So, anyone feel like this should have been a bigger deal...? (SPOILERS!!!)

[Iscah]

During the time we actually spent there, I think we spent far too little time out on the moon's surface actually appreciating that we were on the moon, and far too much time cooped up inside the Loporrits' oversized facility.

And in the grand scheme of things we spent a strangely small and early amount of time on the moon, given that it was presented as the focus of the story in promotional materials. By the time we reach the finale, it is the least recent place we have visited, having been followed by Thavnair/Vanaspati, Elpis, a brief return to Garlemald, lower Labyrinthos and the final zone.

Even the logo, in hindsight, seems to be not the moon at all but one of the hollowed "dead planets" of the finale.

[Wasselin]

And the scions doesn't even have any reaction to it.

This is the only part I didn't really like. It feels like we skipped a story beat after the trial because we never really see their reactions.

[AnotherPerson]

I mean, not really? The moon on FF4 seemed quite empty too. Rather, I think we all fell for the login screen when we thought we were going to the moon. In actuality, that login screen isn't the moon. Look closer, and it'll resemble something else in Ultima Thule.

[StriderShinryu]

Personally, I am both disappointed with and okay with the moon. As a FF4 nut, I was really hoping the moon would be a huge thing and that we'd be spending a ton of time there.. and I couldn't wait to hear Soken's take on the iconic moon theme. So I was a little disappointed that it wasn't that. But within the actual story they tell in EW, however, it feels like it was pretty much given the time and space it deserved, and the moon music is excellent. It was never going to be what I was hoping it would be, and that's okay. I am still hoping for some content that has Soken doing that moon theme though.

I disagree. I think they were handled great and it has nothing to do with cool fights. They can have cool fights with anyone, but the story just makes sense this way.

Also, when was it said that this was their time to shine? All I can remember is that this will conclude their saga, which it did.

Pretty much my take as well. While I do feel the story has it's issues, it really feels like a measurable number of complaints that people have about the story being bad really just revolve around the story not being what they wanted it to be (or decided it would/should be) as opposed to it actually being Bad.

[van_arn]

We've only seen a sliver of the moon. We already know weird stuff goes on there, we just don't know weird yet.

If anything, I'm glad it's just a cool middle surprise zone (in the same vein as Il Mheg) and not a tentpole area.

I *especially* love how they found ways to bring color to the map. A black and white area would've been dull to revisit.

[linayar]

I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation to assume more would be done with a pair of characters that were built up for roughly a decade. Especially in a game that spends an excessive amount of time elsewhere focusing on certain details even at the cost of repetition.

Each to their own, though.

After their respective introduction, in what way were they built up prior to Shadowbringers as characters? They were always distant figures, Zodiark even more so than Hydaelyn.

And after Shadowbringers, when we finally know more about their true natures and when we finally defeated the remaining major Ascians, even the supposed "heart" of Zodiark, without even encountering Zodiark, I'm not sure what else you were expecting. Endwalker is a great payoff for what Shadowbringers (and by extension the previous expansions) had setup with respect to the two figures.

Then again, I remember people were saying they wanted their expectations subverted. Maybe yours was?

[Terin]

I dunno; I have to agree that for as long as both Zodiark and Hydaelyn had been built-up, it was really kind of a bummer for them to have been relatively unimportant characters to the story. As I've said other places, I don't necessarily hate what they did with the story, so much as I feel like it was rushed to the point, it feels like we "skipped" an entire expansion's worth of storytelling. I really wanted to get to know Zodiark as a character, maybe finding out he isn't so much "evil" as being too forceful in trying to protect those who summoned him.

Like, maybe he began "reshaping" the remaining peoples' bodies to be made more for warfare, while Hydaelyn fought against him trying to preserve their humanity, thus giving shape to the actual player-races (a result of both Zodiark's strength and Hydaelyn's beauty, thus making us "better" than the Ancients, who are effectively super tall Garleans; perhaps ALSO explaining why they're the one race without an affinity towards Aether?).

I dunno. This expansion feels like kind of a mixed-bag for me. I wasn't really feeling Ultima Thule, personally, and yeah, felt like we REALLY sped past Zodiark and the Moon.

[Iscah]

I do agree that Hydaelyn and Zodiark seem to be oddly used here, given that it is supposed to be the culmination of years of talk about what they are.

The Ascians have talked about the revival of their "one true god" for so long, and what is he in the end? An empty vessel, waiting to be occupied and puppeted by the first person to come along and break the seal. He was over and gone too quickly, and it was really just a supercharged Amon throwing his Allagan creations at us. No sense of Zodiark as a character.

Hydaelyn, meanwhile – setting aside any discussion of whether Venat's choices were right or not, the overall idea of Hydaelyn feels diminished by the reveal that she is essentially "one person", the continued identity of her creator, rather than an independent entity designed to play the part of mother-goddess. The leap from goddess-primal to person-primal feels far more jarring to me than the reveal that she was a primal at all.

[Vyrerus]

Endwalkers blew my mind for the first half, and then petered out in the second half.

I thought the moon being so early was mind blowing, and I'd always wanted to take the Tower of Bab-il teleporter talked of but not really shown in FFIV back in the day. If I had any disappointment with the moon, it was that the Watcher's tower was... mmm... functionally meaningless? I can't even remember what I did there other than meet the shade for a few seconds and dialogue boxes, and then BAM, villains catch up.

The Hummingways were goofy, and only really went on over long because I did all of their sidequests right then and there. I also got auto logged out during that time due to my GF really really wanting to watch a movie with me at her house. So I came back to a 6k queue in the middle of Hummingway sidequests. It took me 5 more hours to get back into the game, and by then my friends who I'd done Zodiark with were already at Elpis lmao (all in all with the movie it was an 8~9 hour gap).

Overall I thought the moon was fine, but I also agree that not enough stuff went on there. It was all important, and it sure felt epic to me. But seeing the Empty mobs from Promyvion in FFXI there as little more than mutated space fungus(though that does draw HP Lovecraft comparisons) kind of also soured the mood.

I thought for sure we'd go back there to get some spaceship parts during the 89 spaceship "engineering" segment, but... nope.

[Kisshu]

With how much the moon was used in marketing, "we're going to the moon", lunar whale mount, CG trailer showing it, it feels very under-used.

While most zones take several hours at a normal pace, from we get to the moon till Zodiark feels like 30 mins at best, and after that it's around 1 level with comedic bunnies.