What was your favourite expansion stories, ranked in order?

I liked em all, and as much as I can complain about the game it’s still my fave and I loves it precious.

My ranking
1 hvw
2 shb
3 stb
4 ew (so good through Elpis, then the left field deus ex and that awful Michael Bolton song in ultima, dead ends is copypasta amaurot, final trial is copypasta hades)
5 arr

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vencio

Honestly just exactly how this good soul put it together it’s exactly how I can relate!

Need I say anything further?

EW in my opinion was far disappointing than Stormblood…i mean….a friggin bird threatened the very fabrics of reality nihilism sorts….a bird really!!?

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I'm glad to see my disappointment with Endwalker justified a bit more on the forums. Some of my friends think I'm absolutely insane for not liking it, but I really just didn't get impacted as much by all the emotional bits, and a lot of the new stuff they tried to diversify the questing fell flat.

Heavensward because of dragons.

I'll agree with some of the others and rank EW the lowest. It has effectively killed off a lot of my interest in the game's lore and I'll be taking a break.

1. Endwalker. The pacing was imperfect but it still wasted the least amount of time. It also had the two best sections in the entire story at large (Garlemald and Elpis). Nothing else resonated with me nearly as much as the themes of Endwalker, especially as someone who loves almost every Final Fantasy story. And Endwalker is the most Final Fantasy of Final Fantasy stories, so naturally I'd enjoy it a lot. It probably helps that a lot of the storytelling beats mirror Nier Automata, which is my favorite game of all time.

2. Shadowbringers. It was hard carried by the final act and 5.x content, which had the highest highs in the whole story. I hardly cared about anything that happened up until the lore dump in Ratika, but it was all uphill from there. But that first half was so goddamn boring and spent way too much time worldbuilding for my liking. I know they needed to do that to make the self-contained story work, but what they needed to do doesn't change the fact that I didn't like it at all. It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing, and I think the story would've been much better served by having much of that worldbuilding placed in the 4.x storyline so we could focus more on the characters of the First. I will say that it's more consistent and tightly-written than Endwalker was, but, to me, stories are about the emotions they inspire in people more than anything else and EW inspired the strongest emotions in me.

3. Heavensward. It's what made me start caring about the story. The Final Steps of Faith is literally the moment I decided to stop skipping cutscenes, and was the best story trial for the longest time.

4. Stormblood. Bad. Boring. Didn't care, but I resolved to stop skipping almost every cutscene by this point so I was stuck watching it. The 4.x content was good, but it still didn't fix the fact that the entire base expansion was dull all the way through. The only thing I liked was Zenos. Don't @ me.

5. ARR. I didn't care.

1, Shadowbringers (I liked the general world and ryne :D )
2, Endwalker (a excellent follow up to Shadowbringers )
3, Stormblood ( i actually liked zenos for the most part )
4, Heavensward ( while a good expansion i'm not fan of religion in general )

1. Shadowbringers
2. Heavensward
3. Endwalker
4. A Realm Reborn
5. Stormblood

1. Heavensward. It started on loss, and there were actual consequences to the team, with several characters seriously questioning their perspectives on life and the world around them. Ysayle and Estinien were both quite introspective, though Estinien was more resistant to it. This expansion also gifted me the first Ranged DPS that I really liked in game, even with its whacky casting BS that literally lowered its DPS at first. DRK was also a big, unexpected gift that they just keep mauling ever since. The story retreaded some similar ground with the Crystals of Light while still spinning it on a fresh loom. The bad guy was a real person, but was thoroughly bad keeping up with the historic precedent in most JRPGs and real world history of religious leader hogging power is bad. Tragic Dragons kinda got me. Post story was amazing all the way from Post 3.0 till 3.55. I rode that high into Stormblood's release.


2. Stormblood. Say what you will, but this is the expansion where they got experimental and tried to give two arcs at the same time under the same theme. They also tried integrating more story aspects into the gameplay directly in the solo MSQ duties, and while I hated Zenos at first in retrospect I appreciate his role in Stormblood. Stormblood also had a very strong post/end game with the Omega raids, Ivalice, Eureka, and Hildibrand's Kugane arc. I also thoroughly enjoyed the introduction and implications and lore mysteries surrounding the Auspices. I also found Heaven on High to be a better/more fun Deep Dungeon than Palace of the Dead, even though I like PoTD's ending floor aesthetic a lot more. I feel like a lot of FFXIV content creators sort of turned on the game at this time though, because there was a long lull after Byakko, with most of them disinterested in Eureka. Youtubers and Twitch streamers alike poisoned the reception of that content, and I would even daresay poisoned the perception of the expansion along with it. Though I'm sure most folks were happy to hear such stuff at the time, because discontent was pretty high and vocal due to gameplay changes with the role actions and STR vs. VIT again on tanks and what not. Also introduced two of my favorite jobs in the series, Samurai and Red Mage.

3. ARR - The 2.0 story was fairly basic, but the 2.1~2.55 bits were great. It was a great time for content too. 3 Dungeons every patch. Great raids. Cinematics in raid before general release to public. Introduction of Extremes. Introduction of Minstrel's Ballad. Odin. A lot of my favorite dungeons in game come from 2.x, namely Pharos Sirius, Lost City of Amdapor, Keeper of the Lake, Snowcloak, Wanderer's Palace HM... I could go on about them forever, baby! Second Coil of Bahamut is still one of the best raid tiers the game offers. Lore bombs in the raid, Louisoix and the 1.0 tie in. I fell in love hard with XIV by 2.1.

4. Shadowbringers - It's a great story. Great set pieces. Humanization of the Ascians, turning the whole story on its head. I didn't like them at all before, and my first play of it I was waiting for betrayal with baited breath, "Let me kill him, let me kill him! He's bad!" And then they let me kill him, and I found myself being like, "Oh wait... Damn. I regret that." It almost made me forget about the staggering amount of ludonarrative dissonance inherent in trying to make the player think they're in agonizing near death pain from the Light holding. Unfortunately, I found its post content to be relatively weak. Less dungeons and less complex dungeons. No real side dungeons except the first couple. Completely botched Elidibus's character, and I still stand by that. Overwhelmingly good music though. Bozja was alright. Nier 24 man was fun gameplay wise, but completely disconnected from the XIV story.

5. Endwalker - For a story that's supposed to tie up everything with the Ascians and the last 10 years it really fell flat. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed playing through it, and the music was phenomenal again. A lot of gameplay changes to jobs I play were received happily. It really did blow my mind in the first half, up to where the Final Days strike Thavnair. It kept going, and I was enjoying the fan service in Elpis. I was enjoying sparring with Venat, and seeing her interplay with Hades and Hythlodaeus... but then they discarded a lot of recurring story elements in favor of a rather hackneyed predestination plot. Which immediately ruined the faith restoral they were going for with Venat's portrayal. The story suffered greatly for it. I'm still sad about it.

1. Shadowbringers (though including patches, it'd be 2nd)

2. Heavensward. (though including patches, it'd be 1st)

3. Endwalker

4. A Realm Reborn (4 feels too low, though... how about like. 3 1/2?)

5. Stormblood

1. Shadowbringers
2. Shadowbringers again
3. Heavensward
4. Endwalker
5. ARR