The finale of the Arcadion is an absolute disapointment.

[Astronis]

I enjoyed it. The twist felt a bit out of left field, but it worked for the story they were telling. It was all kayfabe after all--the pro 'wrestlers' all in their roles. I thought the writers did a pretty good job making it clear that the characters the fighters played were an act, so that it wasn't necessarily expected, but was perfectly reasonable, for the president to be acting too. I didn't feel fooled by that reveal because of it.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I loved Arcadion as a whole, but was disappointed in the finale story-wise.

It felt like instead of continuing the allegory of the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs in sports they pretty much let the entire cast of on-screen characters hand-wave away all repercussions and simultaneously undo every single emotional beat the story presented during the first two arcs. Killing off characters only for them to be revived is a trope where I feel writers like to have their cake and eat it too.

The only casualty in the end of course is yet another "heroic villain" or whatever, and also a character that is mostly off-screen that we have no attachment to.

Pretty cheap all around.

I did like the character designs, fights, and music though. And the end kicking scene did make me laugh. But I did leave the experience with overall disappointment in the story beat given XIV is already a game that tends to hand-wave away tragedy on many occasions - like the flying pigs undoing the horror of tempering as it was introduced in ARR. They just excel in removing a lot of stakes from their storytelling.

[hydralus]

Absolutely loved it. Complete and utter schlock, which hey if they're not going to tell a good story at least make it a funny one. Might be my favorite raid story yet, and a nice cleanser after that God awful Pandaemonium "mommy and daddy issues" tier.

[Espon]

Visually I was unimpressed, especially with the final encounter. You got this epic music going but the fight is kind of boring to look at. The Lindwurm should of been much bigger, and maybe have the theater get set on fire or something to go with the music. Maybe savage will be more visually impressive.

It's not like they're incapable of making of making a cool looking encounter, and in fact they did that this same patch with Doomtrain. I love how this fight looks and feels with the boss throwing around the train platforms and smashing them later with its huge arms.

I didn't mind the story, though. Wrestling is all an act, and the goal of the Arcadion is not to challenge the Warrior of Light, but to entertain its audience.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Wrestling is all an act, and the goal of the Arcadion is not to challenge the Warrior of Light, but to entertain its audience.

The goal absolutely was to find an adequate challenger - they even state this directly. They needed to find someone to defeat the President so they can have their magical cure that they somehow immediately know how to make, even though the President himself didn't, since The Tyrant wasn't able to.

At least that was the primary goal of the story we played through, with the end result of it going back to being mere entertainment.

[Carstien]

I like there not being a villain in this story, and SE definitely writes some evil characters in here. Most expansions have at least one, sometimes several so I don't think it's an aversion to it, just some nuance. Not every character has to be a good guy behind the scenes like the president, but not every bad guy has to be pure evil, either. In Dawntrail alone we have had Zoraal Ja who definitely let his greed and jealousy turn him evil, Calyx would be considered pretty evil and we had an evil Sphene too. Most raid tiers have evil characters too. Athena, evil. Mitron was a kind of obsessive evil, not pure evil but...a maybe. I'll put her in a maybe. Omega wasn't evil but created evil characters. The goblins of Alexander I'll leave up to you to judge, gobbyspeak is pretty evil though and Bahamut was for sure.

[TKMXIV]

I liked the ending of the raid. Though I'm in the camp of being happy Brute Bomber lived, but at the same time it was done badly.

When we "Killed" him in the 2nd tier he didn't turn back. So, when they had him come back, he should have still been in that monster form!
Brute Abominator making a spirit bomb to give us a powered-up Rider kick would have been more cheesy fun.

Plus, could have still had him return to normal after everyone got the cure for that happy ending.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Yea Brute Bomber's return makes no sense, because you'd think Retsarra (Howling Blade) would care enough for his friend that he'd stick around long enough to supposedly see him turn back.

He just came in, took his cats, and left the body to rot there.

[Vespar]

I wish I had seen this post before I made my own thread on the same thing...
Ahh well. The point is the devs need to hear this kind of feedback, so that hopefully they will improve.

[Kelg]

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.

This is the correct response. I don't really know why you would take a story super seriously when there is a disco frog bunny and 90s surfer bros as a boss. The whole thing is meant to be silly.