What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Rosenstrauch]

Not gonna lie, I miss Kaiten too. Its removal just sort of sapped the fun out of Samurai, and I can't be bothered to level it past 80 anymore. It was arguably my most played DPS in Shadowbringers, too.



EDIT: It's a patch or two late, I think, but I finally dipped into Eureka Orthos. I tried soloing at first, hoping to use the experience to grind Monk up to 90. That... is not happening, lol. Dunno if it's because I'm coming in fresh or if the content is just straight up harder than HOH/POTD, but it feels like the barrier to entry for solo runners is a lot higher this time around. Matched party was an interesting experience—I had to wait a full 30 minutes for a party for the first ten floors, and got the same three people for 11-20. 21-30 was more active, presumably because those're the grinding floors, but I don't recall HOH or POTD being this dead while in their respective expansions.

As for what little story there was, at least from 1-30...

As funny as I find G'raha being reduced to a glorified key, it's clear the only reason he's here at all is because of the personal connection to the Doga/Unei clones. As otherwise, he could've easily been replaced by one of the spirit vessels he crafted. It was also neat to see a clone of Tiamat as the final encounter for this leg of things. But the sheer commitment in trying to paint the Allag vs Meracydia conflict as morally gray—without changing or adding any new information in Allag's favor—is nothing short of amazingly weird. The same expansion where it was revealed that Allag started the war by unleashing an army of voidsent, on top of their already existing crimes of invading Meracydia unprovoked, killing Bahamut, then capturing Tiamat, her children, Bahamut, and the Warring Triad to use as components in their plans for infinite renewable energy, then going "fuck it, burn the world" and unwittingly triggering a calamity in the process...

It is wild for that same narrative to then go "But you see, the dragons fought back" and act like that's enough balance the scales.

That said, I do appreciate being able to listen to Noah try and spin these developments in a positive sounding direction, even citing the Doga/Unei clones... and straight up being able to tell her "No, it was all fucked up".

I suppose on the bright side, the writers not letting us say that to a certain someone in 6.0 is one of the reasons I ended up writing Amidst the Ashes of Paradise. If they'd given me that option back then, I might not have done so, wouldn't have followed it up with Ascilia, Scion of Light, and might not even be here (because I need to be subbed to experience the story, natch).

... Also the aforementioned "But Allag did good, too!" bit reminds me of the Dachau Hypothermia Experiments, which I've been reading up on again today. It seems they've been thoroughly discredited. Neat.