I think the story is suffering a bit in the hands of Natsuko Ishikawa. She seems to like to bring us to emotional lows with ultimately happy endings and our close friends (Scions) never seem to be in real danger in her hands. Now I am not saying she is a bad writer. She made me care about the people in the world of FFXIV a lot and that's huge. Caring about the people makes me care about the story.

But it's time to let some Banri Oda influence seep back in. He had great world building and wasn't afraid to kill characters. A balance between them would be ideal. Oda to threaten the characters and build out the world, Ishikawa to make me care by writing said characters and establishing their motives. Maybe with more Oda the Final Days would have felt more apocalyptic.

I think there was some knee jerk reaction against killing characters after Heavensward and that was fair at the time, honestly. If we'd kept killing off NPCs like that we would be in the opposite situation, where we don't dare care about anyone and deaths have lost any emotional impact.

As for G'raha I like him a lot. He's not my favorite character but he's fun. Some of the issue with him is his energetic enthusiasm can make it hard to remember he's hundreds of years old and ran a society.