Endwalker is finally out, well for over a month now.
New contents are being dropped and game burners have already cleared the latest Savage contents for their pride and glory.
As such, I feel that I can do the review of my own now.
I honesty was excited for Endwalker. I had invested 8 years of my life in this story and was looking forward to see the full completion of the Hydaelyn- Zodiark arch.
Hear, Feel, Think.
That was what I was supposed to do, right?
With Endwalker, I finally can go into the long fabled Old Sharlayan and Garlemald. The Sharlayan experience was great. A vibrant city with lots of things to see and a great harbour. What not to like? The answer? It’s people. From the ‘customs officer’ at the harbour to the crooks who ran the place, Old Sharlayan, a place where knowledge was seek, and people supposed to be open minded, was nothing more than Ishgard before destruction. Yeah, yeah, I know they have a mission and a secret to hide, but do they need to be that annoying as a knowledge governing body? Especially, in front of the Scions, whom, at this stage everyone knows they are agents of Hydaelyn? There are times that I really wonder, what is wrong with these people? So knowledgeable yet so discriminative – seriously, what is wrong with Estinien being a Dragoon who provides the brutal force for the Scion? Nonetheless, what happened in Old Sharlayan finally answered a very important question I had for years – why Alphinaud was so annoying in A Realm Reborn. With a father like Fourchenault, whom we finally met in Shadowbringers, it will be a miracle that he did not become a prick like he was in A Realm Reborn. He eventually redeemed himself throughout the years in my opinion, but yeah, Fourchenault as a father, well…what more can I say?
That said, not all the time in Old Sharlayan was bad, as some of the most exciting and touching cutscenes happened there. And being the main hub of the story, it was still a good area to explore around.
Then we have Thavnair, in my opinion, an area that has a strong South Asian influence, all the way down to their accents. It was another visually vibrant area. I liked it when the development team is not shy from using colours, and the music there completely complimented the vibe of the place. It is another major area that you would be revisiting during the story, so prepare to spend a lot of time there. However, as much as I like this area, some of the most annoying cutscenes that I had to yell at the TV happened here too. For me it was too predictable and then the characters involved were just too annoying given the circumstance, and the results of their action were too consequential for their stupidity. Oh by the way, Thavnair did, in some aspect, looks like the village where Yuna came from in FF X, they just dialled up some of the stupidity of those people in XIV. The other issue I had with this area is the time they took to open up the teleportation to the hub – Radz-at-Han. During the story, whenever I needed to go back, I need to travel all the way to the gate, for me it was unnecessary and a cheap way of extending play time.
Then we have those baren monotone areas of the Moon (Mare Lamentorum) and Garlemald. Garlemald, I can still tolerate as a landscape, but it has some of the most annoying quests and characters in the whole history of FF XIV. I thought they would have exhausted those kinds of characters leading by Zenos in Stormblood, hell no, they managed to lift the bar of annoyance for character creation. That is, for me, when these characters encountered unfortunate incidents, I would tell them, ‘Serves you right’. That’s how unconcerned I am with these characters. There were huge bombshells, which I thought was quite cool in terms of what happened to Garlemald, but there were equal moments I yelled at the TV and had to take breaks because I could no longer deal with this madness of these unyielding and unnecessary stealth quests. Seriously, if I wanted to play stealth quests, I would have played Metal Gear Solid, and I couldn’t even complete the first area in that game, that’s the kind of patience I have with these quests. Seriously, Yoshi-P, please stop this madness in the subsequent patches and expansions. Seriously.
The Moon was a weird place for me. Not only about how convoluted to just travel around, but the fact that when Hydaelyn asked those rabbits to build a safe haven for her children, why is the place populated with enemies and machines that wanted to kill you even when you are on the other side of the hall? Isn’t a safe place means, well, a safe place? Why was I chased by deadly machines just trying to look for lost carrots in a greenhouse? And also, if those robots are so deadly, how could those rabbits with no battle power survive that long? This part of the game just baffles me and went beyond any logic in my opinion.
I don’t really want to talk about the last two areas as they were not in any trailer so I do not want to spoil anything for new players. However, for me, one of the most tedious things in this game was the process for getting to the last area. The quest right before you can get on to the ship that was flashed out in the logo of the expansion was the quest that I kept swearing at the TV. It was long, tedious, convoluting, and demeaning for no purpose. I kept thinking, if my mission is so urgent, why do I have time to do all these trash quests around the place? Why? I am the frigging Warrior of Light, and the weight of the world is on my shoulders, for God’s sake! For me this part of the story quest was the bit that broke me, causing me to, for the first time in any of my RPG playing, and my time with FF XIV, that I just kept pressing X trying to get through all those trash dialogue that I have completely lost my interest in. For me that is a huge deal, as I always emphasised every bit of dialogue is important in an RPG, and that included all the trash stuff in X-2 and XIII. If anything, FF XIV finally managed to broke me with some of the most unnecessary story trash quests and dialogues. Seriously, a quarter into that questline, I no longer care what happened or what is happening to these people. The fact that you spent more hours trying to get to the last area than the time you spent in the last area and to finish the game, you know how bad these trash time filling quests are.
I wanted to enjoy Endwalker as much as Shadowbringers, I really wanted to. Maybe I was expecting too much, hence was disappointed. Endwalker is not really bad kind of bad, but I personally feel that with all that wait, I would love to see a better ending to the whole arch. The final boss motivation was nothing but disappointing. I certainly understand where the motivation came from, but it doesn’t make sense in a way that, in my opinion, we were rushed through to accept this as the cause for the end of everything, but the cause for me was nothing but shallow. We all live through disappointments in life, but we don’t go try to bring forward the end of the world because of personal or other people’s disappointments. The whole thing did not make sense and felt a little bit too convenient for me in terms of storytelling. After all we waited 8 years for this, don’t we deserve something more logical and much grander? And of course, we have Zenos. A character that for me, any additional words mentioning him is a disgrace and disrespect to all other NPCs combined in the whole FF XIV history.
Innovation-wise, Endwalker did bring a lot of new interesting elements into the game. The companion / escort missions are good, but for me I would prefer to use them only for more leisured quests instead of trying to hunt down something or someone, while you were supposed to be in a hurry, and you cannot even get on to the mount because your companion won’t be able to catch up and you have to start the quest all over again. Yup, that happens. Battle mechanics, I must say I like a number of new battle mechanics they introduced here. After all these years, I was wondering how much further they can make fights interesting and fresh. The development team did a great job, as while mechanics were built on previous knowledge, they add variations and layers that made everything fresh again. They were still interesting to veteran players yet manageable for new players too. I must give the development team kudos for this. Also, for the new mechanics we saw for the first time, like in some of the trials, extreme trials and savage raids, they were well thought through and set up new potentials for future battle mechanics. As for the new jobs, Reaper and Sage, I have unlocked them but haven’t tried them, so will have to save my opinions for them for a later time.
All in all, I did not completely dislike or hate Endwalker, but it felt like a finale that didn’t quite meet my expectation. It felt like after going through a nice bowl of soup you found out there were bits and pieces of burnt ingredient at the bottom of the bowl. It did not completely destroy your experience but left you unwanting in some way.
