I honestly couldn't agree more. This expansion had way too much comic relief story pausing nonsense and the major plot points that we were teased were just either touched upon for 5 minutes or entirely non existent.

Zodiark - This expansion was announced to be the end of the Hydaelyn vs Zodiark saga and as though they were both going to be massive prominent good and evil figures. Zodiark however....yeah we just kinda got to the moon not even looking for him and the watcher was like yeah mate he's over there go nuts.

Zenos - What really is there to say.. He had us kidnapped to have a meal and put our soul into a random Garlean soldier for his amusement. He showed up later just to go yo you ready to fight me yet and then just walked away like a sad puppy when we said we had bigger issues to deal with. Then he shows up to assist us only because he still wants his fight. This man was highly prominent in the trailers and was played up to be the big bad then he just...well, existed.

Gaius - I mean...no comment? I'm pretty sure he was seen in a whole 1 cutscene or 2 and never did a single thing.

Garlemald. This nation was played up so much to be the pinnacle of civilisation and technology, this grand empire controlled by one of the greatest threats to Eorzea. We finally get to go there aaaand its gone. Legit just Coerthas Western Highlands 2.0. The people there literally had the ideaology that everyone should accept Garlean rule or be conquered and acted like we were awful warmongers coming to conquer them and expecting them to live by our rules. Hypocritical nonsense at its finest. All that build up in post Stormblood for.....well, that.

We then spent the rest of the expansion being told our planet cannot be saved by some stupid moon bunny lolis we literally just met and we believed none of their words nor agreed with Sharlayan's ideologies but we just agreed to help them just because we needed their ship to chase down Meteion and they just suddenly had a change of heart because the Daddy issues arc was complete or something.

I just honestly don't know how people can say Stormblood was bad for trying to tackle multiple stories at once and has bad pacing but that this expansion is a masterpiece. Just reeks of agenda and trying to put the game on a pedestal out of some desperate urge to assert some kind of superiority complex over WoW and justification for the mass migration and ridiculous over attention the game is getting in the last 4 months.