Originally Posted by
Akiudo
funnily enough, i rewatched spirits within 3 years ago and actually quite enjoyed it. not movie of the year quality, but not nearly as bad as i remembered it. its main problem isn't that its a bad movie, it's problem is that its just not what people expect thinking of final fantasy. imagine you would go watch a new avengers movie and after entering the theater you realize you now have to sit through a 3 hour hystorical retelling of life in feudal japan during the warring states period. it may be a perfectly fine movie, good even, but you would still feel ripped off because its not avengers even if oda nobunaga decided to dress up as captain america in the final 5 minutes.
on topic though, best wishes to the op, hope you find something that makes you happy. one point of advice though. you don't need to like the story, if you love other things its perfectly fine to just power through once and than do other stuff you actually find fun.
that aside though, the problem with skipping story during arr is that the story builds up over time, people talk about retcons and all but really, while the definition of that is somewhat wonky a lot of time its actually pretty reasonable stuff that comes up later was just unclear (at least to us) early on and actually does make thematic sense. for example people speculated on the nature of primals since arr came out, lots of people coming really close to the truth with just the information we had, yet the moment we learned more and new things about primals people started screaming "retcon" like square just rewrote world war 2 documents.
all in all no, i don't think the story in ff14 is the best thing ever written, i do however believe that one simply misses a lot of the finer details by skipping up to shadowbringers. if the way the story is presented however just doesn't catch you, or its just not your kind of story than thats perfectly fine, sad for you as you miss out on joy to be had elsewhere but otherwise just fine. i mean i love lord of the rings and hate game of thrones, doesn't mean either one is objectively bad.