Was anyone disappointed/underwhelmed with Shadowbringers, but LOVED Endwalker?

So, after completing 5.3, my expansion rankings are: StB > ShB = HW > ARR.

I just finished Shadowbringers and am hoping Endwalker can deliver what I wanted from ShB. I was hoping 5.3 would elevate ShB from a 7.5/10 to a 9/10 for me, but it didn’t quite get there. If you were underwhelmed by ShB but loved EW, could you share what made you love it—specifically how it made you feel—without spoiling anything?

I love the story and conflict in ShB on paper, but I felt the writers could have done more to convey the infinite sense of loss that Emet and Elidibus must have experienced. The idea that Elidibus, despite not fully remembering what he had lost, still yearned for it and felt that pain is incredibly powerful. I think the concept of abstracted loss being no less painful could have been explored further. I was hoping for more scenes with Elidibus monologuing or talking to us about this. From what I understand of the lore, the Ascians are the original people. While we are trying to save our world, they’re trying to bring theirs back. That’s further complicated by the fact that we wouldn’t exist if their world hadn’t been destroyed (I think?). That dilemma is so damn potent, and I wish the story explored it more deeply, rather than reducing it to “You can’t kill people to save others.”

Some other quibbles I had:

• I saw people online raving about the relationships between G’raha and Lyna, and Y’shtola and Runar. But, after completing 5.3, I don’t see what there was to rave about. Lyna liked G’raha because he rasied her and led the Crystarium, but most of their interactions happened off-screen. Similarly, Runar admired Y’shtola. Other than G’raha and Y’shtola being cool, badass, and wise, the game didn’t really show what Lyna and Runar saw in them. It felt like the game was telling us these were deep relationships without really showing us.

• As for Thancred and Ryne, I found their relationship a bit boring and sterile. Thancred was the stern guardian who learned to loosen up, and Ryne was the timid kid who learned to believe in herself. It was fine, but I much preferred the RDM and DRK versions of the surrogate father-daughter relationship. Maybe it’s because I don’t care much for Ryne. To me, she felt flat and like a cliched, goody-two-shoes anime girl. That kind of character can work well (e.g., Nagisa from Clannad), but it didn’t work as well for me here. Eden helped improve her character a bit, but not enough, in my opinion.

• Looking back, I realize I don’t care much for the Scions beyond Alphinaud (love that dude) and Alisaie. Aside from Emet, there weren’t any Shadowbringers characters I felt were as fully realized as Lyse, Fordola, and Tsuyu.

I’m just hoping I’m not alone in feeling this way about Shadowbringers, and that there’s still a good chance I’ll LOVE Endwalker and put it up there with Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by JohnLakeside

From what I understand of the lore, the Ascians are the original people. While we are trying to save our world, they’re trying to bring theirs back. That’s further complicated by the fact that we wouldn’t exist if their world hadn’t been destroyed (I think?).

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You are correct; especially that second sentence: "While we are trying to save our world, they’re trying to bring theirs back." Attempting to un-ring bells is a running theme with the part of the story they descend from; a lot of the exploration there is, "Is such a thing even possible? Why do they think it is? If they were right, would it work out?" The answers to all of those questions only make things increasingly tragic, though (as you said) the exploration of that tragedy can be kinda hit and miss.

For me, the greatest tragedy of Elidibus was that his one job was to consider the perspectives of all involved and chart the best course forward, and in spite of being as willing, able, and determined as only an idealistic youth can be, he was robbed - by the summoning, by the plan, by the ages - of his ability to do so, almost from the very start.

In terms of Shadowbringers vs. Endwalker, I think it's tough to say which I "liked" more. I thought Shadowbringers was better structured and more tightly focused, but I found Endwalker to be more exciting and thought provoking despite clearly struggling to choose which lingering plot threads to give the most weight and screen time in resolving. When I look back on them, different emotions jump out about different things.

HOWEVER, I do believe I just read that you enjoyed Stormblood, and Stormblood was also rather weak in the "when to focus on what for how long" department, so this might not be a concern!

If you're familiar with Final Fantasy as a whole, Endwalker is pure Final Fantasy - all of the best and worst tendencies of the franchise are on full display. You will, if you look for it - if you think about it - get a lot more of the sense of tragedy and loss you're hoping for, I think.

The larger issue for Endwalker is that depending on what you wanted to happen and what you wanted the truth to be, Endwalker's case for why "x happened, for y reasons, and z is why this couldn't have gone another way" is far short of 100% persuasive for 100% of players.

(The discourse tends to be so... er, ...passionate... that I labor to find the most diplomatic way to say that.)

If you are able to adopt its perspective, I think you'll get a lot of what you're hoping for.

If not, it may be a little frustrating, lol.

But you did say you liked Stormblood.

If you're expecting Endwalker to change what you didn't like about Shadowbringers, you're probably going to be sorely disappointed since they double-down on a lot that you didn't like. The Ancient dilemma is solved, and while I was satisfied by the result, I'm not sure you will.

But there's only one way to find out. You did mention liking Stormblood, which tends to be on most people's lists as being among the weakest while ShB tends to be the highest, so there could be something about it that you liked.


I would personally rate the expansions ShB > HW > EW > DT = SB > ARR.

Stormblood's pacing was way off and the story was hobbled by splitting the focus on two opposite ends of the planet. The only shocking moments of SB's story that I felt were done really well ended up being undone in the after-credits scenes. Also, following Lyse around for most of the expansion as she reacts to things felt like a slog. "It's all flat except for the parts that are not". Thanks, Lyse.

Personally I really liked ShB and thought it did a good job of making the WoL the actual main character rather than a side character watching everything happening and gathering people together. ShB also brought meaning to the Ascians who up to that point were just doing "random acts of evil" that gave them depth but made sure they were still our enemies and had to be stopped. Behind the scenes not even the writers had a direction for them through ARR and HW.


EDIT: Ninja'd by Moose and his analysis was much more in depth so I'd go with that.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The larger issue for Endwalker is that depending on what you wanted to happen and what you wanted the truth to be, Endwalker's case for why "x happened, for y reasons, and z is why this couldn't have gone another way" is far short of 100% persuasive for 100% of players.

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That's a really good way of explaining it. Opinions on Endwalker are all over the map, from love, to hate, to everywhere in between. The story has a lot of things to say about a lot of subjects, but how much you actually like the answers and (possibly even more importantly) how believable you find the answers, will vary widely depending on personal taste.

I think a lot of people like ShB not just because of the Ascians, but because of the setting.

ShB is when they properly began to introduce to us the idea of the reflections and the sundering to us, all on a brand new world we'd never seen before. Combine this with the fact that 'light' is shown to not be the monolithic force of good like we had been led to believe up to that point, but just another force of nature that can get out of hand like any other, was very interesting and new for the game at the time.

Seeing the characters we had grown to love interact with such a wildly new setting was novel to a lot of people, and helped to cover up what cracks there were in the overall plot and presentation.

Also, the 5.3 quests is the best part of the MSQ across all expansions and nobody can convince me otherwise.

Personally, I do consider Endwalker far better than Shadowbringers, but to explain why in full would be spoilers for where you are. If you loved Stormblood but not Shadowbringers there will be parts of Endwalker you'll be really into... but also at least one zone you'll absolutely hate and there's not really any way around it. But Endwalker is ultimately its own thing with its own pros and cons, so we can't entirely predict what your reaction will be.

I can predict that, from the things you've said you do and don't like, Dawntrail will be fantastic for you.


As for Shadowbringers itself, I've been noodling about with a full review and critique of it in my own time, and I think the big thing about it is that it took a lot of gambles that a lot of the core audience happened to love (and a few things that honestly weren't gambles but were definitely big swings; adding their own MCU Loki was a safe-bet masterstroke that just looks like a risky move), but 'a lot' is not 'all'. And honestly, it coasts on the pure momentum of those pretty successful investments and some real big showcase moments; you start taking a magnifying glass to it and you start seeing some pretty big flaws that start letting down what should be big strengths of the entire expansion... but Emet-Selch's story (and to a lesser degree G'raha's) ring out as such a deafening foghorn that people don't really talk about how Amh Araeng throws masterful pitches that the Crystarium refuses to catch. Something in particular that stands out in review is that my favorite zone in the expansion, and my favorite non-finale zone in the game, is also the zone that's the hardest to justify being in Shadowbringers at all.


Also, something that I think should be raised: Shadowbringers was 'the pandemic expansion', it was the one that happened to be current when insane real-world circumstances left us in our homes with nothing else to do, and also the one that happened to be current during the WoW exodus a year or so later. I have more elaborate thoughts about how that affected the response to and collective memory of specific patches and pieces of content (next year we find out if people actually liked Bozja or just had nothing better to do) but in this context, suffice to say that I think anyone who comes to Shadowbringers after that era will probably have some level of underwhelm in their response because of it. It wasn't some big weird beacon and communal experience for you, it's just one of a pile of expansions that are all at least 'pretty good'.

The Final Days can be a little hard to grasp as the last time the earth really had a huge event that could be seen as a population reset would have been the Black Death. Or if you really want a "reset" then the meteor that hit at the end of the Cretaceous period. Or if you want a more recent event if the 2019 bushfire of Australia were to have devastated the whole globe.

They stopped it by summoning Zodiark but the land was so ravaged by it that they sacrificed more of their remaining number to give it a boost. Think of it like if you got really sick and the doctors hooked you up to an iv bag that was full of all the regular stuff they tend to put in those to help you recover quicker. Just that the convocation and many others were in so much shock from all of the loss that they wanted to rewind the clock per se.

The Ancients if you're to believe what Emet-Selch said about their civilization was idyllic and had very little strife. The Final Days for them would be akin to the natives of the 1st who had never known what the night sky looked like. A tad jarring to all of a sudden have the sky go pitch dark and everything else that happens when that comes to be. For them it would have been going from a child dealing with the loss of a favorite stuffed animal being left on a bus or a friend moving away to suddenly having to deal with the loss of a first pet or relative that they were very close to. Without anyone there who can help them not only deal with such a shock but their grief as well. This behavior of wanting to rewind the clock instead of trying to deal with all of it was seen as bad thing since that's not how you grow or move forward in a healthy way after such a tragic experience. This schism in their society then lead to the summoning of Hydelean and later the sundering of their world. As Zodiark stopped being seen by a minority as a good and helpful entity to one that was a tool to be used to numb the pain. In a way similar to how some people become addicted to opiates. It's easier to numb the pain and forget it exists than to deal with it and the reality that caused it.

Endwalker does shed some more light on this along with the Tales from the Shadows story Ere our Curtain falls.

Shadowbringers holds a special place for me in gaming. It is hard to describe in words but the themes along with the visual aethstetic and music hit me. Holminster Switch was the moment that I knew it was going to be a special expansion for me. That dungeon is still my favorite. Everyrhing ties together to present this emotional with a gloomy overtone vibe for me. I am someone that other aspects of a game can make something much greater than the story alone on paper. Endwalker i view as the sequel if this was a 2 part movie. I played both back to back. They both mean alot to me but SHB brought me to a place in gaming I haven't been to in a very long time. I wanted my character and the game to remain in the first after it was over. I loved the worlds there.

For me, I can't imagine any future content doing what SHB did for me. After being in DT now since summer, I miss SHB and Endwalker. I prefer darker tones of story. DT is a far cry from the magic of SHB for me.

Long rant but I tend to do that when a piece of art really connects.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's a high chance you're not going to like Endwalker. It takes the idea of a less opaquely black and white view of the Hydaelyn/ Zodiark conflict and the exploration of the Ascian/ Ancient side of the struggle that began in Shadowbringers and throws it soundly in the bin, and if you found Ryne bland and the Scions generally forgettable, you're, uh... going to be in for a rather bumpy ride for a considerable portion of the story, I'm afraid. On the bright side, you'll likely get a real kick from one of the zones, though it's an unfortunately somewhat brief part of the story and comes with an extra order of some mind-boggling morality politics on the side. We definitely wear flowers in our hair for this expansion, if you catch my meaning, so if you were hoping for something grittier, you're probably going to be disappointed.

Endwalker as a whole is very much an expansion almost singularly about landing a very specific message, and if you like that message, it might salvage it for you. If you don't, it's going to be a very long game for you.

While I won't say I was disappointed or underwhelmed by Shadowbringers, but I still don't see why so many people praise it so highly. As if antagonists throwing shade is anything new! Just because they're not cackling evil megalomaniacs like Sephiroth or Kefka doesn't make them super deep!

I really liked Endwalker because of its existentialist themes. It's not perfect - it's got pacing issues, some things come a little out of left field - but I feel it was much more thought provoking and philosophically complex than Shadowbringers. If you enjoy that kind of thing and don't go in expecting it to be Shadowbringers 2: Electric Boogaloo you'll probably enjoy it; it's a tough sell otherwise, especially if you liked the Ancients and dislike the somewhat trite answer it offers for the big question.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

I really liked Endwalker because of its existentialist themes. It's not perfect - it's got pacing issues, some things come a little out of left field - but I feel it was much more thought provoking and philosophically complex than Shadowbringers. If you enjoy that kind of thing and don't go in expecting it to be Shadowbringers 2: Electric Boogaloo you'll probably enjoy it; it's a tough sell otherwise, especially if you liked the Ancients and dislike the somewhat trite answer it offers for the big question.

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Yeah, I think the most important compliment I can give to Endwalker is that it's really trying some stuff. It's not just the most ambitious in terms of scale, it's also the most ambitious in terms of concepts it's playing with and questions it's asking. Debatably too much so, it's a little overstuffed and can't give everything the spotlight it deserves, but it's not for lack of effort or ideas, and I think your interest in Endwalker as a story is reliant on how willing you are to meet it in that headspace. The moment you're rejecting something out of turn (not 'considering everything and personally coming to a different conclsion', I mean outright rejection of the premise), you're gone and it's highly unlikely you're coming back.

All of that's about the Endwalker MSQ, though, Endwalker's side content is running on entirely different appeal, and that appeal is mostly 'hey you really like the Ancients, right!?'

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

All of that's about the Endwalker MSQ, though, Endwalker's side content is running on entirely different appeal, and that appeal is mostly 'hey you really like the Ancients, right!?'

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Spoiler Boxing for OP's sake.

Pandaemonium definitely runs on Ancient appeal. 100%, "Oh hey you met Amaurot-era Emet-Selch and Venat and even Hythlodaeus! Wanna meet Amaurot-era Lahabrea and Elidibus?!"
(It's not bad, and having Athena be a legitimately contemptible villain just serves to illustrate that however rosy the image Emet-Selch tries to sell of Amaurot is it was not perfect, and one person going off the rails was infinitely more dangerous.)

Myths of the Realm actually gave concrete answers for lingering plot elements from way back in the day - the Twelve and their iconography have been part of the game's lore since Legacy. Expounding on that was only natural, and the fact it ties into Endwalker's themes of moving on from the legacy of the Ancients (by taking Nietzsche's "God is dead and we have killed Him" to an almost literal extreme) and finding our own path forward leaves me not at all irritated or annoyed with it.

Then the interim MSQ and Dawntrail had us continue to deal with the Ascians' screw-up(s) and tacked on a Pandaemonium wrap-up quest with Wind-up Themis in 7.1. Meanwhile I'm still waiting for my Zenos minion...

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, I think the most important compliment I can give to Endwalker is that it's really trying some stuff. It's not just the most ambitious in terms of scale, it's also the most ambitious in terms of concepts it's playing with and questions it's asking.

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The problem is, ambition only counts if you can pull it off, and not everyone thought SE stuck the landing here.

You can only judge things for what they are. You don't get bonus points for what could have been. It's clear that the writers had more ideas than they were able to juggle cleanly, and some balls were inevitably dropped (though which ones those are will vary depending on who you ask.)

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

You can only judge things for what they are. You don't get bonus points for what could have been.

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No, you can't. I'm very happy to give points for effort when talking about a story, because I think there's value in a good idea even if it doesn't stick the landing. You may think otherwise, but I'm not you.

The way to lose me with a good idea is to actively squander or sabotage it, to either completely ignore or actively make decisions to work against that idea rather than just whiffing on execution, and Endwalker actually mostly doesn't do that, although there's one very clear example to me. Keeping within Endwalker, and spoiler-tagging again for the OP's sake:

I think one of the only things that Endwalker actively squanders is the escaped slaves in Garlemald. Garlemald's a great example, honestly, because a lot of the ideas there are exactly where I go 'points for effort'; the stuff with the girls who ran away from us, Quintus still holding onto his bitter grudges even now, the stuff with the radios, basically everything surrounding In from the Cold and the Anima reveal, even their patch content stuff and the Nerva storyline in the role quest finale... a lot of it's not perfect, mostly because it doesn't have the space to really do its best work, but they get their points across well enough for me to give them a thumbs-up. That's alongside the stuff they actually did nail because it was stuff that excelled in being smaller and low-key, like Jullus' stuff and Quintus' death scene.

But the escaped slaves they just do absolutely nothing to explore, to the point of them being pretty chummy over the patches despite us mostly working with... y'know, the people that enslaved them. Everything else Garlemald as a zone does states itself strongly enough, and executes well enough, that I can see what they want to do and am happy to take the ball and run with it; with the slaves their unwillingness to actually play with them actually ruins whatever they could have done with them.

EDIT: There are some places where I won't give those points for effort, but it's mostly on actual gameplay and spectacle fronts; if you're doing a thing that requires a certain level of visceral bigness or difficulty, you can't get away with just reaching 'I see what you were going for'. The Endwalker alliance raids are a good example of that: I can't give a thumbs up to those raids, because those fights needed to be big, threatening and imposing to really sell those bosses, and they really aren't; the storyline as a whole struggles to work, because those bosses aren't impressive enough for what they're supposed to be.