6.4 Initial Review. Obvious Spoilers.

[Ath192]

After doing the content I enjoyed enough of it to give it a 6/10.

The good:

MSQ

For me the msq delivers some good cinematic moments and makes excellent use of camera angles and the characters expressions. They do a good job at bringing things to life.

The MSQ makes a compelling enough story I'm not bored or skip any cutscenes.

Fights

Golbez Ex is a good fight. It's a lot more straight forward and fast paced than the puzzle solvers we've been having. I think it's my favorite EX trial this expansion.

Normal Raids look promising. Themis is an obvious Thancred clone but that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as the fight is good and there's enough variation.

I like the setting and colors of Athena's arena. This is a breath of fresh air from the cramped castle room and the dark dungeon setting of the previous tier villains. On the other hand it does remind me of Edenverse a bit. It would be nice to have some more varied settings for raids like forests, oceans, caves instead of the weird more abstract nature of these fighting locations.

Gear
I did like the crafted gear a lot. The raid gear looks better in game than the photos suggested.

The bad:

MSQ

The downside with this team is that they continue the trend of everyone being okay and bringing every villain back to life for some reason. A prime example of this is that I was incapable of feeling any sympathy or worry for the loss of Vrtra's sister because I know we're going to save her, and it took 5 minutes for Zero to say she can be saved as well. This is extremely overused and the stories they write for the game don't have the impact they otherwise would because of this insistence on nothing bad "really" happening.

To further strengthen this point, they brought Valens back? I know it's not the real "Valens" but basically a clone. Gaius essentially made a point to say they didn't kill him so they can no doubt imprison him and make him see the error of his ways and probably go on this redemption arc like Fordola. The problem with OG Valens crimes was that he was a child abuser and so even the SE writers couldn't come up with a way to save him. So they did the next best thing. Which is this. Like seriously? Just let the character die. Nobody asked for him.

The MSQ wasted a ton of time appeasing the people of Garlemald, in a real life scenario these people are at their mercy and with a pressing issue like the one we were dealing with the best they could expect was to inform them what was going to happen, not ask for permission. That's really dumb and completely unrealistic.

Gear

Re-used assets again, and the hilarious part is that the OG asset was dyable and this new dungeon gear isn't. So its like, the same gear but worse lol. I really hope 7.0 makes everything dyable. Fat chance but it would make sense.

Character Creation
Putting the RGB values in skin tone and eye color is useless if I can't modify them. The logical choice would be to replace the color table with RGB and a color wheel. If the skin needs to dye in a particular hue so you don't find some neon orange people out in the world that would be the way to go but nonetheless the update in this regard sucked.

The rest
-PVP mount is meh
-Island Sanctuary continues to be just okay content I do on the side. I do appreciate the Island vib glams, as I do enjoy them.

[Ath192]

I don't know if SE's writers "forced goodness" and unrealistic redemption arcs are happening because Japan has a ton of people that have given up on life, both mentally and some physically. But I do think its detrimental to push the message that everything will be okay all the time so hard. I think people, especially impressionable ones may actually believe the kool aid this is the case IRL and only become more bitter and disillusioned when life doesn't work out like that. It also makes it hard to relate on a personal level because mature people know life isn't like this. And for a story to be compelling sides need to make sacrifices and trade blows. Not the "protagonist" side to trounce powerless villains that later "see the light" and become part of the merry pack.

There are good moments in the MSQ, and wholesome moments do matter, but the impact of the story is marred when it is so boringly one sided.

[Maralius]

I think you hit on my biggest issue which was the Garlemald appeasement. I'm totally fine with treating the losers of a war with dignity but like...a world ending threat is coming. We are going to use this tower or else everyone dies. Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable but uh...oh well?

[MikkoAkure]

I think you hit on my biggest issue which was the Garlemald appeasement. I'm totally fine with treating the losers of a war with dignity but like...a world ending threat is coming. We are going to use this tower or else everyone dies. Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable but uh...oh well?

Considering Eorzea has an occupying army and a great wyrm of the First Brood knocking on the door asking to be let in and borrow their stuff, if it came down to it then we were going to get what we wanted no matter what but that doesn't really move the story on in a productive way unless the writers wanted there to be constant friction with the new Garlean government.

The Garleans have no defense if they refuse, but if you try the carrot before the stick then at least they're happier about it in the long run and that goes more in line with the writing of the game since ARR.

[Boblawblah]

"We understand the void is invading..but we can't help you because the Garleans feel bad about the tower..sorry"

Yes, it was over the top, but I get what they were going with, they wanted to start to close off the 'poor Garleans' story arc, so this was it. Hopefully.

[ZephyrMenodora]

"We understand the void is invading..but we can't help you because the Garleans feel bad about the tower..sorry"

Yes, it was over the top, but I get what they were going with, they wanted to start to close off the 'poor Garleans' story arc, so this was it. Hopefully.

Honestly given prior Garlean abuses, including the complete hostile takeover and mass-murder of multiple communities, I'm surprised that in but a few months we are uplifting them just because a few are sympathetic. Was waiting for us to give them back the tower on top of it..

[Atelier-Bagur]

Honestly given prior Garlean abuses, including the complete hostile takeover and mass-murder of multiple communities, I'm surprised that in but a few months we are uplifting them just because a few are sympathetic. Was waiting for us to give them back the tower on top of it..

Not as much as how we ended a thousand year old conflict between dragon and man in a matter of weeks during Heavensward. The more you think about the logistics of events in video games the more you start to nitpick everything.

[Roshidon1]

The thing that got me was after we "beat" Golbez he just gets up and summons an even "bigger bad" on the moon with no backstory, just a surprise motha &%&er type thing. FFXIV usually has better stories than that to be honest.

[fantasiaaddict]

The thing that got me was after we "beat" Golbez he just gets up and summons an even "bigger bad" on the moon with no backstory, just a surprise motha &%&er type thing. FFXIV usually has better stories than that to be honest.

I completely agree with this, but we need to go with the rules that the story-writers themselves have made, along with the world building for the Thirteenth. I think it was supposed to be more of an "Oh sh*t." moment, and while it may not have affected the players that much, I think in terms of story it worked fine for the characters. My only question is how was the Aether there the whole time without floating away? Ah well.

[Carin-Eri]

The thing that got me was after we "beat" Golbez he just gets up and summons an even "bigger bad" on the moon with no backstory, just a surprise motha &%&er type thing. FFXIV usually has better stories than that to be honest.

Yeah - that particular scenario really iritated me to be honest.
Apologies for repeating what I said in another thread, but:
I usually have nothing but praise for the MSQ since, until now, I don't recall being particularly disappointed by it. Underwhelmed at times perhaps, but not disappointed.

However, 6.4 did disappoint me, mostly because the left us with a trope that they've used a few too many times already throughout the MSQ. Namely the "All According to Plan" trope - which is described as follows:

That one little phrase in its various forms - "All According to Plan", "Exactly As Planned", "Just As Planned", and others - is all it takes to cause even the most monumental apparent loss to be completely turned on its head. Was the villain Crazy Prepared enough to insure that even his failure somehow turns into a victory? Did he prepare a plan only just incompetent enough that the heroes could predictably defeat him? Or was The Plan something else entirely?

Well, we're not going to find out anytime soon. In all likelihood he's relying on the Unspoken Plan Guarantee to catch everyone off guard so that we can proceed to the real plot. Stay tuned next week for the exciting new development!

Pretty accurate for how things played out, isn't it? And again - far from the first time we've experienced this, although I feel Ilberd and Fandaniel did it better.

And to top it all off, the classic 'Evil Gloating' trope also came into play. I mean, Trollbez was on his knees, Azdaja (whilst still corrupted) was free and his weapon had dissolved. Great! So what do we do? We just stand there whilst Trollbez monologues at us. Which, predictably, leads to the situation taking a turn for the worst to the point of "oh no - we're powerless against this threat that we totally could've prevented! Run away, back to the Source so we can form another convoluted contingency plan!".

And for the first time, I can't honestly say that I particularly care what happens next.