Honestly, the issue with all of Endwalker, 6.0 and now the post patches, is that every threat within stories side or main is more or less instantly contained. The literal universe ending omni threat is identified with less than total destruction for one city and its immediate environs with a couple of other, small, isolated regions suffering this same fate... Nowhere in the world experiences anything worse than wars that have raged across Etheirys in the time since The Sundering. And it could even be argued that it's not even as bad, since it didn't seem to be affecting animals or plants as far as the story showed.

The stakes were supposed to be everything, but the threat had all its teeth removed by the Scions simply telling characters to remain calm. "Just don't get too negatively emotional!" Which except by minor no name NPCs in the face of direct crisis was followed by every minor character, even the uninformed, and everyone got off scott free from the literal apocalypse generator that was Hydaelyn's motivation to destroy her own people and every civilization worldwide, large or small.

And in the face of this ultimately toothless threat, not only do we stop it mere days or however impossibly short of a time period we're supposed to be doing this in now, but we do it while being hand held and chided over about hope with so many comic/lighthearted relief moments that it's more or less the serious stuff that's the trying to remind us that we're serious WARRIORs saving the world.

God forbid anything get in the way of our slice of life anime in a game that once framed our character for regicide. A game that once had The Elementals melt people for transgressions against their forest. A game that once had sidequests involving immediate rape survivors.

Like sure, we don't need doom and gloom all the time, but we don't need Happy Happy Joy Joy all the time either. We need a game that respects our intelligence both scholarly and emotionally. Bad things happen and sometimes you can't stop them. Not everyone makes it out of bad things unscathed like they have in Endwalker.

It's going to be unbelievable from here on out when smaller stakes villains actually manage to do anything injurious to any of the current cast (Lord knows nobody is gonna get more than transitory boo-boos at this point).

God I can't wait for FFXVI.