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

[Raoabolic]

TO BE FAIR, a lot of the reworks are a result of the Trust NPCs not able to do crazy mechanics so the reworks were there to ensure they could be done with Trusts. RIP in peace Sohr Khai, your final boss will be sorely missed. ;_;7

[Dikatis]

TO BE FAIR, a lot of the reworks are a result of the Trust NPCs not able to do crazy mechanics so the reworks were there to ensure they could be done with Trusts. RIP in peace Sohr Khai, your final boss will be sorely missed. ;_;7

...Was it really that exciting? Aside from the collapsing platform gimmick, Hraesvelgr only had divebomb attacks, exploding add summons, and the dragon heads/orbs that slowly follow you around. The current version actually makes you do stuff as a team and alludes to the mechanics that you'll face when dealing with Nidhogg at the Final Steps of Faith as well as serving as a retroactive reference to Dragonsong Reprise's mechanics.

[ReynTime]

TO BE FAIR, a lot of the reworks are a result of the Trust NPCs not able to do crazy mechanics so the reworks were there to ensure they could be done with Trusts. RIP in peace Sohr Khai, your final boss will be sorely missed. ;_;7

That was the boss change I hated the most. The platforms were one of my favorite MSQ boss gimmicks and made that fight very memorable.

[Vyrerus]

I liked the original version of that fight as well. Though I did think they kinda soft balled it by making his tank buster not cleave.

Actually had a group or two that did so poorly in it, when it was closer to being new, that we ran out of platforms. Good times.

[Maltothoris]

The one change was was the one I hated the most would of be the one to Niddhog in the Aery. You had to heal Estinien during that whole time and in a way, it would of been the big clue to to heal Haurefacunt in DSR but now, they got rid of that and it made it way too easy now.

[ReynTime]

I liked the original version of that fight as well. Though I did think they kinda soft balled it by making his tank buster not cleave.

Actually had a group or two that did so poorly in it, when it was closer to being new, that we ran out of platforms. Good times.

This happened to me two times

[Gordita]

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

Really?
This is the best SQ could do in terms of story after ShB?

You mispelled shadowbringers. God that was an awfully boring and dragged out story with so much filler. No matter how many times I try to like it, I can't help but notice how much they intentionally dragged stuff out , like everything from the landscape to the quest design is just a major time sink with nothing really moving forward. Endwalker was a RELIEF in comparison to shb.

[ReynTime]

Endwalker is such a (bad) rehash of Shadowbringers it literally suffers from the same problems and adds its own new share of issues on top of it.
Apart from a single quest every new addition just makes it worse, like the NPC escorting and the super janky "stealth" NPC trailing and the tedious frog sequence.
It also manages to feature even less combat in its quests.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I feel like Shadowbringers and Endwalker have opposite problems in pacing and map design.

Shadowbringers has more of a slow burn approach, diving into the worldbuilding for the First, and taking its time to bring you into it. The maps are big and expansive to sell you on the idea that this is, indeed, a whole new world (well, the part of one that's still livable, anyway). It also takes its time to let you get to know the important characters, like Lyna, Feo Ul, Rhunar, even Vauthry. (Hell, Magnus gets more development than a lot of characters in EW, and he's only relevant for about a quarter of the back half of one zone!) The downside is that it can feel like it takes a while to actually get anywhere, but it feels like more of a journey when you do.

Endwalker, on the other hand, bumrushes the player through a lot of the plot, because they're trying to tell two expansions and a patch series in one expansion's time. Story elements are brought up and then go nowhere until they're suddenly important (remember akasha getting a brief mention in Radz-at-Han before being renamed dynamis and taking over the story?), or get built up and then dropped (like Corvus, which we never end up visiting). And the maps....well, Garlemald, a continent-spanning empire, gets one zone, and it's mostly empty snow fields. And the moon has a big zone, which....has a handful of landmarks and nothing much else to do. So it feels like being dragged from setpiece to setpiece. It also makes the places where the plot actually does slow down a little (like the introduction of the Loporitts) feel even more jarring.

[SolemnDream]

Part 1:

925 pages, and this thing is still open. And I am here for it. I read the first 150 pages before responding.

I am a person who is pretty forgiving about a lot of plot elements. Time travel. Dropped Ascians and Ascian plans. Some inconsistency. People came in here and taught me how much of a mess those things were, and how much of a mess Hydaelyn was. I appreciate that. I want to give my own perspective though.

I finished Endwalker story only a month ago and I'm going to be very negative today.

After loving Shadowbringers and only really having a problem with the final cutscenes and Ran'jit, Endwalker is an icon for a lot of what I hate about most Japanese pop/anime writing. It's nonsensical, it's style-over-substance, it's got bad morals, and it sticks to the same weird, nonsensical tropes that I am honestly super tired of.

When I started Endwalker, I thought the only problem I was having was how poorly-paced, empty, and at the time seemingly devoid of purpose both Sharlayan and Thavnair were. Then the glurge cutscenes started to become a pattern. You know, the ones where they talk non-stop about love and hope and friendship, sometimes at completely inappropriate times. In Thavnair, Vrtra literally stops you after everyone else left the palace to talk about how "you need to look out for your friends because they're going to suffer because of you", and it was so poorly-written in the moment and the glurge patterns were already so established, that I *already* knew it would have nothing to do with anything— and I was right. That stupid speech had nothing to do with what would happen in the future, nor would Vrtra even have any way of knowing what would happen in the future anyway. It was forced and senseless and it took me out of the moment, like most of Endwalker.

Garlemald felt super great, until 1.) the Zenos body-switch interrupted a time when the game SUCCEEDED at helping me believe in the power of hope, with Jullus. Then 2.) the body-switch ended up affecting nothing and was never talked about again (WTF). Then 3.) in retrospect, Garlemald is just a bunch of boring ruins and we didn't spend a lot of time there, no matter how good that time was.

Fandaniel was obnoxious and so is every character who acts like him. I can't stand to look at them. Emet-Selch had charm, so learn from him.

Loporrits were an insufferable, unfunny waste of time, both on their own and plot-wise. I really sometimes want to ask Japanese people if they actually find their "comedy" tropes funny, or if they're just writing characters that way because "that's just how we do all our comedy, please play along".

The Final Days section with Thavnair was so infuriating I was screaming. The newborn section was just emotional manipulation with no sense, like a lot of EW. Why would a newborn "succumb to despair"? They're a newborn. All they know is "this is a stranger running with me", not "my parents just died". They aren't "in despair", they are crying because they're a newborn. Are you going to tell me that every child who cries in Thavnair is going to turn into a monster? That brings up such an important point, too: this story doesn't even seem to know what despair actually is. Most of the time the transformations are due to *fear*, not despair. It's just plot convenience, like the whole expac.

Part 2: