The best and worst of Endwalker MSQ

[Absimiliard]

Best: The end credits
Worst: Manderville

[Atelier-Bagur]

Best: It was FFXIV
Worst: It was FFXIV

prove me wrong.

[aveyond-dreams]

Best - Garlemald

Worst - Everything else, particularly the stripping my character of all agency via the events of Elpis and the horrifically out of place slice of life scenes in Sharlayan's college dorm room.

[AwesomeJr44]

Best:
- The entirety of Garlemald
- Pre-Zodiark Mare
- Elpis up until Ktisis (assuming we're ignoring the time travel)

Worst:
- 1st Thavnair visit (so boring it's an actual cure for insomnia)
- The entirety of Ultima Thule
- How Elpis' time travel screws up the story
- The Lopporits in Post-Zodiark Mare that broke all of the tension
- Meteion
- The moral implications of the story having literally every character praise Venat for committing genocide

Best: It was FFXIV
Worst: It was FFXIV

prove me wrong.

I mean, if we're gonna simplify it to that level, you're not wrong.

Best: The end credits

The correct answer.

[SpiritedMare]

Best:

- Urianger's character development
- The way they used the music in the Endsinger trial
- The one and only eight-man trial they ever felt obligated to make a Duty Support for, so you could finally experience a *very* significant fight with *all* of your comrades at once


Worst:

- Their tendency to completely overuse it when they introduce a new questing mechanic. So for this expansion, it would be waaaay too many "you gotta follow and sneak and hide!" quests, and too many "escort NPCs around and stop to talk to them inside a blue ring five times on the way" quests.
- The Bestway Burrows part dragged on waaaay too long compared to the rest of the story; that portion should not have been the vast bulk of an entire zone

[DayHealer]

Emet didn't create her. Someone else did and that person did understand dynamis. There had been other ancients in the past that had found out about dynamis but it was not widely known or talked about. Dynamis was not something that the ancients could interpret or interact with because their aether was too dense, so most of them wouldn't have noticed it or been affected by it.

I know Hermes created Meteion, not Emet, sorry that was a bad wording from my part. Still even if Hermes and a few other scholars knew about dynamis and how it worked, their best attempts at make it work was barely creating a flower that changes color. From there to create the universal dynamis sponge that is meteion?

Worst:
- Their tendency to completely overuse it when they introduce a new questing mechanic. So for this expansion, it would be waaaay too many "you gotta follow and sneak and hide!" quests, and too many "escort NPCs around and stop to talk to them inside a blue ring five times on the way" quests

Oh forgot about these, yeah they become boring pretty quickly

[Avoidy]

I felt like the Elpis sections really drove home Emet's feelings in shadowbringers and amplified those parts in retrospect. Like, finally we can see what he was actually fighting for. So I enjoyed that part for a little while. It was certainly the most memorable part for me. There were also some moments early on, like after you kill Zodiark on the moon, where the cutscene presentation goes top notch and you really get the vibe that killing zodiark was a big big fuckup on your part. I liked that a lot. Also the moment where Zenos stole our body and sort of wined and dined us while we sat in the wasted body of some dying soldier and then tossed us out and made us crawl back to our friends. That whole part was so fucking good. Only issue was it felt like lots of tension with not a lot of payoff. In the Zenos part especially, it builds to that confrontational moment where he's in your body with your friends and you approach them in someone else's body, and soooooo many things could've gone down, but in the end you just get your body back and that's kind of it. Meh. Oh, oh, and the part where shit's really finally going down and the elephant's running with the baby that's turning into a despair-beast, holy shit that part was good. EW had a handful of very emotional moments in its base msq portion.

I'd say the worst moment was the fetch quest series after the hydaelyn fight. They should've removed that part altogether and either had a lengthy series of cutscenes where the characters come to grips with what just happened and what they have to do next, or just gut the whole thing and skip straight to the part that happens after the fetch quests. It was so jarring and so annoying for me, because the story actually had my interest at that point and then it pulled me out to make me do generic mmo bullshit.

[Kaurhz]

Best:

- The music.
- Post-tower Thavnair.
- Ultima Thule.
- Sharlayan, 88/89
- Garlemald (Still should've been a dedicated expansion though)
- Mare Lamentorum.


Worst:

- Elpis. It was a nice story, but 20% of the story went to that which was ultimately a distraction and time that could have been better spent on the source rather than more time travel shenanigans.
- Zenos. Should have been 'pasted' away after the trial in Stormblood.
- Telophoroi. I don't know what they were thinking but they essentially introduced it as a faction, when in reality it was just Fandaniel, and amounted to absolutely no mention otherwise. It seemed like they wanted to go somewhere with this but didn't, at all.
- Towers. This will be controversial, but this ruined a significant portion of the expansion. Thank you, Shadowbringers.

[Sylverlin]

I did find some of the quests on the moon seemed to be designed as a time sink as they just seemed to a lot of running around with little story advancement. The quests in Garlemald were very good, and gave a good insight into how the Garleans were controlled by propaganda.
My understanding of Hermes was that he was more emotionally attached to what he did then other ancients, As dynamis draws it's power from emotion rather than aether, it is possible that Hermes already had an understanding of how to use dynamis and passed the knowledge on to Meteion. Outside of the aether rich world the ancients lived on, dynamis may be the dominant power so once Meteion started exploring other worlds she became more powerful.

[EliaStormblade]

Best:

- Old Sharlayan being generally good with some likeable characters (like Montichaigne) and some... not-so-likeable characters (most of the Forum)
- Most of Garlemald. Had some really poignant moments all throughout.
- Special mention to Quintus
- Mare Lamentorum before and during the Zodiark Trial
- Urianger admitting to his trepidation and his doubts and regrets when asked to be duplicitous again
- There were moments with some good and well-deserved levity to offset the grimness of the topic
- There were likewise a lot of good moments that really relayed the level of despair and horror caused by the Final Days
- Elpis
- Venat
- Emet-Selch being Emet-Selch
- Live, Die, and Know
- Urianger and Moenbryda's parents
- Fandaniel's self-doubt and introspection in the Aetherial Sea
- Hydaelyn trial + death cutscene
- Ultima Thule. Not nearly as good as Amaurot, but it still was a neat zone with some good moments
- Credits scene with Flow Together running

There is undoubtedly more, but it's already getting pretty long-winded. Endwalker just has a lot of really good moments; atmospherically, emotionally, sometimes philosophically. It had the necessary setbacks and the catharsis. It's not perfect, but it introduced a bunch of characters I like or improved ones that already existed in many cases. (not all, I concede)

Worst:

- Most of Labyrinthos
- Y'shtola and Thancred mostly just felt... kind of there. Further flanderization of Thancred by making Ryne his sole priority because "le dadcred xdddd"
- Loporrit introduction. Even as someone who grew to like them, the tonal whiplash they caused right after the Zodiark trial is not to be denied.
- Lack of Gaius/Cid/Nero presence. Really? I know they gave a reason for it, but come on. They should have at least given us a little bit of a quest post-EW. Garlemald is their home
- Continued lack of clarity regarding Sundering. I think it's a cowardly move to maintain this plausible deniability about what really went on, what the Convocation was up to, etc.

Neutral/Could be better:

- Endsinger. Neither good nor bad; basically just a vehicle for a cosmic force. It was fine
- Final Days did not feel widespread enough. Barring the job quests, the effects are basically relegated to Thavnair and Garlemald. We could've used a more global threat
- Pacing ups and downs basically on a similar level to Shadowbringers. Hopefully, they iron that out
- Hermes/Fandaniel. This is a conflicting one, but Fandaniel never quite gripped me. I don't hate him, and I've slowly gone from disliking to appreciating him a bit more, but that's just it
- Hythlodaeus going from a charismatic shade to being a quirky prettyboy. Had some heartwarming moments, but feels too servicey
- Not sure how I feel about Varis' fate. I felt like they kind of tossed him away. Anima shouldn't have been just a dungeon boss either