I have been an avid Final Fantasy fan since basically forever. I have played all of the mainline titles, but there is still a handful of games of the franchise I haven't touched, notably FF Tactics or FF XI. I do understand that the intent with those Alliance Raids is to generate an interest from players to go check out the actual game that they do refer, like it was the case with Nier for example.

Well, the problem is that I can't connect to those raids at all. I haven't played their material of reference. I just got through San d'Oria and like for Jeuno, we're going through places I have zero care about, because I have zero emotional attachment to those. I don't know what they're supposed to represent, and even having the narrator drop me a quick line "this is a calm place for new adventurers" isn't really helping either. So far those raids have only felt like going to Disneyland and jumping into the first ride for a movie I haven't seen. All it feels like is going through a trailer with fancy pictures and scenes trying to show you as much as possible from the reference material.

I don't know how people that have played through XI feel about going through this, or even how players that went through FFT/XII for Ivalice felt, or how players that went through the Nier series felt about the Nier AR either. To me, this just feels like fan service that leaves me completely cold, and the little story we're getting trying to connect this to XIV feels more forced and shoehorned than anything, as usual. I think there is also a big difference between inspiration and actual copy pasta, and the game recently even outside of the Alliance Raids has started to really feel like copy pasta (FF9 in the post Dawntrail segment, the Underkeep, the Beatrix doppleganger, etc).

Why can't we get original content and creativity? Or are we doomed to live in that perpetual loop of nostalgia down memory lane thinking that it will suddenly make everybody else hooked?

Or am I the only one feeling like this by now?