This story is really underwhelming - it's opened to mixed reviews.

[Tethan]

snip

Yep. I hear people say "oh someone will always complain" but this isn't normal at all. I've been around since early Heavensward, I attended every launch from Stormblood on. In my recollection, nothing like that has ever happened before. Not on this scale.

It's not just the story either. Between that, the controversy of the graphics update + related bugs STILL not fixed, the general sense of animosity regarding class changes (or lack thereof), rather sloppy implementation of f!Hrothgar (scaling on arms still not fixed), underwhelming dye system update and so on..... I get the feeling that things are not quite right at CBU3. Is it because of FFFXVI? Other projects? Pressure from higher ups? Yoshi-P stopped caring? Who can say... But something is up.

EDIT:
That isn't to say it all bad. It takes many people and many different teams to make a game like this. Certain aspects are as good as ever, encounter design and environment design being standouts. But it appears that certain departments are struggling more, either from lack of time or care, or perhaps they have had replacements and internal changes to the point where the quality begins to suffer (looking at the writing team in particular here).