I'd give the at-launch main body of Endwalker a near perfect score. It's a huge emotional climax to the story told throughout the previous expansions that manages to take you to new, surprising places while still feeling like a satisfying conclusion. The boss fights are fantastic, the characters are great, the soundtrack delivers hit after hit. There are a couple of minor annoyances - some elements feel rushed or incomplete, like Garlemald, the longtime antagonistic nation, here reduced to a speedbump on the way to bigger conflicts. As with Stormblood, since the zones are all spread out and discobobulated the sense of place and connection is weaker, and why large chunks of the story take place in Thavnair I'm still not really sure. These come out in the wash though. The whole of the MSQ is stronger than the sum of its parts.

The same, I'm afraid, cannot be said for the patch content. Shadowbringers delivered, in my opinion, some of the greatest hits in the entire game with Ishgard Restoration & Bozja. These were meaty, community oriented projects that would allow players to sink hundreds of hours into them, or much less and still have fun. There's no comparable content in Endwalker. Island Sanctuary is an absolute bust, a single player idle game that consists of alternatively right clicking rocks or showing up once a week to collect rent. Variant & Criterion dungeons are hits, and I do like having a hard-as-nails 4 player content, but they don't fill the void left by the bigger group activities. Manderville Weapons are deeply underwhelming.

Most disappointing is the post-game story. We knew going into Endwalker that the typical format established in Heavensward wouldn't apply here - Endwalker's story climaxed in 6.0, not 6.3. What we didn't know was that the next expansion storyline wouldn't start until 6.55, meaning the entirety of the 6.X MSQ is an overblown filler arc. I was so disappointed when I realised the standout new character Zero was disappearing like a movie-only anime character when the story came to a close (and worse still, trading in her cool Scythe for a boring Sword!) Maybe it'll all come to bear in a future Bozja-style Void content, one can only hope.

I am sympathetic to the developers, who pushed hard to get the base game out, and struggled on working through the pandemic. I hope that the content drought in the post game is the after effects of the pandemic finally appearing out of the pipeline, and that Dawntrail will be a return to form. Fingers crossed.

This game and this expac changed my life. Like there's a certain experience that just cant be found anywhere else than in mmos. Playing this on release and seeing discussion revolving different parts of the story, talking about things with friends, travelling the journey with new friends you've made along the way; its just magical. All of the memories you make, the challenges you overcome, and the growth you have, on top of just having a fantastic game overall is amazing. Endwalker specifically really feels like the culmination of the entire final fantasy franchises lifespan come into appreciation of its players. Will probably forever remain my favorite game.

One thing I immediately noticed when going into shadowbringers is that the pacing of the story is suddenly really, really good. There is never a single point in the story where I feel like I'd rather be doing something else. Not only that, the story glued me to my seat on more than one occasion. It really recontextualized how I view this game and its setting, and I fucking love it. The only complaint I can think of is that some side characters get less screen time than I felt like they should have, but even that's because I care about them so much.

The game takes the improvements in encounter design and player abilities from stormblood, and goes really far with it. The patch content duties are extremely fun, and both the trial and raid series made me actively lose my shit about how good they were. I really don't have much of anything negative to say, this is an amazing video game.