Game Review: Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (Story only, through 6.0)

I'm excited for Endwalker, but I don't have the overwhelming, burning hype that some people seem to

Well, that turned out to be accurate.

Normally I'd be waiting years to do this review, after all the patches and systems and everything was put into place, and I'm still going to write that post eventually once we wrap up patch 6.5. But Endwalker's story is structured differently than previous expansions--in something like Heavensward, the main x.0 patch resolves many of the story beats but leaves some open, and it's not until x.3 that they all finally come to their conclusion. Patch 3.3 was the final defeat of Nidhogg and the real end of the Dragonsong War, for example, and then 3.4 and 3.5 built up the Garlean Empire and the war in the east that eventually led to Stormblood. Endwalker is different, with patch 6.0 being much bigger than a usual x.0 patch and resolving all the story threads--the 10 year Hydaelyn and Zodiarc arc, as the marketing puts it--in one single journey. Patch 6.1 is called "New Adventures" and represents a clean break into a new saga, to the point where they've said that maybe some day in the future it could represent a new entry point for players who are intimidated by the hundreds of hours of story that FFXIV makes you play through to get to the end. That also means that I can write a review of the story now without having to see how the patches resolve things.

The general consensus is that Endwalker is a masterpiece, but I can't agree with that.

(Obviously, massive Endwalker spoilers below)

This is what I thought most of Endwalker would be about.

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