I do genuinely think the reason Endwalker feels so mediocre is they really thought Island Sanctuary would be received better and take up more time.
But that system completely missed the massive, obvious, housing shaped bullseye it needed to hit to be a success, and as a result you have a Mammet Sweatshop that really only amounts to some glamours and mounts, and a source of free cordials.
Beyond that, Variant Dungeons completely miss the alure of something like Bozja, rather than being good casual content that you can play with anyone regardless of jobs, its something you run 12 times solo for a mount.
Criterion is okay, though I think the normal version is too hard, and the savage version is too similar to the normal version. The fact it doesn't keep up with the Variant Dungeon's attempt to be casual content where your job doesn't matter as much made it flop. IMO, Criterion is basically just bite sized Savages, some more engaging than the Abyssos tier, but its still pretty one and done.
Everything else has been the same standard content we always get, Beast Tribe Chores, Crafting Chores, questionably paced Extremes, and the savage tiers, the second one having a lot of fundamental issues, and the first being fine for those who aren't color blind.
Here's the issue with Graha Tia in Endwalker.
Do you think Haurchefant would be memorable as a character, if he had survived Heavensward, and was in all of Stormblood being the comic relief and your personal cheerleader with no will or ambitions of his own?
Of course he wouldn't, he'd be some annoying tag along meant to make the WoL look cooler.
Well thats Graha now. I'm not against the fact he's still around, but you can't deny that the only thing he did that was REALLY memorable of Endwalker was the fucking burger meme. If characters don't have interesting stories to tell, they probably shouldn't be brought around for the sole purpose of marketability.



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