This review contains spoilers
I want to write an actual review of Endwalker once the patch cycle has completed but man I feel like my opinion of this game has soured quite a bit in the last few months of postgame. Actual expansion content was solid; I liked the new zones, new classes, and the story for the most part. The game felt both too bloated and too rushed at the same time and had plenty of issues with tone, but I felt they were able to wrap up 10 years of story fairly well. Not the biggest fan of the combat change to the 2 minute meta, but I enjoyed some of the savage fights I did even if the EXs were lacking in comparison.
Post patch content seems to have taken a nosedive in quality, with MSQ content being a completely dull retelling of FFIV where nothing has happened for 4 patches besides the introduction of Zero, a new character that I do like but unfortunately is still tied to Zenos (please let him stay dead already!!) and the writing team seems to not know what to do with her yet. Savage has been pretty hit or miss, with fights either being fun to figure out or complete slogs running on an engine that is starting to hit its limits on what mechanics actually feel like they work consistently. Alliance raids are excellent, if tuned a little too easy for my tastes.
Unfortunately, the new content introduced in EW postgame has been interesting, but mostly halfbaked. The new CC mode feels like a copy paste of Overwatch including all the problems that game had. A big PVP rebalance to compensate for CC has made Frontlines even less fun and the team seems to have moved on from balancing it already. Variant and criterion dungeons are fun but over too quickly and have lackluster rewards ensuring this content dies out after a couple weeks. Island sanctuary ended up being a relaxing but dull spreadsheet simulator, again not really giving you much incentive to continue with it once ranked up. The new deep dungeon is great as always thankfully. Relics are tied to manderville quests which have worn out their welcome and the act of getting relics has been reduced to grinding out tomestones instead of the checklists from previous expansions. There is no exploration areas as well. Extended time between patches is fine but patch content seems to be thinner and more along the lines of future proofing older expansions - great for new players, not so much for veterans running out of things to do. I found myself increasingly bored with the game and even unsubbed for the first time in 5 years.
With 7.0 seemingly taking a completely new direction, and ideally the bulk of the development team back on XIV dev after the release of XVI, I am hoping SE can make FFXIV into an engaging MMO after 2 years of lackluster EW patches and get players excited to return to Eorzea again.
Post patch content seems to have taken a nosedive in quality, with MSQ content being a completely dull retelling of FFIV where nothing has happened for 4 patches besides the introduction of Zero, a new character that I do like but unfortunately is still tied to Zenos (please let him stay dead already!!) and the writing team seems to not know what to do with her yet. Savage has been pretty hit or miss, with fights either being fun to figure out or complete slogs running on an engine that is starting to hit its limits on what mechanics actually feel like they work consistently. Alliance raids are excellent, if tuned a little too easy for my tastes.
Unfortunately, the new content introduced in EW postgame has been interesting, but mostly halfbaked. The new CC mode feels like a copy paste of Overwatch including all the problems that game had. A big PVP rebalance to compensate for CC has made Frontlines even less fun and the team seems to have moved on from balancing it already. Variant and criterion dungeons are fun but over too quickly and have lackluster rewards ensuring this content dies out after a couple weeks. Island sanctuary ended up being a relaxing but dull spreadsheet simulator, again not really giving you much incentive to continue with it once ranked up. The new deep dungeon is great as always thankfully. Relics are tied to manderville quests which have worn out their welcome and the act of getting relics has been reduced to grinding out tomestones instead of the checklists from previous expansions. There is no exploration areas as well. Extended time between patches is fine but patch content seems to be thinner and more along the lines of future proofing older expansions - great for new players, not so much for veterans running out of things to do. I found myself increasingly bored with the game and even unsubbed for the first time in 5 years.
With 7.0 seemingly taking a completely new direction, and ideally the bulk of the development team back on XIV dev after the release of XVI, I am hoping SE can make FFXIV into an engaging MMO after 2 years of lackluster EW patches and get players excited to return to Eorzea again.