My criticism is that they should've made the 2 expansions as originally planned vs merging everything into a single expansion because it really killed the story for me.

The whole threat of the Towers is dealt with within the first quarter of the expansion, with nary a mention of more Lunar Primals at all and considering they threw Lunar Odin at us, one would think that they would put that into some form of context for us that would've like to know more. Then we have Anima, who was one of the biggest teases of EW, only to be relegated to a lackluster dungeon boss and it leaves me wondering if that was always the plan. The cutscene at the end of the Tower of Zot, with Y'shtola being a little freaked out by the fact there's a severed hand in the tower's core, gets completely swept under the rug. It felt like it was going to be its own story but then Garlemald happens and it just like, we just had this revelation and you're going to just end it like that? If anything, it felt like the towers were supposed to be the narrative focus of 6.0 with us going around and stopping towers and Lunar Primals in much the same way we did with Lightwardens, and Anima would've been the 89 Trial with Zodiarc as the end boss of the expansion, with 6.1 onward being the whole Hydaelyn story part, with the Loporrits, Elpis story and the final 6.3 element being the Hydaelyn fight with 6.4 leading into confronting Meteion as part of the 7.0 expansion.

Then there's the issue with Thavnair as a zone. The entire zone just felt tacked on. The most significant thing that happened there was the creation of the Warding Talisman but I'm left questioning the entire narrative. This place, with no history of Primals whatsoever, is the 1st to discover a shielding method to their influence, and with Dragon Scales no less. One would THINK that Ishgard, a place that was at war with Dragons for a thousand years, would have had someone in that time frame look into the Aetheric Density of Dragon Scales and considering that Ishgard would have some minor concern for Primals due to the Ixal's close proximity and tendency to summon Garuda, that they would be a more likely candidate to have made this discovery. Now, you could argue that you'd need the scales of one of the 1st brood to have achieved this but then I ask you, WTF was Nidhogg? A dragon of the 1st brood and if they could nick him of his eyes, a dragon scale or 2 over 1000 years should not have been all that difficult to get. Personal gripe aside, there's also the characters of Thavnair, namely Vytra and Ahewann. They get introduced fairly early and while you can excuse that because Estienen was so quick to call them out, it felt like this might not have been the original take on their story. I feel like we were supposed to meet with Ahewann and get to know him as a person and earn his trust before Vytra would be introduced. The reason I say this is because they made Ahewann's death seem like something important when in actuality, he had so little screen time or character development that we really didn't get to feel a huge emotional impact when he died. Yeah, it forced Vytra to reveal his role as the true Satrap of Thavnair but it just felt very rushed. One final minor gripe about Thavnair. According to the DNC questline, the job originated in Thavnair. The entire point of DNC is to soothe the negative emotions people feel and fight off the Totentanz that is summoned as a result. So you're telling me that Thavnair, whom already know about negative emotions and has an entire combat style in place specifically to stave off something akin to the events of the Final Days, is the 1st location affected by the Final Days. Doubt.

I know I'm overthinking this stuff but I was just kind of disappointed in the 6.0 storyline and needed to vent a little about my frustration in both the story and lore of the game since they seemed to have dropped the ball in that regard.