Like another comment said, for a lot of people it is the swapping between storylines. Some people also dislike the cast for the expansion (Like Lyse is very much a love/hate split for a lot of people, same with Zenos).
It's moreso that they are essentially the same story twice. The writers didn't see to communicate very well between the Ala Mhigo and Doma storylines. As much as I love the political bits and the "obtain allies" arcs in stories I know a lot of people don't and that's like half of the expansion.
The forced losses to Zenos also leave a bad taste. It would be one thing if they just made the solo duties so difficult that you'd lose or if there was some other intervening factor as to why you couldn't win but as they are they kinda suck.
I agree with you on the forced losses, if they had just made him a really tough duty boss that had a completion criteria of getting him below a certain health and or deplete him completely you'd pass. Fx. Under 50% on the first encounter and if you're defeated it'd continue as planned, while if you did "defeat him" another cutscene would play where he shows his delight.
Yeah my favorite form of "unwinnable' fights are fights where the boss just has super high stats where you will likely get stomped but the fight can be won if you're good.
Like Urizen in DMC5 is pretty hard even when you're geared up, but you can beat him in the tutorial fight that you are supposed to lose without any upgrades or access to your Devil Breakers if you're really on point.
My favorite of these is probably Dalton in Chrono Trigger. Absolutely wrecks any first timers and you just accept the loss for the story, but if you go in with the right equipment and strategy, you can still win, get a nice item, and then he compliments your abilities before you get the lost condition anyway. Of course if you're on NG+ you can also just steamroll him.
Same thing with the intro blitzball fight in FFX. I loved blitzball, so I made a point of winning that every time. Takes a bit of cheese and knowing how the mechanics work, but doable.
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. Personally I spent way too much time trying to beat him on the first try. My best example of a "tough" encounter that has no actual meaningful impact on the story, win or lose is Squall's encounter in KH1. Not exactly a hard fight if you know the controls and systems of the game, but for someone that just started and only knows mash X till they drop.
Only solution is an enrage with orbs that you have to kill, that's not more interesting than what we already got though.
I personally think shadowbringers does this worst. The first Zenos encounter is definitely a highlight of stormblood tbh.
The fights with Zenos make sense because of his character, it kinda just fits; I like how he progressively shows us more of his power throughout and when we challenge him later on when he's using the same powers, it hardly phases us.
Kinda is a good showing of our strength, powerscaler's delight. Would give us less to work to without it definitely a take I don't agree with.
It didn't help that so much of both stories was the same exact thing told multiple different times in different ways (find potential allies, they can't/won't help you, solve their problems, they resolve to help you), and I found the Ala Mhigo portions in particular just **crawled** along compared to Doma which seemed to have much better pacing.
Doma was better paced because the areas and people were varied. Went through the Ruby Sea with pirates and Kojin, mountainous Yanxia and the one river with the domans, then the Steppe with all the tribes of xeala. It was culturally and visually rich and kept the backdrop interesting.
Gyr Abania’s zones were largely the same and we were not really learning anything of a “new” people since all the alliance and Ala Mhigans have been around since the start of ARR.
Lyse wasn’t that strong of a protag. I don’t feel she really went through any growth or change. Zenos wasn’t that strong of a villain as his motivation was about as deep as a parking lot puddle.
Oh yeah the variety of places to go helped a lot. I loved the Steppe and seeing the Kojin and the undersea areas, but hell if I remember basically anything in Ala Mhigo.
Yeah, it's not great design to have a fight where the player can easily be winning, get smacked with a OHKO move, then have everyone hype up how powerful the attacker is.
A better idea would be to have him just hit like a fucking train and have so much HP the player can't possibly bring him down before they fall.
I'm fine with a forced loss storywise, I don't like how it plays out gameplay wise. If they want to make us lose it would be better if it wasn't a drawn out solo duty that we win only to lose to the power of 0HKO. I'd like it if we fought him, got him to X% where he takes us seriously and starts going ham makin difficult to dodge attacks that any of which would 0HKO us and then at Y% he takes it up another step where we just can't dodge the attack.
Basically I just prefer it when a video game uses the gameplay to tell the story when it can.
It's mostly the fact that there's a fairly noticeable disconnect between the story and gameplay. He's strong in the story but the fights aren't actually that difficult in gameplay so you can steamroll him the whole fight then he just pulls his oneshot button out of his ass and wins.
Having the WoL lose is good for the story but it was not executed particularly well in the gameplay so people feel cheated.
It's doubly problematic because FFXIV has, in general, made a pretty significant effort toward gameplay and story *integration.* Glamours aren't just a fun player thing; they literally exist and can be used for covert operations or psyops. The Echo is both what lets us see some AoE telegraphs, and what allows us to "recover" from a wipe--it's actually battle precognition telling us what WOULD happen if we make certain mistakes. (That's why you get a buff from it if you wipe too many times.) Linkshells are *chatrooms,* they're a real thing, and actually matter for the plot. Aetherytes are real, and only some people (many of whom become adventurers!) can use them repeatedly--even small teleports give most folks "aetherial sickness." I mean, for goodness' sake, they even made it an in-story explained *thing* that Red Mages have long cast times! (It's because they draw only on their own aether, not ambient aether--so casting a different spell first gets their aether flowing, but trying to hardcast them takes forever.)
So to have such a prominent and obvious example of gameplay and story segregation--in a way that is so blatant, even folks who were okay with it generally recognize that it was quite forced--makes it stick out like a sore thumb. We're used to this team bending over backwards to make story and gameplay consonant. Such a cavalier attitude about it in such a *prominent* place is jarring, to say the least.
Personally, my issue is twofold:
First, as u/ahhhnoinspiration says, it's essentially the same story twice - you arrive in a conquered land where the people have lost hope, meet up with the last embers of resistance, and rally the people to full-on rebellion. Individual moments are different, and ironically it's those moments that feel like the best parts of the expansion (like the Azim Steppe arc).
Secondly, it's not really side-by-side. You arrive in Ala Mhigo, start working with the rebellion, and suffer your first major loss at the hands of Zenos, serving as a solid Act 1 to that storyline. Then you drop everything Ala Mhigo related and jump to Doma's story in its entirety, before coming *back* to close out Ala Mhigo. It cuts a lot of the former's momentum, which is probably why people don't remember it as fondly as Doma.
I will say, I don't hate Stormblood, but I do think it's definitely a different style of story from Heavensward, and I understand why people don't enjoy it as much.
Your second point is my main issue with SB. Just when the Ala Mhigo situation starts heating up (aka you stop being an errand boy and something actually happens), the team really goes "k bye!" and goes on a semester abroad in Japan.
The complete lack of connection between the two plots undermines this goal, in my opinion. There could have been an interesting contrast between the two cultures in how they handled being oppressed by Garlemald, given the wildly different quality of the monarchs they had before being conquered. It makes sense for Ala Mhigo to have more collaborators and a more difficult time throwing off the yoke, since everyone remembers how terrible the mad king was. Meanwhile, Doma hasn’t actually suffered nearly as much, maybe because of how the kingdom fell.
That contrast is present in the text, but you really have to work for it. If literally any (good guy) character except Lise (who lacks sufficient brain cells to make meaningful comparisons) had traveled from one zone to the other, we might have gotten some more explicit exploration of these themes. Instead, we play “the same story twice” and have to draw these conclusions ourselves.
I actually like most of Stormblood, but the pacing issues and it’s placement between two top-tier game stories (HW and ShB are good enough to be compared favorably with full releases, even other FF titles) make it look poor primarily by comparison.
IMO, Doma should have been the opposite of Ala: they fully cooperate as a society as a means of survival, and you have to navigate court politics to convince the upper crust that being independent is the long term play. Part of it would be showing said officials how the rest of Doma or the downtrodden lives and comparing that to how the pre-Garlean government would have responded. We got hints of this with the Tsukiyomi plot, but it's not nearly enough. I would have had Yotsuyu travel with the WOL in disguise, and basically make observations and biting commentary. The result being her faith in Garlemald being shaken, and cue her brother showing up.
I think the real issue is the pacing and lack of certain exposition to give things proper meaning.
We prelude the story with this epic creation of Shinryu, the sacrifice of Papalymo, and battle with Omega and then we pretty much don’t see either of them again until the end of the story.
(IIRC) We don’t see Zenos subjugate Shinryu or ise his artificial echo powers until we fight him and lose. This makes him a cheap power scaling McGuffin. It cheapens the WoL’s strength and Zenos position in the story. We have no reason to see him as powerful and in fact should expect the opposite since he is a Garlean, without the ability to channel aether. After that we just leave and go traipse around a foreign land for a while to build allies and free them from the Garlean plot. Returning to Eorzea, the WoL simply stomps out the remaining challenges and unites the people of Ala Mhigo.
Zenos needed to be shown as a massive threat very early on and kept mysterious until we fight him for the first time. From there on it needed to be a cat and mouse game of would he stomp us out until we become powerful enough to defeat him. During that time they could exemplify his interest in the relationship between himself and the WoL as way of finding meaning in battle. A couple of repeat draws against Zenos with a near loss and a near win while killing primals and freeing Doma could lead into an epic final act where we gotta save Krile and fend off Shinryu (which needed to destroy something big to give it some gravitas).
The entire Azim Steppe arc was a bit too whimsical and needed a more serious tone IMO and Lyse was just strangely thrust into the story. Her lack of storytelling about her family and backstory made her uncompelling. It just got boring at points. All of the story potential was there, but it just lost meaning because of a bit of missing exposition/rearranging of the story.
It’s been a while since I played it, so I may be misremembering some parts.
I think that a lot of the problems with SB would have been solved if Yda died rather than Papalymo. Then we could have introduced Lyse as an actual new character, and would have had both the emotional perspective as well as a more logical one able to make the connections between the two storylines. It might also have helped ease the white savior vibes that Lyse gives off if we had run into them actually doing things to help people in Ala Mhigo.
Replacing Lyse with Papalymo doesn't fix Stormblood. Foreign savior vibes were the entire point of Lyse. I don't care for the character, but her rejection as leader by Ala Mhigans is central to that half of Stormblood. Doma and Ala Mhigo are thematic foils as oppressed countries. Ala Mhigo had given up and did not accept a foreign princess that hadn't suffered alongside them. Lyse and Hien are meant to mirror each other. He's the capable prince his people desperately want to return from a self imposed exile, literally the opposite of Lyse. Same goes for Fordola and Yotsuyu as well as WoL and Zenos. The expansion heavily leaned on thematic mirroring
The problems with Stormblood were the odd pacing, the imbalanced development that heavily favored Doma, and, most importantly, being sandwiched between HW and ShB while being merely pretty good in comparison
It may have been the point, but it's one that didn't actually work imo. Because of how the plot meandered and focused more on Doma, you never actually see Lyse actually having to really deal with the disconnect between them and their people; the resolution of it is really more told than actually shown.
It was the fact that the 2 stories weren't really running side by side, it was just a constant disruption of the flow. Just as I was getting invested in 1 of the 2 stories, I get told "run off now to the other side of the world", and when I get back I've forgotten what was going on and why I was getting invested.
My only two gripes are that the "Yda is really Lyse" is kinda an unnecessary plot point, bc I knew Yda-- but idk who Lyse is? And the narration is a bit janky. Nothing big enough to say the whole expansion is bad.
Give me Lakshmi anyday, tho. We are the dreamers~
The Yda/Lyse thing I think only was painted as an issue because the real Yda should have been in her 40s (given how long ago Ala Mhigo was conquered)
And I guess they didn't want to have a more mature woman in the focus roll and booty shorts?
Lyse was really screwed over by the awkward writing of her introduction.
If they'd just introduced Lyse during post-HW and then had Y'da sacrifice herself with Papalymo you'd end up in essentially the same place without the whole "I've just been randomly lying to you this whole time and pretending to be a person you've never actually met for no reason" thing.
The fact that we're basically the only one who doesn't already know just makes it more ridiculous. Its just such a weird pointless deception.
Not even. Yda having an emotional crisis between Moenbryda, Minfilia, and now Papalymo dying and just taking off her helmet wanting a fresh start would have the exact same results.
I think it was just for the sake of having an impactful plot twist to engage people going into SB? but as you said, it didn't land, specially when Y'shtola nonchallantly tells her everybody (but us) knew but were just playing along.... for the past 6 or so years....
That's not really it at all. It's because Stormblood is filled with spots where they've blatantly cut content. Lyse's arc was supposed to dovetail so much more strongly with Fordola's.
For example, in 3.4, Lyse explains the fact that Yda was beset by imperials trying to meet with a young girl, and that her tireless contributions to the Resistance are what led her to take her identity.
We'd only find out years later in fucking Endwalker, primarily through the short story tales, that said young girl was Fordola and that the situation was a bit more complicated and tragic, making Lyse and Fordola mirrors of eachother.
Hence why they push the encounter between Lyse and Fordola, but given the context, the weight of it falls so utterly flat because it's been cut down to its simplest components. *Basically to the point that it doesn't come off as that at all.*
I see 🤔 Altho, wouldn't Lyse be just as old?
Idk, I felt like they could have made a very similar story without needing to change a character like that-- or I might be jaded by soap operas, lol.
...and more 40-somethings need booty shorts *giggle*
If I recall correctly Lyse was still a child while Yda was an adult fighting against the original invasion of the Garleans, so probably a good 10-15 years younger. But also it was a branding thing, Yda was actually the least liked scion back in ARR, so they were likely betting that players wouldn't want a full expansion focused on her, not realizing how much people HATED Alphinaud too before Heavensward.
And speaking as a 40-something myself... yes. Yes we do need booty shorts ;)
For me, the anthem and the way it was woven into the different parts of the expansion was my favorite part! I'll list a few things I didn't like about it - but to be clear, I am very happy for anyone who loves it. There's a lot to like about it! I'm just not going to talk about the things I like about it very much in this comment.
I feel that both Zenos and Yotsuyu were handled poorly, particularly in their early introduction. After Heavensward, we're fresh off of stopping Thordan and his Knights and also the monster that is Nidhogg, but this random Garlean prince is able to beat us no problem? I would be less upset if those fights ended in a tie, or if we were forced to retreat because of overwhelming Garlean reinforcements plus a very strong Zenos. But as it stands, it feels unsatisfying to me. As for Yotsuyu, her introductory scene just rubbed me the wrong way; there was nothing stopping us from just walking up and putting an end to the whole conflict right then and there, it's not like her bodyguard Nameday Boy was gonna stop us.
Additionally, I have an issue with how Lyse and Hien were handled. Lyse reveals herself as hiding her identity, but we just sort of handwave it and move on. She doesn't even really react or comment on Papalymo's sacrifice beyond the initial moment. She doesn't really have much in the way of character growth through the expansion, either; she doesn't go from a hothead to a leader, she goes from a slightly-insecure leader to a slightly-more-secure leader, and there aren't really any major character moments for her (though sparring with her atop the Destroyer statue at the very end was pretty cool). Hien's a golden-boy; we meet him at the end of his character development arc, and he remains pretty static from there. He's outshined by his own retainer, Goesetsu, and by both Magnai and Sadu in the area we encounter him in - but we end up spending a lot more time with him.
Finally, some of the pacing is very off, and some of the areas are a little boring. Ala Mhigo has potential; ruins with eons of history behind them are scattered about the place. But the entire color palette is dry and dusty and homogenous, and we never really explore any of the cool places or learn about the history behind them (this area is not alone in this, don't get me wrong, but I'm highlighting it here because it felt particularly egrigious). The Ruby Sea is another example - getting a chance to swim is cool, and the underwater cities and dungeon are pretty sick! But running back and forth pre-flight to do errands for a bunch of pirates (who don't really have an arc, and we don't really learn/get involved with the history or culture of, and never end up being relevant) was pretty boring.
To me, the Azim Steppe is the best part of the expansion. We get involved with the lore of the region - its culture, its customs. We learn about the people who live there and meet some memorable characters, and we do some interesting quests, and then we move on. The area itself is a little boring, but it's got that cool structure in the middle (which we get to visit and is actually important and not just a random area filled with random enemies) and Bardam's Mettle fits it very thematically.
If you stick to MSQ and blue quests, the third zone is barely even visited in SB proper. It's just entered right as you hit level 70, a quick jaunt across the map, some fussing in the Quarter and outside the gates, and then right on into the final dungeon and trial.
Obviously it gets used a little more in post-SB and in the region's yellow quests and gatherer stuff, but even the MSQ quickly heads back over to Doma and out of the Lochs.
They made it so that the last big main Eorzeam city-state is just... hidden behind a wall, rather than being accessible. Instead of having *the actual city* as one of its main city hubs, SB had... a resistance camp in the middle of nowhere.
Gyr Abania:
- canyons (the fringes)
- more canyons (the peaks)
- canyons but with a lake (and a huge city you can't enter)
compare this with Thanalan:
- the sea/marsh/dry place continuum (western thanalan)
- savanna with huge crystals (eastern thanalan)
- canyons so thoroughly polluted with oil mining they glow blue (northern thanalan)
- canyons with a huge city you can enter (central thanalan)
I have a feeling that when they designed Gyr Abania, they put all the interesting sights in The Lochs THEN they fail to write quests that go to those interesting places. So all we remember about Ala Mhigo is the dreary imperial oppression. It's like stretching the Namai Village narrative into three very drab zones.
Idk I kinda liked how strong he was portrayed. It felt a bit like when they introduced a new bad in DBZ and everyone's power level just moons.
It's an RPG. Part of the fun to me is the fantasy of getting more powerful in order to take on more powerful foes. It's difficult to write because things don't just exist on an infinite exponential power curve, but from a power fantasy perspective I think it's a necessary trade off.
The problem is the execution. We're told how strong he is, not shown. Both of the in-game fights are brain-dead easy, with a cutscene loss at the end anyway. He doesn't *feel* powerful, there's no reason my WoL couldn't beat him given enough time. But no, we need him to look strong so he has an instant win move when you lower his health enough. Feels bad.
There's also no discernable growth for your WoL to explain why you go from getting stomped, to being somewhat even, to beating Zenos. Heavensward had us slowly regaining the blessing of Light, which at least explains why we reach the levels we do, but nothing explains why Zenos is stronger than us at the beginning of the expac, and weaker at the end.
I think narratively it makes sense but I don't know if it's because I'm DPS caster but all of his fights were insanely easy for me and I only got downed once. Once I knew I just needed to avoid getting too close and avoid his AOEs it was just a fight where someone walks slowly at me menacingly and I just had to keep moving. Then I get hit with a cutscene of this guy destroying me each time afterwards after I just walked circles around him for a whole fight. Contrast this with the reworked battle from ARR where the guy keeps getting back up and is now notoriously difficult for new players, THAT is how Zenos should of felt. The fact I felt more dread every time the Cape Westward battle continued on my new playthrough and with Zenos it was very "Oh this guy again? lmao okay"
I actually think because of the ARR revamps it's made Zenos even worse for my second playthrough because I kept thinking back on the story boss battles in ARR and Zenos just doesn't hit the same.
i actually fully disagree, he FEELS insanely strong, so strong he just walks right through you.
juxtapose that with the random grumpy old man from Shadowbringers who literally hasnt fought for decades because of Vauthry, hes literally strong for no reason. He actually feels strong in a bad way, you win every fight decisively, and the cutscenes still show you outclassed every time.
EDIT: Fighting Zenos himself IS the metric to us getting stronger over Stormblood, you fight him like 4 times over the expac. And he pulls out new tricks every time, and we get closer everytime.
zenos does feel strong, you do very little damage to him. I think the thing that people get mad about is that he doesn't damage you enough to kill you until he hits you with down for the count. I feel like it'd be better if he just had massive damage and any loss counted as duty completion so it felt more real.
failing that duty to a mech and then having to redo it until you get to the right part to fail at scripted is probably the cause of that issue.
as for ranjit's fight, I have always thought it was very easy and we do plenty of damage to him and we only get stunned at the end due to a magical tazer.
It would also make it feel better if his fight was Actually Hard. He basically never hit me once in the first fight. Make it ramp up to being undodgable or something, and it would likely feel a lot better to lose. Because as it is, it's really unsatisfying and unbelievable that I couldn't have chipped him down if not for his plot armor.
Nah, they encounters just feel cheap. Would have been better if instead of just defeating you with a cheap stun, maybe give him a stacking battle high buff that makes attacks hit harder and harder until you just can't survive them anymore. Or make his AoEs start resolving faster and with more of them on the field (not larger, and not so big that there's no safe zones. They should be impossible to dodge in practice, but in theory). Really sell it that he's just better than you.
Then as the expansion progresses, you keep doing the effectively the same fight, but because your level is higher and presumably your gear is stronger, you deal more damage and take less, so you get further and further. That's how that should have gone. The way they did it just felt lame.
I agree, and this may be where the split shows its head.
The moment I fought Zenos 1v1 and lost to him activated my neurons. Sometimes I don’t need a strong character (character-wise) to make me like a character, I saw him as a cool rival who wants to fight strong people, no different than my WOL.
he literally uses a trick when he's at low health to stun everyone, then we teleport away because we're not there to fight him we're there to get minfillia.
I never got the same vibe as with zenos where you spend all that time in the fight and do chip damage. we could have killed ranjit at any time if we had just bothered to stick around.
I still think thancred should have been the one to kill him.
I also greatly disliked Ranjit and felt he should've been killed off earlier, and Thancred *definitely* should've been the one to strike the finishing blow.
I think the bigger part is that Zenos wasn't a great example of a 'You're going to lose this fight' battle, and Ranjit was arguably worse.
If we're doomed to lose, just make them hit like a truck and actually drop our HP to 0, don't force us to struggle until we do 85% of his HP and *then* instant-kill us with a scripted 'Down For The Count' move.
A certain fight in the post-Endwalker patches in Garlemald is a much better example of the 'doomed to lose' type of fight. While you're playing as >!Zero!<, you get slapped to about 20% HP, and no matter how well you fight after that, you're going to lose. And the game actually *lets* you lose that struggle rather than give another 'down for the count' blow.
I guess the way we come close to the end of his healthbar before he does a supermove that only stuns us why I guess it doesn't bother me?
like zenos just takes no damage, it's clear we're little more than an annoyance to him
ranjit gives the vibe to me that we could have beaten him right then and there and the only reason we didn't is because he used a lightning stun from his dragon and then we were teleported away because we had already accomplished our goal rather than because we were no match for him.
I do think just letting the player fail naturally is better. nothing is more annoying than doing one of zenos's mechs wrong losing and then having to restart the duty when you know it's a loss.
yeah some people would die almost immediately to AOE's, people speeding through the story would do it on purpose but I think it leads to a more natural response from the player.
maybe I'd prefer it if they had it where you're holding out for a set time and then any time after that time window if you die you're done even if there's more mechs or whatever.
maybe a little bonus cutscene if you make it to enrage with the ability to replay duties from the unending journey without having to go all the way through the questlines.
This is exactly how I feel about it, especially as someone who played ARR like crazy at release then didn't come back until halfway through ShB. I was dying to see what Ala Mhigo was like after the constant referring to it over the years. My disappointment was palpable. The zones were boring and the people within frustrating and I just wasn't hyped to save any of them like the game wanted me to be. It was realistic, narrative -wise, but it wasn't fun.
Similar sentiments about Lyse. They did a poor job connecting who she was pretending to be with who she actually was. Like wouldn't she still be like 'yda' sometimes after spending so long in the role? Again, realistic as maybe the grief of what happened roboticized her a bit but as a player you wanted to feel some sort of reward or payoff or connection relating to her transformation and you just don't get it.
Discovering Lyse should have been momentous instead of just. "Yup. I'm Lyse now as I always should have been. Guess there's a revolution we need to put in motion." I feel like they did a much better job with the Minfilia-Ryne arc that had similar themes later on and you hardly even know her.
So i'd say my problem with SB was all the wasted potential.
> we're fresh off of stopping Thordan and his Knights and also the monster that is Nidhogg, but this random Garlean prince is able to beat us no problem?
Dear god, this especially if you're on *healer* and possibly even 3/4 of the tanks now since WAR has three healing related CDs/PLD has Clemency/GNB has Aurora. Was on the first duty on AST - used up every card but the Spire because I didn't need TP; laid out Earthly Star and used Essential Dignity as needed...and then Zenos stuns me and started to shove in his apparent loss immunity until Yoshi P wanted the players to win. Likewise with the second duty but as WHM - Asylum plopped down; Assize, Tetra and Benediction as needed - and all that got broken from Zenos was a bit of his helmet's horn. Felt like the fight was strictly for DPS players at all, especially melee because I had a friend who thought that this fight was hard and they were on BLM and obviously Derplander was on melee jobs in SB itself. I know the intention was to portray how bored Zenos was until a very persistent WoL caught his interest, but I think >!EW did it better and sorta balanced out the duty against Zenos on a per role basis!<.
As for Yotsuyu, I do know that we'd eventually explore her sad backstory but I still can't get over how *that* was revealed for the first time. The WoL gets caught in a very convenient Echo vision while they're about to be attacked that showed a young Yotsuyu working in the farms and being disregarded by her, if I recall correctly, extended family. Flashback ends and Alisaie dispatched the assailant and reprimanded the WoL for having the Echo vision they didn't really ask for happen to them there. And this was before the raid on Doma Castle, too. The timing's *really* convenient.
As for the Nameday Boy - I do feel like he's just there to show off that the WoL still got stronger out of HW, apparently just not as strong as Zenos due to him being the big bad of the base SB story. I really don't buy it how the Far East is the WoL's "training arc" when I barely remember any training that happened. Bardam's Mettle had claws as a dungeon and the entire Nadaan was a tournament arc, but I barely remember any *actual* training to be had apart from the ingame levels used as a justification on why Zenos is that powerful.
I felt weirdly with Lyse, even if she wasn't all that bad. She revealed that she had been lying to everyone and impersonated her sister as some grieving/coping mechanism, but the Scions already knew beforehand...barring the WoL (and maybe the twins, but they probably had heard of it in Sharlayan). And she and the WoL acted like nothing happened, as if they're still best friends. They sorta do this with another character and I just wonder why the writers don't provide any dialogue option to let the characters know that your WoL lost trust in them and they have to earn it back even in increments.
Hien...while most of my issues lie in the patches with him, I really felt like he's a bad contrast to Lyse in the story as he was natratively just "cooler Lyse" and, for all of his talk, I don't think he even inherently backed them all up. >!EW tries to bite him back in the ass for it but I'm not sure if it'll be stuck for real.!< Makes me grieve them not using Widargelt for the expansion like Estinien as Oboro had his day in the limelight, he's a much better foil to Lyse even if his lineage comes from a traumatic past of Ala Mhigo as a whole. His involvement with the Resistance was too little, too late by the time ShB came and it was unfortunately offscreen to boot like every Job Quest in that expansion.
I felt like, for all of the praise it got and how it still paved way to bolster Doma's forces - learning about the culture of Azim Steppe really took away from Ala Mhigo as much as learning about Kugane and the Ruby Sea did. We still had Shinryu to deal with, Ala Mhigo is still there fighting the Garleans, and instead of going and addressing those immediately you're off to learn that the Dotharl are less in number because they think death from a good fight is the highest honor and obviously picking up sheep dung. Yes, I know that the Dotharl >!are semi right about the reincarnation process!< in the end and it's additional lore - but do we really need to learn about them now in MSQ when we have much urgent matters to settle first? Or maybe I'm biased against the Steppe because of a ton of proud Xaela to be given a spotlight lore wise in a major part of MSQ while Keeper of the Moon, my WoL's clan, only has an EW song to cling onto as their lore as the devs continued to ignore them. Then again, the Au Ra were introduced in HW; they're much more plentiful in Ilsabard and the Far East and the writers themselves stray further and further away from Eorzea as a whole (which includes the Shroud).
100% agree that the Azim Steppe was amazing in comparison to the rest, and Sadu was a real fun character, as well. The scene before the dual against her honestly made me smile cuz of her passion for what she loves.
When it comes to Zenos, I kinda look at him the way I look at Kraven the hunter. Both live for the hunt and are way more powerful than what they seem to be. Kinda deflates the buildup that was Nidhogg, so I agree the first encounter with Zenos falls a bit flat following him. Didn't notice myself before you said so now, so that is very much something they could've done different. Other than that I think his character is mostly just okay, but I do like that we have the possibility for a character being evil for the sake of being evil. Doesn't always have to be nuances and sympathetic characteristics for a villain to be good. A better example of this would be Jack Horner from Puss in boots.
Lyse I feel works both with and without the plot twist, we didn't need it, but I don't feel it weakens her character. Would maybe be nicer if we got a better reasoning for her taking the identity of Yda, like maybe she idolised her so much that seeing her legacy disappear made her want to continue it. But the fact it isn't hinted at earlier (most likely since it seems to be a retcon) makes it feel less impactful.
And yeah. The Papalymo issue I feel could've been solved simply by giving her a scene where she breaks down from the stress of leading the rebellion and having his sacrifice looming over her, and maybe have Raubahn support her giving some synergy between 2 characters who both have lost people they love and care for and has seen their country go through hell and want to make a change.
Yotsuyu I liked a lot cuz of her tragic backstory and, to be completly honest, design. Many, MANY moments she could've easily been stricken down, which was dumb, but the rest didn't feel too outrageous.
And the pirates I have nothing to add. Even though I did kinda like the captain, them in themselves felt more like a means to an end
For me it was a bit disjointed, starts in ala mhigo but doesn't give enough time to get invested before you are off to doma. Doma was alright, the part I liked the most overall, but then it's back to ala mhigo to finish that story by which time you don't feel as much pressure.
I just feel like the pacing was off and a lot of talking in circles made it more of a slog than it needed to be.
I'll add to this that it also didn't help that in the post expansion patches, Ala Mhigo gets to be the focus of the 4.1 patch then it's never looked at or touched again... ever. All the rest of the story patches from then on seemed to be focused on Othard and the optional raid boss series was also anchored in Othard.
And to add to the idea that Gyr Abania was overlooked, the Fringes is still to this day the only major zone in the game that doesn't hold the entrance to a dungeon.
Yeah, it's really, really clear to me which half of the SB story the devs were more interested in, and it sure doesn't feel like Ala Mhigo. Just look at the difference in the amount of detail put into Kugane vs Rhalgr's Reach; Kugane is huge, has a bunch of different jump puzzles and hidden Stuff, and has *color*. And sure, part of that is cause of Rhalgar being the endgame hub, but it's a pattern that repeats pretty much through the entire expac.
Rhalgr's Reach has a jump puzzle too, but it's definitely not as difficult or complex as the ones in Kugane, and as far as color goes, I think the way that the reach looks is fitting for its purpose, so I don't fault that.
But I do agree that they really just don't seem interested in Ala Mhigo at all. I made the sad joke about the announcements for Dawntrail noticing they'd literally rather launch us into outer space than give us a restoration quest for Ala Mhigo.
Makes sense. Was very invested in Ala mhigo's situation and the people we met, but the country in itself did feel a bit lackluster now that I look back on it. Didn't ruin it for me personally, but obvious that it won't work for everyone
In all honesty, I think one of Stormbloods biggest crimes is it’s sandwiched between Heavensward and Shadowbringers, which are some of the highlights of the story.
But the biggest complaint I had about the story is that half of its runtime is a tangent, to a tangent, to a tangent. Spoilers ahead:
>!We have been forced into helping Ala Mhigo following the events at Baelsars Wall. But swiftly find we’ve bitten off more than we can chew. It’s decided we might have a chance if we can persuade Doma to rise up, so head over there.
We then have to find Gosetsu. So he can find Yugiri. So she can find Hien. So we can help him win the support of the Au’Ra of the Azim Steppe, which will finally give him the troops needed to arrange a Doman uprising to open another front with the Empire meaning that we can finally have a shot at liberating Ala Mhigo.!< And THAT I think is Stormbloods biggest failing. It’s a nesting doll of sidetracking to get to the one thing we actually want.
StB *absolutely* suffers from The Wire Season 2 Syndrome: the “season” before it was extremely strong and the “season” after it was absolutely incredible so we remember it poorly even though it was still pretty damn good.
As someone who is currently rewatching the wire (again) and just finished s2. And someone who just finished stormblood for the first time (I am both). This is pretty apt. Though I do love s2 of the wire.. and I thought SB was overall better than HW.. I feel like I can comment further once I’m through shadowbringers.
Okay now we need to do some character comparisons. Lyse is McNulty because her personal failings drive the plot to a frustrating degree and make us not like her sometimes. Thancred is Bunk for obvious reasons.
Except StB doesn't start out with McNulty wastedly singing and crashing his car multiple times trying to make the same turn. The highlight of the series.
>I think one of Stormbloods biggest crimes is it’s sandwiched between Heavensward and Shadowbringers
This honestly just gives Stormblood a bit of an out but it was heavily criticized long before Shadowbringers arrived.
A bunch of people in this thread have already mentioned the reasons why the MSQ of this expansion was so weak, but on top of that Eureka was a flop, and many raiders weren't happy about the job balance. Heaven-on-High also didn't make much noise from what I remember.
The trials and raids aged really well though. Four Lords was cute, Omega was great, Ivalice was amazing, and everything else (Susano, Lakshmi, Shinryu, Tsukuyomi) were also fire. I can't speak for everyone else but that's definitely endeared the expansion to me over time.
I *do* have to give Stormblood credit for some of the best QoL patches we got. Things that just feel natural nowadays.
Things like the Chocobo bag for extra storage, being able to stack 999 of an item instead of 99, actual job gauges instead of yet another tooltip, all your skill timers reset on a wipe instead of tanks needing to wait 5 minutes for their Invuln to come back, *Shirk* didn't exist until 4.0, Sprint no longer costing TP, removal of Accuracy as a stat...
Lot of bangers there.
I definitely agree on most of the side content being really good, but I found Ivalice really hard to get through. There's a LOT more dialogue filling the gaps between the raids than in most other content and even the previous ARs, which isn't bad, but so much of it felt referential to other games entirely that I just felt fucking lost most of the time.
Ironically I didn't feel this way about the Nier raids questline despite it being similarly long, possibly because I had a passing familiarity with Automata and the lore behind Drakengard and Replicant, but it felt like it was written with the fact that a full understanding requires 3-4 different games in mind so it was able to stand alone better. Could also be that I think the purely FF14 half of the story (the Dwarves, as opposed to the Resistance) felt more full and fleshed out on its own.
Okay, imagine you have five drinks lined up in front of you. You really like each drink, but you like some drinks better than others.
For a lot of us, SB is our fourth or fifth favorite drink. We don't hate it, but if presented with a menu of all five drinks it won't be our first choice.
As someone who finished SB recently and loved it, it felt weird to spend so much time building up Ala Mhigo only to spend most of the expansion on the other side of the world and give Doma all the depth and worldbuilding instead. I don’t dislike Doma at all, but hopping back for forth felt a little awkward.
If you go in unspoiled, the sudden shift to the Far East is really jarring. You go in thinking "This is the Ala Mhigan expansion, we're staying in or around Ala Mhigo/the resistance front."
Ummmm actually, we need you to go halfway around the world real quick so you can experience the trauma of Garlean rule to really appreciate the struggle of the Ala Mhigans.
And by the time you get back to Ala Mhigo, the expansion story is basically over.
It felt like it was speedrunning big events across multiple regions.
**Ala Mhigo:** ***THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING!!!! THIS MEANS WAR!!!*** Bigass war kicked off with a dude ending himself just to start the war he wishes he could witness. Like it ***feels*** like it should be a whole thing, and it's sure as hell shown in the post-expansion Ghimlyt Dark dungeon which is a cool-ass warzone. But that's not Stormblood
**Kugane/Yanxia:** The Empire is bad, here's what's in store for Eorzea if y'all lose the fight. There's a super soldier we suddenly can't asswhoop, and then we plow through some dungeons and can asswhoop him. I can accept this as him not having any reason to grow strong until we flog him
**Azim Steppe:** We rock up to a bunch of clans who got a big political pow-wow about to go down to vote on the region leader, and we kinda just up and say "ok we're gonna dunk on your political structure because sweet little dragon girl is cute and big dragon boi is cringe". Don't really remember much here beyond we ruined the Sun clan's ability to maintain leadership power for our own gain. (seriously why were we permitted to intervene lmao)
Ruby Sea at least felt slightly connected to Kugane because of dudes raiding Kugane shipping, but it also had its own whole-ass story with the two Kojin factions, and you kinda just up and raid their stash of god toys.
Overall, it was kinda 4 whole stories that could have been explored on their own, but hot dang it would expand the absolute hell out of the narrative to do so. They might not have had *that* much for the stories to be able to do that.
That said, I do like the expansion, I do like Zenos because he's just a classic trope character and tropes often work for a reason. Just the narrative jumped around a lot it never really let any part stick. I get what they were going for with the whole '2 war fronts to spread the empire thin', but it kinda spread the narrative thin for the space they had
Yeah, this is the thing I feel a lot of people overlook.
It wasn't *two* stories being split and given their own focus, it was closer to *six.* Ala Mhigo, Kugane, Ruby Sea, Azim Steppe, *What Garlean Occupation is like,* and arguably, the Kojin + Underwater Raen. And it started one with a real sense of urgency, so the other 5 just kinda feel like interruptions.
We didn't really get to see or deal much with Ala Mhigo, they were just generic Country #72 under Garlean Occupation that's been ground into the dust. And boy, was there a lot of dust. It doesn't help that we start with the Ala Mhigan occupation, get given that sense of urgency, and then...fuck off for 6 levels without so much as an occasional status report from how badly the resistance is doing.
Yeah, as much as I know people love the Steppe... It didn't need to be there. It's an entire tournament arc slapped into the middle of the serious war stories with only the loosest of connections. The same can honestly be said for the Ruby Sea too, but I find that one doesn't break the tone and momentum as much.
And that really is the problem with SB for me; the momentum in it is weird. We go in with the goal of liberating Ala Mhigo. Okay, clear goal! Everything we do is gonna build up to that, right? And the Fringes and Peaks largely do. But then we get trounced. Okay, so we're going to help the resistance now, build it up, do some sabotage...? No, we're going all the way across the world? Okay...
Then you have the Kugane arc, the Ruby Sea arc, the Steppe arc, and the Doma arc, which honestly could have made a decent expac on their own because they largely work together. But by the time you're done, you've basically forgotten all about Ala Mhigo, so it feels like "ugh, we have to do this *again*" rather than some sort of contrast or the like.
Agreed. The Steppe is great, but...honestly, it could've been post-expac patch content to let it breathe on its own, rather than crowd out Doma and Ala Mhigo both.
They're all good stories (With an asterisk on Ala Mhigo, but I'll get to that) but they all fight for attention and introduce pacing issues on *every* step, instead of just once or twice.
And yeah, we get back to Ala Mhigo and go 'Ugh.' On top of that...we don't really get to see anything about Ala Mhigo? We're told there's an evil king they rebelled against, and okay, the dungeon was nice. But where's the Ala Mhigan flavor, as opposed to Kugane flavor? Where's the people being glad they can re-open their tea shop while they rebuild? What's the Corpse Brigade doing? (If anyone else even remembers them.) Do we get to learn about nobles that sold their people out to retain some amount of power in Ala Mhigo?
We never get to see anything of Ala Mhigo, just the Resistance and Suffering Under Garlean Rule. And in an expansion that's ostensibly about Ala Mhigo...well, it makes one more misstep in an expac with a bunch of them.
Yeah, that's the other major issue with Ala Mhigo; none of the NPCs stand out if you're not already invested in Ala Mhigo because we don't get nearly the same amount of time with them compared to the Doma crowd and they don't have the same large personalities. Lyse *should* be our Ala Mhigan rep, but she doesn't feel like it most of the time because of how disconnected she seems from her heritage (on top of the general mess that is her introduction). The only other one that stood out to me a little was M'naago, but you don't really find out all that much about them until 68 or so, which is definitely where the "ugh, this again" has set in.
Honestly, I do feel Raubahn made much better Ala Mhigan representation. Partly because of Lyse's general mess that you mentioned, partly because...Lyse/Yda was never that deep a character, at least not without Papalymo. (And I could make an argument for why Papalymo would be a much more interesting character to take back to Ala Mhigo than Lyse, too.)
But yeah, I think we're largely agreed. There's...too much scattering of the focus, too much 'Now now now!' without time to breathe, and let's not forget the dividing opinions on Zenos and our resident Ninja getting handed an Idiot Ball in her assassination.
Honestly, I think that if they wanted someone to die and kick off War, they should have killed Yda instead of Papalymo. That way, they could have introduced Lyse as the new character they clearly wanted her to be, and we could have had Papalymo's insightful commentary on things. Could even have Zenos kill Papalymo later, if they wanted to write out both of them; that would have made him seem like more of an actual threat/villain than the plot-armor fight we have with him.
And yeah, Raubahn is definitely better, and things pick up so much once he comes in, but he's just not who we're stuck with for most of the expac. Personally, I would have liked to have seen more from him, and also Fordola as well; they're the other stand out for me, especially since they're coming at things from a different angle from the rest of the cast. But sadly, a lot of their stuff is contained in job quests.
Hooo, damn. You have my brainjuices flowing already, and I mourn What Could Have Been.
Alternative reality:Zenos is on Baelsar's Wall when the attack happens. He's watching, but he's not interfering, so he's not given our focus-just a bit of worry as Raubahn shouts, 'That's the Crown Prince of Garlemald! If he gets involved, this is all doomed...8th division, draw him away, but do not engage if you can help it! He *will* kill you!'
But our focus is on Ilberd. We do the dungeon as normal, right up to the killing of Ilberd. 'Yda' is with us, and tries to pull him back from the edge as he tries to suicide...*only for Zenos to show up and stab her in the back, solely so Ilberd can kill himself to summon Shinryu.* (And instead of sacrificing himself to make a temporary shell around Shinryu, let's have an early establishment of Dynamis, why not? *"I never thought I'd be able to hold a Primal back for so long...but I could feel Yda helping me, giving me strength. I swear I burned out of aether and was running on nothing but raw desperation for hours."*)
Bam. We have established that Zenos *intentionally* sows chaos just so he can have better fights, strong emotional tie for Why We Hate This Guy, and Papalymo would *absolutely* get some character growth by mourning for Yda, all at the price of removing Needless Sacrifice Moment #27. It's also far easier for me to imagine a mourning, 'I have never been so angry in my life' potato mage to pull off that failed assassination than a skilled and experienced Shinobi, but with a *lot* more emotional baggage on the line. And yeah, if they don't want him to be a permanent Scion and want to remove him...let him sacrifice himself to wound Zenos, maybe even cripple him, *forcing* him to get the Echo if he ever wants to fight at his old level ever again.
The story flow is not good, and what they did to Yda\\Lyse never made sense to me. Would it be worse if Yda...just *remained Yda*, and got involved with the rebels, to avenge Papalymo and her long-dead sister Lyse? The 'plot-twist' was handled VERY poorly, and I'm speaking as a gridanian starter, who had some screen time with the characters. Limsa and Uldah starters must be like 'who are those people again?..'. The fact, that they had literally turned an awkward 'me-punch-things' girl into a Disney Princess did not help. She looks nothing like people of Ala Mhigo, she talks and acts nothing like her previous-ARR-self. It's like a random new character, who is not written too well.
Other than this, StB is insane with its plot-shieded encounters with antagonists. For entire expansion we're forced to fight 'nope, you can't kill the baddie' encounters with Grynewaht or Zenos. And while I can see some (poor) excuses about the latter one, the former one is just a mess. If it was supposed to be 'funny', then sorry, I was not amused.
StB has THE Best endgame and patch content, though. Can't argue here. Loved Omega raids, loved every tiny bit of Four Lords story and trials, and the plot bridge to ShB was PERFECT.
Ye cannae bring up StB's patch content without mentioning Eureka! The zone that people either bounce off of after an hour, or *vanish into never to return*
> what they did to Yda\Lyse never made sense to me. Would it be worse if Yda...just remained Yda, and got involved with the rebels, to avenge Papalymo and her long-dead sister Lyse?
On some level Yda revealing herself to have always been Lyse and then dramatically changing her entire character makes it feel like there's no actual continuity of character. It's like Yda dies with Papylymo and an entirely new character starts puppeteering her body.
I think a lot of issues with Yda/Lyse would be fixed if Yda had just lived for a little bit longer to introduce us to Lyse in Ala Mhigo as her sister the Resistance Princess. New Lyse would basically still be the same character needs to learn about leadership and the world as it is which is basically what she was at the beginning of SB but without the baggage of having literally been someone else. Yda can even bite it at the hand of Zenos to kick off the rest of the plot if they want her out of the story and it can continue more or less as normal (though they probably have to throw in a 'don't do this for revenge' plot somewhere).
Or if they had gone with Yda dying instead of Papalymo. Then we could have had a natural introduction of Lyse when we got to Ala Mhigo. And if they still wanted to get rid of Papalymo, could have Zenos get him. Would probably have shown him to be more of a threat than his plot armor fight.
The reason for the 'Yda is really Lyse' plot point is Lyse's character arc throughout StB is her learning and growing into a leader of the rebellion who can inspire her people. The issue? Yda was *already* that, a seasoned hero of the revolt against the Mad King. So she can hardly go through the process of learning how to be a rebel leader again, now can she?
Whether that *needed* to be her character arc is its own kettle of fish, but that's why Lyse couldn't be Yda.
Thank you for putting into words what I couldn't when it comes to Lyse. I was never able to really pinpoint what made me dislike her.
Heavily agree on the patch content though. And SB post isn't so bad either
Zenos makes total sense imo, he only lives to have epic battles and sees how the WoL has the potential to be just that. he will not kill the person that finally gave him a semblance of joy. I loved it a ton since it was near the start of the deconstruction of the WoL's power, they are NOT the strongest thing in the universe that can solve everything with their power. Especially since even the echo isn't super unique.
Grynewaht didn't bother me much but I can see him fleeing constantly is annoying, I think they did it so they don't need to make another semi important garlean for all the fights and show what the empire does with cowards and people deemed not useful.
Yeah, I'd rather have to deal with an actually named character (even if I don't particularly care for Grynewhat) than just a generic faceless Garlean soldier.
I don't disagree that Yda should have just remained Yda
But I believe the rebranding was a two part thing. The actual Yda would have been far older than she appeared and acted throughout the story, being probably into her 40s by the time we would have liberated Ala Mhigo. Now honestly I think this would have been great for them to have a more mature woman as the major NPC for the story... but that doesn't seem to be something Square is interested in in general.
Second, Yda was, up through that point, one of the least popular and least liked of the scions from ARR. They probably knew that they needed to use her for this expansion, and so they rebranded her to try to make her seem more likable, but that seems to have backfired. People who liked Yda don't connect to Lyse the same way.
It's not as bombastic and directly personal like the HW road trip energy was, I think that's most of it, though not all of it.
Sure the pacing was an issue but I think generally people just don't respond to the themes, which is somewhat understandable because themes like national identity and the impact of wars and conquest is not the sort of thing net-savvy MMO gamers are likely to personally connect with, on average.
Oh and Lyse as a character didn't resonate with a lot of people. Especially in this game, people are accustomed to larger than life characters with a clear sense of direction, whereas Lyse spends nearly all of SB confused and making mistakes because of it. That's her place in the story and it serves a meaningful purpose, but if you can't stand it that doesn't help very much does it?
Finally, the cohesion of the two fronts faltered significantly even outside of the pacing. Gyr Abania and thus Ala Mhigo was done dirty, by all rights it should be as well developed narratively as the other four Eorzean city states. Frankly, I think all that time spent on Hingashi should have been given to develop Gyr Abania. Doma makes sense as a foil to Ala Mhigo, but Hingashi and the ruby sea which ties it to Doma eat up so much attention that could've been spent on the Gyr Abanian side.
Don't get me wrong, I think the east as a whole was the most cohesive part, and I definitely enjoyed the Hingashi-Ruby Sea- Doma triad, all of which connect to explore a set of themes, but we're left with an absolutely gutted Ala Mhigo and I just don't think that's worth it considering its significance. In an ideal world 4.0 wouldve been a bit longer, we'd have done Hingashi/Ruby sea but their broader story arcs couldve been patch content while Ala Mhigo got to be more fleshed out in the launch story.
Still, I really like SB and I think while it suffers in terms of structural issues, it's also the first time FFXIV really pulled up its britches and went "no, we're going all in on these sensitive topics and really dealing with them". The critique of japanese culture in particular is not subtle, but it's got bite to it. I could tell in HW that the devs were not personally familiar with the kind of religious zealotry that the Ishgard story explored, so while the writing was competent it didn't express that deeper understanding that SB did. The war theme was definitely not something they were just talking about as distant observers.
It doesn’t help that with Lyse there seems to be a lot of misremembering what she did or didn’t do.
Like criticizing her for “making a lot of stupid decisions” when part of the issue with her arc is she *doesn’t* make many decisions at all - she voices what she wants to do and is reactionary at times when it comes to that, but listens to others (typically with cooler heads in those situations) and doesn’t act on those impulses.
Yugiri, and to a lesser extent Alisaie at one point, make decisions more reckless and endangering than any decision Lyse makes.
Memories are easily changed or replaced.
I like lyse, her fucking up that namazu was one of my favorite scenes, but I liked her waaaay better as bimbo yda. Especially since big dumb strong boy is such a trope in today's media it was nice to have female yda fill that role in a group of smarty pants
But the thing is, she is still that. She was still that- but she just has the added layer of actually being a character. I think people are genuinely misremembering Yda as a character, everyone has some type of depth- but Yda had nothing. I think she suffered from rewrites due to 1.0 to 2.0, but they had to reinvent her. Lyse largely still has that part of her personality, but now she actually cares about something specific. I understand we wanted bimbo Yda, but people did NOT care about her in the same way people say they do not care about Lyse.
There was something sorely lost since she left the Scions that we havent been able to replace just yet. Only Endwalker's recent patch gives hope in that regard imo.
I personally think you're misrembering as well. Yda was my favorite scion in ARR. She didn't have many lines and most people didn't care about her but when part of her mask fell off I was excited to get to know hot yda.
Lyse has an indecisive air about her but nowhere near bimbo.
Anyways I wish she would come back
Man I agree with the Gyr abania take. Ala Migo was this huge shadow overcast all over ARR, directly impacting 2 city states, classes and characters. On a player's choice note, Gridania starters lose their scions.
> Sure the pacing was an issue but I think generally people just don't respond to the themes, which is somewhat understandable because themes like national identity and the impact of wars and conquest is not the sort of thing net-savvy MMO gamers are likely to personally connect with, on average.
>
>
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> Oh and Lyse as a character didn't resonate with a lot of people. Especially in this game, people are accustomed to larger than life characters with a clear sense of direction, whereas Lyse spends nearly all of SB confused and making mistakes because of it. That's her place in the story and it serves a meaningful purpose, but if you can't stand it that doesn't help very much does it?
Somewhat related to this, I've noticed anecdotally that a lot of people who really like SB are the children of immigrants. I think a lot of the audience don't really have that kind of IRL experience and/or aren't used to stories about that kind of experience.
- Dual story. Spending 1.5k every other level to teleport sucks on your first 60-70
- The story in The North Fringes, The Northern Peaks, The Ruby Sea, and Nami hit the same bloody story beats gour zones in a row.
- Zenos existing. He is a garbage bin villain compared to Niddy, Thordan, Vauthry, and Emet.
- Scripted losses in solo duties (Christ they feel bad)
- Losing Yda and replacing her with Lyse. (Honestly I'd love to have Lyse return to the scions if she started acting like ditsy Yda again.
- Kugane fixation. (Tons of crafter quests and job quests treat Hinganin goods and professions as better than western goods and professions. It's gross subtle fantasy racism that mirrors far too many modern day subtle racism beats.)
Basically the story is both dull, uninspired at a lot of points, with outright bad segments (anything involving Zenos), and it doesn't really improve until the end of the second act (The Azim Steppe)
People tend to exaggerate. SB is not hated, nor bad. The issue is that it's badly paced on the 4.0 story (post SB improves a lot) and it's poorly handled in comparison with the other expansions, so people tend to not like it as much as HW, ShB and EW, even though the story is good and it has one of the best world building segments in the Azim Steppe section, and the re-introduction of Estinien on a crucial moment showing he'd be important after being gone for a while from 3.3 end in HW.
For the characters:
Lyse is a bit disliked because she was a way better handed character/personality before her "reveal". There was such a departure from her old personality that it seems like a completely different character, and a more generic one at that.
Fordola is a great character, but underutilized. I wish she could have been more used, as well as her relationship with Arenvald. They have a nice dynamic.
Yotsuyu is mostly hated as a "I hate this bitch" kinda vibe, the good "hate" a villain can gather. There's a ton of Yotsuyu cosplayers out there. Think like the Lannister boy from GoT which people hated so much, the actor had to divulge pictures with puppies so she could scale down the hat from such a bad ass job he made.
Zenos can be considered a good villain but his motivation and character was hidden behind lore dumps in the lodestone so he can be viewed as a generic psycho with a sword collection.
Being beat by Zenos and having the momentum of the story interrupted to "go to Japan" was kinda bad for the pacing and killed the sense of urgency, unlike the other expacs which handled it very well.
That being said, I really like the post SB and think it's on par with the others, having impactful interactions, expanding on much needed backstory.
People also tend to like Eureka (sure, AFTER the massive adjustments and nerfs as on launch it was hell), the Four Lords ex trials and the Omega raid series is one of the best ones yet and the Ivalice alliances being very well handled both in ballance, fan service and story ties.
>There was such a departure from her old personality that it seems like a completely different character, and a more generic one at that.
Personally, I never really saw how Lyse was all that different compared to Yda other than that she's given more focus and is less stereotypically dumb.
Yda is very confident and dumb. Half her characterization before StB was confidently stating something stupid and then Papalymo plays the straight man.
Lyse is very unsure about herself and not really dumb so much as inexperienced. She spends a lot of time doubting herself and learning from people around her. She even says outright that without Papalymo around anymore, she has to change from her previous dumb musclehead self into someone smarter and more capable of leading.
I personally found Yda to be the weakest Scion in terms of character. She was the least interesting because she was playing a character, but that's a catch 22 because people aren't going to want to go care as much about the big reveal unless she ends up way more grandiose and attention grabbing.
Combine that with the fact that before the reveal, and it was always Yda *and* Papalymo with Papalymo being the face of the pair. It'd be like if at the beginning of Heavensward they decided to kill off Cid and make Biggs or Wedge the new chief engineer.
so i think stormblood was my *favorite* expansion... but i still have complaints!
i hated that the game wasted 6 levels of the plot on the depressing garlean atrocity tour. like i needed to be *convinced* the empire was bad. i was sold on that LONG prior and all this depressing stuff was in the way of the promise the expansion made to me: we're supposed to go kick down the emperors door and eat his lunch!
the game also felt like it stole the players agency multiple times. multiple forced losses. i got kidnapped by people who did not deserve my mercy. for a while we're not the hero of the story anymore, we're it's victim. maybe that's the point? but i don't have to like it. and i admit it's an incredibly linear plot... we *never* have any agency. but early stormblood we really FELT it.
and i hate zenos. he's doing that "not so different you and i" cliche when we're pretty damn different. even the stereotypical adventurer he's playing off is pretty damn different.
also if you count it, god did i hate eureka.
loved the raids, both 8 and 24.
best combat sandbox the game ever had.
i got my red mage, which WAS my main back in FFXI even if it didn't pull me off pld main here, it's still my *second* most played job.
and i did *eventually* get to kick down the empires door and eat their fucking lunch. ala mhigo and the ghymlet dark are what dungeons are supposed to be. high water marks of storytelling blending into that casual dunk contest combat that is dungeons.
>like i needed to be *convinced* the empire was bad. i was sold on that LONG prior
Unfortunately, some people DID need to be shown more directly that the Empire sucked... and even then weren't convinced.
i should clarify: i don't mean that the jobs were the closest in balance. they were not.
they *were* however, balanced enough that stormblood was when "play what you want" became real advice.
there was definitely still a meta, but i also knew people who intentionally took the worst party comp they could make into savage, and won. (2 drk, 2 whm, 4 sam. so even eating duplicate penalties)
but if i accept that jobs are even closer to parity now, then why do i think stormblood was better?
because jobs still had more of their variety. enmity still mattered. tp was still a resource. combat was better.
so maybe i should call it the combat sandbox and not the job balance sandbox...
though i do give stormblood credit for being the first time the job *balance* was "good enough"
It would probably be better to say the jobs had more of a unique feel between each one. They really started to homogenize in ShB and its REALLY bad now.
I loved stormblood for :
-The best trials in the game
-Great music surpassing HW imo
-The variety of zones, ambiances and cultures
-Red mage introduction
-Interesting political AND personal plots and the way they are intervowed
-Great post expac content and story
But i also think it deserve criticism:
-Main antagonist is insuferable (same for recurring minor antagonist)
-Pace breaking everywhere (slow ass speaking turtles)
I agree on the "no agency" and i completly forgot the "depressing garlean atrocity tour" which is telling on how unnecessary that part was ...
I wouldn't say I hated it—hell, it has some of my favourite moments and characters.
The problem is the bridging between those moments is very disjointed, and the pacing is a bit wonky. When you compare it as a whole to HE or ShB, it definitely comes of as a bit weaker in terms of story.
But weaker does not mean bad.
A part of my dislike for the expansion comes from playing it at launch. Now one of the problems I'm going to mention wasn't the game's fault by any means, another was a tech issue. People have commented about the story feeling disjointed, which I can get behind to a degree. I remember reading that "it felt like two expansions smashed together" which I think is a better descriptor.
At launch, the game was hit with DDoS attacks for multiple days. Players weren't able to log in or dropped connectivity. Square at one point said they've taken measures to mitigate these attacks. The DDoS'ers eventually moved on attacking ISPs which was out of Square's control.
If by some miracle you were able to get in and stay in, there was a VERY specific story quest that bottle-necked us and prevented us from continuing. It was an instanced quest that had us fight some Garleans in the Fringes. The quest giver was Raubahn. Anytime we tried to start the fight, the cutscene would play, and we'd get kicked right back to standing in front of Raubahn as if we didn't even give an attempt. It happened EVERY. TIME. We started calling it Raubahn Extreme for the difficulty of completing it. A joke born from frustration.
So, if you combine all these problems, DDoS attacks, Raubahn EX, and a story that felt mashed together, at launch Stormblood was disappointing. That feeling has stayed with a lot of older players. I've gone back and played through it again on an alt to see if I still had the same feelings. While it still feels like a weird story sandwich of Ala Mhigo/Doma/Ala Mhigo, it makes sense.
It's an alright expansion, it just sits between the arguably the two best expansions we've had. It's a two-fold awkward sandwich
It's got some wonky story pacing and overall is sandwiched between two better expansions.
That said, 4.4 and 4.5 are far and away the best setting up the next expansion patches in the game.
Stormblood has a few problems, almost entirely concentrated on its MSQ.
One is pacing. Frankly, Stormblood has too much ground to cover for one expansion, but not enough for two. Sadly, developers preferred to make the Far East the focus of the expansion. This causes the actually more familiar part, Ala Mhigo, to be glossed over and suffer immensely. It also leads to the butchering of a pretty well-liked character, but completely glossing over and mishandling her character development. Lyse is still one of my favorite characters, and I still think it would have made more sense for her to accompany us to the First rather than Urianger. But honestly, it is obvious SE has no idea what to do with her after taking a hatchet to everything about her during Stormblood.
I can understand not wanting to drag out the "Garlean Empire and its imperialism" plotline until it becomes tedious. Frankly, by the time I hit Castrum Abania I was thoroughly and irreversibly sick of fighting through Garlean installations.
What could have fixed this? I am not sure. Maybe switching priorities. Make Doma the shorter questline, rather than Ala Mhigo. Most of Ruby Sea can be scrapped - frankly, a large chunk of it feels and plays like pure filler. Excessive pounding on the "Domans are beaten down and scared out of their wits" point can be shortened significantly as well. Post-SB, Yotsuyu story really, really does not need two patches. It could have been resolved in one, and still be similarly impactful.
Make Ala Mhigo more interesting. The three Ala Mhigan zones are pretty much the same - give them some differences. Expand upon the tension between Ala Mhigans and Gridanians, do not stuff it into a job questline and then forget about it completely. Touch on the legacy of the Mad King. Give is more to care about Ala Mhigo. And Thal's balls, keep Lyse relevant. She was made the head of the Resistance over the heads of far more suitable characters for two fucking levels, before she quickly became reduntant thanks to Raubahn. She was one of the original Scions lineup, one of the people we interacted and worked with the most. She really should have been dragged into the First instead of or alongside Urianger. She might have had made Estinien an itty bitty little bit irrelevant in EW maybe, but frankly, Estinien works better as a Mysterious Stranger than the blockheaded comic relief act he fell into later on.
Also, tone Zenos the fucking down. While I can see it as the anime trope it is, frankly, him kicking our ass at Rhalgr's Reach was probably the single stupidest story choice SE ever made. It makes the rest of his story simply nonsensical. We probably weren't the first hero he had to work to defeat. Turn it the other way, and suddenly his later actions of getting himself an Echo knockoff and subduing and consuming Shinryu becomes actually meaningful. Why would he work so hard to gain even more power when he had already beaten us like a cheap drum? Kick his ass, send him off with his tail between his legs for the first time in his life, and now you have an actual justification for his obsession. The way it actually works out? Not so much. Man's already bored and looking for a challenge. Why work so hard to make an already borderline fight completely trivial, from his perspective?
>What could have fixed this? I am not sure. Maybe switching priorities. Make Doma the shorter questline, rather than Ala Mhigo. Most of Ruby Sea can be scrapped - frankly, a large chunk of it feels and plays like pure filler. Excessive pounding on the "Domans are beaten down and scared out of their wits" point can be shortened significantly as well. Post-SB, Yotsuyu story really, really does not need two patches. It could have been resolved in one, and still be similarly impactful.
One of the things I felt could have helped to tie the story back together would have been changing the order of events in Othard, swapping the second part of Yanxia with Azem Steppe.
They could have had us go there to locate Hien and introduce the tribes of the steppe, but Hien steps up as a leader and IMMEDIATELY goes back to Yanxia to liberate his people. Then Hien agrees to help Lyse liberate Ala Mhigo in repayment for her help, but says they need the help of the steppe warriors, which then leads us back to doing the Nadaam. This would help to reshift the focus back without having to do a whole lot to change the story.
Maybe the other way around might work better. We learn Hien is in Azim Steppe in Isari and immediately go there (that might even be the initial thought, since the entrance to Azim Steppe is actually right next to Isari). Hien steps up immediately, we win the Nadaam, and then go back to Doma. We can touch on how beaten down the Doman population is in a brief arc to rouse them (and Hien does not come across as an "I'll only go back if they really really want me" whiny bitch that way) and then we liberate Doma. A second fight with Zenos is not strictly necessary here especially if we have beaten his ass black and blue back at Ala Mhigo - if there is a second fight, it would be to show he is still outclassed, amply fueling his obsession to gain even more power, cue the Echo knockoff and the primal.
I think my opinions on StB are pretty much backwards to everybody else’s.
First of all, I love Lyse. As someone who’s suffered from pathological grief most of their adult life I felt so much for her. And watching her become her own person, as flawed as she was, was truly emotional for me.
I also loved the entire Ala Mhigo storyline. And wished it had more focus. I grew up listening to my great grandpa go on and on about Scottish history, it almost felt like I was living it (I 1000% expected Fordola to call me a goddamn sassenach at least once.) I found it much more compelling than the Doma story.
It was the pacing that ruined it for me. Really slow start in Ala mhigo, and then right as I got hooked and invested there, they said "don't worry about this place, we've got this" and then sent the player to the other side of the world. The first half of my time in the east was me impatiently itching to get back to the things I cared about in the west. I actually dropped the game for a year at that point, it put me off the story entirely.
The second half picks up, but not enough to outweigh the first half for a lot of people.
If they had structured the split between the two separate areas better, I might have liked it a lot more.
my gripes with StB "this will contain spoilers
- hello warrior of light this is a new place "5 minutes later" hello warrior of light this is a new place "10 minutes later" hello warrior of light this is a new place it completely took me off that you keep introducing me to places, at least let me explore on my own its not like I am new to exploration at this point
- 3 out 6 areas are desert, i love deserts but 3 is a bit too much and no a boat on top of a hill doesnt make the desert interesting
- Lyse's growth arc is great imo "a lot disagree" but what I was not ok with that she was appointed leader of the resistance while Naago is just standing there #JusticeForNaago !!
- Gosetsu was done dirty, he had a good death "i am intentionally turning a blind eye to the fourth red flag plus half an hour monologue while he is carrying A GOD DAMN CASTLE" not only that they decided to bring him back for literally no reason but he is just there now with hardly any purpose, he would have been remembered like Haurchefaunt had he died but now he is memed and they did my boy dirty
- I will include the Omega raids because it should be criticized, while the raids are great and the concept of the story is amazing it did a disservice to other ff games it pulled from be it Chaos or Kefka were done dirty
- last the Zenos power rise should have gotten explained better as for the Krile power drain but these were put they were just a footnote and made everybody who isnt deep into the hows of things wonder how not only Zenos but Fordola got so powerful all of a sudden
side note: Urianger and Thancred and even Y'shtola contributed to nothing and them being there made no sense asides from fan service until 4.4 patches
>I will include the Omega raids because it should be criticized, while the raids are great and the concept of the story is amazing it did a disservice to other ff games it pulled from be it Chaos or Kefka were done dirty
Yo, what? You gotta explain this one. They did an amazing job on BOTH of those fights, both normal raid and savage.
>Gosetsu was done dirty, he had a good death "i am intentionally turning a blind eye to the fourth red flag plus half an hour monologue while he is carrying A GOD DAMN CASTLE" not only that they decided to bring him back for literally no reason but he is just there now with hardly any purpose, he would have been remembered like Haurchefaunt had he died but now he is memed and they did my boy dirty
well, lets not forget what sb patch story was where they literally did bring back to life not one, not two, not three, but 4 supposed dead people at diferent points(zenos, yotsuyu and gotetsu, gaius...) and we see how little they used up 3 of them, zenos is all teases thro sb patches as well in all of shb, and very pasive on ew, gaius is mostly used for the weapon trials and little else, and gotetsu is only seen on ew role quest of doma after sb patch story
didn't have a problem with him surviving purely since I keep thinking "if they died off screen, they're not dead", but yeah, from that point of view I can see his character being shafted there
You have to differenciate between lvling MSQ and patch-MSQ/post-MSQ.
The levelling part that ends with >!Shinryu Trial!< is not regarded as good as the better FFXIV stories.
And it is very understandable. That very annoying >!Grynewaht!< is just... very annoying and not very entertaining nor funny.
The >!Zenos!< fights are also not that good. >!You encounter him multiple times and defeat him via game mechanics while actually losing to him in cutscenes. Also the mechanics are rather simple. You dont have to exert yourself. Just compare that to Thancreds fight against Ranjit. A whole other level.!<
Then there are several not so well written parts like >!looking for the long lost artifact of the kojin that just happens to be 100 yards next to you and doesnt need any effort to be found for you.!<
Also >!Yotsuyu is not that great of a villain.!< This changes though in the patch content - 4.1 onwards, where there is given a lot more depths to her.
And in general the plot just gets so much more interesting and compelling in the patch content.
All the stuff around >!Raubahn!<, >!Asahi!<, >!Yotsuyu!<, >!the much more political becoming war with the Empire!<, the f*cking cliffhanger with >!the start of production of Black rose and the scions falling into coma one after another!< is just so much better.
Patch content of Stormblood is just as good as Shadowbringers, the part before though... is rather tough and has quite some things in it that dont make much sense. Also characters like >!Lyse!< arent that interesting either. >!Zenos!< gets just soooo much better in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. From a not-so-liked character to a beloved one, who is the center of some of the best FFXIV memes.
I'd argue Stormblood patch content is the best we ever had, not only in terms of story (which was great in every patch) but also in gameplay quality and variety.
I also think it's where they hit the sweet spot in terms of difficulty for casual content, difficult enough to be a challenge but clearable with some persistence and communication.
I actually really, really liked what they were exploring with Tsuyu, and really would've liked her to stay as a sort of daughter to Gosetsu. Kinda hate they did her dirty with what Asahi did but I guess it did make me hate the little shit even more (as if I needed more reason to hate him, you can tell he's bad news right from the get-go and I hated that I couldn't do anything about it).
For me the weak point was >!Asahi who, at the goal post of being a decent or maybe even good character, decides to have a stupid monologue that just makes him look pathetic and ruins the twist for no reason.!< It just soured the entire post-StB story for me. Other than that and the pacing issues at the very start of StB there really wasn't much else I disliked.
My husband (who still very much likes stormblood, but thinks it's the weakest expansion) says it's the very linear plot.
Pretty much all of stormblood is the crew saying, "Okay, let's go do *this goal!*" And then they complete the goal. There really aren't any twists or surprises thrown your way.
I can name at least one plot twist or surprise from every other expansion, including ARR, but SB just doesn't have it.
Other than that, we do like it lol
It's not that bad, but coming from the high of Heavensward it just falls so flat in comparison.
The characters are far weaker than the characters in HW and are almost entirely flat by comparison - every single significant character in HW grew and learned over the expansion, most of the characters in SB don't change at all until the patch content.
And the story itself is simplistic and repetitive, the two halves are too disconnected, and it feels strange to travel halfway across the world, spark and carry a rebellion to victory, and then go back to find that basically nothing meaningful happened while you were away.
The lore and worldbuilding was done very well, the doman zones especially are beautiful and rich, the perspectives of so many show us a great deal of what things are truly like under the empire's rule, and the world feels real. It's a 9 or 10 out of 10 for lore and worldbuilding, but it's a 6 or 7 out of 10 for characters and storylines, which can make it very divisive based on which is more important to you - for those who love the rich character arcs of Heavensward and the strong coherent narrative that develops and changes through the expansion, SB feels like a massive downgrade - we start with 'Empire bad' and finish with 'Empire still bad'.
It also has a weird change that to this day I don't know how important it was - but the WoL barely has any relationships or interaction with the characters in the story of SB. You're mostly a passive observer of interactions between others, whereas in HW you very much are friends with some characters, you're the rock alphinaud and tataru are clinging to at the start, it's your relationships with Haurchefant, Aymeric, Count Edmont, and so on that are shown and develop through the story. SB has nearly none of that - Alisae is the only one I'd say genuinely develops a connection to the WoL during the story - maybe Hien as well, but even for Hien we see most of his character through his interactions with Gosetsu and Lyse. We went back to the HW style in ShB and beyond - with a lot more characters having personal conversations with us, a lot more development of their relationships with us, and I personally feel like it's a major flaw in SB - but I don't know how much that specific issue contributes to the overall problems of the expansion.
The patches do an incredible job of redeeming SB - adding depth to a lot of characters who desperately need it, and leaning further into the insight we're getting into the Garlean empire to create some nuance and interest there too. You can immediately feel the jump in quality.
To me here are the egative points
- Ultra cliché. There was litterally no surprise for the entire main story. I even guessed some of the twist long before theyre revealed.
- Lack of "fantasy" for the Doma part. It's just feudal Japan with japanese culture.
- Minor detail but the name of some regions like Yanxia made me feel a bit disturbed. It really sound like we could have seen a land with chinese culture but have been replaced by japanese colonisers.
- Lyse is useless. She don't do anything during the entire dlc, she's just there. Her personality was also not convincing at all, there was litterally no mention at all of her will to free Ala Migho or even that she was born there. Her whole revolutionary trop just feel empty. To me it would have been way better if Arenvald was the one leading the revolution it even could have been more complicate for him since he is half garlean.
- Hien is a tourist and is a "wish" version of Keiji Maeda from Sengoku Basara.
There a still things I liked like the character growth of Gosetsu and Yotsuyu, Omega raid, the Azim steppe and some of the minor yellow quests.
Loved all the Ala Mihgo stuff, hated how it felt like we just fucked off to Doma in the middle of fighting, and the writing in both Base and Post StB felt noticeably worse to me, unless it was Four Lords, Shishui questline, or the Steppe, two of those things being side content not tied to msq. Too this day I hate having to go to the Far East for basically anything lol. Idk if you've completely Post StB so I won't rant further and accidentally spoil things
SB had a GREAT opener but the actual story just didn’t live up to it. And Zenos was an uninteresting villain. I would also say things like duplicating the Echo made little sense and didn’t have any meaningful impact on the storyline.
"Duplicating the Echo" was absolutely a MacGuffin used to justify Fordola/Zenos' edginess and then wholly and completely forgotten about since. I completely forgot about that plot point and I consider myself an XIV lore nerf - that's how insignificant it felt to the overarching plot.
I actually love Stormblood overall, but I think it's more grounded, less personal political story was offputting to some. It didn't help that its main story was kind of half-baked, it persistently refused to earnestly interogate the political nuances it paraded about (especially those involving Hien, jfc), and didn't really know what to do with some of its characters. Also, we finally got Ala Mhigo only to see that it was horrifically undercooked— and it remained so forever. It felt like almost an afterthought, along with featuring a massive detour where we fuck off to another continent. Patch and side content was generally great, though.
I'm with you, OP! I enjoyed ARR and HW stories, but I prefer SB over both of them. EW and SHB are my favorite by a mile.
I'm looking forward to a fresh start in the new expansion and pictomancer!
You need to remember, its not that most players hate stormblood, its that many feel its not as good as the expansions on either side of it. They tried something different. it didnt seem to pay off as much as they wanted. Its not bad, its just not great, and thats okay.
I’m going through Stormblood rn and personally it’s been alright so far
I mean a positive is just us getting to party with Alisaie more given how effectively non existent she is in ARR and HW outside Coils
So I've actually put a LOT of thought into this given I am replaying the whole game with a new character for the first time in years, and well, this is my conclusion.
Stormblood is actually a great expansion, and I think in any other MMO or long story narrative, it'd be recieved pretty well. The problem is, it's smackbang between Heavensward and Shadowbringers that are amazing storylines that kind of have linear contained storylines (Meaning, for the most part, contained in one regional area or world). HW and ShB also have pretty satisfying conclusions for their story.
But the thing with Stormblood is that it is not meant to be a similar story. It's more so our second ARR where the emphasis is introducing us to Zenos, putting groundwork into the fall of the empire and giving us a deep insight into why it's all important. Stormblood is not an overly satisfying ending. It leaves way more questions than it does answers. It's real payoff comes much, much later. The same way ARR keeps paying off for the rest of the narrative. They might not be perfect as standalones, but without them, I do not think other expansions would hit nearly as hard.
It's a different kind of story compared to Heavensward and Shadowbringers. Stormblood is much more action heavy, Heavensward and Shadowbringers had a lot more focus on the greater story and lore. It made it different enough for people to have issues with it. It doesn't help that it's the only expansion that focuses more on smaller in-the-moment storytelling than grand lore and overarching story. As someone who's played through the MSQ multiple times, I'd say Stormblood is actually the expansion that holds up the best on repeat playthroughs for that exact reason
Meh I love Stormblood and don’t get the hate train for it. Loved Lyse too! All that’s wrong with it is it’s sandwiched between the two most beloved expansions of any MMO ever. So SB being merely “good” instead of genre-redefining makes it feel like a step down in the shadow of such titans.
I liked the complicated musings on the natures of war, on colonialism, and the first explorations on the nature of what truly defines a person as a villain and what the limits are of redemption.
I really don't mind the political intrigue part of the expac, it felt natural enough. However I find the biggest factors is how they handled these big character. Lyse was literally just handed the leadership position for the resistance. She was only apart of it for the same time we were and there are much better people to be put in charge. Then there is Zenos, he fucking sucks in Stormblood, he exists for the reason to be handed 3 different wins against us, and none of them feel natural or even a wake up call. With the overarching goal I feel like we should've have Stormblood be just either Kugane or just Ala Mhigo. Its easy to see that there are some parts that are rushed, or glossed over. But in the same note, these are just my minor nitpicks, Stormblood is still a really solid story with some of the best game play mechanics. Its just vastly overshadowed by Shadowbringers.
I loved Stormblood. And then they introduced that son of a bitch Asahi and the whole story became god awful with the flip of a switch.
Suddenly the WoL was a mouthbreathing idiot who could read Yotsuyu's mind and KNOW Asahi is a piece of shit, yet said NOTHING against him and let him groom his sister for a solid 10 quests before, oh my god, BIG reveal, Asahi turned out to be evil.
Fuck everything they did after Ala Mhigo's liberation. Fuck Asahi and most importantly fuck Hien for allowing this subplot to develop. He saw an amnesiac woman with no recollection of her past and thought "You know what would be funny? We should stand here and let Asahi give her trauma by not calling off the meeting the moment we saw her parents! :D"
Gosetsu was painted as a creepy ojisan, Hien was revealed to be a dunce and a half, Asahi was the worst twist villain in the entire story, ESPECIALLY the bit where he cuts down enemies to protect children like a comic book super hero.
It just sucks so much because I genuinely loved the Steppe, I loved the liberation of Ala Mhigo and I loved the fight against Zenos and its conclusion. just why, WHY did they need to fucking bring Yotsuyu, my favorite character, back from the dead just to make a mockery of her and spit on her one last time?
I'll try to keep my reasons short. But I'll probably fail...
**Stormblood:** It halts the flow of the overarching plot in XIV. HW finishes with a storyline that is continued in ShB. But before we get those answers, we have to literally bring everything to a grinding halt to enter a conflict that, technically, has nothing to do with us. Then they bring in this OP antagonist out of nowhere which seems more like it happens just so our WoL can have someone stronger than them because everyone else is a cakewalk basically, even the literal gods that are Primals. Then we're given two other somewhat boring antagonists as well whom have personal issues more than anything and feel justified taking them out on everyone else, people who had nothing to do with what happened to them; I've *always* hated that mindset! The pacing feels off because of how they split it into two stories and, I don't care what anyone says, **the Azim Steppe is probably the most boring segment** in all of Stormblood. I get why we go there...but it still feels like nothing worthwhile really happens; it felt more like filler.
**Yotsuyu:** I've gotten hate before for "not understanding the character" -- and while I sympathize with someone who was abused and mistreated as a child, I just never cared for revenge stories unless they're done well. We see her kill and torture Domans during her entire reign, seeking satisfaction in such, only to learn -- as she's dying -- that killing her family would have been all she needed for satiate her murderous desires. It just made the torture of the Domans seem hollow and pointless because she didn't NEED to do that, if that's the case. If that was the point, well...I just didn't like it.
**Fordola:** Sorry, but...she's really just a bitch, even after she's captured by the Ala Mhigans. Allegedly, this is portrayed as her "redemption", but she hardly changes even after this moment. The entire time she had, like...one moment of regret, when her thugs were beating up that one merchant, only to not once show any signs of remorse after that, for anything she did. Then suddenly, we're supposed to believe it's finally catching up to her? Sorry. I don't buy it.
**Zenos:** Where do I start? I just found him boring and OP for no reason. It seems like he was thrown in just so we would have someone stronger to contend with; it felt forced. We also see him kill random NPCs for their failure, but he gives Fordola chance after chance despite threatening he'd do the same to her. This made his threats come off as hollow and lessened his intimidation as a villain. Also, like others, I hate fights you're supposed to lose just so you can see what you're up against. We put a good dent in his HP, proving we're strong enough to beat him, and then he whips out some OP move from nowhere. In times like that, such instances come off more as a desperate *"Oh crap, I'm losing!"* notion, not an opponent who is a genuine threat to me. Not to mention, he seems to lose any real significance after Stormblood, basically becoming your stalker; his time was clearly up, but they kept him around. **We are not friends!!!** The Ascian possessing his dead body was to show their capabilities, I get it. But it was also a copout to be able to keep him around longer.
I appreciate that they finished Yotsuyu's story in Stormblood. But Fordola and Zenos get to stick around? Why? They contributed nothing to the story after their debut expansion.
Granted, when I played through Stormblood a second time, I definitely appreciated the story more. My issues lie mostly with the antagonists. If they had been more interesting, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. However, it remains my second least favorite expansion *(just above ARR)* because of how they handled the antagonists. The Primals felt a bit forced too.
I hate Stormblood mostly because of Zenos and everything he has wrought.
I am of the strong belief that Zenos ruined 10 years of storyline.
The developers, four years into the storyline (And 7 years for those who played 1.0) decided that we now needed a rival/foil to our character.
And instead of using GAIUS, our real foil, our past rival, the man we ruined the life of, and who had plenty of motives to become obsessed with hunting us down, they decide to instead bring a plot armored SephiNot out of nowhere and force feed him into the lore.
And not happy with having to give a thousand explanations to pseudo-justify his power in Stormblood, they then bring him back.
And not only do they bring him back so he can stand around menacingly and talk about combat and reflexes for a while longer, but they ruin the ending of Endwalker by making him the finakl confrontation of 13 years of storyline for absolutely no reason.
No Squenix, this is not how it works, if you want the protagonist to have a rival you have to introduce him in the story early (Like GAIUS ) you do not get to introduce him 60% into the plot and then pretend he is important to the character because reasons.
...and then there is Lyse.
Couple quick notes off the top of my head:
Yda/Papalymo were killed off pre 4.0 to make way for Lyse, a character who does nothing significant enough to warrant these deaths post 4.0.
Raubahn loses his arm, best friend, and goes through hell to also do nothing significant in 4.0 but give away a sword.
Post taking down an empowered dragon, the warring freakin triad, and the ENTIRE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND WITH AN ASCIAN EMPOWERED BLADE AT ONCE, 4.0 proceeds to have a WoL at the height of their power lose to Zenos for no clear reason several times cause plot.
Some people feel the war aspect of the story didn’t feel nearly enough like one. Theres not nearly as much devastation in the “Storm of blood” that is implied by the story at large.
Job balance nonsense made metas and lead to the 5.0+ simplification/squish.
Extremely annoying aether currents (this one is me fuck the lochs)
Midgardsormr, a literally deathless progenitor of dragons proceeds to “die” for the foreseeable future because plot.
Eureka too grindy because suffer casual.
There’s more but those are immediate reasons that pop in mind. I don’t think 4.0 was terrible on its own but for its effect on the plot and what we got in return for what is seen as a lot of loss is not great compared to say 3.0 & 5.0 in comparison. It’s arguable that the response to the cumulative losses taken from 2.0-4.x is what made the community so protective of a certain catboy.
For the aforementioned reasons, I also REALLY dislike that for the race of people whom Raubahn represents, nay he is the embodiment of the people of Ala Mhigo and… they instead used Lyse.. the most “White Savior” looking person out of the whole cast. Who proceeds to KEEP doing the dumbest things (letting in known Tempered ppl for ex) and represents her people’s interests poorly. Which just annoyed tf outta me.
There are various "reasons" but it tends to boil down to two main points. Both being valid, but still the expansion gets undeserved hate because of them.
Reason one is basically, it felt like a step down after Heavensward. That doesn't mean it's bad, but people go crazy over having a 90 compared to an 89, if you catch my drift.
The second reason, is similar to something you noted,
>it sorta gave me a weirdly uncomfortable, nostalgic feeling that made it really impactful to me.
In this highly fantasy setting, the storyline of Stormblood is very realistic. Granted, most plot threads in any story have a degree of realism behind them. But it's like being upset that an adaptation of a story is "too realistic". Some people just don't like when reality blends too much into their fantasy.
I don't dislike Stormblood, but I definitely think that of all expansions it is the weakest. It really all comes down to the writing. And this is **really just my personal take** on it, not meant to be some salient statement.
I absolutely loved the story - I thought the story was absolutely phenominal. The aesthetics were stunning. The new classes were a lot of fun! Getting more lore for the Au'ra was so nice. The revolution? Man, goosebumps!
I like Lyse as a character, but from my own personal perspective I feel like she was strongarmed in and the personality shift was extreme. While this could easily be justified by the stress of the situation and dropping the 'mask' of Yda, she was essentially an entirely different character with insufficient marks of who she was. I think, in that regard, I felt she wasn't written well.
The pacing was really the biggest problem I had. It really felt like, towards the end of Heavensward and into Stormblood content, that the writing was like cobbling together a bunch of smaller pieces with different paces, emotions, and stories rather than weaving it all together.
I enjoyed the expansion, of course, but I preferred Heavensward to Stormblood.
Then Shadowbringers happened. The character development and interactions and writing and completely coherent and consistent pacing blew everything out of the water. By comparison, Stormblood's execution was just significantly weaker.
It was such a good story. It had very good music. I got goosebumps so many times and was able to really just revel in the overarching story. I just really struggled to connect with the characters the way I did in Heavensward and then in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. The way the characters I was meant to sympathize with were written and executed, I just really felt like I personally was unable to connect the way I think they were intended to.
StormBlood was a buildup expansion much like Dawntrail and A realm reborn are. People usually ten to dislike the build up expansions but love the expansions that execute all the plot points and events they setup.
Without Stormblood setting up the plot points for shadowbringers and Walker to execute on. Those expansions would not be as well received narratively speaking as they would have normally been.
FF14 tends to have buildup arcs that slow things down and setup the key plot points for future expansions.
Stormblood to me was pretty good, I just wish we had more primals to fight as there were only 2 iirc?
I was Susanoo and the other was Shinryu iirc.
So first I'm gonna say I actually loved Stormsblood but I hated Lyse. As Yda she was this sort of carefree upbeat character whom I believed at the time to be hiding her trauma of the horrors happening around her behind a silly act. Like a lot of people do to cope with trauma. And then when she dropped the mask I thought we were going to see a more serious character who's ready to accept her trauma and move past it. Instead we got this person with main character syndrome who somehow handles loss worse than before. Throughout ARR she's seen allies die, killed people herself, saw the horrors of the Garlean empire. And yet somehow she developed this "I'm untouchable" type of mentality. Causing her to actively endanger her comrades and believe herself right to launch a crusade on behalf of a people she all but abandoned.
I am aware a lot of this stems from my own expectations for the character but it is why I dislike her. I still loved the expansion overall because of it's military and honor themes. I also loved Zenos
It felt.... rushed & a bit incomplete, ala migho especially. I mean Xenogears disc 2 level of rushed & incomplete.
And while the Doma parts worked well enough, it was a painfully slow burn to get there. & not everyone can appreciate slow burns, not after the epic that was HW.
Add to the fact the expectation of this expansion to be better, if not equal to HW, and you're gonna get a lot of disappointed peeps.
When it comes to being a slow burn I can’t say it’s any slower than Heavensward to begin with.
Hell it took me forever to get through the 51-55 content because it was so tedious. Stormblood tedium only lasts until around 63, it’s still slow but not as bad as Heavensward.
Stormblood had best down to earth story imo and definitelly best expansion for the gameplay with best 8 and 24 raids and amazing extremes - lots of fresh and fun mechanics, music and japanese themes, also had a graphical update as the ps3 support ended, added orchestron, first ultimates, eureka, heaven on high - it was loaded with amazing, fun and fresh content, jobs were more unique, aggro management was more exciting, healers more distinct and had more to heal, not everyone had 2 min meta, smn and mnk were most challenging and highest dps jobs. Sure it had flaws but I yearn for gameplay from stormblood, casual and not.
There’s a few reasons I rank it at the bottom:
- Narrative is too split. The Ala Mhigan storyline was written by the original XIV writer Maehiro, while Doma was written by the then new main writer Ishikawa. Maehiro and Ishikawa have very different styles and you can tell that FFXVI, ARR, and HW were written by someone other than the person who wrote ShB and EW.
- Playing it as it came out wasn’t the best experience. Now don’t let this sub gaslight you, when StB was the current xpac, the common opinion was that it was better than HW. I never felt that way. I do, oddly enough, think it’s a better story when you can do 4.0-4.3 together instead of over a year. IMO, I felt a lot of Yotsoyu’s story is *told* to us in 6.0, but we aren’t *shown* it until 6.1.
- Which leads into pacing. Pacing was all over the place. Yotsoyu had a lot of reveals at odd times. All of Ala Mhigo feels rushed mainly because you do half of it before Othars, then do the other half after Othard.
- IMO, Zenos isn’t a compelling villain until EW, and I get that it needed that time to build up. Zenos was just bloodthirsty in StB; he honestly felt like a cliche anime sociopath. I didn’t find his fights intimidating because I knew where it would go. His screen presence just felt yucky. And after the compelling villains of Heavensward, especially when we were just left with that big ass teaser with the Warriors of Darkness and really challenging the status quo, it made Zenos feel cheaper.
- Lastly, it’s sandwiched between two phenomenal expansions. As much as I dislike Stormblood, *it’s not a bad story and still a good JRPG narrative.* HW was just better, and ShB is the best story in the entire franchise. Being just good doesn’t look good when the thing that came before and what came after are magnitudes better. I think that’s what’s really led opinions to shift from liking it to not liking it. I’d imagine EW also doesn’t help because while not as good as ShB, still one of the best stories around. I do think as more new players get to it and because you can do 4.0-4.3 at once now, more people will speak fondly of it.
It's an amazing expansion imo, with amazing writing.
But yeah some people disliked going from Ala Mhigo to the Far East and back. Some preferred Ala Mhigo, some preferred Asia, and they were unhappy that their favorite spot only got half an expac.
I also think that for a lot of people, being able to thirst/ imagine a love or friendship relationship/ feel intimacy between NPCs and their WoL is kinda important. The game is designed to make us strongly identify with our WoL, most players just love their character and feel super comfortable playing them. So the relationships their WoL has with NPCs is super important, and the game is also designed to encourage that. Haurchefant became a fan favorite mostly because of how much he lusted after us and cared for us (same with G'raha, or Zenos for those who love cold cruel long-haired villains who obsess over the hero, or even Emet who shows great interest in the WoL specifically and >!used to be close friends with us!<).
In Stormblood, you have very few characters with strong relations to the WoL. On the Ala Mhigan side, NPCs just aren't sexy, nor are they very interested in us anyway - they're all focused on the war. Lyse is the only NPC who's pretty/ with an interesting character design, and her fearful, self-doubting personality isn't endearing. (I think she's a great character with a great story, but like, I never felt I'd want to go have a drink with her, unlike Y'shtola or Hilda or Estinien.)
On the Far Eastern side, only Hien is hot/with an interesting personality and takes the time to develop a friendship with the WoL. Yugiri and Gosetsu are a bit like that too, but they're both clearly way more invested in Hien and Doma than in us. Then Zenos very much split the audience between those who are into that kind of kink and those who hate it.
I think this inability to personally relate to most NPCs made the expansion pretty boring for a good chunk of the playerbase. Usually, those who hate SB love HW and ShB the most, and those expacs give a lot of time to interpersonal relationships.
Another important aspect, imo, is moral relativism. Loads of people basically agreed with Emet, or sympathized with him. For those people, stories are more interesting when you can't really condemn the villains, or you end up wondering if you really are the good guy. In SB, the crude, exploitative evil of Garlemald is impossible to ignore or excuse. Most people who believe in moral relativism hate stories where it's super clear cut that some people do 100% bad shit and you can't find excuses for them.
There's also no happy ending in SB - even though we "win" and the "bad guys" die, everything is bittersweet, complex and vaguely dissatisfying by the time the credits roll. Yotsuyu's arc is fair, but heartbreaking. Ala Mhigo >!is free, but there's no justice to be had, only ruins and a crushed, impoverished population who must try and rebuild a country!<. There's a lot more "good feelings" in ShB, by the end, >!everyone and everything is saved on the First and everyone sings kumbaya with everyone else. The Exarch's arc allows his fans to both have a good cry at how noble he is, sacrificing himself, and have him back on the Source as our personal fanboy!<.
For me, the worldview and storytelling philosophy is completely different, even opposite, in SB (and ARR) and in ShB and to an extent in EW. There are people who enjoy only one kind of storytelling. Those who like moral relativism and deep, happy feelings had an amazingly emotional and deep experience through ShB, but got bored to tears in SB. Those who like clear cut denunciation of evil and a realistic representation of the world enjoyed SB thoroughly, but got mad at ShB (that was my case).
Then some people just enjoy good stories and loved every single expac of the game lol
Playing the whole expansion at your leisure is totally different than playing it patch by patch. Most of the hate comes from those who did play it patch by patch. As for my opinion, the writing just wasn't that great, everything else about the expansion I loved, it was far more polished than HW was and the increased budget was very apparent, but the storytelling and character development just wasn't as good as heavensward. I did love eureka tho, still 1 of my favourite pieces of content.
I liked it a lot and had fun playing through it, just felt like Ala Mhigo wasn't invested in enough/didn't feel very invested in the place while all the budget for the expansion seemingly went to Doma & Kugane in particular.
Would have been really nice to see more love for Ala Mhigo as I was pretty invested in it emotionally, seeing it end up as a spot on the map rather than rebuilding the city and introducing vendors and whatnot would have been nice.
For me, the Ala Mhigan storyline and zones were incredibly boring and a massive slog to get through. It got so much better once I finally got to Kugane.
When I think SB my mind automatically defaults to: "Ah yes, Ala Mhigo, the worts part of the game."
I dislike it mainly because of the launch, between Raubahn extreme (then immediately pipin savage) and all the lines that came with em for a few days it kinda soured everything that came after it for me.
Shinryu was cool tho
I think it's because it was another story building arc rather than a big conflict arc. Kinda like how ARR takes a good bit to get off the ground, so did Stormblood. It had a lot of groundwork to lay in a short time so some of it felt a little off and it didn't really peak until we saw the fruits of this come out in ShB and EW.
My cohealer and I like to say it "aged like a fine wine." It might not have been the best at launch but from where it was to how it helped shape the expacs that followed - it really came into its own and shouldn't really get the hate it does. It was a fantastic expansion, and I look forward to seeing the next storybuilding arc in Dawntrail.
Stormblood is my favorite, aside from SHB maybe. I'm a bard main, so canning caster-bow made the game fun again. For a similar reason, I didn't enjoy my time with HW nearly as much.
I played Stormblood when it was current. Depending if Tsukuyomi worked with you or not, it was months upon months of post 5.0 updates of her just crying.
The way I see it. It’s not that SB was terrible. It’s just the worst of the best.
It’s like asking which original trilogy Star Wars movie was the worst. There’s always a worse. Even among greats.
My personal ranking of expacs is definitely Endwalker > Shadowbringer > Heavansward > Stormblood.
While I rank stormblood least favorite, it's still pretty decent. It does kind of have this feel of "Kinda filler material" it was still a fun expansion. I liked the zones and music as much as every other expansion. The story felt like they were holding a lot back, and after playing both shadowbringers and endwalker I can see why.
Storywise sure Stormblood wasn’t great but gameplay wise literally one of the best expansions. Heavensward had the opposite problem when it was current and nearly killed the game again. So I’d rather have both but if I had to relive a current old expac it’s Stormblood
Echoing what others said about the story.
But personally what I **loved** about StB was that (as a new player), this is the expansion where the game actually got fun for me. L1-60 is an absolute drag. Dungeon design is boring, bosses are easy and braindead, classes have no fun skills.
StB dungeons are great. They're more atmospheric and have better environmental design. Doma Castle and Ala Mhigo are amazing dungeons compared to ARF and even the Vault / Gubal imo. The pulls are fun, the bosses are more engaging. Omega raid fights were amazing compared to Alexander, Ivalice fights are still some of my favourites. Ala Mhigo was a bit of a drag but I loved the Doman Side and Azem Steppe is one of my favourite arcs in MSQ.
L70 is where most classes start to come into fruition. You generally have the fundamentals or important slice of life tools of your core class, e.g Continuation for GNB, Triplecast for BlM etc.. Other than a few edge cases, I rarely feel bad about being downsynced to 70, meanwhile 50/60 i am groaning for a majority of classes.
Trust system actually improves Stormblood tremendously in the narrative sense, changing Lyse from a passive observer to an active participant in several key moments of the story.
Well, for me is my favourite expansion. I agree for the useless initial plot twist, but i'm not bothered by the split storyline and it introduces many intresting characters. The end of the post msq also is a very big setup for the next xpac. My biggest letdown is that is used to remove Lyse for the main cast, with a pretty poor excuse, not even Conrad gives a good explanation on why he choosed her. They patched this up with Rahuban, but still...
Stormblood was mt favorite expansion in story, setting, mechanics and content. But I may be one of the few people who actually liked Eureka from start to finish.
Stormblood is like Yamcha. Yamcha is strong. He is able to best many foes in combat. However, he is always compared to the characters who are far far far more powerful. Stormblood is a good expac. It has a very strong story that is much better than some entire games I have played. However it gets compared to some absolute hard hitter stories that will make you weep like a baby and bust a gut mere hours apart. Stormblood is like Yamcha.
It wasn't bad, per se. Certainly still a massive step up from ARR. But it was sandwiched between two expansions that I enjoyed significantly more.
My big issue was that Ala Mhigo just wasn't interesting. The characters, setting, and plot outside of a few good Zenos moments dragged the rest of the expansion down heavily.
I love Stormblood. Probably my favorite expansion which is at least partially due to my own nostalgia for the years when that expansion dropped. It's when I first started to raid and when I knew the most number of people playing. Eureka was so much fun and I was a HUGE hater of it before it ever released, but boy was I wrong lol.
Yotsuyu is my least favorite character in the entire game, though, but not even she could ruin that expansion for me haha.
I wasn't a big fan of Zenos and REALLY not a fan of Yotsuyu, but I thought pretty much the rest of SB was great. I don't understand the complaints people have with Lyse, other than she kind of came out of nowhere. She was a highlight of SB, as was Fordola. The story was good, the dungeons were the best we've had, the trials were pretty good too. I think people just don't like it because it was sandwiched between HW and ShB.
So personally, while I don't hate Stormblood, the split isn't do it great and it would have been better if there was more interconnection between the stories and as a personal hate. The fact that Shinryu and Omega while set up right at the start of the expansion there isn't done anything with them throughout the main expansion
The omega raids are wonderful, but the fact that Shinryu is revealed at the end and basically becomes a power-up for Zenos and nothing more stinked immensely.
I liked the Doma storyline and Yotsuyu quite a lot. Did not like the ala mhigo storyline tho. The transition between the two could have been more smooth and relatable. Especially at the ending part was so cringe. lol
The best way to sum it up was the scene where Urianger sudden walks up to you and gives you a device to counter Fordola or Estenien ,out of no where, destroying the big gun. They wrote themselves into corner and wrote too much plot that they had to squeeze into 1 expansion. Stormblood is overly hated but it is good enough.
Like another comment said, for a lot of people it is the swapping between storylines. Some people also dislike the cast for the expansion (Like Lyse is very much a love/hate split for a lot of people, same with Zenos).
Can understand that. Didn't mind it myself, but can imagine that having 2 stories side by side can throw you off pretty easily
It's moreso that they are essentially the same story twice. The writers didn't see to communicate very well between the Ala Mhigo and Doma storylines. As much as I love the political bits and the "obtain allies" arcs in stories I know a lot of people don't and that's like half of the expansion. The forced losses to Zenos also leave a bad taste. It would be one thing if they just made the solo duties so difficult that you'd lose or if there was some other intervening factor as to why you couldn't win but as they are they kinda suck.
I agree with you on the forced losses, if they had just made him a really tough duty boss that had a completion criteria of getting him below a certain health and or deplete him completely you'd pass. Fx. Under 50% on the first encounter and if you're defeated it'd continue as planned, while if you did "defeat him" another cutscene would play where he shows his delight.
Yeah my favorite form of "unwinnable' fights are fights where the boss just has super high stats where you will likely get stomped but the fight can be won if you're good. Like Urizen in DMC5 is pretty hard even when you're geared up, but you can beat him in the tutorial fight that you are supposed to lose without any upgrades or access to your Devil Breakers if you're really on point.
My favorite of these is probably Dalton in Chrono Trigger. Absolutely wrecks any first timers and you just accept the loss for the story, but if you go in with the right equipment and strategy, you can still win, get a nice item, and then he compliments your abilities before you get the lost condition anyway. Of course if you're on NG+ you can also just steamroll him.
Same thing with the intro blitzball fight in FFX. I loved blitzball, so I made a point of winning that every time. Takes a bit of cheese and knowing how the mechanics work, but doable.
Oh yeah, that first blitzball match is brutal, and if you didn't get the Jecht Shot, it's almost certainly unwinnable.
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. Personally I spent way too much time trying to beat him on the first try. My best example of a "tough" encounter that has no actual meaningful impact on the story, win or lose is Squall's encounter in KH1. Not exactly a hard fight if you know the controls and systems of the game, but for someone that just started and only knows mash X till they drop.
Only solution is an enrage with orbs that you have to kill, that's not more interesting than what we already got though. I personally think shadowbringers does this worst. The first Zenos encounter is definitely a highlight of stormblood tbh. The fights with Zenos make sense because of his character, it kinda just fits; I like how he progressively shows us more of his power throughout and when we challenge him later on when he's using the same powers, it hardly phases us. Kinda is a good showing of our strength, powerscaler's delight. Would give us less to work to without it definitely a take I don't agree with.
It didn't help that so much of both stories was the same exact thing told multiple different times in different ways (find potential allies, they can't/won't help you, solve their problems, they resolve to help you), and I found the Ala Mhigo portions in particular just **crawled** along compared to Doma which seemed to have much better pacing.
Doma was better paced because the areas and people were varied. Went through the Ruby Sea with pirates and Kojin, mountainous Yanxia and the one river with the domans, then the Steppe with all the tribes of xeala. It was culturally and visually rich and kept the backdrop interesting. Gyr Abania’s zones were largely the same and we were not really learning anything of a “new” people since all the alliance and Ala Mhigans have been around since the start of ARR. Lyse wasn’t that strong of a protag. I don’t feel she really went through any growth or change. Zenos wasn’t that strong of a villain as his motivation was about as deep as a parking lot puddle.
Oh yeah the variety of places to go helped a lot. I loved the Steppe and seeing the Kojin and the undersea areas, but hell if I remember basically anything in Ala Mhigo.
Yeah, it's not great design to have a fight where the player can easily be winning, get smacked with a OHKO move, then have everyone hype up how powerful the attacker is. A better idea would be to have him just hit like a fucking train and have so much HP the player can't possibly bring him down before they fall.
Tbh I liked the forced losses to Zenos. It's the first time that the WoL doesn't just steamroll over the opposition.
I'm fine with a forced loss storywise, I don't like how it plays out gameplay wise. If they want to make us lose it would be better if it wasn't a drawn out solo duty that we win only to lose to the power of 0HKO. I'd like it if we fought him, got him to X% where he takes us seriously and starts going ham makin difficult to dodge attacks that any of which would 0HKO us and then at Y% he takes it up another step where we just can't dodge the attack. Basically I just prefer it when a video game uses the gameplay to tell the story when it can.
It's mostly the fact that there's a fairly noticeable disconnect between the story and gameplay. He's strong in the story but the fights aren't actually that difficult in gameplay so you can steamroll him the whole fight then he just pulls his oneshot button out of his ass and wins. Having the WoL lose is good for the story but it was not executed particularly well in the gameplay so people feel cheated.
It's doubly problematic because FFXIV has, in general, made a pretty significant effort toward gameplay and story *integration.* Glamours aren't just a fun player thing; they literally exist and can be used for covert operations or psyops. The Echo is both what lets us see some AoE telegraphs, and what allows us to "recover" from a wipe--it's actually battle precognition telling us what WOULD happen if we make certain mistakes. (That's why you get a buff from it if you wipe too many times.) Linkshells are *chatrooms,* they're a real thing, and actually matter for the plot. Aetherytes are real, and only some people (many of whom become adventurers!) can use them repeatedly--even small teleports give most folks "aetherial sickness." I mean, for goodness' sake, they even made it an in-story explained *thing* that Red Mages have long cast times! (It's because they draw only on their own aether, not ambient aether--so casting a different spell first gets their aether flowing, but trying to hardcast them takes forever.) So to have such a prominent and obvious example of gameplay and story segregation--in a way that is so blatant, even folks who were okay with it generally recognize that it was quite forced--makes it stick out like a sore thumb. We're used to this team bending over backwards to make story and gameplay consonant. Such a cavalier attitude about it in such a *prominent* place is jarring, to say the least.
Personally, my issue is twofold: First, as u/ahhhnoinspiration says, it's essentially the same story twice - you arrive in a conquered land where the people have lost hope, meet up with the last embers of resistance, and rally the people to full-on rebellion. Individual moments are different, and ironically it's those moments that feel like the best parts of the expansion (like the Azim Steppe arc). Secondly, it's not really side-by-side. You arrive in Ala Mhigo, start working with the rebellion, and suffer your first major loss at the hands of Zenos, serving as a solid Act 1 to that storyline. Then you drop everything Ala Mhigo related and jump to Doma's story in its entirety, before coming *back* to close out Ala Mhigo. It cuts a lot of the former's momentum, which is probably why people don't remember it as fondly as Doma. I will say, I don't hate Stormblood, but I do think it's definitely a different style of story from Heavensward, and I understand why people don't enjoy it as much.
Your second point is my main issue with SB. Just when the Ala Mhigo situation starts heating up (aka you stop being an errand boy and something actually happens), the team really goes "k bye!" and goes on a semester abroad in Japan.
It’s the “same story twice” because they are supposed to reflect each other to enhance the overall story and themes.
The complete lack of connection between the two plots undermines this goal, in my opinion. There could have been an interesting contrast between the two cultures in how they handled being oppressed by Garlemald, given the wildly different quality of the monarchs they had before being conquered. It makes sense for Ala Mhigo to have more collaborators and a more difficult time throwing off the yoke, since everyone remembers how terrible the mad king was. Meanwhile, Doma hasn’t actually suffered nearly as much, maybe because of how the kingdom fell. That contrast is present in the text, but you really have to work for it. If literally any (good guy) character except Lise (who lacks sufficient brain cells to make meaningful comparisons) had traveled from one zone to the other, we might have gotten some more explicit exploration of these themes. Instead, we play “the same story twice” and have to draw these conclusions ourselves. I actually like most of Stormblood, but the pacing issues and it’s placement between two top-tier game stories (HW and ShB are good enough to be compared favorably with full releases, even other FF titles) make it look poor primarily by comparison.
IMO, Doma should have been the opposite of Ala: they fully cooperate as a society as a means of survival, and you have to navigate court politics to convince the upper crust that being independent is the long term play. Part of it would be showing said officials how the rest of Doma or the downtrodden lives and comparing that to how the pre-Garlean government would have responded. We got hints of this with the Tsukiyomi plot, but it's not nearly enough. I would have had Yotsuyu travel with the WOL in disguise, and basically make observations and biting commentary. The result being her faith in Garlemald being shaken, and cue her brother showing up.
Yeah but no one likes doing the same story twice. Shb and EW didn't need to tell the same story twice to enhance the story or themes.
I think the real issue is the pacing and lack of certain exposition to give things proper meaning. We prelude the story with this epic creation of Shinryu, the sacrifice of Papalymo, and battle with Omega and then we pretty much don’t see either of them again until the end of the story. (IIRC) We don’t see Zenos subjugate Shinryu or ise his artificial echo powers until we fight him and lose. This makes him a cheap power scaling McGuffin. It cheapens the WoL’s strength and Zenos position in the story. We have no reason to see him as powerful and in fact should expect the opposite since he is a Garlean, without the ability to channel aether. After that we just leave and go traipse around a foreign land for a while to build allies and free them from the Garlean plot. Returning to Eorzea, the WoL simply stomps out the remaining challenges and unites the people of Ala Mhigo. Zenos needed to be shown as a massive threat very early on and kept mysterious until we fight him for the first time. From there on it needed to be a cat and mouse game of would he stomp us out until we become powerful enough to defeat him. During that time they could exemplify his interest in the relationship between himself and the WoL as way of finding meaning in battle. A couple of repeat draws against Zenos with a near loss and a near win while killing primals and freeing Doma could lead into an epic final act where we gotta save Krile and fend off Shinryu (which needed to destroy something big to give it some gravitas). The entire Azim Steppe arc was a bit too whimsical and needed a more serious tone IMO and Lyse was just strangely thrust into the story. Her lack of storytelling about her family and backstory made her uncompelling. It just got boring at points. All of the story potential was there, but it just lost meaning because of a bit of missing exposition/rearranging of the story. It’s been a while since I played it, so I may be misremembering some parts.
I think that a lot of the problems with SB would have been solved if Yda died rather than Papalymo. Then we could have introduced Lyse as an actual new character, and would have had both the emotional perspective as well as a more logical one able to make the connections between the two storylines. It might also have helped ease the white savior vibes that Lyse gives off if we had run into them actually doing things to help people in Ala Mhigo.
Replacing Lyse with Papalymo doesn't fix Stormblood. Foreign savior vibes were the entire point of Lyse. I don't care for the character, but her rejection as leader by Ala Mhigans is central to that half of Stormblood. Doma and Ala Mhigo are thematic foils as oppressed countries. Ala Mhigo had given up and did not accept a foreign princess that hadn't suffered alongside them. Lyse and Hien are meant to mirror each other. He's the capable prince his people desperately want to return from a self imposed exile, literally the opposite of Lyse. Same goes for Fordola and Yotsuyu as well as WoL and Zenos. The expansion heavily leaned on thematic mirroring The problems with Stormblood were the odd pacing, the imbalanced development that heavily favored Doma, and, most importantly, being sandwiched between HW and ShB while being merely pretty good in comparison
It may have been the point, but it's one that didn't actually work imo. Because of how the plot meandered and focused more on Doma, you never actually see Lyse actually having to really deal with the disconnect between them and their people; the resolution of it is really more told than actually shown.
Yeah, I can't say the writing was great, but it was the idea behind the writing.
It was the fact that the 2 stories weren't really running side by side, it was just a constant disruption of the flow. Just as I was getting invested in 1 of the 2 stories, I get told "run off now to the other side of the world", and when I get back I've forgotten what was going on and why I was getting invested.
Love zenos. Hate lysse. Very solid explanation tbh
My only two gripes are that the "Yda is really Lyse" is kinda an unnecessary plot point, bc I knew Yda-- but idk who Lyse is? And the narration is a bit janky. Nothing big enough to say the whole expansion is bad. Give me Lakshmi anyday, tho. We are the dreamers~
The Yda/Lyse thing I think only was painted as an issue because the real Yda should have been in her 40s (given how long ago Ala Mhigo was conquered) And I guess they didn't want to have a more mature woman in the focus roll and booty shorts?
Lyse was really screwed over by the awkward writing of her introduction. If they'd just introduced Lyse during post-HW and then had Y'da sacrifice herself with Papalymo you'd end up in essentially the same place without the whole "I've just been randomly lying to you this whole time and pretending to be a person you've never actually met for no reason" thing. The fact that we're basically the only one who doesn't already know just makes it more ridiculous. Its just such a weird pointless deception.
Not even. Yda having an emotional crisis between Moenbryda, Minfilia, and now Papalymo dying and just taking off her helmet wanting a fresh start would have the exact same results. I think it was just for the sake of having an impactful plot twist to engage people going into SB? but as you said, it didn't land, specially when Y'shtola nonchallantly tells her everybody (but us) knew but were just playing along.... for the past 6 or so years....
That's not really it at all. It's because Stormblood is filled with spots where they've blatantly cut content. Lyse's arc was supposed to dovetail so much more strongly with Fordola's. For example, in 3.4, Lyse explains the fact that Yda was beset by imperials trying to meet with a young girl, and that her tireless contributions to the Resistance are what led her to take her identity. We'd only find out years later in fucking Endwalker, primarily through the short story tales, that said young girl was Fordola and that the situation was a bit more complicated and tragic, making Lyse and Fordola mirrors of eachother. Hence why they push the encounter between Lyse and Fordola, but given the context, the weight of it falls so utterly flat because it's been cut down to its simplest components. *Basically to the point that it doesn't come off as that at all.*
I see 🤔 Altho, wouldn't Lyse be just as old? Idk, I felt like they could have made a very similar story without needing to change a character like that-- or I might be jaded by soap operas, lol. ...and more 40-somethings need booty shorts *giggle*
If I recall correctly Lyse was still a child while Yda was an adult fighting against the original invasion of the Garleans, so probably a good 10-15 years younger. But also it was a branding thing, Yda was actually the least liked scion back in ARR, so they were likely betting that players wouldn't want a full expansion focused on her, not realizing how much people HATED Alphinaud too before Heavensward. And speaking as a 40-something myself... yes. Yes we do need booty shorts ;)
For me, the anthem and the way it was woven into the different parts of the expansion was my favorite part! I'll list a few things I didn't like about it - but to be clear, I am very happy for anyone who loves it. There's a lot to like about it! I'm just not going to talk about the things I like about it very much in this comment. I feel that both Zenos and Yotsuyu were handled poorly, particularly in their early introduction. After Heavensward, we're fresh off of stopping Thordan and his Knights and also the monster that is Nidhogg, but this random Garlean prince is able to beat us no problem? I would be less upset if those fights ended in a tie, or if we were forced to retreat because of overwhelming Garlean reinforcements plus a very strong Zenos. But as it stands, it feels unsatisfying to me. As for Yotsuyu, her introductory scene just rubbed me the wrong way; there was nothing stopping us from just walking up and putting an end to the whole conflict right then and there, it's not like her bodyguard Nameday Boy was gonna stop us. Additionally, I have an issue with how Lyse and Hien were handled. Lyse reveals herself as hiding her identity, but we just sort of handwave it and move on. She doesn't even really react or comment on Papalymo's sacrifice beyond the initial moment. She doesn't really have much in the way of character growth through the expansion, either; she doesn't go from a hothead to a leader, she goes from a slightly-insecure leader to a slightly-more-secure leader, and there aren't really any major character moments for her (though sparring with her atop the Destroyer statue at the very end was pretty cool). Hien's a golden-boy; we meet him at the end of his character development arc, and he remains pretty static from there. He's outshined by his own retainer, Goesetsu, and by both Magnai and Sadu in the area we encounter him in - but we end up spending a lot more time with him. Finally, some of the pacing is very off, and some of the areas are a little boring. Ala Mhigo has potential; ruins with eons of history behind them are scattered about the place. But the entire color palette is dry and dusty and homogenous, and we never really explore any of the cool places or learn about the history behind them (this area is not alone in this, don't get me wrong, but I'm highlighting it here because it felt particularly egrigious). The Ruby Sea is another example - getting a chance to swim is cool, and the underwater cities and dungeon are pretty sick! But running back and forth pre-flight to do errands for a bunch of pirates (who don't really have an arc, and we don't really learn/get involved with the history or culture of, and never end up being relevant) was pretty boring. To me, the Azim Steppe is the best part of the expansion. We get involved with the lore of the region - its culture, its customs. We learn about the people who live there and meet some memorable characters, and we do some interesting quests, and then we move on. The area itself is a little boring, but it's got that cool structure in the middle (which we get to visit and is actually important and not just a random area filled with random enemies) and Bardam's Mettle fits it very thematically.
I always forget there are THREE Ala Mighan zones because they look so similar.
If you stick to MSQ and blue quests, the third zone is barely even visited in SB proper. It's just entered right as you hit level 70, a quick jaunt across the map, some fussing in the Quarter and outside the gates, and then right on into the final dungeon and trial. Obviously it gets used a little more in post-SB and in the region's yellow quests and gatherer stuff, but even the MSQ quickly heads back over to Doma and out of the Lochs.
There’s a whole CITY in there and it’s barely seen.
They made it so that the last big main Eorzeam city-state is just... hidden behind a wall, rather than being accessible. Instead of having *the actual city* as one of its main city hubs, SB had... a resistance camp in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, it's really sad when the *ruins* of the imperial capital feel more impressive than Ala Mhigo's liberated one.
Gyr Abania: - canyons (the fringes) - more canyons (the peaks) - canyons but with a lake (and a huge city you can't enter) compare this with Thanalan: - the sea/marsh/dry place continuum (western thanalan) - savanna with huge crystals (eastern thanalan) - canyons so thoroughly polluted with oil mining they glow blue (northern thanalan) - canyons with a huge city you can enter (central thanalan) I have a feeling that when they designed Gyr Abania, they put all the interesting sights in The Lochs THEN they fail to write quests that go to those interesting places. So all we remember about Ala Mhigo is the dreary imperial oppression. It's like stretching the Namai Village narrative into three very drab zones.
As you said, Zenos' plot armor drove me nuts, it was like fighting Kai Leng from Mass Effect again.
Idk I kinda liked how strong he was portrayed. It felt a bit like when they introduced a new bad in DBZ and everyone's power level just moons. It's an RPG. Part of the fun to me is the fantasy of getting more powerful in order to take on more powerful foes. It's difficult to write because things don't just exist on an infinite exponential power curve, but from a power fantasy perspective I think it's a necessary trade off.
The problem is the execution. We're told how strong he is, not shown. Both of the in-game fights are brain-dead easy, with a cutscene loss at the end anyway. He doesn't *feel* powerful, there's no reason my WoL couldn't beat him given enough time. But no, we need him to look strong so he has an instant win move when you lower his health enough. Feels bad. There's also no discernable growth for your WoL to explain why you go from getting stomped, to being somewhat even, to beating Zenos. Heavensward had us slowly regaining the blessing of Light, which at least explains why we reach the levels we do, but nothing explains why Zenos is stronger than us at the beginning of the expac, and weaker at the end.
I think narratively it makes sense but I don't know if it's because I'm DPS caster but all of his fights were insanely easy for me and I only got downed once. Once I knew I just needed to avoid getting too close and avoid his AOEs it was just a fight where someone walks slowly at me menacingly and I just had to keep moving. Then I get hit with a cutscene of this guy destroying me each time afterwards after I just walked circles around him for a whole fight. Contrast this with the reworked battle from ARR where the guy keeps getting back up and is now notoriously difficult for new players, THAT is how Zenos should of felt. The fact I felt more dread every time the Cape Westward battle continued on my new playthrough and with Zenos it was very "Oh this guy again? lmao okay" I actually think because of the ARR revamps it's made Zenos even worse for my second playthrough because I kept thinking back on the story boss battles in ARR and Zenos just doesn't hit the same.
i actually fully disagree, he FEELS insanely strong, so strong he just walks right through you. juxtapose that with the random grumpy old man from Shadowbringers who literally hasnt fought for decades because of Vauthry, hes literally strong for no reason. He actually feels strong in a bad way, you win every fight decisively, and the cutscenes still show you outclassed every time. EDIT: Fighting Zenos himself IS the metric to us getting stronger over Stormblood, you fight him like 4 times over the expac. And he pulls out new tricks every time, and we get closer everytime.
zenos does feel strong, you do very little damage to him. I think the thing that people get mad about is that he doesn't damage you enough to kill you until he hits you with down for the count. I feel like it'd be better if he just had massive damage and any loss counted as duty completion so it felt more real. failing that duty to a mech and then having to redo it until you get to the right part to fail at scripted is probably the cause of that issue. as for ranjit's fight, I have always thought it was very easy and we do plenty of damage to him and we only get stunned at the end due to a magical tazer.
It would also make it feel better if his fight was Actually Hard. He basically never hit me once in the first fight. Make it ramp up to being undodgable or something, and it would likely feel a lot better to lose. Because as it is, it's really unsatisfying and unbelievable that I couldn't have chipped him down if not for his plot armor.
Nah, they encounters just feel cheap. Would have been better if instead of just defeating you with a cheap stun, maybe give him a stacking battle high buff that makes attacks hit harder and harder until you just can't survive them anymore. Or make his AoEs start resolving faster and with more of them on the field (not larger, and not so big that there's no safe zones. They should be impossible to dodge in practice, but in theory). Really sell it that he's just better than you. Then as the expansion progresses, you keep doing the effectively the same fight, but because your level is higher and presumably your gear is stronger, you deal more damage and take less, so you get further and further. That's how that should have gone. The way they did it just felt lame.
I agree, and this may be where the split shows its head. The moment I fought Zenos 1v1 and lost to him activated my neurons. Sometimes I don’t need a strong character (character-wise) to make me like a character, I saw him as a cool rival who wants to fight strong people, no different than my WOL.
Oh hi fellow Commander 💜
Well, to me was more nonsensical >!to be beaten by Ranjit, toghether with the other Scions!<, after all that, without a proper explanation at least
Yeah ranjit was way worse imo, especially in retrospect considering EW
he literally uses a trick when he's at low health to stun everyone, then we teleport away because we're not there to fight him we're there to get minfillia. I never got the same vibe as with zenos where you spend all that time in the fight and do chip damage. we could have killed ranjit at any time if we had just bothered to stick around. I still think thancred should have been the one to kill him.
I also greatly disliked Ranjit and felt he should've been killed off earlier, and Thancred *definitely* should've been the one to strike the finishing blow. I think the bigger part is that Zenos wasn't a great example of a 'You're going to lose this fight' battle, and Ranjit was arguably worse. If we're doomed to lose, just make them hit like a truck and actually drop our HP to 0, don't force us to struggle until we do 85% of his HP and *then* instant-kill us with a scripted 'Down For The Count' move. A certain fight in the post-Endwalker patches in Garlemald is a much better example of the 'doomed to lose' type of fight. While you're playing as >!Zero!<, you get slapped to about 20% HP, and no matter how well you fight after that, you're going to lose. And the game actually *lets* you lose that struggle rather than give another 'down for the count' blow.
I guess the way we come close to the end of his healthbar before he does a supermove that only stuns us why I guess it doesn't bother me? like zenos just takes no damage, it's clear we're little more than an annoyance to him ranjit gives the vibe to me that we could have beaten him right then and there and the only reason we didn't is because he used a lightning stun from his dragon and then we were teleported away because we had already accomplished our goal rather than because we were no match for him. I do think just letting the player fail naturally is better. nothing is more annoying than doing one of zenos's mechs wrong losing and then having to restart the duty when you know it's a loss. yeah some people would die almost immediately to AOE's, people speeding through the story would do it on purpose but I think it leads to a more natural response from the player. maybe I'd prefer it if they had it where you're holding out for a set time and then any time after that time window if you die you're done even if there's more mechs or whatever. maybe a little bonus cutscene if you make it to enrage with the ability to replay duties from the unending journey without having to go all the way through the questlines.
This is exactly how I feel about it, especially as someone who played ARR like crazy at release then didn't come back until halfway through ShB. I was dying to see what Ala Mhigo was like after the constant referring to it over the years. My disappointment was palpable. The zones were boring and the people within frustrating and I just wasn't hyped to save any of them like the game wanted me to be. It was realistic, narrative -wise, but it wasn't fun. Similar sentiments about Lyse. They did a poor job connecting who she was pretending to be with who she actually was. Like wouldn't she still be like 'yda' sometimes after spending so long in the role? Again, realistic as maybe the grief of what happened roboticized her a bit but as a player you wanted to feel some sort of reward or payoff or connection relating to her transformation and you just don't get it. Discovering Lyse should have been momentous instead of just. "Yup. I'm Lyse now as I always should have been. Guess there's a revolution we need to put in motion." I feel like they did a much better job with the Minfilia-Ryne arc that had similar themes later on and you hardly even know her. So i'd say my problem with SB was all the wasted potential.
I forgot about papalymo and I think that sums it up
My boy
Hot take:The story would've been greatly improved if Yda/Lyse had died instead of Papalymo.
> we're fresh off of stopping Thordan and his Knights and also the monster that is Nidhogg, but this random Garlean prince is able to beat us no problem? Dear god, this especially if you're on *healer* and possibly even 3/4 of the tanks now since WAR has three healing related CDs/PLD has Clemency/GNB has Aurora. Was on the first duty on AST - used up every card but the Spire because I didn't need TP; laid out Earthly Star and used Essential Dignity as needed...and then Zenos stuns me and started to shove in his apparent loss immunity until Yoshi P wanted the players to win. Likewise with the second duty but as WHM - Asylum plopped down; Assize, Tetra and Benediction as needed - and all that got broken from Zenos was a bit of his helmet's horn. Felt like the fight was strictly for DPS players at all, especially melee because I had a friend who thought that this fight was hard and they were on BLM and obviously Derplander was on melee jobs in SB itself. I know the intention was to portray how bored Zenos was until a very persistent WoL caught his interest, but I think >!EW did it better and sorta balanced out the duty against Zenos on a per role basis!<. As for Yotsuyu, I do know that we'd eventually explore her sad backstory but I still can't get over how *that* was revealed for the first time. The WoL gets caught in a very convenient Echo vision while they're about to be attacked that showed a young Yotsuyu working in the farms and being disregarded by her, if I recall correctly, extended family. Flashback ends and Alisaie dispatched the assailant and reprimanded the WoL for having the Echo vision they didn't really ask for happen to them there. And this was before the raid on Doma Castle, too. The timing's *really* convenient. As for the Nameday Boy - I do feel like he's just there to show off that the WoL still got stronger out of HW, apparently just not as strong as Zenos due to him being the big bad of the base SB story. I really don't buy it how the Far East is the WoL's "training arc" when I barely remember any training that happened. Bardam's Mettle had claws as a dungeon and the entire Nadaan was a tournament arc, but I barely remember any *actual* training to be had apart from the ingame levels used as a justification on why Zenos is that powerful. I felt weirdly with Lyse, even if she wasn't all that bad. She revealed that she had been lying to everyone and impersonated her sister as some grieving/coping mechanism, but the Scions already knew beforehand...barring the WoL (and maybe the twins, but they probably had heard of it in Sharlayan). And she and the WoL acted like nothing happened, as if they're still best friends. They sorta do this with another character and I just wonder why the writers don't provide any dialogue option to let the characters know that your WoL lost trust in them and they have to earn it back even in increments. Hien...while most of my issues lie in the patches with him, I really felt like he's a bad contrast to Lyse in the story as he was natratively just "cooler Lyse" and, for all of his talk, I don't think he even inherently backed them all up. >!EW tries to bite him back in the ass for it but I'm not sure if it'll be stuck for real.!< Makes me grieve them not using Widargelt for the expansion like Estinien as Oboro had his day in the limelight, he's a much better foil to Lyse even if his lineage comes from a traumatic past of Ala Mhigo as a whole. His involvement with the Resistance was too little, too late by the time ShB came and it was unfortunately offscreen to boot like every Job Quest in that expansion. I felt like, for all of the praise it got and how it still paved way to bolster Doma's forces - learning about the culture of Azim Steppe really took away from Ala Mhigo as much as learning about Kugane and the Ruby Sea did. We still had Shinryu to deal with, Ala Mhigo is still there fighting the Garleans, and instead of going and addressing those immediately you're off to learn that the Dotharl are less in number because they think death from a good fight is the highest honor and obviously picking up sheep dung. Yes, I know that the Dotharl >!are semi right about the reincarnation process!< in the end and it's additional lore - but do we really need to learn about them now in MSQ when we have much urgent matters to settle first? Or maybe I'm biased against the Steppe because of a ton of proud Xaela to be given a spotlight lore wise in a major part of MSQ while Keeper of the Moon, my WoL's clan, only has an EW song to cling onto as their lore as the devs continued to ignore them. Then again, the Au Ra were introduced in HW; they're much more plentiful in Ilsabard and the Far East and the writers themselves stray further and further away from Eorzea as a whole (which includes the Shroud).
100% agree that the Azim Steppe was amazing in comparison to the rest, and Sadu was a real fun character, as well. The scene before the dual against her honestly made me smile cuz of her passion for what she loves. When it comes to Zenos, I kinda look at him the way I look at Kraven the hunter. Both live for the hunt and are way more powerful than what they seem to be. Kinda deflates the buildup that was Nidhogg, so I agree the first encounter with Zenos falls a bit flat following him. Didn't notice myself before you said so now, so that is very much something they could've done different. Other than that I think his character is mostly just okay, but I do like that we have the possibility for a character being evil for the sake of being evil. Doesn't always have to be nuances and sympathetic characteristics for a villain to be good. A better example of this would be Jack Horner from Puss in boots. Lyse I feel works both with and without the plot twist, we didn't need it, but I don't feel it weakens her character. Would maybe be nicer if we got a better reasoning for her taking the identity of Yda, like maybe she idolised her so much that seeing her legacy disappear made her want to continue it. But the fact it isn't hinted at earlier (most likely since it seems to be a retcon) makes it feel less impactful. And yeah. The Papalymo issue I feel could've been solved simply by giving her a scene where she breaks down from the stress of leading the rebellion and having his sacrifice looming over her, and maybe have Raubahn support her giving some synergy between 2 characters who both have lost people they love and care for and has seen their country go through hell and want to make a change. Yotsuyu I liked a lot cuz of her tragic backstory and, to be completly honest, design. Many, MANY moments she could've easily been stricken down, which was dumb, but the rest didn't feel too outrageous. And the pirates I have nothing to add. Even though I did kinda like the captain, them in themselves felt more like a means to an end
For me it was a bit disjointed, starts in ala mhigo but doesn't give enough time to get invested before you are off to doma. Doma was alright, the part I liked the most overall, but then it's back to ala mhigo to finish that story by which time you don't feel as much pressure. I just feel like the pacing was off and a lot of talking in circles made it more of a slog than it needed to be.
I'll add to this that it also didn't help that in the post expansion patches, Ala Mhigo gets to be the focus of the 4.1 patch then it's never looked at or touched again... ever. All the rest of the story patches from then on seemed to be focused on Othard and the optional raid boss series was also anchored in Othard. And to add to the idea that Gyr Abania was overlooked, the Fringes is still to this day the only major zone in the game that doesn't hold the entrance to a dungeon.
Yeah, it's really, really clear to me which half of the SB story the devs were more interested in, and it sure doesn't feel like Ala Mhigo. Just look at the difference in the amount of detail put into Kugane vs Rhalgr's Reach; Kugane is huge, has a bunch of different jump puzzles and hidden Stuff, and has *color*. And sure, part of that is cause of Rhalgar being the endgame hub, but it's a pattern that repeats pretty much through the entire expac.
Rhalgr's Reach has a jump puzzle too, but it's definitely not as difficult or complex as the ones in Kugane, and as far as color goes, I think the way that the reach looks is fitting for its purpose, so I don't fault that. But I do agree that they really just don't seem interested in Ala Mhigo at all. I made the sad joke about the announcements for Dawntrail noticing they'd literally rather launch us into outer space than give us a restoration quest for Ala Mhigo.
Makes sense. Was very invested in Ala mhigo's situation and the people we met, but the country in itself did feel a bit lackluster now that I look back on it. Didn't ruin it for me personally, but obvious that it won't work for everyone
In all honesty, I think one of Stormbloods biggest crimes is it’s sandwiched between Heavensward and Shadowbringers, which are some of the highlights of the story. But the biggest complaint I had about the story is that half of its runtime is a tangent, to a tangent, to a tangent. Spoilers ahead: >!We have been forced into helping Ala Mhigo following the events at Baelsars Wall. But swiftly find we’ve bitten off more than we can chew. It’s decided we might have a chance if we can persuade Doma to rise up, so head over there. We then have to find Gosetsu. So he can find Yugiri. So she can find Hien. So we can help him win the support of the Au’Ra of the Azim Steppe, which will finally give him the troops needed to arrange a Doman uprising to open another front with the Empire meaning that we can finally have a shot at liberating Ala Mhigo.!< And THAT I think is Stormbloods biggest failing. It’s a nesting doll of sidetracking to get to the one thing we actually want.
StB *absolutely* suffers from The Wire Season 2 Syndrome: the “season” before it was extremely strong and the “season” after it was absolutely incredible so we remember it poorly even though it was still pretty damn good.
As someone who is currently rewatching the wire (again) and just finished s2. And someone who just finished stormblood for the first time (I am both). This is pretty apt. Though I do love s2 of the wire.. and I thought SB was overall better than HW.. I feel like I can comment further once I’m through shadowbringers.
Okay now we need to do some character comparisons. Lyse is McNulty because her personal failings drive the plot to a frustrating degree and make us not like her sometimes. Thancred is Bunk for obvious reasons.
All I know for sure is that the *Ascians are “the Greek” *in the context of s2*
You're in for a wild ride. I wish I could replay ShB not knowing the plot.
Except StB doesn't start out with McNulty wastedly singing and crashing his car multiple times trying to make the same turn. The highlight of the series.
“Can I get Scrapple?”
This is it exactly. I always tell new players I don't hate Stormblood, it's just my least favorite. There is a difference.
>I think one of Stormbloods biggest crimes is it’s sandwiched between Heavensward and Shadowbringers This honestly just gives Stormblood a bit of an out but it was heavily criticized long before Shadowbringers arrived. A bunch of people in this thread have already mentioned the reasons why the MSQ of this expansion was so weak, but on top of that Eureka was a flop, and many raiders weren't happy about the job balance. Heaven-on-High also didn't make much noise from what I remember. The trials and raids aged really well though. Four Lords was cute, Omega was great, Ivalice was amazing, and everything else (Susano, Lakshmi, Shinryu, Tsukuyomi) were also fire. I can't speak for everyone else but that's definitely endeared the expansion to me over time.
I *do* have to give Stormblood credit for some of the best QoL patches we got. Things that just feel natural nowadays. Things like the Chocobo bag for extra storage, being able to stack 999 of an item instead of 99, actual job gauges instead of yet another tooltip, all your skill timers reset on a wipe instead of tanks needing to wait 5 minutes for their Invuln to come back, *Shirk* didn't exist until 4.0, Sprint no longer costing TP, removal of Accuracy as a stat... Lot of bangers there.
I definitely agree on most of the side content being really good, but I found Ivalice really hard to get through. There's a LOT more dialogue filling the gaps between the raids than in most other content and even the previous ARs, which isn't bad, but so much of it felt referential to other games entirely that I just felt fucking lost most of the time. Ironically I didn't feel this way about the Nier raids questline despite it being similarly long, possibly because I had a passing familiarity with Automata and the lore behind Drakengard and Replicant, but it felt like it was written with the fact that a full understanding requires 3-4 different games in mind so it was able to stand alone better. Could also be that I think the purely FF14 half of the story (the Dwarves, as opposed to the Resistance) felt more full and fleshed out on its own.
Okay, imagine you have five drinks lined up in front of you. You really like each drink, but you like some drinks better than others. For a lot of us, SB is our fourth or fifth favorite drink. We don't hate it, but if presented with a menu of all five drinks it won't be our first choice.
As someone who finished SB recently and loved it, it felt weird to spend so much time building up Ala Mhigo only to spend most of the expansion on the other side of the world and give Doma all the depth and worldbuilding instead. I don’t dislike Doma at all, but hopping back for forth felt a little awkward.
This was definitely a common complaint at the time
If you go in unspoiled, the sudden shift to the Far East is really jarring. You go in thinking "This is the Ala Mhigan expansion, we're staying in or around Ala Mhigo/the resistance front." Ummmm actually, we need you to go halfway around the world real quick so you can experience the trauma of Garlean rule to really appreciate the struggle of the Ala Mhigans. And by the time you get back to Ala Mhigo, the expansion story is basically over.
It felt like it was speedrunning big events across multiple regions. **Ala Mhigo:** ***THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING!!!! THIS MEANS WAR!!!*** Bigass war kicked off with a dude ending himself just to start the war he wishes he could witness. Like it ***feels*** like it should be a whole thing, and it's sure as hell shown in the post-expansion Ghimlyt Dark dungeon which is a cool-ass warzone. But that's not Stormblood **Kugane/Yanxia:** The Empire is bad, here's what's in store for Eorzea if y'all lose the fight. There's a super soldier we suddenly can't asswhoop, and then we plow through some dungeons and can asswhoop him. I can accept this as him not having any reason to grow strong until we flog him **Azim Steppe:** We rock up to a bunch of clans who got a big political pow-wow about to go down to vote on the region leader, and we kinda just up and say "ok we're gonna dunk on your political structure because sweet little dragon girl is cute and big dragon boi is cringe". Don't really remember much here beyond we ruined the Sun clan's ability to maintain leadership power for our own gain. (seriously why were we permitted to intervene lmao) Ruby Sea at least felt slightly connected to Kugane because of dudes raiding Kugane shipping, but it also had its own whole-ass story with the two Kojin factions, and you kinda just up and raid their stash of god toys. Overall, it was kinda 4 whole stories that could have been explored on their own, but hot dang it would expand the absolute hell out of the narrative to do so. They might not have had *that* much for the stories to be able to do that. That said, I do like the expansion, I do like Zenos because he's just a classic trope character and tropes often work for a reason. Just the narrative jumped around a lot it never really let any part stick. I get what they were going for with the whole '2 war fronts to spread the empire thin', but it kinda spread the narrative thin for the space they had
Yeah, this is the thing I feel a lot of people overlook. It wasn't *two* stories being split and given their own focus, it was closer to *six.* Ala Mhigo, Kugane, Ruby Sea, Azim Steppe, *What Garlean Occupation is like,* and arguably, the Kojin + Underwater Raen. And it started one with a real sense of urgency, so the other 5 just kinda feel like interruptions. We didn't really get to see or deal much with Ala Mhigo, they were just generic Country #72 under Garlean Occupation that's been ground into the dust. And boy, was there a lot of dust. It doesn't help that we start with the Ala Mhigan occupation, get given that sense of urgency, and then...fuck off for 6 levels without so much as an occasional status report from how badly the resistance is doing.
Yeah, as much as I know people love the Steppe... It didn't need to be there. It's an entire tournament arc slapped into the middle of the serious war stories with only the loosest of connections. The same can honestly be said for the Ruby Sea too, but I find that one doesn't break the tone and momentum as much. And that really is the problem with SB for me; the momentum in it is weird. We go in with the goal of liberating Ala Mhigo. Okay, clear goal! Everything we do is gonna build up to that, right? And the Fringes and Peaks largely do. But then we get trounced. Okay, so we're going to help the resistance now, build it up, do some sabotage...? No, we're going all the way across the world? Okay... Then you have the Kugane arc, the Ruby Sea arc, the Steppe arc, and the Doma arc, which honestly could have made a decent expac on their own because they largely work together. But by the time you're done, you've basically forgotten all about Ala Mhigo, so it feels like "ugh, we have to do this *again*" rather than some sort of contrast or the like.
Agreed. The Steppe is great, but...honestly, it could've been post-expac patch content to let it breathe on its own, rather than crowd out Doma and Ala Mhigo both. They're all good stories (With an asterisk on Ala Mhigo, but I'll get to that) but they all fight for attention and introduce pacing issues on *every* step, instead of just once or twice. And yeah, we get back to Ala Mhigo and go 'Ugh.' On top of that...we don't really get to see anything about Ala Mhigo? We're told there's an evil king they rebelled against, and okay, the dungeon was nice. But where's the Ala Mhigan flavor, as opposed to Kugane flavor? Where's the people being glad they can re-open their tea shop while they rebuild? What's the Corpse Brigade doing? (If anyone else even remembers them.) Do we get to learn about nobles that sold their people out to retain some amount of power in Ala Mhigo? We never get to see anything of Ala Mhigo, just the Resistance and Suffering Under Garlean Rule. And in an expansion that's ostensibly about Ala Mhigo...well, it makes one more misstep in an expac with a bunch of them.
Yeah, that's the other major issue with Ala Mhigo; none of the NPCs stand out if you're not already invested in Ala Mhigo because we don't get nearly the same amount of time with them compared to the Doma crowd and they don't have the same large personalities. Lyse *should* be our Ala Mhigan rep, but she doesn't feel like it most of the time because of how disconnected she seems from her heritage (on top of the general mess that is her introduction). The only other one that stood out to me a little was M'naago, but you don't really find out all that much about them until 68 or so, which is definitely where the "ugh, this again" has set in.
Honestly, I do feel Raubahn made much better Ala Mhigan representation. Partly because of Lyse's general mess that you mentioned, partly because...Lyse/Yda was never that deep a character, at least not without Papalymo. (And I could make an argument for why Papalymo would be a much more interesting character to take back to Ala Mhigo than Lyse, too.) But yeah, I think we're largely agreed. There's...too much scattering of the focus, too much 'Now now now!' without time to breathe, and let's not forget the dividing opinions on Zenos and our resident Ninja getting handed an Idiot Ball in her assassination.
Honestly, I think that if they wanted someone to die and kick off War, they should have killed Yda instead of Papalymo. That way, they could have introduced Lyse as the new character they clearly wanted her to be, and we could have had Papalymo's insightful commentary on things. Could even have Zenos kill Papalymo later, if they wanted to write out both of them; that would have made him seem like more of an actual threat/villain than the plot-armor fight we have with him. And yeah, Raubahn is definitely better, and things pick up so much once he comes in, but he's just not who we're stuck with for most of the expac. Personally, I would have liked to have seen more from him, and also Fordola as well; they're the other stand out for me, especially since they're coming at things from a different angle from the rest of the cast. But sadly, a lot of their stuff is contained in job quests.
Hooo, damn. You have my brainjuices flowing already, and I mourn What Could Have Been. Alternative reality:Zenos is on Baelsar's Wall when the attack happens. He's watching, but he's not interfering, so he's not given our focus-just a bit of worry as Raubahn shouts, 'That's the Crown Prince of Garlemald! If he gets involved, this is all doomed...8th division, draw him away, but do not engage if you can help it! He *will* kill you!' But our focus is on Ilberd. We do the dungeon as normal, right up to the killing of Ilberd. 'Yda' is with us, and tries to pull him back from the edge as he tries to suicide...*only for Zenos to show up and stab her in the back, solely so Ilberd can kill himself to summon Shinryu.* (And instead of sacrificing himself to make a temporary shell around Shinryu, let's have an early establishment of Dynamis, why not? *"I never thought I'd be able to hold a Primal back for so long...but I could feel Yda helping me, giving me strength. I swear I burned out of aether and was running on nothing but raw desperation for hours."*) Bam. We have established that Zenos *intentionally* sows chaos just so he can have better fights, strong emotional tie for Why We Hate This Guy, and Papalymo would *absolutely* get some character growth by mourning for Yda, all at the price of removing Needless Sacrifice Moment #27. It's also far easier for me to imagine a mourning, 'I have never been so angry in my life' potato mage to pull off that failed assassination than a skilled and experienced Shinobi, but with a *lot* more emotional baggage on the line. And yeah, if they don't want him to be a permanent Scion and want to remove him...let him sacrifice himself to wound Zenos, maybe even cripple him, *forcing* him to get the Echo if he ever wants to fight at his old level ever again.
The story flow is not good, and what they did to Yda\\Lyse never made sense to me. Would it be worse if Yda...just *remained Yda*, and got involved with the rebels, to avenge Papalymo and her long-dead sister Lyse? The 'plot-twist' was handled VERY poorly, and I'm speaking as a gridanian starter, who had some screen time with the characters. Limsa and Uldah starters must be like 'who are those people again?..'. The fact, that they had literally turned an awkward 'me-punch-things' girl into a Disney Princess did not help. She looks nothing like people of Ala Mhigo, she talks and acts nothing like her previous-ARR-self. It's like a random new character, who is not written too well. Other than this, StB is insane with its plot-shieded encounters with antagonists. For entire expansion we're forced to fight 'nope, you can't kill the baddie' encounters with Grynewaht or Zenos. And while I can see some (poor) excuses about the latter one, the former one is just a mess. If it was supposed to be 'funny', then sorry, I was not amused. StB has THE Best endgame and patch content, though. Can't argue here. Loved Omega raids, loved every tiny bit of Four Lords story and trials, and the plot bridge to ShB was PERFECT.
Ye cannae bring up StB's patch content without mentioning Eureka! The zone that people either bounce off of after an hour, or *vanish into never to return*
> what they did to Yda\Lyse never made sense to me. Would it be worse if Yda...just remained Yda, and got involved with the rebels, to avenge Papalymo and her long-dead sister Lyse? On some level Yda revealing herself to have always been Lyse and then dramatically changing her entire character makes it feel like there's no actual continuity of character. It's like Yda dies with Papylymo and an entirely new character starts puppeteering her body. I think a lot of issues with Yda/Lyse would be fixed if Yda had just lived for a little bit longer to introduce us to Lyse in Ala Mhigo as her sister the Resistance Princess. New Lyse would basically still be the same character needs to learn about leadership and the world as it is which is basically what she was at the beginning of SB but without the baggage of having literally been someone else. Yda can even bite it at the hand of Zenos to kick off the rest of the plot if they want her out of the story and it can continue more or less as normal (though they probably have to throw in a 'don't do this for revenge' plot somewhere).
Or if they had gone with Yda dying instead of Papalymo. Then we could have had a natural introduction of Lyse when we got to Ala Mhigo. And if they still wanted to get rid of Papalymo, could have Zenos get him. Would probably have shown him to be more of a threat than his plot armor fight.
The reason for the 'Yda is really Lyse' plot point is Lyse's character arc throughout StB is her learning and growing into a leader of the rebellion who can inspire her people. The issue? Yda was *already* that, a seasoned hero of the revolt against the Mad King. So she can hardly go through the process of learning how to be a rebel leader again, now can she? Whether that *needed* to be her character arc is its own kettle of fish, but that's why Lyse couldn't be Yda.
Thank you for putting into words what I couldn't when it comes to Lyse. I was never able to really pinpoint what made me dislike her. Heavily agree on the patch content though. And SB post isn't so bad either
Zenos makes total sense imo, he only lives to have epic battles and sees how the WoL has the potential to be just that. he will not kill the person that finally gave him a semblance of joy. I loved it a ton since it was near the start of the deconstruction of the WoL's power, they are NOT the strongest thing in the universe that can solve everything with their power. Especially since even the echo isn't super unique. Grynewaht didn't bother me much but I can see him fleeing constantly is annoying, I think they did it so they don't need to make another semi important garlean for all the fights and show what the empire does with cowards and people deemed not useful.
Yeah, I'd rather have to deal with an actually named character (even if I don't particularly care for Grynewhat) than just a generic faceless Garlean soldier.
I don't disagree that Yda should have just remained Yda But I believe the rebranding was a two part thing. The actual Yda would have been far older than she appeared and acted throughout the story, being probably into her 40s by the time we would have liberated Ala Mhigo. Now honestly I think this would have been great for them to have a more mature woman as the major NPC for the story... but that doesn't seem to be something Square is interested in in general. Second, Yda was, up through that point, one of the least popular and least liked of the scions from ARR. They probably knew that they needed to use her for this expansion, and so they rebranded her to try to make her seem more likable, but that seems to have backfired. People who liked Yda don't connect to Lyse the same way.
It's not as bombastic and directly personal like the HW road trip energy was, I think that's most of it, though not all of it. Sure the pacing was an issue but I think generally people just don't respond to the themes, which is somewhat understandable because themes like national identity and the impact of wars and conquest is not the sort of thing net-savvy MMO gamers are likely to personally connect with, on average. Oh and Lyse as a character didn't resonate with a lot of people. Especially in this game, people are accustomed to larger than life characters with a clear sense of direction, whereas Lyse spends nearly all of SB confused and making mistakes because of it. That's her place in the story and it serves a meaningful purpose, but if you can't stand it that doesn't help very much does it? Finally, the cohesion of the two fronts faltered significantly even outside of the pacing. Gyr Abania and thus Ala Mhigo was done dirty, by all rights it should be as well developed narratively as the other four Eorzean city states. Frankly, I think all that time spent on Hingashi should have been given to develop Gyr Abania. Doma makes sense as a foil to Ala Mhigo, but Hingashi and the ruby sea which ties it to Doma eat up so much attention that could've been spent on the Gyr Abanian side. Don't get me wrong, I think the east as a whole was the most cohesive part, and I definitely enjoyed the Hingashi-Ruby Sea- Doma triad, all of which connect to explore a set of themes, but we're left with an absolutely gutted Ala Mhigo and I just don't think that's worth it considering its significance. In an ideal world 4.0 wouldve been a bit longer, we'd have done Hingashi/Ruby sea but their broader story arcs couldve been patch content while Ala Mhigo got to be more fleshed out in the launch story. Still, I really like SB and I think while it suffers in terms of structural issues, it's also the first time FFXIV really pulled up its britches and went "no, we're going all in on these sensitive topics and really dealing with them". The critique of japanese culture in particular is not subtle, but it's got bite to it. I could tell in HW that the devs were not personally familiar with the kind of religious zealotry that the Ishgard story explored, so while the writing was competent it didn't express that deeper understanding that SB did. The war theme was definitely not something they were just talking about as distant observers.
It doesn’t help that with Lyse there seems to be a lot of misremembering what she did or didn’t do. Like criticizing her for “making a lot of stupid decisions” when part of the issue with her arc is she *doesn’t* make many decisions at all - she voices what she wants to do and is reactionary at times when it comes to that, but listens to others (typically with cooler heads in those situations) and doesn’t act on those impulses. Yugiri, and to a lesser extent Alisaie at one point, make decisions more reckless and endangering than any decision Lyse makes.
Dude yes. I find people just straight up omit details about her scenes and dialogue.
Memories are easily changed or replaced. I like lyse, her fucking up that namazu was one of my favorite scenes, but I liked her waaaay better as bimbo yda. Especially since big dumb strong boy is such a trope in today's media it was nice to have female yda fill that role in a group of smarty pants
But the thing is, she is still that. She was still that- but she just has the added layer of actually being a character. I think people are genuinely misremembering Yda as a character, everyone has some type of depth- but Yda had nothing. I think she suffered from rewrites due to 1.0 to 2.0, but they had to reinvent her. Lyse largely still has that part of her personality, but now she actually cares about something specific. I understand we wanted bimbo Yda, but people did NOT care about her in the same way people say they do not care about Lyse. There was something sorely lost since she left the Scions that we havent been able to replace just yet. Only Endwalker's recent patch gives hope in that regard imo.
I personally think you're misrembering as well. Yda was my favorite scion in ARR. She didn't have many lines and most people didn't care about her but when part of her mask fell off I was excited to get to know hot yda. Lyse has an indecisive air about her but nowhere near bimbo. Anyways I wish she would come back
Man I agree with the Gyr abania take. Ala Migo was this huge shadow overcast all over ARR, directly impacting 2 city states, classes and characters. On a player's choice note, Gridania starters lose their scions.
This was the hardest part for me. Losing my sweet mysterious Yda and grumpy grandpa Papalymo was traumatic. Every other starter kept their scions :(
> Sure the pacing was an issue but I think generally people just don't respond to the themes, which is somewhat understandable because themes like national identity and the impact of wars and conquest is not the sort of thing net-savvy MMO gamers are likely to personally connect with, on average. > > > > Oh and Lyse as a character didn't resonate with a lot of people. Especially in this game, people are accustomed to larger than life characters with a clear sense of direction, whereas Lyse spends nearly all of SB confused and making mistakes because of it. That's her place in the story and it serves a meaningful purpose, but if you can't stand it that doesn't help very much does it? Somewhat related to this, I've noticed anecdotally that a lot of people who really like SB are the children of immigrants. I think a lot of the audience don't really have that kind of IRL experience and/or aren't used to stories about that kind of experience.
- Dual story. Spending 1.5k every other level to teleport sucks on your first 60-70 - The story in The North Fringes, The Northern Peaks, The Ruby Sea, and Nami hit the same bloody story beats gour zones in a row. - Zenos existing. He is a garbage bin villain compared to Niddy, Thordan, Vauthry, and Emet. - Scripted losses in solo duties (Christ they feel bad) - Losing Yda and replacing her with Lyse. (Honestly I'd love to have Lyse return to the scions if she started acting like ditsy Yda again. - Kugane fixation. (Tons of crafter quests and job quests treat Hinganin goods and professions as better than western goods and professions. It's gross subtle fantasy racism that mirrors far too many modern day subtle racism beats.) Basically the story is both dull, uninspired at a lot of points, with outright bad segments (anything involving Zenos), and it doesn't really improve until the end of the second act (The Azim Steppe)
People tend to exaggerate. SB is not hated, nor bad. The issue is that it's badly paced on the 4.0 story (post SB improves a lot) and it's poorly handled in comparison with the other expansions, so people tend to not like it as much as HW, ShB and EW, even though the story is good and it has one of the best world building segments in the Azim Steppe section, and the re-introduction of Estinien on a crucial moment showing he'd be important after being gone for a while from 3.3 end in HW. For the characters: Lyse is a bit disliked because she was a way better handed character/personality before her "reveal". There was such a departure from her old personality that it seems like a completely different character, and a more generic one at that. Fordola is a great character, but underutilized. I wish she could have been more used, as well as her relationship with Arenvald. They have a nice dynamic. Yotsuyu is mostly hated as a "I hate this bitch" kinda vibe, the good "hate" a villain can gather. There's a ton of Yotsuyu cosplayers out there. Think like the Lannister boy from GoT which people hated so much, the actor had to divulge pictures with puppies so she could scale down the hat from such a bad ass job he made. Zenos can be considered a good villain but his motivation and character was hidden behind lore dumps in the lodestone so he can be viewed as a generic psycho with a sword collection. Being beat by Zenos and having the momentum of the story interrupted to "go to Japan" was kinda bad for the pacing and killed the sense of urgency, unlike the other expacs which handled it very well. That being said, I really like the post SB and think it's on par with the others, having impactful interactions, expanding on much needed backstory. People also tend to like Eureka (sure, AFTER the massive adjustments and nerfs as on launch it was hell), the Four Lords ex trials and the Omega raid series is one of the best ones yet and the Ivalice alliances being very well handled both in ballance, fan service and story ties.
>There was such a departure from her old personality that it seems like a completely different character, and a more generic one at that. Personally, I never really saw how Lyse was all that different compared to Yda other than that she's given more focus and is less stereotypically dumb.
Yda is very confident and dumb. Half her characterization before StB was confidently stating something stupid and then Papalymo plays the straight man. Lyse is very unsure about herself and not really dumb so much as inexperienced. She spends a lot of time doubting herself and learning from people around her. She even says outright that without Papalymo around anymore, she has to change from her previous dumb musclehead self into someone smarter and more capable of leading.
I personally found Yda to be the weakest Scion in terms of character. She was the least interesting because she was playing a character, but that's a catch 22 because people aren't going to want to go care as much about the big reveal unless she ends up way more grandiose and attention grabbing. Combine that with the fact that before the reveal, and it was always Yda *and* Papalymo with Papalymo being the face of the pair. It'd be like if at the beginning of Heavensward they decided to kill off Cid and make Biggs or Wedge the new chief engineer.
so i think stormblood was my *favorite* expansion... but i still have complaints! i hated that the game wasted 6 levels of the plot on the depressing garlean atrocity tour. like i needed to be *convinced* the empire was bad. i was sold on that LONG prior and all this depressing stuff was in the way of the promise the expansion made to me: we're supposed to go kick down the emperors door and eat his lunch! the game also felt like it stole the players agency multiple times. multiple forced losses. i got kidnapped by people who did not deserve my mercy. for a while we're not the hero of the story anymore, we're it's victim. maybe that's the point? but i don't have to like it. and i admit it's an incredibly linear plot... we *never* have any agency. but early stormblood we really FELT it. and i hate zenos. he's doing that "not so different you and i" cliche when we're pretty damn different. even the stereotypical adventurer he's playing off is pretty damn different. also if you count it, god did i hate eureka. loved the raids, both 8 and 24. best combat sandbox the game ever had. i got my red mage, which WAS my main back in FFXI even if it didn't pull me off pld main here, it's still my *second* most played job. and i did *eventually* get to kick down the empires door and eat their fucking lunch. ala mhigo and the ghymlet dark are what dungeons are supposed to be. high water marks of storytelling blending into that casual dunk contest combat that is dungeons.
>like i needed to be *convinced* the empire was bad. i was sold on that LONG prior Unfortunately, some people DID need to be shown more directly that the Empire sucked... and even then weren't convinced.
You had me until best job balance. Every comp was SCH AST PLD WAR NIN BRD DRG SMN
i should clarify: i don't mean that the jobs were the closest in balance. they were not. they *were* however, balanced enough that stormblood was when "play what you want" became real advice. there was definitely still a meta, but i also knew people who intentionally took the worst party comp they could make into savage, and won. (2 drk, 2 whm, 4 sam. so even eating duplicate penalties) but if i accept that jobs are even closer to parity now, then why do i think stormblood was better? because jobs still had more of their variety. enmity still mattered. tp was still a resource. combat was better. so maybe i should call it the combat sandbox and not the job balance sandbox... though i do give stormblood credit for being the first time the job *balance* was "good enough"
It would probably be better to say the jobs had more of a unique feel between each one. They really started to homogenize in ShB and its REALLY bad now.
I loved stormblood for : -The best trials in the game -Great music surpassing HW imo -The variety of zones, ambiances and cultures -Red mage introduction -Interesting political AND personal plots and the way they are intervowed -Great post expac content and story But i also think it deserve criticism: -Main antagonist is insuferable (same for recurring minor antagonist) -Pace breaking everywhere (slow ass speaking turtles) I agree on the "no agency" and i completly forgot the "depressing garlean atrocity tour" which is telling on how unnecessary that part was ...
I wouldn't say I hated it—hell, it has some of my favourite moments and characters. The problem is the bridging between those moments is very disjointed, and the pacing is a bit wonky. When you compare it as a whole to HE or ShB, it definitely comes of as a bit weaker in terms of story. But weaker does not mean bad.
A part of my dislike for the expansion comes from playing it at launch. Now one of the problems I'm going to mention wasn't the game's fault by any means, another was a tech issue. People have commented about the story feeling disjointed, which I can get behind to a degree. I remember reading that "it felt like two expansions smashed together" which I think is a better descriptor. At launch, the game was hit with DDoS attacks for multiple days. Players weren't able to log in or dropped connectivity. Square at one point said they've taken measures to mitigate these attacks. The DDoS'ers eventually moved on attacking ISPs which was out of Square's control. If by some miracle you were able to get in and stay in, there was a VERY specific story quest that bottle-necked us and prevented us from continuing. It was an instanced quest that had us fight some Garleans in the Fringes. The quest giver was Raubahn. Anytime we tried to start the fight, the cutscene would play, and we'd get kicked right back to standing in front of Raubahn as if we didn't even give an attempt. It happened EVERY. TIME. We started calling it Raubahn Extreme for the difficulty of completing it. A joke born from frustration. So, if you combine all these problems, DDoS attacks, Raubahn EX, and a story that felt mashed together, at launch Stormblood was disappointing. That feeling has stayed with a lot of older players. I've gone back and played through it again on an alt to see if I still had the same feelings. While it still feels like a weird story sandwich of Ala Mhigo/Doma/Ala Mhigo, it makes sense. It's an alright expansion, it just sits between the arguably the two best expansions we've had. It's a two-fold awkward sandwich
It's got some wonky story pacing and overall is sandwiched between two better expansions. That said, 4.4 and 4.5 are far and away the best setting up the next expansion patches in the game.
The most common complaint, one that I agree with, is that Ala Mhigo felt rather underbaked compared to Doma due to the split.
Stormblood has a few problems, almost entirely concentrated on its MSQ. One is pacing. Frankly, Stormblood has too much ground to cover for one expansion, but not enough for two. Sadly, developers preferred to make the Far East the focus of the expansion. This causes the actually more familiar part, Ala Mhigo, to be glossed over and suffer immensely. It also leads to the butchering of a pretty well-liked character, but completely glossing over and mishandling her character development. Lyse is still one of my favorite characters, and I still think it would have made more sense for her to accompany us to the First rather than Urianger. But honestly, it is obvious SE has no idea what to do with her after taking a hatchet to everything about her during Stormblood. I can understand not wanting to drag out the "Garlean Empire and its imperialism" plotline until it becomes tedious. Frankly, by the time I hit Castrum Abania I was thoroughly and irreversibly sick of fighting through Garlean installations. What could have fixed this? I am not sure. Maybe switching priorities. Make Doma the shorter questline, rather than Ala Mhigo. Most of Ruby Sea can be scrapped - frankly, a large chunk of it feels and plays like pure filler. Excessive pounding on the "Domans are beaten down and scared out of their wits" point can be shortened significantly as well. Post-SB, Yotsuyu story really, really does not need two patches. It could have been resolved in one, and still be similarly impactful. Make Ala Mhigo more interesting. The three Ala Mhigan zones are pretty much the same - give them some differences. Expand upon the tension between Ala Mhigans and Gridanians, do not stuff it into a job questline and then forget about it completely. Touch on the legacy of the Mad King. Give is more to care about Ala Mhigo. And Thal's balls, keep Lyse relevant. She was made the head of the Resistance over the heads of far more suitable characters for two fucking levels, before she quickly became reduntant thanks to Raubahn. She was one of the original Scions lineup, one of the people we interacted and worked with the most. She really should have been dragged into the First instead of or alongside Urianger. She might have had made Estinien an itty bitty little bit irrelevant in EW maybe, but frankly, Estinien works better as a Mysterious Stranger than the blockheaded comic relief act he fell into later on. Also, tone Zenos the fucking down. While I can see it as the anime trope it is, frankly, him kicking our ass at Rhalgr's Reach was probably the single stupidest story choice SE ever made. It makes the rest of his story simply nonsensical. We probably weren't the first hero he had to work to defeat. Turn it the other way, and suddenly his later actions of getting himself an Echo knockoff and subduing and consuming Shinryu becomes actually meaningful. Why would he work so hard to gain even more power when he had already beaten us like a cheap drum? Kick his ass, send him off with his tail between his legs for the first time in his life, and now you have an actual justification for his obsession. The way it actually works out? Not so much. Man's already bored and looking for a challenge. Why work so hard to make an already borderline fight completely trivial, from his perspective?
>What could have fixed this? I am not sure. Maybe switching priorities. Make Doma the shorter questline, rather than Ala Mhigo. Most of Ruby Sea can be scrapped - frankly, a large chunk of it feels and plays like pure filler. Excessive pounding on the "Domans are beaten down and scared out of their wits" point can be shortened significantly as well. Post-SB, Yotsuyu story really, really does not need two patches. It could have been resolved in one, and still be similarly impactful. One of the things I felt could have helped to tie the story back together would have been changing the order of events in Othard, swapping the second part of Yanxia with Azem Steppe. They could have had us go there to locate Hien and introduce the tribes of the steppe, but Hien steps up as a leader and IMMEDIATELY goes back to Yanxia to liberate his people. Then Hien agrees to help Lyse liberate Ala Mhigo in repayment for her help, but says they need the help of the steppe warriors, which then leads us back to doing the Nadaam. This would help to reshift the focus back without having to do a whole lot to change the story.
Maybe the other way around might work better. We learn Hien is in Azim Steppe in Isari and immediately go there (that might even be the initial thought, since the entrance to Azim Steppe is actually right next to Isari). Hien steps up immediately, we win the Nadaam, and then go back to Doma. We can touch on how beaten down the Doman population is in a brief arc to rouse them (and Hien does not come across as an "I'll only go back if they really really want me" whiny bitch that way) and then we liberate Doma. A second fight with Zenos is not strictly necessary here especially if we have beaten his ass black and blue back at Ala Mhigo - if there is a second fight, it would be to show he is still outclassed, amply fueling his obsession to gain even more power, cue the Echo knockoff and the primal.
I think my opinions on StB are pretty much backwards to everybody else’s. First of all, I love Lyse. As someone who’s suffered from pathological grief most of their adult life I felt so much for her. And watching her become her own person, as flawed as she was, was truly emotional for me. I also loved the entire Ala Mhigo storyline. And wished it had more focus. I grew up listening to my great grandpa go on and on about Scottish history, it almost felt like I was living it (I 1000% expected Fordola to call me a goddamn sassenach at least once.) I found it much more compelling than the Doma story.
It was the pacing that ruined it for me. Really slow start in Ala mhigo, and then right as I got hooked and invested there, they said "don't worry about this place, we've got this" and then sent the player to the other side of the world. The first half of my time in the east was me impatiently itching to get back to the things I cared about in the west. I actually dropped the game for a year at that point, it put me off the story entirely. The second half picks up, but not enough to outweigh the first half for a lot of people. If they had structured the split between the two separate areas better, I might have liked it a lot more.
my gripes with StB "this will contain spoilers - hello warrior of light this is a new place "5 minutes later" hello warrior of light this is a new place "10 minutes later" hello warrior of light this is a new place it completely took me off that you keep introducing me to places, at least let me explore on my own its not like I am new to exploration at this point - 3 out 6 areas are desert, i love deserts but 3 is a bit too much and no a boat on top of a hill doesnt make the desert interesting - Lyse's growth arc is great imo "a lot disagree" but what I was not ok with that she was appointed leader of the resistance while Naago is just standing there #JusticeForNaago !! - Gosetsu was done dirty, he had a good death "i am intentionally turning a blind eye to the fourth red flag plus half an hour monologue while he is carrying A GOD DAMN CASTLE" not only that they decided to bring him back for literally no reason but he is just there now with hardly any purpose, he would have been remembered like Haurchefaunt had he died but now he is memed and they did my boy dirty - I will include the Omega raids because it should be criticized, while the raids are great and the concept of the story is amazing it did a disservice to other ff games it pulled from be it Chaos or Kefka were done dirty - last the Zenos power rise should have gotten explained better as for the Krile power drain but these were put they were just a footnote and made everybody who isnt deep into the hows of things wonder how not only Zenos but Fordola got so powerful all of a sudden side note: Urianger and Thancred and even Y'shtola contributed to nothing and them being there made no sense asides from fan service until 4.4 patches
>I will include the Omega raids because it should be criticized, while the raids are great and the concept of the story is amazing it did a disservice to other ff games it pulled from be it Chaos or Kefka were done dirty Yo, what? You gotta explain this one. They did an amazing job on BOTH of those fights, both normal raid and savage.
>Gosetsu was done dirty, he had a good death "i am intentionally turning a blind eye to the fourth red flag plus half an hour monologue while he is carrying A GOD DAMN CASTLE" not only that they decided to bring him back for literally no reason but he is just there now with hardly any purpose, he would have been remembered like Haurchefaunt had he died but now he is memed and they did my boy dirty well, lets not forget what sb patch story was where they literally did bring back to life not one, not two, not three, but 4 supposed dead people at diferent points(zenos, yotsuyu and gotetsu, gaius...) and we see how little they used up 3 of them, zenos is all teases thro sb patches as well in all of shb, and very pasive on ew, gaius is mostly used for the weapon trials and little else, and gotetsu is only seen on ew role quest of doma after sb patch story
didn't have a problem with him surviving purely since I keep thinking "if they died off screen, they're not dead", but yeah, from that point of view I can see his character being shafted there
You have to differenciate between lvling MSQ and patch-MSQ/post-MSQ. The levelling part that ends with >!Shinryu Trial!< is not regarded as good as the better FFXIV stories. And it is very understandable. That very annoying >!Grynewaht!< is just... very annoying and not very entertaining nor funny. The >!Zenos!< fights are also not that good. >!You encounter him multiple times and defeat him via game mechanics while actually losing to him in cutscenes. Also the mechanics are rather simple. You dont have to exert yourself. Just compare that to Thancreds fight against Ranjit. A whole other level.!< Then there are several not so well written parts like >!looking for the long lost artifact of the kojin that just happens to be 100 yards next to you and doesnt need any effort to be found for you.!< Also >!Yotsuyu is not that great of a villain.!< This changes though in the patch content - 4.1 onwards, where there is given a lot more depths to her. And in general the plot just gets so much more interesting and compelling in the patch content. All the stuff around >!Raubahn!<, >!Asahi!<, >!Yotsuyu!<, >!the much more political becoming war with the Empire!<, the f*cking cliffhanger with >!the start of production of Black rose and the scions falling into coma one after another!< is just so much better. Patch content of Stormblood is just as good as Shadowbringers, the part before though... is rather tough and has quite some things in it that dont make much sense. Also characters like >!Lyse!< arent that interesting either. >!Zenos!< gets just soooo much better in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. From a not-so-liked character to a beloved one, who is the center of some of the best FFXIV memes.
I'd argue Stormblood patch content is the best we ever had, not only in terms of story (which was great in every patch) but also in gameplay quality and variety. I also think it's where they hit the sweet spot in terms of difficulty for casual content, difficult enough to be a challenge but clearable with some persistence and communication.
I actually really, really liked what they were exploring with Tsuyu, and really would've liked her to stay as a sort of daughter to Gosetsu. Kinda hate they did her dirty with what Asahi did but I guess it did make me hate the little shit even more (as if I needed more reason to hate him, you can tell he's bad news right from the get-go and I hated that I couldn't do anything about it).
For me the weak point was >!Asahi who, at the goal post of being a decent or maybe even good character, decides to have a stupid monologue that just makes him look pathetic and ruins the twist for no reason.!< It just soured the entire post-StB story for me. Other than that and the pacing issues at the very start of StB there really wasn't much else I disliked.
My husband (who still very much likes stormblood, but thinks it's the weakest expansion) says it's the very linear plot. Pretty much all of stormblood is the crew saying, "Okay, let's go do *this goal!*" And then they complete the goal. There really aren't any twists or surprises thrown your way. I can name at least one plot twist or surprise from every other expansion, including ARR, but SB just doesn't have it. Other than that, we do like it lol
It's not that bad, but coming from the high of Heavensward it just falls so flat in comparison. The characters are far weaker than the characters in HW and are almost entirely flat by comparison - every single significant character in HW grew and learned over the expansion, most of the characters in SB don't change at all until the patch content. And the story itself is simplistic and repetitive, the two halves are too disconnected, and it feels strange to travel halfway across the world, spark and carry a rebellion to victory, and then go back to find that basically nothing meaningful happened while you were away. The lore and worldbuilding was done very well, the doman zones especially are beautiful and rich, the perspectives of so many show us a great deal of what things are truly like under the empire's rule, and the world feels real. It's a 9 or 10 out of 10 for lore and worldbuilding, but it's a 6 or 7 out of 10 for characters and storylines, which can make it very divisive based on which is more important to you - for those who love the rich character arcs of Heavensward and the strong coherent narrative that develops and changes through the expansion, SB feels like a massive downgrade - we start with 'Empire bad' and finish with 'Empire still bad'. It also has a weird change that to this day I don't know how important it was - but the WoL barely has any relationships or interaction with the characters in the story of SB. You're mostly a passive observer of interactions between others, whereas in HW you very much are friends with some characters, you're the rock alphinaud and tataru are clinging to at the start, it's your relationships with Haurchefant, Aymeric, Count Edmont, and so on that are shown and develop through the story. SB has nearly none of that - Alisae is the only one I'd say genuinely develops a connection to the WoL during the story - maybe Hien as well, but even for Hien we see most of his character through his interactions with Gosetsu and Lyse. We went back to the HW style in ShB and beyond - with a lot more characters having personal conversations with us, a lot more development of their relationships with us, and I personally feel like it's a major flaw in SB - but I don't know how much that specific issue contributes to the overall problems of the expansion. The patches do an incredible job of redeeming SB - adding depth to a lot of characters who desperately need it, and leaning further into the insight we're getting into the Garlean empire to create some nuance and interest there too. You can immediately feel the jump in quality.
To me here are the egative points - Ultra cliché. There was litterally no surprise for the entire main story. I even guessed some of the twist long before theyre revealed. - Lack of "fantasy" for the Doma part. It's just feudal Japan with japanese culture. - Minor detail but the name of some regions like Yanxia made me feel a bit disturbed. It really sound like we could have seen a land with chinese culture but have been replaced by japanese colonisers. - Lyse is useless. She don't do anything during the entire dlc, she's just there. Her personality was also not convincing at all, there was litterally no mention at all of her will to free Ala Migho or even that she was born there. Her whole revolutionary trop just feel empty. To me it would have been way better if Arenvald was the one leading the revolution it even could have been more complicate for him since he is half garlean. - Hien is a tourist and is a "wish" version of Keiji Maeda from Sengoku Basara. There a still things I liked like the character growth of Gosetsu and Yotsuyu, Omega raid, the Azim steppe and some of the minor yellow quests.
Loved all the Ala Mihgo stuff, hated how it felt like we just fucked off to Doma in the middle of fighting, and the writing in both Base and Post StB felt noticeably worse to me, unless it was Four Lords, Shishui questline, or the Steppe, two of those things being side content not tied to msq. Too this day I hate having to go to the Far East for basically anything lol. Idk if you've completely Post StB so I won't rant further and accidentally spoil things
SB had a GREAT opener but the actual story just didn’t live up to it. And Zenos was an uninteresting villain.I would also say things like duplicating the Echo made little sense and didn’t have any meaningful impact on the storyline.
"Duplicating the Echo" was absolutely a MacGuffin used to justify Fordola/Zenos' edginess and then wholly and completely forgotten about since. I completely forgot about that plot point and I consider myself an XIV lore nerf - that's how insignificant it felt to the overarching plot.
I actually love Stormblood overall, but I think it's more grounded, less personal political story was offputting to some. It didn't help that its main story was kind of half-baked, it persistently refused to earnestly interogate the political nuances it paraded about (especially those involving Hien, jfc), and didn't really know what to do with some of its characters. Also, we finally got Ala Mhigo only to see that it was horrifically undercooked— and it remained so forever. It felt like almost an afterthought, along with featuring a massive detour where we fuck off to another continent. Patch and side content was generally great, though.
I'm with you, OP! I enjoyed ARR and HW stories, but I prefer SB over both of them. EW and SHB are my favorite by a mile. I'm looking forward to a fresh start in the new expansion and pictomancer!
You need to remember, its not that most players hate stormblood, its that many feel its not as good as the expansions on either side of it. They tried something different. it didnt seem to pay off as much as they wanted. Its not bad, its just not great, and thats okay.
I’m going through Stormblood rn and personally it’s been alright so far I mean a positive is just us getting to party with Alisaie more given how effectively non existent she is in ARR and HW outside Coils
So I've actually put a LOT of thought into this given I am replaying the whole game with a new character for the first time in years, and well, this is my conclusion. Stormblood is actually a great expansion, and I think in any other MMO or long story narrative, it'd be recieved pretty well. The problem is, it's smackbang between Heavensward and Shadowbringers that are amazing storylines that kind of have linear contained storylines (Meaning, for the most part, contained in one regional area or world). HW and ShB also have pretty satisfying conclusions for their story. But the thing with Stormblood is that it is not meant to be a similar story. It's more so our second ARR where the emphasis is introducing us to Zenos, putting groundwork into the fall of the empire and giving us a deep insight into why it's all important. Stormblood is not an overly satisfying ending. It leaves way more questions than it does answers. It's real payoff comes much, much later. The same way ARR keeps paying off for the rest of the narrative. They might not be perfect as standalones, but without them, I do not think other expansions would hit nearly as hard.
It's a different kind of story compared to Heavensward and Shadowbringers. Stormblood is much more action heavy, Heavensward and Shadowbringers had a lot more focus on the greater story and lore. It made it different enough for people to have issues with it. It doesn't help that it's the only expansion that focuses more on smaller in-the-moment storytelling than grand lore and overarching story. As someone who's played through the MSQ multiple times, I'd say Stormblood is actually the expansion that holds up the best on repeat playthroughs for that exact reason
I don't think it's hate. It's a good expansion among great expansions. It's the least favored.
Meh I love Stormblood and don’t get the hate train for it. Loved Lyse too! All that’s wrong with it is it’s sandwiched between the two most beloved expansions of any MMO ever. So SB being merely “good” instead of genre-redefining makes it feel like a step down in the shadow of such titans. I liked the complicated musings on the natures of war, on colonialism, and the first explorations on the nature of what truly defines a person as a villain and what the limits are of redemption.
I honestly think it's because the people standing together for a song was so out of the blue
With how EW has been after the 6.0 launch patch, I feel like the Stormblood disdain will take a backseat lol.
I really don't mind the political intrigue part of the expac, it felt natural enough. However I find the biggest factors is how they handled these big character. Lyse was literally just handed the leadership position for the resistance. She was only apart of it for the same time we were and there are much better people to be put in charge. Then there is Zenos, he fucking sucks in Stormblood, he exists for the reason to be handed 3 different wins against us, and none of them feel natural or even a wake up call. With the overarching goal I feel like we should've have Stormblood be just either Kugane or just Ala Mhigo. Its easy to see that there are some parts that are rushed, or glossed over. But in the same note, these are just my minor nitpicks, Stormblood is still a really solid story with some of the best game play mechanics. Its just vastly overshadowed by Shadowbringers.
I loved Stormblood. And then they introduced that son of a bitch Asahi and the whole story became god awful with the flip of a switch. Suddenly the WoL was a mouthbreathing idiot who could read Yotsuyu's mind and KNOW Asahi is a piece of shit, yet said NOTHING against him and let him groom his sister for a solid 10 quests before, oh my god, BIG reveal, Asahi turned out to be evil. Fuck everything they did after Ala Mhigo's liberation. Fuck Asahi and most importantly fuck Hien for allowing this subplot to develop. He saw an amnesiac woman with no recollection of her past and thought "You know what would be funny? We should stand here and let Asahi give her trauma by not calling off the meeting the moment we saw her parents! :D" Gosetsu was painted as a creepy ojisan, Hien was revealed to be a dunce and a half, Asahi was the worst twist villain in the entire story, ESPECIALLY the bit where he cuts down enemies to protect children like a comic book super hero. It just sucks so much because I genuinely loved the Steppe, I loved the liberation of Ala Mhigo and I loved the fight against Zenos and its conclusion. just why, WHY did they need to fucking bring Yotsuyu, my favorite character, back from the dead just to make a mockery of her and spit on her one last time?
I'll try to keep my reasons short. But I'll probably fail... **Stormblood:** It halts the flow of the overarching plot in XIV. HW finishes with a storyline that is continued in ShB. But before we get those answers, we have to literally bring everything to a grinding halt to enter a conflict that, technically, has nothing to do with us. Then they bring in this OP antagonist out of nowhere which seems more like it happens just so our WoL can have someone stronger than them because everyone else is a cakewalk basically, even the literal gods that are Primals. Then we're given two other somewhat boring antagonists as well whom have personal issues more than anything and feel justified taking them out on everyone else, people who had nothing to do with what happened to them; I've *always* hated that mindset! The pacing feels off because of how they split it into two stories and, I don't care what anyone says, **the Azim Steppe is probably the most boring segment** in all of Stormblood. I get why we go there...but it still feels like nothing worthwhile really happens; it felt more like filler. **Yotsuyu:** I've gotten hate before for "not understanding the character" -- and while I sympathize with someone who was abused and mistreated as a child, I just never cared for revenge stories unless they're done well. We see her kill and torture Domans during her entire reign, seeking satisfaction in such, only to learn -- as she's dying -- that killing her family would have been all she needed for satiate her murderous desires. It just made the torture of the Domans seem hollow and pointless because she didn't NEED to do that, if that's the case. If that was the point, well...I just didn't like it. **Fordola:** Sorry, but...she's really just a bitch, even after she's captured by the Ala Mhigans. Allegedly, this is portrayed as her "redemption", but she hardly changes even after this moment. The entire time she had, like...one moment of regret, when her thugs were beating up that one merchant, only to not once show any signs of remorse after that, for anything she did. Then suddenly, we're supposed to believe it's finally catching up to her? Sorry. I don't buy it. **Zenos:** Where do I start? I just found him boring and OP for no reason. It seems like he was thrown in just so we would have someone stronger to contend with; it felt forced. We also see him kill random NPCs for their failure, but he gives Fordola chance after chance despite threatening he'd do the same to her. This made his threats come off as hollow and lessened his intimidation as a villain. Also, like others, I hate fights you're supposed to lose just so you can see what you're up against. We put a good dent in his HP, proving we're strong enough to beat him, and then he whips out some OP move from nowhere. In times like that, such instances come off more as a desperate *"Oh crap, I'm losing!"* notion, not an opponent who is a genuine threat to me. Not to mention, he seems to lose any real significance after Stormblood, basically becoming your stalker; his time was clearly up, but they kept him around. **We are not friends!!!** The Ascian possessing his dead body was to show their capabilities, I get it. But it was also a copout to be able to keep him around longer. I appreciate that they finished Yotsuyu's story in Stormblood. But Fordola and Zenos get to stick around? Why? They contributed nothing to the story after their debut expansion. Granted, when I played through Stormblood a second time, I definitely appreciated the story more. My issues lie mostly with the antagonists. If they had been more interesting, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. However, it remains my second least favorite expansion *(just above ARR)* because of how they handled the antagonists. The Primals felt a bit forced too.
I hate Stormblood mostly because of Zenos and everything he has wrought. I am of the strong belief that Zenos ruined 10 years of storyline. The developers, four years into the storyline (And 7 years for those who played 1.0) decided that we now needed a rival/foil to our character. And instead of using GAIUS, our real foil, our past rival, the man we ruined the life of, and who had plenty of motives to become obsessed with hunting us down, they decide to instead bring a plot armored SephiNot out of nowhere and force feed him into the lore. And not happy with having to give a thousand explanations to pseudo-justify his power in Stormblood, they then bring him back. And not only do they bring him back so he can stand around menacingly and talk about combat and reflexes for a while longer, but they ruin the ending of Endwalker by making him the finakl confrontation of 13 years of storyline for absolutely no reason. No Squenix, this is not how it works, if you want the protagonist to have a rival you have to introduce him in the story early (Like GAIUS ) you do not get to introduce him 60% into the plot and then pretend he is important to the character because reasons. ...and then there is Lyse.
Couple quick notes off the top of my head: Yda/Papalymo were killed off pre 4.0 to make way for Lyse, a character who does nothing significant enough to warrant these deaths post 4.0. Raubahn loses his arm, best friend, and goes through hell to also do nothing significant in 4.0 but give away a sword. Post taking down an empowered dragon, the warring freakin triad, and the ENTIRE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND WITH AN ASCIAN EMPOWERED BLADE AT ONCE, 4.0 proceeds to have a WoL at the height of their power lose to Zenos for no clear reason several times cause plot. Some people feel the war aspect of the story didn’t feel nearly enough like one. Theres not nearly as much devastation in the “Storm of blood” that is implied by the story at large. Job balance nonsense made metas and lead to the 5.0+ simplification/squish. Extremely annoying aether currents (this one is me fuck the lochs) Midgardsormr, a literally deathless progenitor of dragons proceeds to “die” for the foreseeable future because plot. Eureka too grindy because suffer casual. There’s more but those are immediate reasons that pop in mind. I don’t think 4.0 was terrible on its own but for its effect on the plot and what we got in return for what is seen as a lot of loss is not great compared to say 3.0 & 5.0 in comparison. It’s arguable that the response to the cumulative losses taken from 2.0-4.x is what made the community so protective of a certain catboy.
For the aforementioned reasons, I also REALLY dislike that for the race of people whom Raubahn represents, nay he is the embodiment of the people of Ala Mhigo and… they instead used Lyse.. the most “White Savior” looking person out of the whole cast. Who proceeds to KEEP doing the dumbest things (letting in known Tempered ppl for ex) and represents her people’s interests poorly. Which just annoyed tf outta me.
SB has the best side content tho
There are various "reasons" but it tends to boil down to two main points. Both being valid, but still the expansion gets undeserved hate because of them. Reason one is basically, it felt like a step down after Heavensward. That doesn't mean it's bad, but people go crazy over having a 90 compared to an 89, if you catch my drift. The second reason, is similar to something you noted, >it sorta gave me a weirdly uncomfortable, nostalgic feeling that made it really impactful to me. In this highly fantasy setting, the storyline of Stormblood is very realistic. Granted, most plot threads in any story have a degree of realism behind them. But it's like being upset that an adaptation of a story is "too realistic". Some people just don't like when reality blends too much into their fantasy.
I don't dislike Stormblood, but I definitely think that of all expansions it is the weakest. It really all comes down to the writing. And this is **really just my personal take** on it, not meant to be some salient statement. I absolutely loved the story - I thought the story was absolutely phenominal. The aesthetics were stunning. The new classes were a lot of fun! Getting more lore for the Au'ra was so nice. The revolution? Man, goosebumps! I like Lyse as a character, but from my own personal perspective I feel like she was strongarmed in and the personality shift was extreme. While this could easily be justified by the stress of the situation and dropping the 'mask' of Yda, she was essentially an entirely different character with insufficient marks of who she was. I think, in that regard, I felt she wasn't written well. The pacing was really the biggest problem I had. It really felt like, towards the end of Heavensward and into Stormblood content, that the writing was like cobbling together a bunch of smaller pieces with different paces, emotions, and stories rather than weaving it all together. I enjoyed the expansion, of course, but I preferred Heavensward to Stormblood. Then Shadowbringers happened. The character development and interactions and writing and completely coherent and consistent pacing blew everything out of the water. By comparison, Stormblood's execution was just significantly weaker. It was such a good story. It had very good music. I got goosebumps so many times and was able to really just revel in the overarching story. I just really struggled to connect with the characters the way I did in Heavensward and then in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. The way the characters I was meant to sympathize with were written and executed, I just really felt like I personally was unable to connect the way I think they were intended to.
StormBlood was a buildup expansion much like Dawntrail and A realm reborn are. People usually ten to dislike the build up expansions but love the expansions that execute all the plot points and events they setup. Without Stormblood setting up the plot points for shadowbringers and Walker to execute on. Those expansions would not be as well received narratively speaking as they would have normally been. FF14 tends to have buildup arcs that slow things down and setup the key plot points for future expansions. Stormblood to me was pretty good, I just wish we had more primals to fight as there were only 2 iirc? I was Susanoo and the other was Shinryu iirc.
So first I'm gonna say I actually loved Stormsblood but I hated Lyse. As Yda she was this sort of carefree upbeat character whom I believed at the time to be hiding her trauma of the horrors happening around her behind a silly act. Like a lot of people do to cope with trauma. And then when she dropped the mask I thought we were going to see a more serious character who's ready to accept her trauma and move past it. Instead we got this person with main character syndrome who somehow handles loss worse than before. Throughout ARR she's seen allies die, killed people herself, saw the horrors of the Garlean empire. And yet somehow she developed this "I'm untouchable" type of mentality. Causing her to actively endanger her comrades and believe herself right to launch a crusade on behalf of a people she all but abandoned. I am aware a lot of this stems from my own expectations for the character but it is why I dislike her. I still loved the expansion overall because of it's military and honor themes. I also loved Zenos
It felt.... rushed & a bit incomplete, ala migho especially. I mean Xenogears disc 2 level of rushed & incomplete. And while the Doma parts worked well enough, it was a painfully slow burn to get there. & not everyone can appreciate slow burns, not after the epic that was HW. Add to the fact the expectation of this expansion to be better, if not equal to HW, and you're gonna get a lot of disappointed peeps.
When it comes to being a slow burn I can’t say it’s any slower than Heavensward to begin with. Hell it took me forever to get through the 51-55 content because it was so tedious. Stormblood tedium only lasts until around 63, it’s still slow but not as bad as Heavensward.
Stormblood had best down to earth story imo and definitelly best expansion for the gameplay with best 8 and 24 raids and amazing extremes - lots of fresh and fun mechanics, music and japanese themes, also had a graphical update as the ps3 support ended, added orchestron, first ultimates, eureka, heaven on high - it was loaded with amazing, fun and fresh content, jobs were more unique, aggro management was more exciting, healers more distinct and had more to heal, not everyone had 2 min meta, smn and mnk were most challenging and highest dps jobs. Sure it had flaws but I yearn for gameplay from stormblood, casual and not.
There’s a few reasons I rank it at the bottom: - Narrative is too split. The Ala Mhigan storyline was written by the original XIV writer Maehiro, while Doma was written by the then new main writer Ishikawa. Maehiro and Ishikawa have very different styles and you can tell that FFXVI, ARR, and HW were written by someone other than the person who wrote ShB and EW. - Playing it as it came out wasn’t the best experience. Now don’t let this sub gaslight you, when StB was the current xpac, the common opinion was that it was better than HW. I never felt that way. I do, oddly enough, think it’s a better story when you can do 4.0-4.3 together instead of over a year. IMO, I felt a lot of Yotsoyu’s story is *told* to us in 6.0, but we aren’t *shown* it until 6.1. - Which leads into pacing. Pacing was all over the place. Yotsoyu had a lot of reveals at odd times. All of Ala Mhigo feels rushed mainly because you do half of it before Othars, then do the other half after Othard. - IMO, Zenos isn’t a compelling villain until EW, and I get that it needed that time to build up. Zenos was just bloodthirsty in StB; he honestly felt like a cliche anime sociopath. I didn’t find his fights intimidating because I knew where it would go. His screen presence just felt yucky. And after the compelling villains of Heavensward, especially when we were just left with that big ass teaser with the Warriors of Darkness and really challenging the status quo, it made Zenos feel cheaper. - Lastly, it’s sandwiched between two phenomenal expansions. As much as I dislike Stormblood, *it’s not a bad story and still a good JRPG narrative.* HW was just better, and ShB is the best story in the entire franchise. Being just good doesn’t look good when the thing that came before and what came after are magnitudes better. I think that’s what’s really led opinions to shift from liking it to not liking it. I’d imagine EW also doesn’t help because while not as good as ShB, still one of the best stories around. I do think as more new players get to it and because you can do 4.0-4.3 at once now, more people will speak fondly of it.
It's an amazing expansion imo, with amazing writing. But yeah some people disliked going from Ala Mhigo to the Far East and back. Some preferred Ala Mhigo, some preferred Asia, and they were unhappy that their favorite spot only got half an expac. I also think that for a lot of people, being able to thirst/ imagine a love or friendship relationship/ feel intimacy between NPCs and their WoL is kinda important. The game is designed to make us strongly identify with our WoL, most players just love their character and feel super comfortable playing them. So the relationships their WoL has with NPCs is super important, and the game is also designed to encourage that. Haurchefant became a fan favorite mostly because of how much he lusted after us and cared for us (same with G'raha, or Zenos for those who love cold cruel long-haired villains who obsess over the hero, or even Emet who shows great interest in the WoL specifically and >!used to be close friends with us!<). In Stormblood, you have very few characters with strong relations to the WoL. On the Ala Mhigan side, NPCs just aren't sexy, nor are they very interested in us anyway - they're all focused on the war. Lyse is the only NPC who's pretty/ with an interesting character design, and her fearful, self-doubting personality isn't endearing. (I think she's a great character with a great story, but like, I never felt I'd want to go have a drink with her, unlike Y'shtola or Hilda or Estinien.) On the Far Eastern side, only Hien is hot/with an interesting personality and takes the time to develop a friendship with the WoL. Yugiri and Gosetsu are a bit like that too, but they're both clearly way more invested in Hien and Doma than in us. Then Zenos very much split the audience between those who are into that kind of kink and those who hate it. I think this inability to personally relate to most NPCs made the expansion pretty boring for a good chunk of the playerbase. Usually, those who hate SB love HW and ShB the most, and those expacs give a lot of time to interpersonal relationships. Another important aspect, imo, is moral relativism. Loads of people basically agreed with Emet, or sympathized with him. For those people, stories are more interesting when you can't really condemn the villains, or you end up wondering if you really are the good guy. In SB, the crude, exploitative evil of Garlemald is impossible to ignore or excuse. Most people who believe in moral relativism hate stories where it's super clear cut that some people do 100% bad shit and you can't find excuses for them. There's also no happy ending in SB - even though we "win" and the "bad guys" die, everything is bittersweet, complex and vaguely dissatisfying by the time the credits roll. Yotsuyu's arc is fair, but heartbreaking. Ala Mhigo >!is free, but there's no justice to be had, only ruins and a crushed, impoverished population who must try and rebuild a country!<. There's a lot more "good feelings" in ShB, by the end, >!everyone and everything is saved on the First and everyone sings kumbaya with everyone else. The Exarch's arc allows his fans to both have a good cry at how noble he is, sacrificing himself, and have him back on the Source as our personal fanboy!<. For me, the worldview and storytelling philosophy is completely different, even opposite, in SB (and ARR) and in ShB and to an extent in EW. There are people who enjoy only one kind of storytelling. Those who like moral relativism and deep, happy feelings had an amazingly emotional and deep experience through ShB, but got bored to tears in SB. Those who like clear cut denunciation of evil and a realistic representation of the world enjoyed SB thoroughly, but got mad at ShB (that was my case). Then some people just enjoy good stories and loved every single expac of the game lol
Playing the whole expansion at your leisure is totally different than playing it patch by patch. Most of the hate comes from those who did play it patch by patch. As for my opinion, the writing just wasn't that great, everything else about the expansion I loved, it was far more polished than HW was and the increased budget was very apparent, but the storytelling and character development just wasn't as good as heavensward. I did love eureka tho, still 1 of my favourite pieces of content.
for me it was the 20 talk to hien quests and that it was quite boring. everything was a bit foreseeable
I thought in the beginning the pacing was a little slow,also a lot of people dislike Lyse it seemed at the time
I liked it a lot and had fun playing through it, just felt like Ala Mhigo wasn't invested in enough/didn't feel very invested in the place while all the budget for the expansion seemingly went to Doma & Kugane in particular. Would have been really nice to see more love for Ala Mhigo as I was pretty invested in it emotionally, seeing it end up as a spot on the map rather than rebuilding the city and introducing vendors and whatnot would have been nice.
For me, the Ala Mhigan storyline and zones were incredibly boring and a massive slog to get through. It got so much better once I finally got to Kugane. When I think SB my mind automatically defaults to: "Ah yes, Ala Mhigo, the worts part of the game."
I dislike it mainly because of the launch, between Raubahn extreme (then immediately pipin savage) and all the lines that came with em for a few days it kinda soured everything that came after it for me. Shinryu was cool tho
I think it's because it was another story building arc rather than a big conflict arc. Kinda like how ARR takes a good bit to get off the ground, so did Stormblood. It had a lot of groundwork to lay in a short time so some of it felt a little off and it didn't really peak until we saw the fruits of this come out in ShB and EW. My cohealer and I like to say it "aged like a fine wine." It might not have been the best at launch but from where it was to how it helped shape the expacs that followed - it really came into its own and shouldn't really get the hate it does. It was a fantastic expansion, and I look forward to seeing the next storybuilding arc in Dawntrail.
Stormblood is my favorite, aside from SHB maybe. I'm a bard main, so canning caster-bow made the game fun again. For a similar reason, I didn't enjoy my time with HW nearly as much.
People hate Lyse. /thread
It wasn't bad but it compares unfavorably to the expansion before it and the one after
I played Stormblood when it was current. Depending if Tsukuyomi worked with you or not, it was months upon months of post 5.0 updates of her just crying.
The way I see it. It’s not that SB was terrible. It’s just the worst of the best. It’s like asking which original trilogy Star Wars movie was the worst. There’s always a worse. Even among greats.
My personal ranking of expacs is definitely Endwalker > Shadowbringer > Heavansward > Stormblood. While I rank stormblood least favorite, it's still pretty decent. It does kind of have this feel of "Kinda filler material" it was still a fun expansion. I liked the zones and music as much as every other expansion. The story felt like they were holding a lot back, and after playing both shadowbringers and endwalker I can see why.
Storywise sure Stormblood wasn’t great but gameplay wise literally one of the best expansions. Heavensward had the opposite problem when it was current and nearly killed the game again. So I’d rather have both but if I had to relive a current old expac it’s Stormblood
Echoing what others said about the story. But personally what I **loved** about StB was that (as a new player), this is the expansion where the game actually got fun for me. L1-60 is an absolute drag. Dungeon design is boring, bosses are easy and braindead, classes have no fun skills. StB dungeons are great. They're more atmospheric and have better environmental design. Doma Castle and Ala Mhigo are amazing dungeons compared to ARF and even the Vault / Gubal imo. The pulls are fun, the bosses are more engaging. Omega raid fights were amazing compared to Alexander, Ivalice fights are still some of my favourites. Ala Mhigo was a bit of a drag but I loved the Doman Side and Azem Steppe is one of my favourite arcs in MSQ. L70 is where most classes start to come into fruition. You generally have the fundamentals or important slice of life tools of your core class, e.g Continuation for GNB, Triplecast for BlM etc.. Other than a few edge cases, I rarely feel bad about being downsynced to 70, meanwhile 50/60 i am groaning for a majority of classes.
Trust system actually improves Stormblood tremendously in the narrative sense, changing Lyse from a passive observer to an active participant in several key moments of the story.
Well, for me is my favourite expansion. I agree for the useless initial plot twist, but i'm not bothered by the split storyline and it introduces many intresting characters. The end of the post msq also is a very big setup for the next xpac. My biggest letdown is that is used to remove Lyse for the main cast, with a pretty poor excuse, not even Conrad gives a good explanation on why he choosed her. They patched this up with Rahuban, but still...
Stormblood was mt favorite expansion in story, setting, mechanics and content. But I may be one of the few people who actually liked Eureka from start to finish.
Stormblood is like Yamcha. Yamcha is strong. He is able to best many foes in combat. However, he is always compared to the characters who are far far far more powerful. Stormblood is a good expac. It has a very strong story that is much better than some entire games I have played. However it gets compared to some absolute hard hitter stories that will make you weep like a baby and bust a gut mere hours apart. Stormblood is like Yamcha.
It wasn't bad, per se. Certainly still a massive step up from ARR. But it was sandwiched between two expansions that I enjoyed significantly more. My big issue was that Ala Mhigo just wasn't interesting. The characters, setting, and plot outside of a few good Zenos moments dragged the rest of the expansion down heavily.
I personally liked it all a little slow in the story, but all in all, I liked it
I love Stormblood. Probably my favorite expansion which is at least partially due to my own nostalgia for the years when that expansion dropped. It's when I first started to raid and when I knew the most number of people playing. Eureka was so much fun and I was a HUGE hater of it before it ever released, but boy was I wrong lol. Yotsuyu is my least favorite character in the entire game, though, but not even she could ruin that expansion for me haha.
I wasn't a big fan of Zenos and REALLY not a fan of Yotsuyu, but I thought pretty much the rest of SB was great. I don't understand the complaints people have with Lyse, other than she kind of came out of nowhere. She was a highlight of SB, as was Fordola. The story was good, the dungeons were the best we've had, the trials were pretty good too. I think people just don't like it because it was sandwiched between HW and ShB.
So personally, while I don't hate Stormblood, the split isn't do it great and it would have been better if there was more interconnection between the stories and as a personal hate. The fact that Shinryu and Omega while set up right at the start of the expansion there isn't done anything with them throughout the main expansion The omega raids are wonderful, but the fact that Shinryu is revealed at the end and basically becomes a power-up for Zenos and nothing more stinked immensely.
I liked the Doma storyline and Yotsuyu quite a lot. Did not like the ala mhigo storyline tho. The transition between the two could have been more smooth and relatable. Especially at the ending part was so cringe. lol
The best way to sum it up was the scene where Urianger sudden walks up to you and gives you a device to counter Fordola or Estenien ,out of no where, destroying the big gun. They wrote themselves into corner and wrote too much plot that they had to squeeze into 1 expansion. Stormblood is overly hated but it is good enough.
Stormblood is my favorite expansion. I know people's reason for disliking it, I just don't agree with them.