My Journey Through FFXIV Endwalker: Honest Takes And Spoiler Friendly Impressions



Note: Spoilers are towards the back of the video.
Throughout 2021 I played FFXIV off and on in a personal journey and have shared parts of that with you all.
With this saga of the FFXIV series complete with Endwalker, I revisit the road that brought me here, how I received this expansion’s story and gameplay, and a lot of introspection.

0:00 The best
1:30 The journey to Endwalker
13:22 Endwalker: What I like and didn’t like
28:51 SPOILERS! Random nitpicking

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#endwalker #ffxiv

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26 thoughts on “My Journey Through FFXIV Endwalker: Honest Takes And Spoiler Friendly Impressions”

  1. I love the FF14 story, ARR to EW.
    It is cliched but cliches exist for a reason.
    Things don't have to be different to be good. Doing a classic style story very well is an accomplishment in and of itself and to me that is what they did here.

    Also: First.

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  2. I agree on most parts. I think the ending was a little, meh. Not bad, but I wasn't amazed by it, and not my cup of tea type of story. Pretty much everything related to Dynamis not a fan of. I would have liked it more I think of everything related to Zodiark was the 80-90 story, and then everything else was the epilog patch content for .1 -> .4 and then something to open up "The adventure will continue" for .5+ patches
    I am looking forward to the patch content to see what story might evolve from that though.
    I have logged in since the final MSQ, but just trying out some other jobs to see how things have changed. My main WHM doesn't really have a button bloat thing, but trying out SAM currnelty, and feel button bloat is a bit of a thing. I might run around with PLD after that if I don't just wait for .1 to come out.
    Otherwise, I do have to say, I really do like Endwalker, every expac has been a blast. Just not super happy about the final story arch.

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  3. I'm halfway through the video but I get the urge to write this : are you saying that FF14 isn't the perfect game/mmo that everyone is saying it is these past few months ?
    I salute your way of presenting things

    insert sigma grindset theme

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  4. Hey Soul to answer your question about the part where you "travel" (spoilers):

    There's a little bit of magic (and fudging) involved here, but FF still somewhat respects what we interpret the rules of time travel are. As I understood it, FF sets the rule that you can't significantly change the past or else you risk the chance that a new branch is created and that the timeline of the past will lead to a different future than the one that you'll return to. So long as it's close enough, a converging of timelines occurs. Now, does that make the time travel bit good? Not necessarily. I'm just trying to say how it happened.

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  5. This very precisely sums up my gameplay experience. I like FFXIV as a story, but I have never really been able to get engaged with the gameplay mechanics.
    At the same time I have found it very difficult to make any social connections to other players. When I started out it was among other things because I heard so mush about the fantastic player base, and I probably hyped it too much in my head, but I haven't really felt that. I have mostly been met with what I would call friendly indifference.

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  6. Finally someone who has the guts to honestly and adequatly adress not only the goods of FF, but also it's bads. It's a decent Game, nothing more… the blind pro FF fanatism of literally the whole Internet the last couple of months was so annoying.

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  7. Soul, if you want more of the world ending robots do the Omega raids in Stormblood. That raid explains why the Robits were lost to melancholy that nothing was stronger because they didn't hear back from their scout. A good majority of the significant side content, Alliance raids and Raids especially, had cameos or large pieces of plot that tied to the MSQ. I know they probably won't force that content like they did for the Crystal Tower raids and Shadowbringers. There is a lot of endearing things during the MSQ that are missed out on with a narrow focus. They said this was a culmination of an eight year story and they meant that beyond just the MSQ. People who played during the ending event of 1.0 said a song from that even made an appearance.

    Ending Spoiler below:

    Also, Zeno was a plot device that helped end our story as the Warrior of Light. Throughout the Endwalker MSQ he knew he wasn't going to be the center of your attention until everything was done, till all threats towards your friends were taken care of.

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  8. on the story: i mostly agree with you, but for me sitting through those long ass cutscenes feels like hell since nothing is happening and there's been no actual fun gameplay for the past 12 hours. probably cuz i have seen another version of this story before, and it's been done to death, to hell, and to death again, it's just not intresting to me.
    On the other hand i'm kinda excited about the future since they've gotten this cliche, boring, and overdone storyline over with they could do something actually cool now.

    on the gameplay: yeah it sucks, there's damn near nothing intresting to do, to push me into wanting to get better, i feel like there's nowhere to go after 5 minutes because it's just that simple, there's no abilties that inform me as to what stats i want more than others. there's nothing in the combat that makes me want to do harder content, or even do content at all, the gameplay feels like an afterthought and the entire game feels like they just wanted to make an anime with a sub fee.

    the side content is great, player housing is more fun than i thoguht it would be and i was pretty hyped for it, shame actually getting a house is such a massive pain. atleast my apartment looks nice.
    Actually feel like that is the trend in 14, the content is great but the systems are infuriating or boring.

    in conclusion: yeah it's great, but i play video game to PLAY, not to watch.

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  9. It checks a lot of the tropes in many jRPGs because FF literallly pioneered all those tropes. Endwalker has been described as "the most Final Fantasy story to ever Final Fantasy", and thats gonna be an acquired taste. I've seen many reactions that EW was tailor made for them and as I've commented before on your previous FFXIV vids, CBU3 knows exactly what their audience wants and will never compromise their narrative vision, for better or for worse, to cater outside the core audience. You don't fix what isn't broken.

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  10. You could do player housing. You didn't mention once. COPIUM overdose brother. Sorry. Yes you missed a lot of the story, including the cycle of life aether which was the whole point of the ancients mythos. You did your best to complain about everything you possibly could and yes you did miss out because you skipped a AAR as well. As a now X while player that 4 piece set for havoc that has you press blade dance 15% more of the time it's just like your paladin. See you on the flipside cause there's nothing for me here anymore.

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  11. When you mention the music at the start, I knew it was gonna be that one. Now imagine doing all side quest with that playing in the background, I mute the music for that zones. I hope they maybe patch it.

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  12. 1: let go of your obsession with gear grinds. It’s affecting your ability to accurately critique games.

    2: don’t talk about perfecting rotations and general end game gameplay critiques when you yourself admit to never even doing any end game activities. Maybe if you went into savage you would have an experience worth talking about. As it is, story mode is just that. Story.

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  13. " I love this, BUT.. I loved that, BUT … I really enjoyed this, BUT… Was a lot of fun, BUT … This was great, BUT … ~ " Reality, you're shitting on the game, with your 'BUTS' … Sadly, releases of ANY OTHER MMO, launch day is FAR WORSE THAN FFXIV: Endwalker. Too bad your need to add another 'BUT'…

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  14. It always hurt me to hear people bought skip for ARR. It is an understatement how important ARR for the entire story. The character growth, how the developer's mind set change from time to time. Those are lost once you skip it. And dont lied to me, playing new game+ on ARR just a lied people force them self to believe.

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  15. I love this review and your critical take on it! I don't fully resonate with your review in many points especially the ones that personally put you off. But it was great listening to your take. You definitely helped let me question if my experience was too tainted as a XIV fanboi and me simply ignoring the blaring issues. You at least touched on objective pain points the game has, which nobody should argue with you on. But what was most interesting for me is how much of a difference my experience with EW was compared with yours and we both still came out with "it was a great" despite criticism. I too haven't felt the need to login after completing the MSQ despite there being Extreme raids to complete before the release of the normal mode 8 man raids in a few short days, mainly because there isn't any content for me to do that is worth sitting more than 30min in queue for, so i'm totally content in waiting for the game to stabilize before i dive in.

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  16. "Unapologetically shit", "garbage", "cliche", plus all the snark. It's the same needless negativity some players use when talking about WoW. The gameplay obviously doesn't grab you, so maybe concentrate on the parts that do and go deeper into them? Even the thing that you supposedly liked you still found a way to make negative. Sorry if I'm being harsh but this video didn't add anything of value to my day.

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  17. I can understand your take. What I feel the need to point out is that it appears as though the idea of experiencing content for its own sake is more resonant with players currently than the chase of gear. Which (as a 10+ year WoW player) I can say was the part I hated the most about WoW. After playing 14 for over a year now, I can say I’m much happier. I don’t feel “forced” to play through a raid to gear up. I go to a raid now because the encounter design is good and I just want get better and that’s not even putting in MSQ. Thrall should know your name by now. You should be drinking buddies. He just calls you Maw-Walker. You’re faceless and unimportant. That is a HUGE turn-off for me after personally saving the world like 15 times.

    TLDR – if gear is what you’re wanting I don’t think FF14 is the most conducive game to get that.

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