6.4 Initial Review. Obvious Spoilers.

[Ath192]

After doing the content I enjoyed enough of it to give it a 6/10.

The good:

MSQ

For me the msq delivers some good cinematic moments and makes excellent use of camera angles and the characters expressions. They do a good job at bringing things to life.

The MSQ makes a compelling enough story I'm not bored or skip any cutscenes.

Fights

Golbez Ex is a good fight. It's a lot more straight forward and fast paced than the puzzle solvers we've been having. I think it's my favorite EX trial this expansion.

Normal Raids look promising. Themis is an obvious Thancred clone but that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as the fight is good and there's enough variation.

I like the setting and colors of Athena's arena. This is a breath of fresh air from the cramped castle room and the dark dungeon setting of the previous tier villains. On the other hand it does remind me of Edenverse a bit. It would be nice to have some more varied settings for raids like forests, oceans, caves instead of the weird more abstract nature of these fighting locations.

Gear
I did like the crafted gear a lot. The raid gear looks better in game than the photos suggested.

The bad:

MSQ

The downside with this team is that they continue the trend of everyone being okay and bringing every villain back to life for some reason. A prime example of this is that I was incapable of feeling any sympathy or worry for the loss of Vrtra's sister because I know we're going to save her, and it took 5 minutes for Zero to say she can be saved as well. This is extremely overused and the stories they write for the game don't have the impact they otherwise would because of this insistence on nothing bad "really" happening.

To further strengthen this point, they brought Valens back? I know it's not the real "Valens" but basically a clone. Gaius essentially made a point to say they didn't kill him so they can no doubt imprison him and make him see the error of his ways and probably go on this redemption arc like Fordola. The problem with OG Valens crimes was that he was a child abuser and so even the SE writers couldn't come up with a way to save him. So they did the next best thing. Which is this. Like seriously? Just let the character die. Nobody asked for him.

The MSQ wasted a ton of time appeasing the people of Garlemald, in a real life scenario these people are at their mercy and with a pressing issue like the one we were dealing with the best they could expect was to inform them what was going to happen, not ask for permission. That's really dumb and completely unrealistic.

Gear

Re-used assets again, and the hilarious part is that the OG asset was dyable and this new dungeon gear isn't. So its like, the same gear but worse lol. I really hope 7.0 makes everything dyable. Fat chance but it would make sense.

Character Creation
Putting the RGB values in skin tone and eye color is useless if I can't modify them. The logical choice would be to replace the color table with RGB and a color wheel. If the skin needs to dye in a particular hue so you don't find some neon orange people out in the world that would be the way to go but nonetheless the update in this regard sucked.

The rest
-PVP mount is meh
-Island Sanctuary continues to be just okay content I do on the side. I do appreciate the Island vib glams, as I do enjoy them.

[Ath192]

I don't know if SE's writers "forced goodness" and unrealistic redemption arcs are happening because Japan has a ton of people that have given up on life, both mentally and some physically. But I do think its detrimental to push the message that everything will be okay all the time so hard. I think people, especially impressionable ones may actually believe the kool aid this is the case IRL and only become more bitter and disillusioned when life doesn't work out like that. It also makes it hard to relate on a personal level because mature people know life isn't like this. And for a story to be compelling sides need to make sacrifices and trade blows. Not the "protagonist" side to trounce powerless villains that later "see the light" and become part of the merry pack.

There are good moments in the MSQ, and wholesome moments do matter, but the impact of the story is marred when it is so boringly one sided.

[Maralius]

I think you hit on my biggest issue which was the Garlemald appeasement. I'm totally fine with treating the losers of a war with dignity but like...a world ending threat is coming. We are going to use this tower or else everyone dies. Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable but uh...oh well?

[Boblawblah]

"We understand the void is invading..but we can't help you because the Garleans feel bad about the tower..sorry"

Yes, it was over the top, but I get what they were going with, they wanted to start to close off the 'poor Garleans' story arc, so this was it. Hopefully.

[ZephyrMenodora]

"We understand the void is invading..but we can't help you because the Garleans feel bad about the tower..sorry"

Yes, it was over the top, but I get what they were going with, they wanted to start to close off the 'poor Garleans' story arc, so this was it. Hopefully.

Honestly given prior Garlean abuses, including the complete hostile takeover and mass-murder of multiple communities, I'm surprised that in but a few months we are uplifting them just because a few are sympathetic. Was waiting for us to give them back the tower on top of it..

[Roshidon1]

The thing that got me was after we "beat" Golbez he just gets up and summons an even "bigger bad" on the moon with no backstory, just a surprise motha &%&er type thing. FFXIV usually has better stories than that to be honest.

[kinslayer-]

My exact thoughts as well with the MSQ,i know it was supposed to be "filler", i know it was "expected" to be like this but still, for some reason it feels like they incorporated the Manderville writters into the MSQ for this patch, not a fan of the loporits nor the le silly face/ dance stuff when we are supposed to be on a hurry to save Vitra. Moon was borning, Zero still borning, Scions still boring. Normal mode Golbez was cool, the arena being a literal cube was alright i guess, but the fight and mechanics were cool i woulda liked if we foguht some mobs on the red moon, or at least do something else instead of "poke here" and cutscene.

Tome, raid and dungeon gear were meh for me, i dont find anything that a MNK or a MCH would dress, i agree on the deepshadow recolor being redundant but it's expected for a "filler" patch i guess? i was surprised for the crafted gear, gotta do the Trial next, working on getting better gear, i'm looking for the Pandaemonium story how it ends. About the character creation changes i haven't seen them, maybe cuz i dont like to change that much my Higlander. I agree too on the Pvp series rewards, the mount is kinda unteresting, but will do it for the Nigitama frame and the Ruby weapon minion. Overall, besides the msq stuff (and some bug people have found doing basic stuff as crafting and limit break), for me it was a good patch.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Honestly given prior Garlean abuses, including the complete hostile takeover and mass-murder of multiple communities, I'm surprised that in but a few months we are uplifting them just because a few are sympathetic. Was waiting for us to give them back the tower on top of it..

Not as much as how we ended a thousand year old conflict between dragon and man in a matter of weeks during Heavensward. The more you think about the logistics of events in video games the more you start to nitpick everything.

[MikkoAkure]

I think you hit on my biggest issue which was the Garlemald appeasement. I'm totally fine with treating the losers of a war with dignity but like...a world ending threat is coming. We are going to use this tower or else everyone dies. Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable but uh...oh well?

Considering Eorzea has an occupying army and a great wyrm of the First Brood knocking on the door asking to be let in and borrow their stuff, if it came down to it then we were going to get what we wanted no matter what but that doesn't really move the story on in a productive way unless the writers wanted there to be constant friction with the new Garlean government.

The Garleans have no defense if they refuse, but if you try the carrot before the stick then at least they're happier about it in the long run and that goes more in line with the writing of the game since ARR.

[OzumaKuma]

I found a lot of story aspects to this patch were incredibly bad.