The finale of the Arcadion is an absolute disapointment.

[honest_psycho]

After finishing the MSQ and being positivley surprised, I jumped right into the Arcadion and I am not amused.

I'll go in order of annoyance/dissatisfaction from "meh" to "absolute dissapointment".

Visuals:
I could have accepted the standart mechanics if at least, if they were visually appealing.

The third boss infused with a behemoth?
I expected a totally buff dude and got a standard-elezen with horns glued on it, even the surfer bros looked way better.

But the worst offender is the final boss
That thing looks like a asset-flip demon-dragon ordered from Etsy and not from "Final Fantasy".
What are your artist doing???

Now, to the main part, the story.

What is it with the writers in Dawntrail that outright refuse to write actually evil characters???

The president was "AKSHUALLY" the good guy all along?
Are you serious?

What is it with the writers in Dawntrail who just wanna "redeem" every villain and avoid to actually kill off characters for once?

Bakol Jaja released a giant violent monster and got a hug from Wuk Lamat instead of the death-sentence.


And than the story had the audacity, to just bring back Brute Bomber.

Just like that.

He "just" survived being infused with SEVERAL beast-souls because "he has a stronger soul" or something.

No consequences, no health-issues, nothing.

He can just continue fighting in the Arcadion (without the beastsouls) and everything has a happy end, nothing bad ever happens (don't pretend anyone cared about the president)

Another story-line Disney-fied that treats the player like a fragile 12yo.


After the disastruous 7.0 MSQ, the Arcadion was the only saving grace this Expansion had.
But then you ruined that too.

I hope none of the people involved are working on 8.0.

[Jeeqbit]

The reason none of the characters in the Arcadion end up being evil is because it is based on Professional Wrestling and that's how Professional Wrestling works. They are all good people in real life but some of them "play" evil characters known as heels.

That's why Brute Bomber legitimately makes you feel like he's evil and then turns out not to be. That's why the President creates a situation where you are the heel trying to tear down the Arcadion, then before the finale they do a double turn (President is revealed as the biggest heel in history and you become the biggest babyface in history). And then they reveal all that was just characters they were playing and that they are of course good people in real life, because that's how wrestling works.

For that reason, I thought they did an extremely good job with the story. Most people don't understand nor appreciate wrestling (if they know anything about it, they just say it's fake and they don't get it). If there is one story that can help people appreciate what it's supposed to be, it's this.

[Mouthbone]

The reason none of the characters in the Arcadion end up being evil is because it is based on Professional Wrestling and that's how Professional Wrestling works. They are all good people in real life but some of them "play" evil characters known as heels.

Do professional wrestlers hug and make up when their matches are over?
Admittedly, I'm not really a wrestling fan, but from what I know they have to keep up appearances and the story going while the cameras are on
It felt very unrewarding for the story to suddenly go: "Oh, this thing you've been invested in? Completely fake. Oh, and I hope you enjoy the lore dump about how this was orchestrated all this time"

There could have been a lot of ways to make this interesting, like making the LHW tier clearly fake and the later tiers being about people getting into the fights too much and abusing (steroids) souls too much to remember that its just theatre
We've even had actual drama with Brute Bomber's death, but all of that was hand waved for what purpose exactly?
I loved his character and wanted for him to return back from death, even temporarily, but not like this

I'm not even going to talk about the character designs of M11 and M12, they were kinda meh, Lindwurm especially (Why did we have to fight a Raid Shadow Legends boss???)
It's a real shame that Everything Burns was wasted on such an underwhelming fight

[honest_psycho]

The reason none of the characters in the Arcadion end up being evil is because it is based on Professional Wrestling and that's how Professional Wrestling works. They are all good people in real life but some of them "play" evil characters known as heels.

That's why Brute Bomber legitimately makes you feel like he's evil and then turns out not to be. That's why the President creates a situation where you are the heel trying to tear down the Arcadion, then before the finale they do a double turn (President is revealed as the biggest heel in history and you become the biggest babyface in history). And then they reveal all that was just characters they were playing and that they are of course good people in real life, because that's how wrestling works.

For that reason, I thought they did an extremely good job with the story. Most people don't understand nor appreciate wrestling (if they know anything about it, they just say it's fake and they don't get it). If there is one story that can help people appreciate what it's supposed to be, it's this.

Yes, I expected some kind of Wrestling twist.
But the "twist" was not "soul decay was made-up for show".
The twist was "president was good guy lol"

Second, you missed the fact that the soul-decay was a REAL issue in this and Brute Bomber DID have several souls infused.

My point is that he, at minimum, should be out of comission.
I'm fine with him surviving, but the soul-decay wasn't part of the "script"

The president worte a script involving it (which is the Wrestiling part you speak of), but that didnt make it "fake".

The story is technically functional, but the lack of a "real" villain is typical Dawntrail-Disneyfied kids-tv.

[SkankyRoe]

I'm the opposite; I went into this finale expecting to be left feeling unsatisfied, but ended up being pleasantly surprised and left feeling good in the end. I actually didn't mind the final boss design, and the fight itself, while a bit on the easy side, was still a fun spectacle for finale. My biggest complaint is probably M11 in general, the fight was really boring and the music was surprisingly dull in a raid series that has been nothing but bangers.

[Anarnee]

I do think Arcadion is different from what we're use to with the 8-man raids (IMO everything else starts weaker and ends strong, and IMO Arcadion is strong all the way through, but does feel a little weaker in the ending.) but I don't think it's bad. I loved the whole cast and thought it was a lot of fun. I don't even like wrestling and I was pleasantly surprised by how on point they were with everything thematically.

I think the only thing I would have changed was having Hector come in with the steel chair, but I gotta admit getting to do he and Retsarra's signature move that they teased was a ton of fun.

My biggest complaint is probably M11 in general, the fight was really boring and the music was surprisingly dull in a raid series that has been nothing but bangers.

Noooo the 80s dad rock is one of the best songs in the series. Quickly became one of my fav songs.

[Carin-Eri]

Well, firstly, Arcadion aside, this statement: "What is it with the writers in Dawntrail that outright refuse to write actually evil characters???"
Actually, I thought Calyx fit the bill quite nicely there. I mean, he took a good shot a killing us before we even knew who he was - and it might have actually worked if Everkeep had been able to generate a more powerful blast. He murdered heaven knows how many Alexandrians including Geode. He manifested a Primal that could've beaten 'us' if not for Spene's intervention. And he's now hanging out with Ascians plotting and scheming. Seems pretty evil to me!

As for Arcadion - I enjoyed how it played out. It did feel pretty 'WWE' and I don't think it needed to be a high-stakes outcome story when the MSQ has, basically, followed that formula.

And I have to add- I thought the music was epic!

[honest_psycho]

Well, firstly, Arcadion aside, this statement: "What is it with the writers in Dawntrail that outright refuse to write actually evil characters???"
Actually, I thought Calyx fit the bill quite nicely there. I mean, he took a good shot a killing us before we even knew who he was - and it might have actually worked if Everkeep had been able to generate a more powerful blast. He murdered heaven knows how many Alexandrians including Geode. He manifested a Primal that could've beaten 'us' if not for Spene's intervention. And he's now hanging out with Ascians plotting and scheming. Seems pretty evil to me!

...

Sure, but then "evil" in the context of FF14 just mean "I wanna do good things, but you gotta crack some eggs to make omelett", and the eggs objecting to being cracked (Emet-Selch says Hello).

The only "real" evil character in this story overall would be Zenos.
Dude just didn't care about any deaths or collateral damage, as long as he can fight and feel alive.

The fact that his goal somehow aligned with saving the universe is secondary.


But back to topic, I would have preferred if there was an actual evil villain (maybe Brute Bomber being too much into fighting like Zenos).

[Kennar]

In typical Dawntrail fashion, this story wrapped up too neatly and quickly. For something as serious as psychonecrosis to be handled so cheaply at the end is a little disappointing, but not exactly unexpected. Imagine if Vince McMahon had a real, no-foolin' cure for cancer in his body, and he would only make it available to everyone after a convoluted story told during Monday Night Raw, culminating with his defeat by a Stone Cold Stunner during Wrestlemania. Stupid, right? One would think that a society advanced enough to turn the soul into a commodity would be fully aware of psychonecrosis and have its top scientists working on it.

I'm repeating myself here, but I wish they would have just made a simple story about the business and personalities of professional wrestling and left out all the stuff about psychonecrosis. That would have left room for more character development, and maybe created some characters that resonated with me; that I actually cared about. All that being said, I don't think this isn't the worst raid story, it just ended on such a bland note for me.

[CaptainLagbeard]

The Arcadion story ending was kinda cliche, but as the characters said, he president of the Acradion was a showman. He sets the WoL as someone trying to destroy the Arcadion, but when we get to him he tells everyone about the psychonekrosis, about how the feral souls are actually killing the fighters, and so sets himself as the real villain and the WoL as the hero who's been trying to stop him all this time.

They also mentioned that he had the fighters in the Arcadion try to kill him, but they weren't strong enough to beat the Lindwurm's ability to regenerate. So they had the whole Arcadion latter set up as the means to find someone who would be even stronger than Tyrant.