This review contains spoilers
Want to slap whoever added the trailing and stealth missions (not the more "involved" stealth of the one instance of Stormblood and the Thancred instance here), this get behind the obvious rock formation to hide behind to just waste time type of stealth mission.
As someone that has been hyped to see more of Garlemald since the beginning of the game, its implementation in Endwalker left me kinda cold, in general the story gave me a feeling that the threads and characters from A Realm Reborn to Stormblood wasn't a priority anymore, and decided instead to make a story about the ascians, with the Shadowbringers main cast because that is the most acclaimed one, keep Estinien because people liked Heavensward too. Is honestly silly that Cid doesn't take a big part in the story where you go to Garlemald and the Sea of Stars, the dude that loves his technology and gave you ships to confront your fights in ARR and HW, like at least he still got stuff in the side stories in the other expansions, but come on, he is definitely a big character from XIV, definitely more deserving of being on a key visual than Tataru, also why Tataru and not, idk Krile.
Obviously is not all bad, the locales are great, thematically the dungeons are interesting, it has one of the most consistently great musical scores of the game, I fucking love Flow Together, the character moments are among the best in the game, and the few times the rest of the cast show up, is definitely a heartwarming event. Y'shtola is kinda there, which is guess is the most consistent part of XIV, she doesn't get anything beyond fake-out self sacrifices.
Hydaelyn and Endsinger are great trials, Zodiark is oddly disappointing, is kinda easy and it doesn't have that big of a presentation flair to make up for it, like I like that his theme had motifs of FFI's battle theme, but other than that, kinda weak, and weird that the first dungeon probably has the hardest normal fight in EW, and not at all surprising that you fight him and Hydaelyn, neither as the final confrontation, feel that was pretty much set since their primal twist in Shadowbringers.
I also felt like in a weird auto-pilot through the story, I liked most of the set pieces, despite the odd pacing, everything is so jumpy, between Thavnair, Sharlayan, then we go to Garlemald for a bit, we drop the tower story there, what was even the point of the body possession bit with Zenos, again cool set piece, but why?, then the moon for a bit, Final Days start, Thavnair sells its despair well, but everything else just looks pretty chill, even with the role quests, then we travel back in time to hang out with the ascians because Emet is a really popular character, and because we need a final boss and we ended everyone else with a build up already, and Zenos can't be the final trial again, used 2 of the best antagonists in fact with Shadowbringers, so here is nihilistic bird girl and then straight to the edge of universe, also god damn, the amount of almost retconish bs and rationalization, plus pretty much emotional manipulation in order to justify how awful Venat is, fucking astounding. I didn't really care about a lot of story developments, we end up at use the power of friendship to beat the shit out of nihilism at the edge of the universe, war and politics? who? Do I still love Ultima Thule as a location and its music? Absolutely. Did I care much about Meteion and the fake-out deaths? Not that much honestly. And are the Dead Ends and The Final Day great set pieces? Yes, they are.
Was the entrance of Zenos, his dialogue and final send off, despite me not liking that he couldn't stay dead, fucking amazing? That I can't deny.
Solid expansion, not a great ending to everything, but good enough for the ascians. Heavensward's story is still the peak, and Stormblood has the best gameplay.
And as far as general praise I can give that XIV's writing can at times give some good grey morality to antagonists, going from Emet's great characterization, to how they handled Elpis and Venat is such a nosedive, honestly for the sake of the story it would have been better to either not show it and keep it vague, or rework it to actually function in some way other than Hermes and Venat being idiots, Venat woe is me, doomed the entirety of my civilization because they can't handle grief like I want them to, and Elpis is actually a nice place, they definitely were trash at portraying them as some sort of hubris downfall or some sort of cruel people, the Hermes breakdown was ridiculous too, and at that point that one cutscene at the end of the segment I just can't take it seriously.
This probably came out more of a salty rant than I would have liked, but I do have to reiterate that I still enjoyed my time with it, just not as much as the rest of the game.
Do hope whatever is next goes for something different, and a different cast, I like the scions but I already spent like 500 hours with some of them tagging along, love the twins but I could do with a break Kappa.
As someone that has been hyped to see more of Garlemald since the beginning of the game, its implementation in Endwalker left me kinda cold, in general the story gave me a feeling that the threads and characters from A Realm Reborn to Stormblood wasn't a priority anymore, and decided instead to make a story about the ascians, with the Shadowbringers main cast because that is the most acclaimed one, keep Estinien because people liked Heavensward too. Is honestly silly that Cid doesn't take a big part in the story where you go to Garlemald and the Sea of Stars, the dude that loves his technology and gave you ships to confront your fights in ARR and HW, like at least he still got stuff in the side stories in the other expansions, but come on, he is definitely a big character from XIV, definitely more deserving of being on a key visual than Tataru, also why Tataru and not, idk Krile.
Obviously is not all bad, the locales are great, thematically the dungeons are interesting, it has one of the most consistently great musical scores of the game, I fucking love Flow Together, the character moments are among the best in the game, and the few times the rest of the cast show up, is definitely a heartwarming event. Y'shtola is kinda there, which is guess is the most consistent part of XIV, she doesn't get anything beyond fake-out self sacrifices.
Hydaelyn and Endsinger are great trials, Zodiark is oddly disappointing, is kinda easy and it doesn't have that big of a presentation flair to make up for it, like I like that his theme had motifs of FFI's battle theme, but other than that, kinda weak, and weird that the first dungeon probably has the hardest normal fight in EW, and not at all surprising that you fight him and Hydaelyn, neither as the final confrontation, feel that was pretty much set since their primal twist in Shadowbringers.
I also felt like in a weird auto-pilot through the story, I liked most of the set pieces, despite the odd pacing, everything is so jumpy, between Thavnair, Sharlayan, then we go to Garlemald for a bit, we drop the tower story there, what was even the point of the body possession bit with Zenos, again cool set piece, but why?, then the moon for a bit, Final Days start, Thavnair sells its despair well, but everything else just looks pretty chill, even with the role quests, then we travel back in time to hang out with the ascians because Emet is a really popular character, and because we need a final boss and we ended everyone else with a build up already, and Zenos can't be the final trial again, used 2 of the best antagonists in fact with Shadowbringers, so here is nihilistic bird girl and then straight to the edge of universe, also god damn, the amount of almost retconish bs and rationalization, plus pretty much emotional manipulation in order to justify how awful Venat is, fucking astounding. I didn't really care about a lot of story developments, we end up at use the power of friendship to beat the shit out of nihilism at the edge of the universe, war and politics? who? Do I still love Ultima Thule as a location and its music? Absolutely. Did I care much about Meteion and the fake-out deaths? Not that much honestly. And are the Dead Ends and The Final Day great set pieces? Yes, they are.
Was the entrance of Zenos, his dialogue and final send off, despite me not liking that he couldn't stay dead, fucking amazing? That I can't deny.
Solid expansion, not a great ending to everything, but good enough for the ascians. Heavensward's story is still the peak, and Stormblood has the best gameplay.
And as far as general praise I can give that XIV's writing can at times give some good grey morality to antagonists, going from Emet's great characterization, to how they handled Elpis and Venat is such a nosedive, honestly for the sake of the story it would have been better to either not show it and keep it vague, or rework it to actually function in some way other than Hermes and Venat being idiots, Venat woe is me, doomed the entirety of my civilization because they can't handle grief like I want them to, and Elpis is actually a nice place, they definitely were trash at portraying them as some sort of hubris downfall or some sort of cruel people, the Hermes breakdown was ridiculous too, and at that point that one cutscene at the end of the segment I just can't take it seriously.
This probably came out more of a salty rant than I would have liked, but I do have to reiterate that I still enjoyed my time with it, just not as much as the rest of the game.
Do hope whatever is next goes for something different, and a different cast, I like the scions but I already spent like 500 hours with some of them tagging along, love the twins but I could do with a break Kappa.