deleted the earlier plurk because I don't think I have the energy to go through my screenshots chronologically right now and do this in great detail, given that it's start at Elpis and cover the rest of the game, haha

so just a few impression of the final bits

- Zenos is now my least favourite part of the expansion by a very, very large margin, because I think he only works, and his extremely prominent place in the narrative there at the end is only earned, if you have an extremely specific interpretation of who your WoL is

and it's one that's derived from being An Adventurer Who Loves Adventuring And Battles so it's not super far-fetched or anything

but he seriously annoyed me so much that I had a hard time enjoying any of the ending bits after Meteon leaves to show us the way back to the ship

even after we'd beaten the shit out of Zenos.

You can be annoyed with him in dialogue but you can't just magic him crashing into the narrative and taking over for twenty minutes away

(the thought I had is that he feels a bit like a secret superboss in an older game, where you have to do a specific sequence of minor events throughout the game to unlock it, and otherwise you just skip back to the ship. XD)

Doesn't help that his battle was boring after everything the Endsinger threw at you and how wonderful the last phase of that battle feels.

(especially as a healer because you sure get a lot to do there and then suddenly, your friends' prayers make your job much easier.)

But yeah Zenos is my one big complaint, and I loved the rest!

(i did get a bit tired towards the end because I played through it so quickly and all the returning characters and the repetitions got to be a bit much, but that's more due to me not generally tearing through stories that quickly. It would not have been my preferred way for Endwalker either, but I needed to because of irl things and their timing.)

- I only really got emotional about G'raha's "sacrifice" because he brought the promise back up and then compared himself as the custodian of the Tower to the mechanic existence of the omicron and that really hit home

for the others, I liked them a lot still, pitting their own beliefs against the despair of these faded stars

(I also liked that from the moment they first discussed Thancred's sacrifice, it was made clear that this was temporary (or most likely temporary, in-universe, as the characters can't ever be quite as certain as we outside of the narrative can be) so we weren't supposed to believe they were really gone.)

so many flowers for Meteon! To be fair, when I recalled Hermes promising her a flower after I'd returned from Elpis, my thought was more "well that's okay, I'm a white mage, I've got BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD LILIES" but this was so much better.

I love that everyone seems to be imagining Emet and Hythlodaeus watching our exploits with popcorn

- I love Meteion realising that there never was one single answer to the question she was sent out to find an answer to, and that that is exactly the beauty and strength of that matter.

"Answers" played frequently in the second half of this expansions, bits of its lyrics made it into dialogue and event the names of several main story quests in Elpis, and that was really quite fitting.

- naming the last trial The Final Day was quite ingenious. When you leave the Duty, the text log will inform you, quite truly, that "The Final Day has ended."

- now I'm going back through my screenshots after all at least for a bit, and there's a status effect from one of the bosses in the final dungeon whose description I didn't catch in-game but I screenshotted it and now I'm having feelings

because it's called Craven Companionship and its description reads "Will suffer Fear if no allies are in range when this effect expires"

- it sure was a lot to enter the dungeon and have the first two dialogue pieces from the background npcs be "the plague will consume us all!" and "It's so hot... Can't breathe..."

- jumping back all the way to Venat's trial (which I loved a lot more than I usually do "I shall test you" battles because this one served a better purpose than just "I'm not letting you save the world unless you live up to my arbitrary standards" because if they try and fail, every living being will die, but if they don't try, at least some will live)

I talked to all the scions before forming a party and everyone has these inspiring meaningful things to say

and then I spoke to Urianger last and

he's just like "well one of us has to change"

(he points out that there are too many healers, and then explains that he will adjust, and he's a Lithomancer if you queue with the scions as a healer)

- but yeah there are many more great moments that i don't have the energy to go into today, but hopefully I'll be able to look through my screenshots more and compile a post this weekend

but yeah I loved it a lot

will probably love it even more with time passing and me maybe even replaying it at a much more leisurely pace

that suits me much better

(I stopped doing sidequests after Elpis (before then, I'd only left the ones on the moon undone) because I needed to get through the main story so I can like... do other things with my freetime again too <.< without having to worry about leaving things half-finished over the entire holiday break)

(I won't be able to do Pandaemonium when it comes out because of that but at least I can relax on msq spoiler avoidance now.)

HARD AGREE ON EVERYTHING YOU SAID ABOUT ZENOS

Honestly my single enormous beef w the expansion; if I HAD to fight him because he wouldn't let me leave at least let me tell him he's wrong.

But oh Meteion ;;