Disclaimer: I am not a high-end raider. This is all from the perspective of a casual player. I played this game for 3.5 years. TL;DR this expansion sucks. I have actually fallen asleep going through quests in this expansion.
Coming back to this game (and this review) after 6 months to grind a bit for mogtomes---my opinion on this expansion has not changed much. Outside of raiding, there is virtually nothing new for casual players to do. Gameplay is still the 1231231234123-type gameplay we've known for years, and dungeons are still straight lines so your female au'ra dark knight can waste no time getting back to afking in Limsa in their dollskill-tier "goth" glam as soon as possible. It seems the developers have taken notice of that, as they're dumbing down old content and completely revamping PVP maps that don't need it because I guess the community is too stupid to look at their map for more than 5 seconds and actually PLAY the game. If they change up any of the Stormblood trials to compensate for the fact that trust AI is braindead, it will spell the end of any remaining fun content in the game.
There is little reason to log into this game every day. In fact, now that I think about it, I haven't seen any hunt trains whatsoever in the 2 years since this expack came out, and I played for a good year after I finished the main story. Yes, I am well-aware of their "we want you to play other games!" spiel and lots of people LOVE whipping that one out to deflect criticism, but that doesn't change the fact that the content they're putting out is sloppy and low-effort. New content can be beaten in a 2-3 weeks, maybe even a week if you feel like it, and the patch cycle is every 5 months. Who is this game even for anymore? Where is the longevity, the challenge? Casual players won't stick around for short-lived content and hardcore raiders won't stick around for half-assed raids. If FF16 isn't taking developers away like people deluded themselves into believing, what the hell are they doing over at Square??? WHY DID IT TAKE 10 YEARS TO ADD PHYSICAL/MAGIC ATTACK INDICATORS???? This is THE most profitable Final Fantasy game TO DATE. Where is the money going? Modders can fix up the game's horrendous UI (amongst other things) in a few days, but the developers drag their feet and claim "it's too resource intensive :/" when asked about QOL changes.
The story right now is just FF4 fanfiction, and quest design has gone down the tubes (it was never that good in the first place, honestly. I don't know how I put up with it for 2000+ hours). I'm not sure how many more "go talk to person A, talk to person B, report to person C and go back to A" and pseudo-stealth quests I can handle. Alongside this, the whole "power of friendship" theme is getting a bit tired. Using it as the main theme of Endwalker and now FF16 has turned it into an empty platitude and made the writing painfully predictable. I have no issue with this sort of story, but when it's poorly executed (like how this and 16 was) it starts to get grating. It's such a messy wrap-up of a decade-long story that it's actually incredible. They spent 10 years beating into our heads that summoning primals is bad and tempering is dangerous but at the end of 6.0 they summon Garuda and all the other primals to hitch a ride on our spaceship because who gives a single flying fuck about consistency anymore. I don't even remember WHY they summoned them in the first place. Aether supply, maybe? That's usually how they weasel their way out of bad writing. Things happen in Endwalker not because it's the natural flow of the story, but because the writers needed it to happen. For example, the threat of the Telophoroi is instantly negated within 5 minutes of MSQ because we just so happen to create this invincibility device that we just so happen have the ability to mass produce. Crisis averted! Zenos can also bodysnatch people for whatever reason. He had ample opportunity to throw the WoL off the nearest cliff or incapacitate a Scion, but no, he decides to just stand and stare at them like a fucking moron. God forbid we have any stakes in the literal end-of-the-world expansion, right?
In conclusion, after 3 years of this game, I think I'm ready to throw in the towel. Unless they drastically overhaul the gameplay system, the quest design, get better writers, and actually give Y'shtola a fucking character arc because it's been 10 goddamn years and she's still a cardboard cutout (and kill Thancred because he sucks), I don't think I'll be coming back to this game anytime soon. A shame that it ends like this because I really did enjoy the game prior to this expansion, but with the dumbing down of content, said content being formulaic, and the devs barely taking feedback, I don't see the point in dropping $15 to play this game anymore. I wouldn't mind a week-long subscription to be quite frank, since that's about the amount of time I play this game anymore. They already nickle-and-dime you for basic shit like changing your name ($10 btw) and transferring worlds, what's a $5 sub tier going to hurt?
If you read this far, thanks for sticking around, you also probably think I hate this game, and if you haven't played any FF games before, I would not recommend this as your first. It is nowhere near the other FFs in terms of quality, so play literally any other game in the franchise. Any criticism of this expansion, whether it be about the lack of content or said content being lackluster is always met with "Just play another game", or "Just do old content!" and it drives me up the goddamn wall. This is an EXPANSION, it's supposed to add NEW content to keep you playing. Telling people to just play old content defeats the purpose of an expansion pack and is also a blatant deflection of criticism. I don't really care if it's "kino" or whatever you lot describe everything as, Square isn't going to give you a sub discount for defending their milquetoast output. Maybe I'll actually sub again and go through the rest of the patches to write another review before Dawntrail, but I literally had to drag myself through the first few awful post-patches in 2022 before I just quit the game completely. It truly blows my mind that people praise this as one of the best JRPG stories ever written. Sure, if you haven't played anything else! Anyway, the music is the last remaining positive of this game, and even that is wearing thin. There's more to music than nondescript chanting vocals.
Coming back to this game (and this review) after 6 months to grind a bit for mogtomes---my opinion on this expansion has not changed much. Outside of raiding, there is virtually nothing new for casual players to do. Gameplay is still the 1231231234123-type gameplay we've known for years, and dungeons are still straight lines so your female au'ra dark knight can waste no time getting back to afking in Limsa in their dollskill-tier "goth" glam as soon as possible. It seems the developers have taken notice of that, as they're dumbing down old content and completely revamping PVP maps that don't need it because I guess the community is too stupid to look at their map for more than 5 seconds and actually PLAY the game. If they change up any of the Stormblood trials to compensate for the fact that trust AI is braindead, it will spell the end of any remaining fun content in the game.
There is little reason to log into this game every day. In fact, now that I think about it, I haven't seen any hunt trains whatsoever in the 2 years since this expack came out, and I played for a good year after I finished the main story. Yes, I am well-aware of their "we want you to play other games!" spiel and lots of people LOVE whipping that one out to deflect criticism, but that doesn't change the fact that the content they're putting out is sloppy and low-effort. New content can be beaten in a 2-3 weeks, maybe even a week if you feel like it, and the patch cycle is every 5 months. Who is this game even for anymore? Where is the longevity, the challenge? Casual players won't stick around for short-lived content and hardcore raiders won't stick around for half-assed raids. If FF16 isn't taking developers away like people deluded themselves into believing, what the hell are they doing over at Square??? WHY DID IT TAKE 10 YEARS TO ADD PHYSICAL/MAGIC ATTACK INDICATORS???? This is THE most profitable Final Fantasy game TO DATE. Where is the money going? Modders can fix up the game's horrendous UI (amongst other things) in a few days, but the developers drag their feet and claim "it's too resource intensive :/" when asked about QOL changes.
The story right now is just FF4 fanfiction, and quest design has gone down the tubes (it was never that good in the first place, honestly. I don't know how I put up with it for 2000+ hours). I'm not sure how many more "go talk to person A, talk to person B, report to person C and go back to A" and pseudo-stealth quests I can handle. Alongside this, the whole "power of friendship" theme is getting a bit tired. Using it as the main theme of Endwalker and now FF16 has turned it into an empty platitude and made the writing painfully predictable. I have no issue with this sort of story, but when it's poorly executed (like how this and 16 was) it starts to get grating. It's such a messy wrap-up of a decade-long story that it's actually incredible. They spent 10 years beating into our heads that summoning primals is bad and tempering is dangerous but at the end of 6.0 they summon Garuda and all the other primals to hitch a ride on our spaceship because who gives a single flying fuck about consistency anymore. I don't even remember WHY they summoned them in the first place. Aether supply, maybe? That's usually how they weasel their way out of bad writing. Things happen in Endwalker not because it's the natural flow of the story, but because the writers needed it to happen. For example, the threat of the Telophoroi is instantly negated within 5 minutes of MSQ because we just so happen to create this invincibility device that we just so happen have the ability to mass produce. Crisis averted! Zenos can also bodysnatch people for whatever reason. He had ample opportunity to throw the WoL off the nearest cliff or incapacitate a Scion, but no, he decides to just stand and stare at them like a fucking moron. God forbid we have any stakes in the literal end-of-the-world expansion, right?
In conclusion, after 3 years of this game, I think I'm ready to throw in the towel. Unless they drastically overhaul the gameplay system, the quest design, get better writers, and actually give Y'shtola a fucking character arc because it's been 10 goddamn years and she's still a cardboard cutout (and kill Thancred because he sucks), I don't think I'll be coming back to this game anytime soon. A shame that it ends like this because I really did enjoy the game prior to this expansion, but with the dumbing down of content, said content being formulaic, and the devs barely taking feedback, I don't see the point in dropping $15 to play this game anymore. I wouldn't mind a week-long subscription to be quite frank, since that's about the amount of time I play this game anymore. They already nickle-and-dime you for basic shit like changing your name ($10 btw) and transferring worlds, what's a $5 sub tier going to hurt?
If you read this far, thanks for sticking around, you also probably think I hate this game, and if you haven't played any FF games before, I would not recommend this as your first. It is nowhere near the other FFs in terms of quality, so play literally any other game in the franchise. Any criticism of this expansion, whether it be about the lack of content or said content being lackluster is always met with "Just play another game", or "Just do old content!" and it drives me up the goddamn wall. This is an EXPANSION, it's supposed to add NEW content to keep you playing. Telling people to just play old content defeats the purpose of an expansion pack and is also a blatant deflection of criticism. I don't really care if it's "kino" or whatever you lot describe everything as, Square isn't going to give you a sub discount for defending their milquetoast output. Maybe I'll actually sub again and go through the rest of the patches to write another review before Dawntrail, but I literally had to drag myself through the first few awful post-patches in 2022 before I just quit the game completely. It truly blows my mind that people praise this as one of the best JRPG stories ever written. Sure, if you haven't played anything else! Anyway, the music is the last remaining positive of this game, and even that is wearing thin. There's more to music than nondescript chanting vocals.