Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

2025-01-14
Endwalker had the decidedly herculean task of following up one of the best games ever: Shadowbringers. A game centered by one of the most interesting and richly developed villains in any form of media, Emet-Selch. Endwalker decided the proper send off was to throw away 10 years of a building plot about the fight between good and evil and sub in an autistic bird lady in space. "I'm an empath, people are SAD, so I'm going to kill all of you." I was actually mad for the whole end section of the game. I spent all this time to have the writers decide Nihilism is the Big Bad?

Ok, ok it's not all bad. I mean the intro is bad. So much exposition. I think I clocked it at at least 5 hours, maybe 10, before either A) I could do something like a dungeon or B) the plot actually moved forward. But hey, once the story and dungeons started rolling about halfway through it's the same old goodness you expect from FFXIV. A bunch of characters, a plot to destroy the world, new places to journey-- it's got it all. I particularly loved going back in time to hang out with Emet-Selch and the rest of the ancients. It's a really nice bit of fan-service as well as furthering the plot and firmly tying the fate of the ancients with the current doom unfolding.

As with other expansions they also expanded the mechanics just enough to keep everything enticing and the challenge gets continually ramped up. I honestly had a ton of fun with the dungeons and even wiped on some of the later trials a couple times which is impressive!

I had a good time. I just fucking hate the bird. And you know I can't even imagine coming up with someone as good as Emet-Selch and having to follow it up. What a challenge! But a fucking sad bird? Christ almighty. I'm writing this almost 3 years later and I still haven't played Dawntrail largely because of how big of a whiff the plot of this one was for me. How could they follow it up? But you know what I just realized? The sky's the limit; anything is better than a bird.

??? 2022
I dunno if it's because this is the 4th expansion of this game and after spending like 300 hours in the MSQ I'm just tired of the gameplay but this one tired me out. I think I realized how damn slow these games are to get going. I mean I was bored playing this at the start. It's all exposition with no combat, no bosses, no dungeons for like at least 5 hours. Hell, it might have been 10 hours. That's awful.

While it takes a long time to get going, once the story and dungeons started rolling about halfway through it's the same old goodness you expect from FFXIV. A bunch of characters, a plot to destroy the world, new places to journey-- it's got it all. I particularly loved going back in time to hang out with Emet Selch and the rest of the ancients. It's a really nice bit of fanservice as well as furthering the plot and firmerly tying the fate of the ancients with the current doom unfolding.

While I adored seeing Emet Selch, the explanation for the doom of the planet and the villains in this expansion are kind of trash. The ultimate baddy ends up being some weird autistic bird girl. Like really? Some summon from a mage is why the world is being destroyed? And the focus on themes of the ultimate pointlessness of the world and how that is what's going to kill everyone is a big whiff for me. I had no real attachment to the story as it unfolded. EXCEPT for the fact that they brought back Emet Selch and some other ancients which were very cool.

Gameplay-wise it really is the same old thing. I think they introduced a couple new mechanics like right-left side attacks for bosses and a couple of the trials were actually pretty tricky and we wiped a couple times. Even though it's the same I enjoyed it. I will say, again, after 4 expansions I find the actual combat outside of boss fights to be incredibly boring. And the quests are almost always boring. I skipped almost all the non-main story dialogue in this game. I was basically just checked out.

I original had this down as an 8 but I'm thinking it's really a 7. The only thing saving it for me was I did enjoy them putting a bow on everything and I enjoyed the fanservice. But overall this formula has grown really stale for me. In that way I'm actually happy it ended.