During the expansion i did not rly feel the sense of despair and hopelessness. In ShB we metaphorically speaking collapsed under the weight of responsibility of saving not only our world but The First as well. We tried our best, killed the Wardens but we failed, doomed to turn into a monster. But we didn't give up, fought back and won. We earned it. In EW there is nothing like that. NPCs talk about failing and getting stronger but in reality we do not fail. We just go through every encounter with a breeze. When we arrived at Ultima Thule and Thancred died I was hoping that finally we might face some long term repercussions, embrace dread of losing our dear comrades but nope, we still had Azem stone in our pocket and after each and one of them gave their speech we just magically brought them back to life...

Correct me if im wrong but I think the principle of causality got betrayed in the storyline. When we traveled to Elpis and do the thingies, only us and Venat remembered the events that occured in the end. Memory of those events we're also the reason why The Sundering happened in the first place. So she waited thousands of year for us to be born to go back in time and witness the events in Elpis. Effect cannot happen before the cause yo, bootstrap paradox right there... I know i know we already had something similar with Alexander and i didn't like it. Also why couldn't we change the past? Just because papa Elidibus told us so? By going to the First and doing all of the stuff there we averted the 8th Umbral calamity and proved that timelines not converge to the same outcome...

Also i was thinking about the Sundering and it's influence on aether. If Hydaelyn split the world into smaller pieces it's safe to assume that aether got divided and aetheric density of each planet's atmosphere got thinner. Why didn't Meteion invade then? After the Sundering Zodiark's power was just a fraction of what he wielded back then and all of it was necessary to make the stagnant aether flow again and create aether barrier around the planet strong enough to keep Meteion at bay.

I don't hate this expansion but i cannot say i liked it either. Whole EW is like a love letter to Scions and although themes on nihilism and importance of life are syplhlike, they could have handled them better.