FFXIV Dawntrail reviews are out on Metacritic

[Malthir]

Which means the choice between 'reasonable 6/10, not as good as usual but ok' and 'I'm giving a 0/10 just to show I don't agree with the grade inflation' becomes just that much simpler.

I had this issue when ff16 came out. People were giving it a 0/10 out of spite. Or a 8 even though they will admit it wasn't great but it doesn't crash or have that many issues,

IMO Rating should be treated as: (put in some examples)
0- Game doesn't work constantly crashes completely unplayable, these come along rarely
1-2 Game can be played but is very buggy lots of missing assets and glitches (The Gollum game)
3-4 Game is not good, there's many issues, bad design choices, story inconsistent/gameplay loop is bad in either design or implementation (FF16, 3-5 this section of rating is tricky it's the most subjective part)
5 Acceptable games ok, not amazing not bad just a decent game(FF16, 3-5 this section of rating is tricky it's the most subjective part)
6-7 Game is good, direction was good, Was a very fun game to play, I would play it again. (Monster Hunter rise)
8-9 Game is great absolute brilliant example of their genres (Witcher 3, Hades, Halo, Gears of War, God of War)
10 - Come along rarely, define genres and are truly outstanding, usually spawn a myriad of copy cats. (Eldenring - Personally I don't enjoy these games but can recognise their impact and success, BG3)

An RPG with a bad story, not personal taste bad but actually written to a poor standard, can't really score more than a 4-5. Imo