I thought the Garlemald section was extremely strong for its stark illustration of how horrifying and powerful that nationalistic indoctrination is on people, and for achieving a very compelling balance between recognizing the humanity of its civilian population and showing compassion, while not excusing their greater nation's atrocities or anyone's inclinations to make excuses for it. Garlemald's fate and outcome as an empire all the way down completely worked for me, including the anticlimactic, ignoble self-destruction. It wasn't actually a "powerful enemy for us to overcome" like it always wanted to narratively be, in essence. Instead, strip away the pretenses, and it was always - by design - a pathetic, shambling mess built on skeletons and deliberately harmful ideology, and the simultaneous complicity and victimhood of its populace as a result is a complex issue with no easy answers. I felt for a lot of the Garlemald NPCs because they were so irrational, hateful, flailing, and self-destructive - and it was a complicated feeling that I appreciated a video game giving me.

Some parts of Endwalker were, in fact, Good. (And some were decidedly not!)