Endgame Viable

I finished the Endwalker Main Scenario Quest, at least up to 6.0.

I don’t know what comes next, but I understand there’s somewhat of a story “reset” after this point.

I’ve been wanting to change my main character for a while, but I’ve never found a good time to do it. It always felt weird to experience the Main Scenario Quest with a different character, since it’s always been my old character (pictured above) saving the world and building relationships with the Scions. I’ve even tried to age her a little bit with each expansion to make her look older and wiser. But the conclusion of 6.0 seems like a fantastic time to retire one character and swap in a new one, because it really felt like The End of the story.

I’ll have to come up with some hand-wavy headcanon reason for why my new main character has all the memories of the previous main character, and why all the Scions think the new character is the old character. (A major defect in the FFXIV story presentation… their expectation is that you’ll use the same character from the beginning to the end of time.)

Final Fantasy is all into souls, so it isn’t that far-fetched to imagine the old main character fell into a coma but their soul got shoved into the body of a new main character because “something something aether transferrence.”

Anyway here’s some highlights and lowlights from the expansion.

Highlights

• Voice acting. I’m always pretty enthralled by the voice acting in FFXIV, and this expansion was no different. As always, I just wish all the MSQ dialog was voice acted, but I have to imagine it’s more of a logistical impracticality than a lack of money in their case.
• The Mothercrystal. AN 8-PLAYER TRIAL WITH NPCS. The greatest thing ever. (The NPCs were not as good as one might hope, though, they routinely led me astray.)
• Endwalker. That is, the last quest in Endwalker, which is usually named the same as the expansion, which in this case was Endwalker. They really know how to end a story with a bang. Really felt like a definitive “end” to a multiple-expansion-long story arc.
• Meteion. A very creepy character with great voice acting. Too bad she wasn’t in it more.
• Hurray for nihilism. Really enjoyed the overall theme of existential nihilism toward the end. Beats the ordinary fantasy fare about power-hungry primals and Ascions any day.
• Drunk Urianger.
• Y’shtola turning us into frogs.
• Loporitts are pretty funny.
• The Ranged DPS role quest chain was a pretty good story too.

Lowlights

• In From The Cold. The quest where you had to sneak around as a lowly Garlean soldier without any superpowers. Worst, most annoying quest that Final Fantasy XIV has ever done. Besides the weird fact that anyone can apparently just kidnap and neuter the Warrior of Light whenever they feel like it, the mechanics were awful.
• Children Are Our Future. The quest where you follow that kid around the Garlemald ruins to unlock an aetherial current. Second worst, most annoying quest that FFXIV has ever done.
• Worthy Of His Back. The quest where you fight Venat in a solo duty. Extremely annoying to go from dead simple questing gameplay up to that point to suddenly hard raid-level gameplay for one quest.
• As The Heavens Burn. The one where you had to play as Alphinaud and Alisaie for a while. Do I really have to say that it sucks to have to play a whole different job that you’re unfamiliar with and don’t care that much about? Make it a cut scene. (Same for A Frosty Reception, where you play as Thancred sneaking around a Garlemald base.)
• Waiting two plus hours in the Duty Finder for The Dark Inside trial. I get that we’re supposed to be sociable and play together because whatever, but nobody plays that trial anymore and waiting sucks. Give us the ability to run trials solo, too. They proved it’s possible in this very expansion. Surely 90% of the playerbase would love it. Surely less than 10% of the playerbase can easily jump into an 8-person group for the MSQ whenever they feel like it. Why are we still catering to them? Get Claude or Gemini to figure it out if it’s too hard for you, sheesh.

Comments

• Did we really need the Zenos thing? It felt rather out of place. I can’t imagine anyone was out there thinking, “Oh I can’t wait to see more Zenos and resolve that storyline.” At least it’s over now. I hope? Luckily it wasn’t that intrusive except at the end.
• Most of the Scions didn’t have much of a story arc, they were just “there.” Thancred, Y’shtola, Estinien, and G’raha Tia, in particular. The twins at least had some family drama. And Urianger had a little bit of drama with long-forgotten Moenbryda’s parents. Otherwise not much. G’raha always seems like he’s bashfully hitting on my character though, I can’t tell if that’s intentional or not.

P.S. I finished speedrunning my alt Machinist character through Endwalker so that I can switch to it for 6.1 and beyond. I had previously bought him a Shadowbringers MSQ skip, and recently I bought him a level 90 job boost for Machinist so I didn’t have to grind from 66 in dungeons for weeks, so then I was able to pick up the Dawntrail Viper job at level 80 and use that for the MSQ run.

It took about 16 1/2 hours, not counting the roughly nine total hours of waiting time for The Dark Inside trial and the roughly three total hours of waiting time for The Final Day trial.

But he’s now ready to take over starting from 6.1, Newfound Adventure.