After lurking this thread for a while, I just wanted to say that I'm quite glad it exists. I don't feel I'm very good at expressing myself well, specially on discussions of this level, but through Endwalker I always found myself constantly disappointed about its story developments, and some outright dumb character moments, sometimes even the lack of moments, like at the fight with Hydaelyn. Even shutting my brain off during Elpis didn't quite help feeling like a letdown. I know that at the end of the day, people that don't like a lot of the story of EW are in the minority, but I'm happy that minority exists, because otherwise I would be questioning what is wrong with me for not being as engaged as seemingly everyone else is into this story.

The only part that I found well done and had me actually caring was the Garlemald portion, and some of Thavnair in isolation. And I'll be forever salty about the fact that we didn't get a Garlemald expansion in favor of, whatever the hell this hope vs despair thing was, and honestly the worst part of it all is how it all came to be, it couldn't just have been a simple story about that, we have to add in closed time loop, a machine that can wipe out memories cause of course, and Venat being the worst.