Endwalker was "meh" (for reasons other than technical issues)

[Tsukino]

It's really not. Hermes created Meteion, and later ENCOURAGED her to destroy everything due to his own nihilism and depression after discovering all those civilizations crumbled into nothing. We basically got rid of the guy who caused everything, and then had to go take care of the very creation he had made. Necron was hinted to nowhere prior in FF9 and came at the last minute as the final boss. We got an actual buildup for Meteion, and saw her turn into what she became, you cannot equate the two.

It's not just the events at Elpis that establish Meteion's character either. It's everything building up to this from all of the stories, and as the cause of the "Final Days" Meteion being the final boss is the last piece of the puzzle that explains pretty much everything.

Why are the ascians going around teaching everyone to summon primals? To bring back their god, Zodiark, which we later find out is done by causing calamities.
Why do calamities bring them closer to their goal? Because the world was broken into pieces and the calamities are part of putting it back together, which will put Zodiark back together.
Why was the world broken into pieces? Hydaelyn was summoned to do it, because Zodiark was a cruel god who demanded sacrifices to keep running.
Then where did Zodiark come from? He was created to be a deified embodiment of the planet so that it could stop a total global apocalypse by stabilizing the whole thing.
Then what caused the apocalypse? The Meteia sent out by Hermes to find life on other planets who found only death. Hydaelyn also knew about this and breaking up the world and keeping Zodiark around but sealed up was all part of combating this from the beginning.

The idea this is even remotely similar to Necron or Zeromus is laughable, because the whole story doesn't make sense without something in that place to cause it all.

Edit: Also, Fandaniel was barely any more fleshed out than Meteion was. He was only added in 5.4, and until the same scenes in Elpis and his flashback to being Amon he was just a generic crazy guy who wanted everyone to die. Additionally, he has his own purpose to serve being a mirror to our character (he identifies more as Amon after being pieced back together by the other ascians and not as Hermes, just as we don't see ourselves as Azem) that would not work as well if he somehow was the cause of the Final Days himself, not to mention the question of how they would make that even possibly work.

[Shialan]

Ok, can you tell me the narrative relevance of Thavnair or any of the characters there? What purpose did they serve in terms of the story? Could you have replaced them with virtually anyone else and gotten the same outcome? How about the moon? Was exploring the Loporrits base really necessary to the story at all? No it really wasn't.

Yeah, how dare they were creating lore. Why didn't they just skip all the stuff and give us a list of what happened and will happen right when we started the MSQ? Why even bother following the story when you can just read up a summary on the internet?

[Silver-Strider]

Yeah, how dare they were creating lore. Why didn't they just skip all the stuff and give us a list of what happened and will happen right when we started the MSQ? Why even bother following the story when you can just read up a summary on the internet?

World building is fine when it actually has significance to a story, which Thavnair doesn't. The story of Thavnair could have happened virtually anywhere and have changed nothing in regards to the story presented and while it might play a role in the future, the fact is that there was no reason for the zone to exist in regards to the 6.0 story. The moon being a space ship is another wasted story element because it's never used. That's bad storytelling.

[Floortank]

100% agree with OP's first point.

50% agree with OP's second point. I feel that the pacing was bad, and made a lot of the "apocalypse" seem like it would wait around for an eternity for us to celebrate seven unbirthdays and a wedding before it finally happened. But I liked the buildup and characterization of Meteion, a lot. She surpasses Zeromus as a piece of writing, while being a character that was inspired by him, or deliberately made to resemble him in story and theme.

0% agree with OP's third point. The Garlean characters were extremely well written. They're not dumb, they've been victimized into believing something contrary to what you know. There's people like that all over the world in real life, too.

With respect to OP's conclusion: Pretty much agree. Pacing was awful. Had a lot of great moments, though. I'd rate it higher overall than any other expansion beside Shadowbringers, though. For writing, scene to scene, character to character, it leaves Heavensward in the dust. As much as I love Heavensward.

[Darthgummibear]

[COLOR="red"]

Huge Amounts of Pointless Time Sinks
Endwalker introduced a lot of mechanics that were completely pointless and did nothing to further the story but instead just dragged out the number of hours of "gameplay" in this expansion. These include the "guide this NPC around" quests, "stalk this NPC" quests, and "follow this NPC" quests. I realize that iterations of these mechanics have been present in quests in past expansions, but it felt like there were numerous of these quests in every single zone in Endwalker. Normally, you could just mount up and run over to the next spot, or even use the aetheryte. However, in Endwalker, you now have to stick with a slow NPC and walk/run across the map on foot as part of the MSQ. I think the best example of this is when you're body-swapped in Garlemald and, at the end of that quest, you literally have to crawl across part of the map before you finally trigger the cutscene. "Gameplay" like this was tedious, unnecessary, and not "fun" whatsoever (mainly because it was so easy that it was almost impossible to fail any of these quests). It didn't feel like I was playing a game, but rather doing a chore. I'm not sure why SE decided to suddenly add a bunch of crappy mechanics like this.

Endwalker also saw an increase of the Eulmore-type areas (e.g., the Garlean subway camp and Radz-at-Han) where you're annoyingly prevented from attuning to the aetheryte. This made a little bit of sense with the Garlean subway camp from a story perspective, but not Radz-at-Han, where you almost immediately come into the good graces of the folks in charge.

SE has also added new "achievements" like mounts and fashion pieces that effectively require you to do 4,000+ FATEs each. How about instead of creating rewards that incentivize people to do hundreds of hours of mind-numbingly boring content (which is what FATE grinding is), SE actually comes up with some fun, new content?

This here is what really stuck out as I played through the expansion. Even in comparison to previous expansions, there were way more stupid quest mechanics that served no other purpose than making things take as long as possible to inflate the play time...like that one awful quest in Labyrinthos that wanted you to help 8 people, but you ended up needing to talk to like 20 because most of the quest markers didn't count towards the quest with half the 8 being in really awkward to find locations. Seriously guys, we're going to play your game...we've already proven that...you don't have to go out of your way to have zero respect for our time.

[Snapdragyn]

This here is what really stuck out as I played through the expansion. Even in comparison to previous expansions, there were way more stupid quest mechanics that served no other purpose than making things take as long as possible to inflate the play time...like that one awful quest in Labyrinthos that wanted you to help 8 people, but you ended up needing to talk to like 20 because most of the quest markers didn't count towards the quest with half the 8 being in really awkward to find locations. Seriously guys, we're going to play your game...we've already proven that...you don't have to go out of your way to have zero respect for our time.

To add: The series of hunting for Meteion when she's running away... & running away again... & running away AGAIN.

Like, I didn't even know she was going to turn evil at that point, & I already wanted to put an arrow in her face. So at least that wish got fulfilled in the end.

But, yeah. Next time maybe just auto-boot us & force us to go through queue again instead? That'd actually be a less frustrating waste of player time. :/

[Krotoan]

Huge Amounts of Pointless Time Sinks
Endwalker introduced a lot of mechanics that were completely pointless and did nothing to further the story but instead just dragged out the number of hours of "gameplay" in this expansion. These include the "guide this NPC around" quests, "stalk this NPC" quests, and "follow this NPC" quests. I realize that iterations of these mechanics have been present in quests in past expansions, but it felt like there were numerous of these quests in every single zone in Endwalker. Normally, you could just mount up and run over to the next spot, or even use the aetheryte. However, in Endwalker, you now have to stick with a slow NPC and walk/run across the map on foot as part of the MSQ.

This was probably the only thing I disliked about the expansion. Yes it's very cute you found out a way for us to walk with NPCs and get lore tidbits SE... that's enough.. no.. enough.. STAHP I DON'T WANT ANOTHER ONE. There was literally one at every hub. It did make things drag and I'm used to doing every single side quest there is (and yes I did it this time too, making me do even MORE "lead the NPC" quests).

Every expansion they make up a new quest mechanic and then try to show it off as often as possible.. this one was these and hopefully they've gotten over it. I do not want more of these every patch.

[Tsukino]

I don't agree with any of this at all, but I doubt just explaining why is going to suddenly convince anyone to change their mind...

The pacing is weird and I do agree that the Radz-at-Han aetheryte not being able to be attuned to is annoying for no reason. But I don't think this is some kind of crazy outlier when it comes to FFXIV. Even Shadowbringers, which was many people's favorite including my own, had that whole dumb section in Western Amh Araeng with the miners for the flimsiest excuse, Ran'jit showing up all the time and being super strong for no reason, and everything involving the mystel couple and Alphinaud in Eulmore. And that's to say nothing of the other two expansions and 2.x which are truly awful by comparison in this area.

I didn't even register a "darkness" theme, since by this time we know the story behind Zodiark and the Final Days pretty well. The whole story this time is payoff for the setup concerning these events in Shadowbringers, and a key aspect of any Final Fantasy storyline - we have to figure out the cause of the Final Days and the truth behind what really happened to get the world to where it is now, and we do. Zenos was pretty pointless and I really don't understand why the writers keep him around at all, so I do agree that he brought everything down here, just not for "story is too dark" reasons.

Everyone else has already mentioned that the Garleans act a lot like imperial citizens in real history. I also liked that our relationship with the empire ended this way - no need to have Stormblood part II where we have a massive world war to take them down, instead empires are naturally unstable and collapse under their own weight as soon as they have problems in the leadership. They're no longer a threat and this demonstrates it well while making way for the rest of the story.

[DoH]

Maybe it's because no matter how intelligent you are, someone can pose a question that makes you question your beliefs? Maybe you can't come up with all the answers right on the spot no matter how intelligent you are if you meet the right person to question your motives?

To me it makes more sense that the question stumped him initially, only for him to come up with an answer later after thinking on it

You can be an intelligent person but still admit that you don't know all the answers, heck admitting you don't know all the answers is essential to developing a more rounded worldview

Again, though, Alphinaud was stumped by the legates’ question of why didn’t you accept peace when the Garleans offered it - how is what the Eorzean alliance doing any different than what Garlemald tried to do?

Well, let’s see. Sure, the Garleans may have been persecuted a long time ago; as a result of that, and to compensate for their inability to use magic, they came up with magitech… which they eventually used to basically pull a Nazi Germany and invade the rest of Eorzea, killing those of different faiths (i.e., the beast tribes). As I mentioned above, we literally had the WoL there and could’ve subjugated them then and there if that is what our plan was. Alphinaud being unable to raise any of the law counter arguments to the legatus was weak.