This story is really underwhelming - it's opened to mixed reviews.

[genuine_stranger]

They can do "show, don't tell" if they want. Erenville delivers that very well up (Lv98-100).

They just don't respect us as players and treat us like little kids.

Oh, I know that they can, but they don't. Which is sad.

I can't speak about the last zone, as it fell flat for me and I skipped almost every cutscene. The fights were great, though.

[Loggos]

One point I keep coming back to is how they often want to make a point for the sake of making a point, even if it's not logical.

The most egregious one is Wuk Lamat's motivation to maintain peace and the game’s insistence that she is the best candidate for this particular prospect.

I haven’t finished the story yet (beat the first trial) and I assume that all siblings will end up as co-rulers with their respective strengths complementing each other but the message that the way she wants peace is somehow unique and better compared to Koana and makes her special just makes no sense.

She wants to achieve her goal of maintaining peace for Tural by stopping her warmonger brother (understandable) but if that's the case she could also have rallied behind Koana and supported his bid for the throne.

Her chances of achieving said goal of hers would have been a lot higher since Koana is both popular, highly educated and skilled (and also significantly older than her, has more life experience, connections with an important city in Eorzea and has seen the world more than she has). They are also very close as siblings.

However, the story tries to convince us that his aim of technological advancement would somehow be incompatible with “true peace”, the brand of peace that Wuk Lamat embodies.

Wuk Lamat is presented as not only a person of the people but also a keeper of traditions and for some reason that means that her brand of peace is somehow superior and more genuine than the peace Koana would ensure.

But traditions vs. innovation and peace vs. war are two unrelated questions. You can also be a highly advanced peaceful society or an archaic warmongering one.

Koana even outright states that he wants to prevent war:

When he is asked to produce magitek weapons for his older brother he resolutely denies the request. He wants to be like Sharlayan which secured peace and deterred Garlemald from attacking them by being scientifically and academically advanced. Whether it works like that in the real world is another question.

But he quite literally spells it out for us that he wants to maintain peace and security by explicitly non-violent means.

How is he any less of an advocate for peace only because he doesn’t mention he wants to be friends with everyone, and how things wouldn’t spark joy if there was war, every 5 seconds?

Sorry, I’m about to rant and ramble so I’ll mark the rest as spoilers to spare you an even longer wall of text. Also: actually containts spoilers

Even in terms of his behaviour we soon learn that he is a very caring, moral person who easily abandons his progress in the contest to slay Valigarmanda.

I know in the cutscene on the mountain top they want to establish this trifecta of resolve (oldest brother), reason (Koana) and peace (Wuk), implying that Koana would be the embodiment of intellect without a heart (or enough heart), with the latter being necessary to make sure the intellect is used for peaceful purposes. But it just makes no sense given the Koana we actually got to know.

Now you can argue that him being insensitive to traditions is a flaw of his but this can be resolved outside of the peace question.

If Wuk wanted to participate as the candidate whose goal it is to explicitly preserve her people’s heritage then she should also be framed as such. It shouldn’t be dressed up as peace because obviously peace is the best and most sympathetic goal, making it much harder to criticise her ambitions, instead casting her as the purest and most moral candidate.

But if she wanted to conserve traditions then this would not be an inherently good or bad cause.
It would actually be a very interesting perspective because now each sibling would embody something that has good aspects if implemented correctly but bad aspects if overdone. If they came together they’d truly be a trifecta of good rule.

Sorry for the wall of text, but this has been driving me mad. I still don’t hate Wuk but I just can’t say that she’d be better than Koana in any way so far. And given his sensitive true nature I can imagine that if you push the right buttons you could most certainly open his heart up to a form of technological advancement that isn’t at odds with preserving cultural heritage.

[ZephyrMenodora]

One point I keep coming back to is how they often want to make a point for the sake of making a point, even if it's not logical.

The most egregious one is Wuk Lamat's motivation to maintain peace and the game’s insistence that she is the best candidate for this particular prospect.

I haven’t finished the story yet (beat the first trial) and I assume that all siblings will end up as co-rulers with their respective strengths complementing each other but the message that the way she wants peace is somehow unique and better compared to Koana and makes her special just makes no sense.

She wants to achieve her goal of maintaining peace for Tural by stopping her warmonger brother (understandable) but if that's the case she could also have rallied behind Koana and supported his bid for the throne.

This is how I feel every time we cross paths with Koana's team and then I'm not allowed to go with them and I just watch them walk away:

[Loggos]

This is how I feel every time we cross paths with Koana's team and then I'm not allowed to go with them and I just watch them walk away:

I feel you, haha, I feel you... :'D

(Edit bc I'm right in the middle of a cutscene and Wuk drops this: "I have realised I'm truly motivated by the happiness of others." I'm sure good healthcare and safe travel routes would make them very happy. Just a thought.)

[Raven2014]

First things first, having just finished the story, I like the expansion and the story in and of itself. However, like so many other JRPGs, the story is plagued by several issues. For one, it repeats the premise over and over, to the point where you ask yourself, 'Is this meant for people with a short attention span?' I get it, you want to emphasize the importance of the matter for the characters, but holy moly, slow down. We get it after the first four times.

Yeah, it feels like they're just padding the number of lines because they don't have something new/interesting to say, so they opt to just repeat the same thing over and over. You probably can chop 30-40% of the text and the story won't still lose any meaning.

[Tethan]

Just now finishing up the third zone and I'm not even bored anymore.

I'm angry.

I'm honestly at a loss for words. Who wrote this? I don't want to get into details or spoilers right now but this is truly so bad. At this point I'm going on just to see how bad it gets. I will need to collect my thoughts and write a proper post-morten once I'm finished because.. oh my god.

[Vejj]

The whole story would have been a lot better if that stupid Wuk Lamat (SPOILER) had stayed on her throne after the attack and taken care of her people(spoiler).
The usual suspects who saved the whole damn world - if not the universe - from the Endsinger would have taken on a few sci fi neon cyberpunk motorcycles and angular land ships.

Sorry but this wuk lamat got on my nerves all these hours. It really escalated after the fourth area. I wouldn't have liked to push any NPC off the next cliff as much as the would-be queen.


Talk to lamat, talk to lamat again, talk to lamat once more, talk a last time with lamat then repeat. AWWWWWW

[CosmoBabylonia]

Talk to lamat, talk to lamat again, talk to lamat once more, talk a last time with lamat then repeat. AWWWWWW

That's not the worst even. They even had a NPC say how much they love Wuk Lamat and how everyone should love her. It's like the writers went and watched the exact Simpsons moment where Homer pitched his Poochie ideas.

[SirShady]

I can't wait to talk about the crazy crap that happens at the end of the story. I'm chugging my way through the final level 100 quests and BOY DO I HAVE OPINIONS!

[Somnolence]

I can't wait to talk about the crazy crap that happens at the end of the story. I'm chugging my way through the final level 100 quests and BOY DO I HAVE OPINIONS!

Oh yes, as do I, most of my criticism are for the Solution 9 portion, but it is too early to discuss them since so many haven't done that.