The finale of the Arcadion is an absolute disapointment.

[Avenheit]

you gotta remember, FF14 is a shounen.

[Basteala]

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?

Hot take. This shouldn't be a surprise at all. The guy was always shown as competent, yet recruited an outsider from the Source--a place that views souls as sacred. It was pretty well known that you planned to release them if you won, but you were allowed and encouraged in anyway. The Pres was aware of the soul deterioration from the use of Feral Souls. Put two and two together.

...and avoid to actually kill off characters for once?

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

Just like that.

Okay here on the other hand I absolutely agree. And this problem isn't limited to FF14. Even something like Dispatch that's largely praised for its characters and stories chickens out with killing off one of its notable minor characters. WoW backpedaled on Ysera. The Star Wars sequels does this multiple times. EW did this with the Scions.

I don't hold that against the Arcadion writers per se, but I hold that against whatever writing philosophy is in vogue in general right now. It's bad. I liked Brute Bomber but his story was better with him dying. With there being a victory but with a bittersweet moment. Maybe you even learned that Brute Bomber knew about the role he was to play, and gets his "faceturn" by giving up his own life to help bring about the change in Arcadion in the only way he knew.

I don't know. Anyway, I thought the whole kayfabe gambit to bring about the cure was fitting for a wrestling coded storyline.

But my God, character death needs to be treated with more respect. I wholeheartedly agree there.

[Batbrat]

Last boss looked like he was animated for one of the original DOOM games.
Also, the "actually the bad guy was good along" propaganda never works on me. It just never does. They were evil, that was that. No amount of forcing the little sad music will suddenly make me sympathize. There is no redemption-and if you write it in, I will simply headcanon it out.

[tsuchii]

I like me an alls-well-that-ends-well story tbh
I loved it a lot!
The misunderstood villain trope has always been a core concept in FF games and you shouldn't exclude 14.

We did have Athena last expansion though? She was evil just for the lols. I loved that too.

[Garruss]

I'm never a fan of the "villain was a good guy all along" trope that's been going about in media lately. We need more villains who are just evil in stories

[Stasya]

While people here comment about feral soul etc, I just want to point out why this ending truly sucks and the only saving grace left is savage fights.

We are fighting wwe fighters only from the beginning but for this tier we get vampire lady, beach boys, tall guy and for some reason useless creature that was shoehorned into plot 10 seconds before.

People like/remember wwe fights for fighters and matches. So instead of getting something like Hell in a Cell moment with Brute Undertaker going suplex on wol from 100 meters above with "this is my show" OR having intentionally weak fighter with lalafell going all out "arcadeon belongs to me", we get a WYVERN FROM FIRST DAWNTRAIL TRIAL.

I am mad, so much potential was wasted, because the person who wrote plot has aphantasia.

Can we just have a mix of first two raid fights again? I don't like this tier.

[Connor]

While people here comment about feral soul etc, I just want to point out why this ending truly sucks and the only saving grace left is savage fights.

We are fighting wwe fighters only from the beginning but for this tier we get vampire lady, beach boys, tall guy and for some reason useless creature that was shoehorned into plot 10 seconds before.

People like/remember wwe fights for fighters and matches. So instead of getting something like Hell in a Cell moment with Brute Undertaker going suplex on wol from 100 meters above with "this is my show" OR having intentionally weak fighter with lalafell going all out "arcadeon belongs to me", we get a WYVERN FROM FIRST DAWNTRAIL TRIAL.

To be fair, the first and second tier was against like, horse cat lady (why is it always the bottom half that get horseified lol), woman with bee abdomen where an abdomen should not be, dancing frog rabbit, Gundam but not Gundam because copyright. So it’s not like ‘bizarre Pokemon fusion but with FFXIV content’ wasn’t always the theme lol. That said, it does make the final boss all the more disappointing. You go through fighting all these weird unique mash-ups of creatures and humanoid races…then it’s capped off with a generic ass dragon?

That said I do agree that it doesn’t feel like it captures what it meant to. In my opinion it didn’t go far enough, frankly. I don’t care about some manufactured drama or some psychonekrocallifragillistic macguffin disease. I want to see Chocobos deliver elbow drops (wing drops?) from the top rope, and sassy Moogles calling each other out in the ring. I mean, we got a bit of that with bee lady and dancing frog, but then it’s straight back to ‘OK everyone serious faces we are a dramatic and impassioned set of writers and we’re going to make you weep with our edge-of-your-seat tale of deceit, manipulation and impending death (but it’s ok because it was all fake I guess?)’.

Like, can’t we just have fun for once? Would a ‘comical’ raid be so bad? Alexander was weird as hell but it was super memorable, like driving around in those dodgem things pulling bombs around lol, or turning into gorillas for barely any reason

[Reimmi]

The raid was pretty awful cause it didn't end with me marrying Yaana in the end

[Stasya]

The raid was pretty awful cause it didn't end with me marrying Yaana in the end

*permanently unlocking npc features to every miqote

**will be sold later in mogstation

[moodud]

I’m surprised anyone expected the story to be serious at all lol. It was stupid I love it. They obviously did it for funsy nothing deep here. I find it refreshing that we don’t really have a villain.

For the Tyrant design, I thought it was too simple at first too, but after several wipes now I understand why. A lot of the mechanics required reading the boss actions while everything is super flashy and busy. Simpler model is better for readability, is my opinion. Could be cooler tho.