Points that I like:
-The final days, at least up until after you're done with Thavnair and to a much more massive extent the Elpis are genuinely terrifying. To hear Y'shtola talk about how after someone transforms into a monster and after they die they essentially crumble away into nothingness was genuinely fucking spine chilling and the Radz-at-han outbreak that you see in person happen was very fucking haunting so I really have to give props to Ishikawa for not throwing punches especially since you see a fucking child turn into one then get stomped into dust by a much bigger blasphemy.
-Garlemald in ruins was probably one of my favorite parts of Endwalker mainly because I had two distinct emotions as I was wandering. One, I was feeling brutal empathy for the garleans as they were essentially trying to make do with a completely destroyed nation with nothing left to salvage and just hoping that things turn around. The second, it was a understanding that Garlemald's politics after Gaius had fled was doomed to fail and they arrogantly chose to hold on and this was the result. It still was a somber thing to think about, but one that I could see coming from a mile away.
-I didn't know if I should put the Endbringer (yes, she had a different name, but I can't for the life of me remember) in the mixed category or the points that I like, because on the one hand she actually is an interesting perspective on achievement and death rendering all of it meaningless. Regardless of what we do on planet earth, eventually it's going to end at some point and we're going to be forgotten to the point of non-existence. Future civilizations are not even going to know Earth or humanity was even a thing like we essentially get a feeling for when we go through the final dungeon and what the Endbringer relays to Hermes in Elpis. This actually makes her becoming an eikon and weaponizing Dynamis to just end everything make sense because to her, nothing mattered and she essentially could be assured of nothing. I really liked this villain, but I'll explain why I'm mixed about her in the next category.
-Last I'll touch upon Zenos. Guilty to admit, I fucking loved his final fight at the end and my favorite line from my character is "That, I'll have to admit." when he asks you if you feel the same thrill he does in battle. It's probably the schlockiest moment in FFXIV history and in any other story it probably would've been passed off as juvenile trite, but I'll admit, sometimes I like juvenile trite every now and then and having a final battle with him was almost fun in a stereotypical anime way.
Things I'm mixed about:
-So I touched upon why I liked the Endbringer and why I thought the Final Days were genuinely terrifying up until the ending of Elpis, on the other hand having the motive and reason why the Final Days was happening kind of deflated the tension that Thavnair was trying to portray. Because at first, the Final Days, seemed like a cosmic disasterish horror threat that seemed like it would require extremely drastic measures to stop and everyone's aether was decaying which sounded scary on paper. However, once we realized that a collective that formed a psuedo-eikon to destroy things because of an order they couldn't fully rationalize sort of deflated the tension astronomically. The reason is because it turned from drastic measures to "oh, we just go into space and kill this woman everything will go back to normal". So why am I mixed on this? Because if they went with the cosmic horror the final days I was thinking they were going with, I'd have literally no idea how they could resolve it without making me roll my eyes. Give more power to Hydaelin so she could rewrite laws? Sounds retarded. Make a primal of their own to do the same thing? Sounds utterly retarded. Make some asspull at the end where some artifact in a distant world by an ancient race experimenting with the laws of nature is the key to solving everything? I honest to god would've uninstalled the fucking game if they went with that and I would've emailed Ishikawa telling her she's a talentless hack.
-Fandaniel as a character I'm extremely mixed on. On one hand I get why he did everything that he did, on the otherhand his fucking identity is difficult to keep up with. At first it was "oh yeah I'm actually amon" and I was like who? Because the only thing I remember about him from the Crystal Tower was that he was the second to last boss, I didn't know he had significant lore behind him or at least it's been so long and I can't remember. Then it's like "no, I'm actually Hermes" which makes a hell of a lot more sense because both of them had the same reasons why they instigated things; pure existential nihilism. But for some reason he keeps being labeled Fandaniel and it got confusing for me.
-The part with the loporrits was cute, but their zone drags on for WAY too long. I like their musical score, but after hearing it for the 60th time on loop I actually had to mute the OST because my brain was starting to go numb. And unfortunately their music now gives me PTSD and they play it when Urianger interacts with them and I have to mute my audio. So why is it under mixed? Because again, I like and dislike it. I like it because it gives FFXIV its charm of having cute things, but I dislike because it went on too long.
Things I vehemently dislike (just one):
-There's only one character that I really could not stand in the expansion and that's the dragon character in Thavnair. Everything about him from his concept to his execution was a flat out failure for me because nothing about him or his relation to his nation makes any sense. For whatever reason he uses a simulacrum to wander around Thavnair helping out its people, but the odd thing about this decoy is its a small child and it never gets old. Why the Thavnairans had no suspicion that something was going on with this au ra child is beyond me, but his character got even worse. As the final days were happening in Thavnair and people are dying and transforming into mindless fucking husks yet he chooses to remain in reluctant seclusion because... why? His bullshit reason is because he doesn't want to start conflict with people in that country yet did none of the dragons in Coerthas fucking relay information to him that the war between man was over? Why didn't Midgarsormir tell him this when his dragon pup follows us everywhere we go? So he's content to let people be slaughtered like animals. Unbelievable. Then his little redemption arc at the end where he reveals himself makes utterly no sense either because everyone accepts him regardless. Nobody brings up that he let one of his own servants fucking die and his people get slaughtered and transformed while he did nothing. Maybe I'm irrational and maybe I'm not seeing things about him clearly and maybe I missed details, but I could not for the life of me sympathize or like this character.
