Massive wet fart of an ending to a 10 year long buildup. Things are introduced and never brought up again, Zenos can body-snatch for some reason, hey we just killed a god on the moon, we should go back to earth and check things out, nah let's go hang out with these obnoxious rabbits for 20 quests! The writer's aversions to killing established characters is greatly harming this game's writing and story potential. Obviously, killing off main characters doesn't automatically make the story good. But with a character like Yshtola having a fake-out death in every single expansion, can they at LEAST shake things up for once?
The fanservice by the end was lowering my already low opinion of this expansion. Zenos waltzes into Sharlayan despite being known far and wide as an extremely dangerous person, and the people in Sharlayan just let him hitch a ride to the WOL? Why???

Elpis was okay I guess. Everything bad in the universe being caused by a socially awkward bird girl who we just met 10 minutes ago is kind of....not a good explanation at all. They could've improved it with creative shots of a blue bird or a blue feather interspersed in cutscenes leading up to the arc, but I suppose symbolism is lost on this community, considering there are people who genuinely think Zenos is the next coming of Sephiroth. Hythlodaeus was obvious fujobait and neither he or Emet contributed much to the plot except for blatant fanservice. I barely remember Hermes because I was just so bored at that point it went in one ear and out the other. Post-patch story also blows but I haven't played this game for any more than 20 hours this year so I'm not writing about it (yet).

Gameplay is okay. They keep homogenizing the classes into "build up gauge to use big move" and it sucks really hard, but the trials and content make up for it a bit. ONLY a little bit, though. The Aglaia raids were supposed to match Ivalice's levels of difficulty, but they very much did not. It started off strong but petered off into ARR-esque AOE dodge fests. I didn't finish Panda raids so I don't have much of an opinion on those.
As another review said, there is no real action or combat in this game, just dancing around mechanics and keeping your rotation up. Customization is practically nonexistent in this game. Gear progression is an unending uphill trek, which is standard of MMOs but that doesn't mean it's not boring.

If this is your first exposure to Final Fantasy, there are way better games to play in this series. The constant catering to people who do nothing but afk in Limsa for 8 hours a day is starting to really harm this game.

With the original Ni No Kuni being one of my favorite games of all time I had high expectations for the sequel. Alas, Ni No Kuni 2 was a mere shell of the original. Drastically simplified combat, a hollow story, weak original score, and far too easy difficulty made this adventure a bore rather than a magical wonder. The kingdom management sim mechanics were OK but kept the player on too tight of a leash to feel like I was getting anything out of it. It was one of the few genuinely disappointing games I played in 2018, which was a serious bummer.