A story that starts off very slow, ramps up to some amazing highs, and falls into a big low in the most recent expansion. I might suggest doing the free trial up through the first few expansions if you haven't already bought the game / paid for it. If you have I think its too late technically unless you use another account. But then you'd have to go through it again on your paid account or buy the expansion again on that one.
On the plus side, the latest expansion is essentially an entirely new story arch, so you'll get a complete, and genuinely very good story experience finishing the one before it.
Also great OSTs through and through.
Gameplay wise, its pretty fun, but the early combat is a bit dull. Much more enjoyable at higher level / end game stuff once you have all your abilities, but I guess thats typical of MMOs. Most of the complaints people have about jobs/combat are things you will not encounter yourself until end game (job homogenization or the two minute 2rotation/burst windows) and then you can make your own decisions.
You'll encounter an annoyingly high amount of these groups >>717285169 unless you find yourself a nice group to play with in advance.

Despite its faults, I think it is still very much worth playing. For the story up through Endwalker, and for the raid content well its all pretty good through out even Dawntrail.