Lurker > Mac Arrowny

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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Thordan works better as a symbol than a real character I think. For me the atmosphere is the best part of HW. Ishgard is my favorite city in the game by far, with the best town theme by far. I love being there. I love Estinien too though.

I'll agree that Azys Lla isn't great. WAY too big.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I'm pretty sure 90% of the people who love it are into it because of the non philosophical aspects, but whatever.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Wow, I could not care less about any of that.

I thought HW was almost as good as ShB and better than EW too, which seems to be an uncommon opinion.

trdl23 posted...

Also yeah, the implication was that Meteion accidentally became a catalyst for all the suffering in the worlds she saw, which led to people feeling more despair, which pushed made her amplify it more and more.

Yeah, that part's interesting. Wish we saw more of it, though it doesn't apply to the civilizations that were dead before she arrived.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I might not've seen all the ones in the last dungeon. I remember the one civilization having two groups that fight each other, then inventing some sort of weapon so powerful that it kills everyone on the planet (intentionally?). Then the third civilization creates a god to kill them all (I feel like this was a reference to primals, but I'm not totally sure).

I did see that Meteion made other planets worse/destroyed other civilizations, too. I would've liked to have seen those though. Only seeing one side sucked.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

People are saying it wasn't as 'hype' as Shadowbringers, but I think they missed the point. We're not at Ultima Thule to kill anyone. We're there to prove that hope is greater than despair, and that even though the universe is a cold and uncaring place, our actions give it warmth and meaning. And everything, everything worked perfectly from that standpoint, as did who the final boss was. It's not Meteion -- she's 'defeated' before we even embark on the final dungeon, as the fact she turns back into a little blue bird proves. The final enemy is the sum of the universe's sorrow, suicidal ideations, depression and regret and it's incredible how we get to kick it in the fucking face. As a tank, the fact that we got the starring role by LB3ing in this of all duties couldn't make me happier.

AND THEN ZENOS DUDE. Can I say how much I fucking love what they did with him? There's technically three answers you can give him and I appreciate they let people have room to be boring but thematically speaking, why pick anything but the first one? It's so perfect! After denying despair, what else is there to do but live? And that's exactly what Zenos offers us there, genuinely and without catches or threats, a chance to push ourselves to the utmost and celebrate life by going to and beyond our limits. Saving the full version of the final theme for him was truly inspired. I didn't see it coming, and actually lost my shit when I got to mano a mano him. I want an EX of that solo duty so badly now, ughhhhhh

So you love that you're not there to kill anyone but you also love killing Zenos? What?

And again, you do nothing to stop the suicidal ideations of countless alien races. It's insane to me that they all wish for oblivion with no exceptions other than Etheirys.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Some various thoughts:

I feel like in this expansion I preferred the slower parts to the more action packed parts. I was more into the Loporrit stuff than Garlemald, for example, and Elpis was my favorite part of the whole thing. Just going around talking to people without pressure is nice.

Likewise, I want to say that I like FFXIV more when the MC's more isolated. Being with all the Scions for the whole expansion was a big negative, partly because they slow things down so much. It's much better when there's only one or two around at a time, or when they only come together for big moments. Having them separated at the start of Heavensward and Shadowbringers is a big part of what makes those expansions so great for me. Gives more of a sense of adventure and isolation. On the plus side, we get Estinien and G'raha with us most of the time, which is great, since I like them way more than the classic scions. On the negative side, Alphinaud is way more interesting when he's suffering than when he's succeeding, as with several of the others, and he has more successes here than in any other part of the game.

It's cool how varied the areas are. The six areas are all for totally different regions, which gives them a different feel than any other part of the game. Going around exploring them was almost always fun ,though Labyrinthos would've benefited from being smaller, and exploring the moon (outside of the Loporrit city) was a lot less interesting than I hoped. I know it's the moon, but I think there should've been more variety and interesting stuff to find. Elpis was the best, naturally.

I was kind of disappointed this expansion wasn't giving us any cool new important characters, since the previous expansions were good at that. But then we got Venat, who's awesome, and Hythlodaeus who isn't technically new, but is cool here in a different way than he was previously. I loved how they made Hydaelyn a good character since there wasn't much to her before.

Fandaniel was shit. All his scenes and boss fights were lame. Bringing back Asahi and not letting you punch him in the face was dumb. Zenos was boring early on, but all his scenes after beating Zodiark are pretty hilarious. I wish there was an option to just ignore him at the end - feels like that would've been more satisfying. Him showing up as a dragon to rescue you made me burst out laughing and was fabulous.

People seemed to like the themes of the later stuff, but I really wasn't into the "all civilizations other than humanity give up on life and desire death" thing. I wish they'd emphasized that those were only the ones Meteion ran into or that she misinterpreted somehow. Stuff like giving up on life because you know the universe is going to die feels bad since we in the real world already know the universe is going to die and no one really cares. I think this could've been executed a lot better. I liked the Omicrons and the Dragons, but the Ea weren't my thing. Meteion was a pretty good concept that I wish I'd liked better. The final dungeon and what came after were excellent, at least. Really great climactic scenes.

As soon as Estinien sacrificed himself it was pretty obvious they were all coming back, so those sacrifices didn't really hit me hard or anything. Still good scenes, and bringing back Emet+Hydrolathus at the end was a fantastic surprise since I thought the Scions were going to come back instead.

Finally, this is probably something that no one else cares about, but it bothers me a lot that traveling back to Elpis creates a stable time loop. We already know that G'raha created a new timeline when he traveled back, so why didn't that happen here? They could even have had a fun thing where WoL saves another world, but still has to go back and deal with their own because they won't abandon their original timeline. I would've liked that more, at least. The erasing memories stuff seems kinda contrived, and you'd think Venat would've been competent enough to stop the original Final Days early with all her foreknowledge...
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Estinien: Why are you so concerned for me, anyway?
WoL: Because I love you.

game keeps failing to give the good options ;_;
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Is the Zenos slugmatch hilarious if you're a Lala?
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.