I miss HW

[Absimiliard]

but the world had a sense of “entropy” to it in the fall of dalamud that nothing has come close to for me, oh and nael as well as legacy gaius are criminally underrated as villains

Aight, you know what? ....I kinda have to agree with this. The game has somehow managed to lose that sense of "dread" or "entropy" it had in the days when Dalamud was a serious consideration. Ditto for Nael and OG Gaius being pretty underrated.

Perhaps it's because I was around to hear Answers - Reprise fill the zones as Dalamud burned in the sky? Whatever the case, I found ARR's whole "feel" was far better than what we have now, and a large part of that was knowing what kind of threat Bahamut actually posed to the world. The player-character(s) have gone on to face much greater threats than he, but somehow the "feeling" was lacking. Even the Final Days and lead-up to the Endsinger did not stir any kind of feelings within me at all.

Heavensward was two or three steps removed from that feeling, but there was still a sense of urgency with the threats posed by Alexander and the Warring Triad. Although the former turned out to be benevolent, his mere presence could've killed the planet. The latter were of course primals that very much lived up to their hype as gods, and any one of them would've been basically unstoppable by modern man if allowed to regain its former strength. Admittedly, my interest in the Warring Triad in this regard may have stemmed in part from FF6 having been one of my favorite Final Fantasies to date, but still.