This is a review of my experiences with FFXIV and all expansions.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (FFXIV) marks the conclusion of the main Seventh Umbral Era storyline that has been ongoing since the game rebooted in 2013 after the failed launch years prior.

When I first started playing FFXIV at the end of 2022, I wasn't all that sure I would really like it. I had never played an MMO before besides some casual playing of Runescape and Club Penguin when I was kid, and a handful of attempts at things like AdventureQuest and other such spin offs.
My experience with the game was rocky at first, with me feeling the MMO genre wasn't meant for me at all. Too much busy work, too many quests that seemingly were just filler, and giant ui that took up half the screen made it very hard to adjust and approach the game in good faith rather than poking fun at a genre I've only known for having hard-core WoW nerd spending every waking moment on it.

But the story pulled me in.
It wasn't until late in the story of A Realm Reborn (ARR) I was starting to get an interest in what was actually going on with the primals and the scions and these characters I've been talking to for the last 50 hours. I got invested in the order after the patch quests of the base game and really enjoyed the next expansion called Heavensward. I was a Dragoon for my main class for the story so I think that heavily boosted my enjoyment of the new questline when it felt like it all revolved around my background as a character. I really did feel a kinship with the character Estinien, a fellow Dragoon that was in the job questline in ARR that became a main character for the next expansion. With the conclusion of the Dragonsong War they began setting up the next expansion, Stormblood (SB), but before that they introduced a new and of characters called the Warriors of Darkness, a parallel group in contrast with the Warrior of Light, the main character in the story. Initially I thought they were just a small bit group that didn't get any worthwhile conclusion after their introduction but I was eventually proven wrong many hours later.
Stormblood has a lot of rocky moments for me, a lot of downtime in quests running back and forth across the Ruby Sea and Kugane where it feels like the game just really likes taking its sweet time. There were moments I was struggling to get through it and felt I was wasting my time on this game that maybe wasn't actually good. It was merely a trick of the light.
But I kept playing for the villains, Zenos yae Galvus and Yotsuyu goe Brutus.
Zenos is the brutal heir to the Imperial Legion, the ongoing enemy the different factions of the world are head to head with for years. To me Zenos is a tall menacing figure, oozing in raw strength he boasts with his triple sword holster he always has with him. The way we see him focused in scenes with this giant aura around him makes me see him as a demon bringing hellfire down on the citizens of Eorzea and Ala Mihgo. Some comparisons have been made to Darth Vader and I do agree with that sentiment.
The secondary villain we see in the expansion is Yotsuyu. She is the imperial viceroy acting on behalf of the Empire in the far eastern region Doma. Her nature is also brutal and cruel similar to Zenos but she doesn't have the physical strength to intimidate her foes. Instead she draws on her hatred and angry at the Doma people for how her upbringing was as a citizen, being abused by her family and only finding a place in the world working for the enemy of her homeland. The complexity of her backstory makes you question your loyalty to a nation you're defending and think twice about describing your foes in absolutes when they're as deep as you're alies.
The ending to Stormblood including the patch quests really brought up my enjoyment of the expansion by quite a bit and I hold it in a higher regard than I initially did in reflection. Zenos' end and Yotsuyu conclusion was a fitting end to the arc.
Shadowbringers (ShB) is bar none my favorite expansion thus far in the FFXIV stories. I enjoyed the colorful environments, the music direction, the new characters from this other world, and especially the villains.
The main villain going against the scions this time is Vauthry, a giant hedonistic man living at the top of the tower while bringing pain and misery to the citizens of The First with Sin Eaters and Lightwardens, creatures that only have animalistic instincts to eat.
In this expansion the Warrior of Light becomes the Warrior of Darkness, a namely aptly named after their pursuits to rid the world of its permanent daylight plaguing the world for years under the rule of Vauthry. After the first success in turning off the lights, we get to meet Ardbert, the leader of the Warriors of Darkness we met before Stormblood. We learn about his tragic fate trying to stop the light that consumed the planet and being regarded as a villain in history for his and his comrades' actions. Even worse, he was doomed to walk history as a ghost by himself, forced to watch the world he failed to protect suffer tragedies and the people in it wallow in agony.
It's only after the Warrior of Light and the scions defeat the last Lightwarden and fight Vauthry does Ardbert finally get to take his rest, and while I do miss him every day, I'm thankful he has earned his rest at long last.
While writing about Shadowbringers I've glossed over the main reason I regard it as my favorite expansion in the story, and that is because of one character named Emet-Selch.
Emet-Selch is an ascian, an organization of black robed figures that sow the seeds of chaos over history. Emet-Selch in particular takes on the role of the late Emperor Solus zos Galzus, Zenos' grandfather.
It's difficult to put into words why I'm so fond of this one character from this game but I think he just has this charismatic nature in his performance that really pulled me in from his first appearance, and I do enjoy all of his onscreen sections where he's able to give us history on the world as long living being, almost a permanent fixture of this world.
We have known some Ascians before this point in the story like Lahabrea and Elidibus, two meddlers that had the biggest roles in the story up to this point, but I don't think they hold a candle to Emet-Selch.
His nature as an otherworldly being puts you at odds with him immediately but his knowledge of the world and input on problems we face makes you warm up to him, even if you can see the stab in the back coming a mile away. His insistence that he knows better than all of us because of his great wisdom isn't something I toss away due to thinking he has delusions of grandeur. He has lived a thousand of our lives, seen the fall of the ancients, humans grow and fight, and he is tired of seeing us repeat mistakes. Whether he has good motives or not, I sympathize with his actions in reminiscing on a world that once was, a people he used to know, and the city below the ocean he built in their memories with shades of the ancients.
His final words to the Warrior of Light is a request. Remember the ascians, for they once lived.
To me Shadowbringers was a perfect arc for FFXIV and I loved everything about it, including the patch quests setting up Endwalker.
Endwalker is currently the last expansion of FFXIV and is quite a heavy experience, especially in comparison to the earlier questlines in the game like Heavensward and Stormblood. Themes center around pain, identity, what it means to be alive, and the inevitably of all life.
The main villain is initially set up as the ascian Fandaniel, along with the return of Zenos after his death in Stormblood, now back after some body swapping shenanigans.
Fandaniel only wishes to cause misery for all of humanity and trying to bring agony for everyone in order to trigger an event known as The Final Days, a catastrophic event that wiped out the ascians in their earlier forms thousands of years ago.
Zenos is also present as the new Emperor of Garlemald and helps orchestrate these plans of world domination with the resources of the city, using the surrounding buildings and citizens to turn into his evil tower lair.
The first half of the story is focused on uniting the people of Eorzea, Doma, and the beast tribes against Fandaniel, culminating in chasing them to the moon and fighting the primal Zodiark.
Unbeknownst to the scions, Zodiark was being used as a shield against The Final Days from triggering on the planet of Etheirys, the home world to humanity. After this event anyone that feels depressed, anguish, or other such feelings of helplessness fade into dark ash and became monsters with no cure besides death. It's a race against time to try and figure out how to escape this new problem plaguing every nation and there isn't a clear cut solution anyone can find.
So they go back in time.
The Warrior of Light, all out of options, goes through the crystal tower in The First and visits the world of the Ancients, before they met their end to The Final Days years ago.
On this quest we meet Hythlodaeus, Hermes, Venat, and our old pal Emet-Selch before he knows who we are. Eventually after meeting Venat we have to tell the ancients who we really are and that we have come from the future to try and stop our own extinction. With the help of the ancients we find out the cause of this agony based death is based on people's emotional state or dynamis as they call it.
While working towards a solution for the ancients as well, Hermes erases everyone's memories except for the Warrior of Light and Venat, who is left with the fate of knowing tragedy awaits them all in the future but with no way to prevent it besides helping humanity in the far future. Venat's sacrifice and aid in the story as Hydaelyn should not be overlooked as one of the better parts of the remaining influence from the ancients of the past.
This section of Endwalker was my favorite to experience, meeting the ancients and seeing Emet-Selch again after his death at the end of the last expansion. I also feel deeply for Venat and what she did for all of us in the future. I can't help but make the comparison to Jesus when I think about the circumstances.
After returning to present day we begin working on upgrading our spaceship to take us further in space then was initially planned and go visit a dead star in the far off universe, where we tracked the origin of The Final Days to and defeat the creature.
And that is the end of the main Endwalker eexpansion.
Overall I really enjoyed this expansion and thought the message they went for was quite heavy at times but didn't stop on helping give words of encouragement to fight back against life when it looks completely helpless and you just want to crawl into a hole. It gave me some words of wisdom to keep with me when I've been battling some inner demons myself this last year and helped me look at life in a different light. A different perspective on how to enjoy myself.
-Kurt Belmont, Leviathan