Honestly, I enjoyed Endwalker, but in the same way I enjoyed Stormblood or A Realm Reborn's story. It's not bad, but it's not *AMAZING* as a story either. I think one of the biggest disappointments to me about EW was that Shadowbringers seemed as if it was setting the story up for even further heights in Endwalker, and it didn't deliver on that for me. Shadowbringers made me feel invested in the story and Endwalker made me realize "yeah its been kinda not good more than its been good" and it made me stop caring again. In a way, the blame is on me for getting invested into an MMO storyline to begin with, but I still feel as if the story was being led somewhere and instead they changed it to be a very banal feel-good "never give up and give in to despair!" anime message because of COVID and what everyone in the world has been dealing with since 2020. And you know, that's fair, I can understand not wanting to make something super depressing and instead wanting to make something 'positive' but that's not what Shadowbringers felt like it was leading to. Had this expansion come after another expansion with a Stormblood tier level of writing/worldbuilding, I don't think I would've been disappointed with how it ultimately concluded.

I think the worst part to me about Endwalker's story is that it makes me feel a bit stupid for having cared or put any thought into it, discussing it with others, talking about "clues" or "it looks like lore is leading to this" when it feels very evident especially after the liveletter Yoshida did on the story that it was never really that deep to the developers. I feel bad for all of the people who have been truly invested in this story for years because I can and have easily just gone back to not really caring about the story and I'm okay with that. I don't have the same level of aversion to some of the characters that a lot of you do or the Slice of Life scenes etc, so it's not really going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me (that will be healer gameplay continuing down this path) but it is unfortunate that the story ever got to a place that made me invested to begin with. I just feel a little bit silly having ever cared, you know?