

In an ironic twist, Zenos of all people ended up being the best character of the expansion, IMO.

[Theodric]

When they continuously bait and switch us it starts to getting redundant for me.
Y'shtola died like 5 times only to be brought back. The plot armour is incredibly annoying.

That said, I think what really just threw me off was my aforementioned Zodiark encounter.
We have been talking about the guy for years....only for him to be easily beaten within 3 levels of the expansion
and some random birb girl appears and she's the end all. I don't like it and kinda kills the wind out of me honestly.
Zodiark should not have been fought at level 83. If anything, he should have been the expansions final boss.

Yeah, I don't like blatant emotional manipulation as a storytelling device. It's lazy and whether it's intentional or not, the writers are almost saying that if you dare to like an antagonist or a secondary character, then you have to see them suffer and fail to realise their full potential because they'll likely be killed off. Worse yet, despite losing very little by comparison to everybody else the Scions are constantly going on about how they have lost 'so much'.

I'm indifferent to the Scions. I can tolerate some of them, I dislike others. Yet again and again they were forced to the forefront at the cost of other characters. I wanted to see the likes of Arenvald and Fordola slip into a more prominent role. Yet conveniently both were written to be placed in a position where they are consigned to side content.

I wanted to see a male Raen or Xaela step into a prominent position. They're a popular pick when it comes to male player characters, yet there's so few of them actively present in the story. Worse yet, we get a couple who show up in Endwalker and...they're promptly killed off.

There's other elements, too, that I dislike. It happened before Endwalker, but Tempering no longer being a concern just erodes away a lot of the danger in the setting. So, too, does it strike me as odd for pirates - a staple fantasy trope - to be written as being negated.

Another bizarre angle is that for the longest time, it was implied that there was a need for balance between Light and Dark. Absolutely nothing came of that in the end, to the disappointment of many I suspect.

JRPG's are no stranger to pulling crazy stunts and suddenly changing the established rules 'just because' but I'm disappointed nonetheless because FFXIV genuinely seemed to be avoiding such an approach for quite some time. We'll see what the future brings, I guess, though if this was the sort of storytelling present back in ARR and HW then I never would have made FFXIV into my primary MMO. Especially since back then, I left WoW due to its storytelling jumping the shark.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

Maybe I am simple minded. Maybe I have low expectations. Maybe I can appreciate bad media. But I cant help but read this thread and feel like Im on a red letter media forum, with the grossest of nitpicks and whining about this beautiful story. Was it perfect? No. Id say there were a few moments where pacing felt off and I felt the music was reused and not as amazing as previous expansion but my God, Soken worked on this music while in the hospital with cancer, during a pandemic. This isn't Shakespeare or War and Peace. It's a video game, and in my 38 years its the most amazing one ive ever experienced. Some of the complaints I am seeing here are laughable.

The problem is, people can not or don't want to read, or have problems with comprehension. Nothing new here on these forums.

[Lauront]

When they continuously bait and switch us it starts to getting redundant for me.
Y'shtola died like 5 times only to be brought back. The plot armour is incredibly annoying.

That said, I think what really just threw me off was my aforementioned Zodiark encounter.
We have been talking about the guy for years....only for him to be easily beaten within 3 levels of the expansion
and some random birb girl appears and she's the end all. I don't like it and kinda kills the wind out of me honestly.
Zodiark should not have been fought at level 83. If anything, he should have been the expansions final boss.

Although they gave a reason for it (he was incomplete and not at full strength), I also found it underwhelming - same with Hydaelyn, tbh. I don't think they were great fights for what they were meant to be. Who knows, maybe they'll revisit Zodiark via Pandaemonium...

I couldn't help but feel unsatisfied at the conclusion of Endwalker, and the criticisms levied in this thread pretty succinctly explain why, I think.

Particularly, that scene where Meteion goes full goth and the memory wipe happens. It just feels so contrived. Why was Hermes able to restrain us after we completely bodied him? Why did Hermes have access to the super magical memory wipe MacGuffin that was never mentioned before or after this zone? Why did no one try to stop it from executing, and instead just tried to attack Hermes? Why are there random portals people can open that teleport you away from the facility? Why didn't Emet or Hythlo leave (we've literally seen emet flying, can hythlo not?) when the portal was open instead of literally standing still and talking? Why did Venat not even ATTEMPT to convince Emet and Hythlo of what truly happened? In fact, since when could we even time travel, and why haven't we done it before? Why, why, why?

And that's just one cutscene. In general, the whole expansion just left me with so many questions that, disappointingly, have no reasonable answers. The more you think about it, the more poorly constructed it all feels.

Agreed with all that. By the end of it I felt sorry for Zenos - not because he was sympathetic, but because they just dragged this guy along for the ride.

[QT_Melon]

I couldn't help but feel unsatisfied at the conclusion of Endwalker, and the criticisms levied in this thread pretty succinctly explain why, I think.

Particularly, that scene where Meteion goes full goth and the memory wipe happens. It just feels so contrived. Why was Hermes able to restrain us after we completely bodied him? Why did Hermes have access to the super magical memory wipe MacGuffin that was never mentioned before or after this zone? Why did no one try to stop it from executing, and instead just tried to attack Hermes? Why are there random portals people can open that teleport you away from the facility? Why didn't Emet or Hythlo leave (we've literally seen emet flying, can hythlo not?) when the portal was open instead of literally standing still and talking? Why did Venat not even ATTEMPT to convince Emet and Hythlo of what truly happened? In fact, since when could we even time travel, and why haven't we done it before? Why, why, why?

And that's just one cutscene. In general, the whole expansion just left me with so many questions that, disappointingly, have no reasonable answers. The more you think about it, the more poorly constructed it all feels.

In an ironic twist, Zenos of all people ended up being the best character of the expansion, IMO.

Yeah the memory wipe device was a bit much.

As far as Hythlo is concerned he does state he's good with detecting souls (color of a soul) but is actually very useless in magic. Him showing up again at the end I did love but was wondering what was his exact purpose for being there other than being Emet's "cop buddy"

Then there was the weird standards of Argos. Argos some reason needs to have us tested in a battle with Venat, which to me establishes that despite who the owner is the dog isn't just gonna be nice to anyone, however, in the moon area Argos has no such problem getting along with the Scions for allowing a ride.

Whether or not Argos trusted us as a WoL SHOULD NOT be the reason Argos lets a Scion ride, since even with Venat Argos did not want to deal with WoL until we were tested.

I like the message that "we suffer so that we may live" but I did feel the whole tone of Meteion and her sisters was too hammered? I mean yeah I get it there are some true horrors, horrors we can't fully blame the Ascians for (finally :P) but it was like I think it would have been better presented with more highs to the lows. I just felt that we only saw the end results, and while sad - there was less impact of if/when the sisters may have actually found some joy in meeting civilizations only to see it really ripped away which heightened their emotions.

I still want to see the new life we were fighting over - vs the montage focusing on Venat. That and what caused mankind to look so different from our ancient counterparts when the creations have pretty much stayed the same since their inception.

On a side note: Anyone using the "This isn't Shakespeare" argument - to try to bat off people having a discussion - doesn't even UNDERSTAND Shakespeare to begin with. (Shakespeare wrote to appeal to the most bottom of the barrel masses, so that the performers wouldn't have rotten vegetables thrown at them, lmao - not to mention like many artisians he wasn't appreciated as much and wasn't lauded for his works as masterpieces until after his death)

Also, why even bring Soken into this when no one else did in this thread? That's in extremely poor taste and quite frankly disgusting to use his battle with cancer as some prop for your argument about a discussion regarding the story.