LordKasual
Banned
I read through every line of dialogue in FFXIV all the way up to the end of ARR (with Japanese voices on for cutscenes). Story was decent, dialogue was terrible. It came off as pretentious as it does this game, and every voiced cutscene was a blessing because I could hear the original, more straightforward script.
So it's not everyone.
Seems to be a love it or hate it affair.
There is no such thing as an "Original" FFXIV script. The ENG and JP translations are developed alongside one another. The localization team has even confirmed that some of it is done in English first and then translated into Japanese. And this was likely a very common scenario from Heavensward onward.
The problem here isn't "pretentiousness". It's you preferring a more "straightforward script". The Ivalice series and XIV was not written to cater to people who require straightforwardness to appreciate its content. And XIV continuously makes that very obvious.
Just about the only characters with a dialect so foreign that it's difficult to understand are Urianger and Midgardsormr. And that makes perfect sense with those two.