Finally decided to review ARR after being done with it for I guess 3 weeks now? Probably more or less going to be repeating what a lot of people have already said. ARR itself is okay from a story standpoint. It's the generic beginning to any JRPG. It's not great, but it's not bad to just load up and play a few hours of. If you've played the first 10 or so hours of any JRPG, you've got the ARR experience. Just world-building, character establishment, and the very very very beginnings of a plot. Again, not bad, but nothing great.
What makes ARR annoying is all the constant backtracking you have to do on top of the padding they've added in between important quests. Accidentally getting 2 different types of aether crystal before you find the wind one you need to fight Garuda comes to mind. The constant returning to the Waking Sands when they literally have linkpearls is also annoying, and while Square has started giving you aetheryte tickets to make the journey less annoying, it would be better if they just teleported you directly there. Presently I'm in the post-HW patches and it is SO nice for them to say 'let us reconvene in Ishgard' and then boom you're there in Ishgard and all you have to do is find whoever you need to talk to instead of navigating the world map to teleport where ever you need to go. This alone could make ARR so much less painful, but it also doesn't make up for the amounts of padding they have added to pace the game out.
ARR's characters are all pretty boring. I just finished 3.0 and I'm still not really attached to any of the scions outside of Urianger, whom I like because despite all his cryptic weirdness, he's genuinely just a really nice dude. The characters aren't bad, but they're there to serve the plot, and that's about it. Given how much of a slog ARR is, I didn't find myself compelled to look for any side material to flesh them out more either.
The thing that really annoys me about ARR, however, is the way people talk about it. I'm truly in the camp that you can skip ARR and as long as you read a wiki or someone's SparkNotes version of the events that happen in it, you really won't miss anything. And 40 hours (roughly how much time I spent in ARR mostly just pushing through MSQ alone) for mediocre content before "FFXIV gets good" is not something a lot of people can afford. Or want to do. Personally I'm glad that I played ARR even if I will never touch it again, but I feel bad for the people who have been pressured by the community to push through its blandness and ultimately ended up dropping the game entirely due to the pressure to "not skip". This attitude is what I find most annoying about ARR rather than the game itself lol.
What makes ARR annoying is all the constant backtracking you have to do on top of the padding they've added in between important quests. Accidentally getting 2 different types of aether crystal before you find the wind one you need to fight Garuda comes to mind. The constant returning to the Waking Sands when they literally have linkpearls is also annoying, and while Square has started giving you aetheryte tickets to make the journey less annoying, it would be better if they just teleported you directly there. Presently I'm in the post-HW patches and it is SO nice for them to say 'let us reconvene in Ishgard' and then boom you're there in Ishgard and all you have to do is find whoever you need to talk to instead of navigating the world map to teleport where ever you need to go. This alone could make ARR so much less painful, but it also doesn't make up for the amounts of padding they have added to pace the game out.
ARR's characters are all pretty boring. I just finished 3.0 and I'm still not really attached to any of the scions outside of Urianger, whom I like because despite all his cryptic weirdness, he's genuinely just a really nice dude. The characters aren't bad, but they're there to serve the plot, and that's about it. Given how much of a slog ARR is, I didn't find myself compelled to look for any side material to flesh them out more either.
The thing that really annoys me about ARR, however, is the way people talk about it. I'm truly in the camp that you can skip ARR and as long as you read a wiki or someone's SparkNotes version of the events that happen in it, you really won't miss anything. And 40 hours (roughly how much time I spent in ARR mostly just pushing through MSQ alone) for mediocre content before "FFXIV gets good" is not something a lot of people can afford. Or want to do. Personally I'm glad that I played ARR even if I will never touch it again, but I feel bad for the people who have been pressured by the community to push through its blandness and ultimately ended up dropping the game entirely due to the pressure to "not skip". This attitude is what I find most annoying about ARR rather than the game itself lol.