I wouldn't consider myself the biggest XIV fan but this game definitely has its moments under all that tedium and monotony of a tab targeting MMO that being said I'm a little disappointed in endwalker, I don't think that endwalker is a bad expac mind you far from it I think what EW brings to the table is excellent but having said that this story really needed another comb over because it is rife with incredibly weak execution and the most monotonous filler I've seen in an MMO so far.

I'm not exactly against the pacing in XIV but it can absolutely murder interest if you're going from expansion to expansion with an ever unchanging pacing structure that seems designed to waste as much time as possible while forsaking giving plot elements actual time to breathe the fact garlemald and zodiark are handled in the actual story feels really weak and somewhat insulting if you were expecting these plot elements to take up more then two quest chains then the story has to take a huge detour to actually set up and tell you what its going to do in the next 5 or so hours and frankly I was really exhausted by the time I was approaching the last few quest chains.

Again this is not to say i despise or even dislike EW's story but man that second half really needed another look over the whole end of the world aspect doesn't feel as urgent as it should either the towers are completely forgotten about within like 2 hours of story and I never felt pressured to do anything which is a far cry from a game they released much later XVI which actually handled that aspect far better and grander then they did.

Good expansion, mediocre for a decent chunk story and really bad story I think people are possibly crazy for thinking this was better then shadowbringers lol.

This game has so much potential. It could be the greatest game of all time, and at times it is. But it falls into the trap of being a FromSoft game. Because it's a FromSoft game it is unnecessarily difficult, with no good reason for this. There are several points with huge difficulty spikes for no real reasons other than artificially boosting the runtime so streamers can shout at the game more. It also runs horribly on the PS4. I had to literally put my console in my fridge during some of the bossfights in order to avoid overheating. It really is disappointing that this game is so good, but so focused on being difficult and on looking good, that it puts these two things over having a fun experience. I really really wanted to love Elden Ring, and there are times when I do love Elden Ring, every 3 months or so, I get back into this game for like a weekend, and I love it, until I find an enemy too difficult to defeat and I go focus on something important until I pick the game back up later on and restart the whole cycle. I truly do want to love Elden Ring, but I just don't have the time to sink into grinding this game.