The best and worst of Endwalker MSQ

[DayHealer]

Not including post-endwalker since thats a new arc. Im curious what are your best and worst too, try to be unbiased ty.

Best:

• Eorzea Alliance part: seeing all the friends you did along the way on Sharlayan, getting all the beast tribe primals being summoned for a good cause finally, ye this part was cool.
• Elpis and Ultima Thule: the final 2 zones. Wish they managed the time travel thing better but visiting the ascians homeworld with Emet and co. was very welcome. Ultima Thule recalls the same feeling i had going to Azys Lla the first time, also have lot of potential for future plot content too.
• Solo duty instances: Venat fight was prob the first on forever i actually had some difficulty, Thancred sneak instance was nice too, then the one where you are an imperial soldier (they finally fuckin nerfed the WoL for once).

Worst:

• Moon evacuation plot: ok this entire part is silly, like whats the point on evacuate our planet if the Final Days put not only our planet at risk, but every planet? Venat/Hydaelyn knew it and still she come with the brilliant idea of evacuation .-.
• Telophoroi towers and final days: everything just happens on poor Thavnair and Garlemald, is like the rest of the world is immune to these world's ending events. Bro sure they rushed this a lot, I could prefer they expanded those events instead of fuckin loporrits in the moon questlines.
• Meteion: this is the biggest offender for me. So are you trying to tell me that after 4 expansions the final villain you come is a girl bird automaton with depression problems? And she somehow gain world destroying powers when her/their (counting all meteias) initial task was that of the observer? To dont talk to the fact the ancients barely knew dynamis. Emet Selch, one of the most powerful ancients, never heard of dynamis, so how possibile meteion suddendly can absorb all dynamis in the universe if her creator barely understand dynamis?

Rate: 6/10 wish I could give more but the weak points in storyline left a bad taste in my mouth and the final antagonist was disappointing. Dungeons and zones are top tier all along.

[hunkygladiator]

Not including post-endwalker since thats a new arc. Im curious what are your best and worst too, try to be unbiased ty.

Best:

• Eorzea Alliance part: seeing all the friends you did along the way on Sharlayan, getting all the beast tribe primals being summoned for a good cause finally, ye this part was cool.
• Elpis and Ultima Thule: the final 2 zones. Wish they managed the time travel thing better but visiting the ascians homeworld with Emet and co. was very welcome. Ultima Thule recalls the same feeling i had going to Azys Lla the first time, also have lot of potential for future plot content too.
• Solo duty instances: Venat fight was prob the first on forever i actually had some difficulty, Thancred sneak instance was nice too, then the one where you are an imperial soldier (they finally fuckin nerfed the WoL for once).

Worst:

• Moon evacuation plot: ok this entire part is silly, like whats the point on evacuate our planet if the Final Days put not only our planet at risk, but every planet? Venat/Hydaelyn knew it and still she come with the brilliant idea of evacuation .-.
• Telophoroi towers and final days: everything just happens on poor Thavnair and Garlemald, is like the rest of the world is immune to these world's ending events. Bro sure they rushed this a lot, I could prefer they expanded those events instead of fuckin loporrits in the moon questlines.
• Meteion: this is the biggest offender for me. So are you trying to tell me that after 4 expansions the final villain you come is a girl bird automaton with depression problems? And she somehow gain world destroying powers when her/their (counting all meteias) initial task was that of the observer? To dont talk to the fact the ancients barely knew dynamis. Emet Selch, one of the most powerful ancients, never heard of dynamis, so how possibile meteion suddendly can absorb all dynamis in the universe if her creator barely understand dynamis?

Rate: 6/10 wish I could give more but the weak points in storyline left a bad taste in my mouth and the final antagonist was disappointing. Dungeons and zones are top tier all along.

I would add Garlemald to "best". In From the Cold is the best solo instance they made as long as you ignore that it served no purpose right after.

[BaconBits]

All the friends we did?

Nice.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

All the friends we did?

Nice.

New headcanon. The Scions are one beeg polycule. Except Tataru. And the twins. Because.... yeah.

The Best:

- Garlemald, obviously. Was nice to see the opposite perspective for once, wish we could've gotten more of it though. Screw you, viator Galvus
- Elpis brought me back to my Chrono Trigger days. It was ethereal and beautiful, but with lingering hints of shadow and ruin hidden in the bowels. I also rather enjoyed the embodied Amaurotines more than Emet's shades, seeing new kinds of people is always nice
- The sometimes heartwarming, sometimes way too damn sexy room scene. (Looking at you, Estinien! >xO)
- Venat was.... passable, I guess? I kinda found the FFXII one more compelling, this rendition was very similar yet far less scrutinized

The Worst:

- I liked the Towers, and was sad to see them go. I wanted more Bloodborne vibes!!!! T_T
- The revelation of Varis and the Emperor's ultimate fate. I almost felt as if the horrific nature of it was all but brushed past. Also the coffins in the Tower of Babil powering up Anima. Who were they? Could they have been Garlemald royals?
- In from the Cold, while a fun duty and a frightening plot beat resolved rather unsatisfactorily. While I didn't necessarily want someone to die, it was another horrific moment that didn't feel like they paid enough attention to
- Ultima Thule, obviously. I wish the devs would cease the constant fake-out deaths already. You want to saddle us with the Scions for another 10 years? Fine, but as a compromise would you please stop cheaply attempting to tug our heartstrings this way? All such things eventually fade and grow old and stale, they stop working. This one certainly has

The MVNPC:



This girl. Square knew what they were doing with your grey-haired Steppe Childe. The best girl of the entire game, right here. Sold the entire expansion and all previous content, all by herself. She's why it exists, practically.

[VelKallor]

Ultima Thule, obviously. I wish the devs would cease the constant fake-out deaths already.

"Azems magic, you can use it to summon us back..but you mustnt"..Yshtola and the others knew they werent going to die, but would be torn into another plane..it was still a horrific risk, as you can recall at the end, when you are given the choices

"No, I absolutely forbid it"

"Stop. Not one more word"

They never died, which I keep saying ...they were never dead to start with. Their souls were displaced aka the First...also what Emet-Selch said "They need no longer fight their fight", their souls were paving the way, bridge by bridge, only their BODIES were gone, their souls, their will to succeed forged the path for the WoL to each the nest.

Why did Yshtola tell us not to use the crystal? Venat told us the power was limited, finite, doing that would have drained the crystal, leaving us without power to change that outcome. Dynamis is well named, a dimension if you like where reality is malleable, where emotion and will govern and determine outcomes, the antithesis of aether. Their sacrifice, their utter determination to reach Meteion, their unbreakable will to save Eitherys remained, eternal, undying, immortal.

The physical body is not the all of existence, Towa..a lesson i learned a long time ago. Look at the actual definition:

plural dynames -ˌmēz : the state of that which is not yet fully realized A place where what you wish, what you believe, determines what can be, will be, might be.

Why did Meteion do this to each of the Scions? To drag them down, bury them in despair and fear, to freeze them in terror , to prevent them from stopping the Final Days..

"It is hopeless you cant win, give up, give in to sadness and grief..."

To which, as Emet-Selch said

"You will not end our journey., THAT is our answer, the answer of all lives on Eitherys, past and present"

Hythlodaeus: "What form that path takes DEPENDS ON YOU, so focus and envision that which rejects the claim you cannot attain your goal"

Look at that field of Elpis flowers..remember what they do and why.."No more is yours the dominion of despair"....

Towa: death, the physical end of being is not the end at all, a lesson made plain by the fact that in Ultima Thule, reality itself and all around you can be whatever you want it to be.

So, no. There was no "fakeout" as they never died...in one or more senses, death itself has no real meaning.

[DayHealer]

All the friends we did?

Nice.

Jokes on you, in my headcanon the WoL makes out with other scions every now and then. I mean we are no saints :x

[Atelier-Bagur]

I would add Garlemald to "best". In From the Cold is the best solo instance they made as long as you ignore that it served no purpose right after.

Except for Zenos wanting to push our buttons by personally messing with us so that we would fight him to the death because of it. Since that was his entire purpose.

[BaconBits]

The only purpose In From the Cold served was getting to watch a reanimated Garlean corpse dramatically football tackle a possessed Lalafell in slow motion.

I know Zenos's goofy ahh was stumbling like crazy after dropping from 7 feet and some change to 3 feet and wearing armored high heels in the snow.

[Jeeqbit]

Telophoroi towers and final days: everything just happens on poor Thavnair and Garlemald, is like the rest of the world is immune to these world's ending events.

No, if you teleported around you would discover there were towers all over the world. Even Yanxia. The final days took time to spread to different areas of the world. First Thavnair, then the rest of Ilsabard (Garlemald), then it reached the corners of Old Sharlayan as you got rid of it.

Monsters were being fought around the world, which you would know if you had done all of the role quests that involve you taking care of the most dangerous ones.

To dont talk to the fact the ancients barely knew dynamis. Emet Selch, one of the most powerful ancients, never heard of dynamis, so how possibile meteion suddendly can absorb all dynamis in the universe if her creator barely understand dynamis?

Emet didn't create her. Someone else did and that person did understand dynamis. There had been other ancients in the past that had found out about dynamis but it was not widely known or talked about. Dynamis was not something that the ancients could interpret or interact with because their aether was too dense, so most of them wouldn't have noticed it or been affected by it.

This is one of the reasons the sundering happens, because after being sundered, the aether is less dense and more susceptible to dynamis.

[kpxmanifesto]

Spoilers obviously. I personally hated how EW retconned the cause of the Sundering that was originally told in ShB. In ShB we were told that the Sundering was a result of some major battle between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, but during the cutscene in EW where the WoL is leaving Elpis we were given a different explanation - Venat just sundered everyone by herself.


Also, I agree with your opinion about Meteion. She was a huge disappointment as the final villain of this saga.