ARR (The base game) is necessary exposition for the good parts (AKA: Pretty much every expansion lvl 50 onwards), but it is a SLOG, It's so slow that I'll admit that it filtered me at first, the first 50-100 hours of this game that I played were nearly 2-3 years ago on the 20$ Starter Edition, I dropped it after getting a Job to lvl 30/50ish, and I only picked it up again about a half a year ago on a whim after seeing Endwalker (The current expansion) win an award at the Game Awards...

...And I will say that it was completely worth it, after picking it up again randomly, and not thinking that I was going to like it, I ended up buying the latest expansion and playing all the way through to the current patch (6.5), and I can say with confidence that it has become one of, if not my favorite game of all time for the main story alone, I usually take reviews about stories like this with a grain of salt, but this is the one scenario where I can say that it has earned it's laurels.

Lalafells rise up.

ARR (The base game) is necessary exposition for the good parts (AKA: Pretty much every expansion lvl 50 onwards), but it is a SLOG, It's so slow that I'll admit that it filtered me at first, the first 50-100 hours of this game that I played were nearly 2-3 years ago on the 20$ Starter Edition, I dropped it after getting a Job to lvl 30/50ish, and I only picked it up again about a half a year ago on a whim after seeing Endwalker (The current expansion) win an award at the Game Awards... ...And I will say that it was completely worth it, after picking it up again randomly, and not thinking that I was going to like it, I ended up buying the latest expansion and playing all the way through to the current patch (6.5), and I can say with confidence that it has become one of, if not my favorite game of all time for the main story alone, I usually take reviews about stories like this with a grain of salt, but this is the one scenario where I can say that it has earned it's laurels. Lalafells rise up.