Why shadowbringers is truely the best expansion in all of FFXIV

let me explain! playing it back recently. i saw my self untangling the tightly interwoven threads that ll made shadowbringers feel so good. It had everything. a mysterious unknown world, the scions. in action and bloody awesome too. Yshtola leading an entire group of people. thancred finding a new cause. alphinaud finding somewhat of a home where he had allways been traveling. and you, the warrior of light., you were not just the warrior of light, in that word you were anything but a hero, and your job was to undoo what "heroes did" you were alone, but yet you werent. you were important, but so small.

the world was filled with wonderful lore that could easily stretch 3 books. each of the gorgeous cities lost to time, they're history, people and magics still remaining in traces. beautiful ancient styles that make you want to know more. nothing futuristic or dystopian. just pure fantasy. nowhere is this handled better than in il mheg. what can i saw about titania? was she not extremely popular? beloved and adored. what about feo ul. you're number one fan. it all felt so magical. there were multilayered villain's and hierarchy's and even something massive beyond the whole scope of what YOU even thought possible. And at the heart of all of it. a villian that we will NEVER see again. A man, a friend, a human. empathic, emotional, tired of fighting tired of the same cycles of misery and fighting. but he really did try and he suffered great losses doing so.

there are no ways to fully explain how truly narratively amazing from every direction SHB really was. how beautifully every character brought everything together, every city having its own story and wonder for you to unpack piece by piece. and all of this handled in just ONE expansion. shb could have ended on 5.0 and it would have been a complete perfect story. yet somehow even the patches got better. ardbert is one of the most inspirational characters i have ever seen. he was forged not in being given power, but in being tasked with how to use it properly, and he is a beautiful tragic character. when the exarchs story ended in 5.3 i knew he was gone and it hurt and my character hurt too, and i felt every aching minute of it and it was amazing.

so why do i bring this up. perhaps to evoke thought in SE. to look back at a previous masterpiece, and untangle the narrative threads of genuis and success. perhaps they need to find that spark again. or perhaps in your downtime to inspire you to replay shb, and experience it all again with newfound appreciation. the comedy the tears and the amazing sense of adventure.

ShB is widely viewed among players as the "best" expansion. The thing is - it was only able to be a real 10/10 because of the expansions that came before it. Two out of those three books of lore you could write were written in ARR, HW, and SB. The villains that became multi-faceted were introduced as one-dimensional back in ARR.

There's not really much "thought to evoke" in SE. It's already there. You just can't realistically expect the new equivalent of ARR (starting a new narrative) to reach as high as an expansion that had 3 prior installments to build on. Years from now, FFXIV will probably put out another 10/10 expansion - the only question will be whether those "hating" on DT will be willing to acknowledge that the new top-tier installment was able to reach those heights because of the foundation DT laid.

Me? I'm still having a ton of fun with the new stories and lore in DT. *shrugs*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Striker44

ShB is widely viewed among players as the "best" expansion. The thing is - it was only able to be a real 10/10 because of the expansions that came before it. Two out of those three books of lore you could write were written in ARR, HW, and SB. The villains that became multi-faceted were introduced as one-dimensional back in ARR.

There's not really much "thought to evoke" in SE. It's already there. You just can't realistically expect the new equivalent of ARR (starting a new narrative) to reach as high as an expansion that had 3 prior installments to build on. Years from now, FFXIV will probably put out another 10/10 expansion - the only question will be whether those "hating" on DT will be willing to acknowledge that the new top-tier installment was able to reach those heights because of the foundation DT laid.

Me? I'm still having a ton of fun with the new stories and lore in DT. *shrugs*

---

You can say that ARR released one dimensional villains that were expanded later but that specifically because they actually left open ends

DT didn’t, DT is such an enclosed story they had to rezz its main antagonist literally a patch after it finished just to have some kind of conflict

DT isn’t another “build up” expansion like ARR was because it closed off all its plot lines at the end of itself. I don’t get why people still pretend like it was a “prep” expansion

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You can say that ARR released one dimensional villains that were expanded later but that specifically because they actually left open ends

DT didn’t, DT is such an enclosed story they had to rezz its main antagonist literally a patch after it finished just to have some kind of conflict

DT isn’t another “build up” expansion like ARR was because it closed off all its plot lines at the end of itself. I don’t get why people still pretend like it was a “prep” expansion

---

We definitely only fought lahabrea and zenos once.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

We definitely only fought lahabrea and zenos once.

---

Lahabrea has reasons for why our initial defeat of him because we specifically didn’t understand how ascians worked and so all we really did is purge him from thancred compared to sphene where we specifically completely shut down his he meso terminal. “Oh they had a backup” if that’s actually the reason is not remotely similar justification

Zenos’s revival in EW was stupid contrived nonsense I agree. But he was also basically an afterthought compared to the endsinger and the actual plot of EW

People would be more mad on Zenos if 4.1’s story was basically “somehow Zenos returned” especially since the other half of 7.1’s story is nuking the last bit of nuance from koana’s backstory

ShB is the worst expansion because it's where they really committed to the stale content formula that everyone complains about and it had the least amount of content out of all the expansions. Story was alright tho, not as good as HW or EW but still decent.

The regulators literally bring people back from the dead and you're surprised the main antagonist just comes back nonchalantly? Pay attention to the story man.

we kill Nidhogg and yet he was able to come back in a stupid way as well, if you want to simplify everything down like that.

At the time, this forum was raging about how Shadowbrings made the story "too anime," and how the game was going downhill because it lost all the politics-driven drama from ARR, HW, and SB.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sacae

At the time, this forum was raging about how Shadowbrings made the story "too anime," and how the game was going downhill because it lost all the politics-driven drama from ARR, HW, and SB.

---

I started playing this game again at the tail end of Stormblood and even I know that we should just let them cook. You may not like the direction a story is going now, only for it to really ramp up in the later patches. Then have people come in 3 years later being like "Dawntrail was the BEST expansion!" It's like a cycle.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dastan

I started playing this game again at the tail end of Stormblood and even I know that we should just let them cook. You may not like the direction a story is going now, only for it to really ramp up in the later patches. Then have people come in 3 years later being like "Dawntrail was the BEST expansion!" It's like a cycle.

---

I don't think it can get any worse than this to be honest...

I'm only on 5.4, but ShB had by far my least favorite zones. I get that 90% or something of the population was wiped out, but god the zones are so lifeless. Too much of it feels flat and textureless. Compare it to ARR where there are NPCs even outside of Aetheryte tele areas. Hell, in Shb's Aetheryte areas, most of the NPCs are just standing outside of their homes like mannequins. The fact that we can't even enter most of the buildings makes it even worse. It feels almost insulting that out of maybe the 4 buildings we can go inside in the entire expansion, 2 of them are lalafell only. Yes, the world is pretty, but it lacks a lot of that interiority and detail that makes a world feel alive imo. I also think the Crystarium is the worse expansion city we've gotten so far. I'd really like someone to explain to me how the Crystarium holds a candle to the likes of Ishgard or Kugane.

I'm actually kinda bitter about how underwhelmed I was by ShB. Almost everyone I talked to gushed about how ShB was almost like some life-changing experience. I loved every expansion so far and I thought ShB would reach heights that I couldn't even imagine. But at the end of it all, it was just "pretty good." Like a 7.8/10 for me.

I can't disagree, but much of that was simply down to circumstance, a combination of due to the fact of the previous expansions, it subverted expectation quite a bit, and then there's the fact that it was tying together a lot of what came before it, e.g., with Ascian's motivations, whilst also being able to stay in its own separate world as it were. It was about as much of a blank canvas as you could get.

Realistically they couldn't replicate it no matter hard hard they try, IMO, because everything that made that expansion good was due to the above.

It's going to take a really long time to rebuild that spark. It's not even about what I am willing to accept in terms of quality but more-so just the reality of what made ShB good.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JohnLakeside

I'm only on 5.4, but ShB had by far my least favorite zones. I get that 90% or something of the population was wiped out, but god the zones are so lifeless. Too much of it feels flat and textureless. Compare it to ARR where there are NPCs even outside of Aetheryte tele areas. Hell, in Shb's Aetheryte areas, most of the NPCs are just standing outside of their homes like mannequins. The fact that we can't even enter most of the buildings makes it even worse. It feels almost insulting that out of maybe the 4 buildings we can go inside in the entire expansion, 2 of them are lalafell only. Yes, the world is pretty, but it lacks a lot of that interiority and detail that makes a world feel alive imo. I also think the Crystarium is the worse expansion city we've gotten so far. I'd really like someone to explain to me how the Crystarium holds a candle to the likes of Ishgard or Kugane.

I'm actually kinda bitter about how underwhelmed I was by ShB. Almost everyone I talked to gushed about how ShB was almost like some life-changing experience. I loved every expansion so far and I thought ShB would reach heights that I couldn't even imagine. But at the end of it all, it was just "pretty good." Like a 7.8/10 for me.

---

A lot of the Shb hype, imo, comes from people who REALLY liked Emet Selch.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

We definitely only fought lahabrea and zenos once.

---

This right here is proof why I don't get why ppl act like dawntrail is literally on par with shadowbringers....its not and saying things like this means u either skipped the story or just ignored when ever zenos or lahabrea was on screen

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

A lot of the Shb hype, imo, comes from people who REALLY liked Emet Selch.

---

Well, yeah. A good villain is what can make or break a story. When you have bad villains like sad bird girl or sad robot girl or even sad sword boy and put them up against sad but confident and charismatic Emet Selc, yeah there is a reason ShB was so highly regarded in comparison.

It goes the same with protagonists. Put the heaping spoonfuls we got of a bad protaginist in Wuk up against the likeable and not overwhelming Yugiri, Estinien, Graha, Arenvald or Aymeric, even Lyse or the sparingly used Minfillia and it's obvious why there is so much hate for her.

The bad villains or protagonists we got could have been much better if they were put in the hands of a more competent writer in a game who's story wasn't deliberately rushed because the creatively spent producer/director was getting bored with it. Which in turn would have given even DT more love than it's getting. But that was sadly not the case. Even Emet, and therefore ShB, would have suffered if given the sad bird girl, sad robot girl treatment. Just like there is no way Graha, Estinien and like would be so beloved if given the Wuk treatment. Even with everything else, like the quest design, taken into consideration, the protagnists and antagonists are the most crucial part of a story. Get them right and you have ShB, get them wrong and you have DT.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

A lot of the Shb hype, imo, comes from people who REALLY liked Emet Selch.

---

And people who liked the jobs being less homogenised and child-proofed, not having the 2 minute meta and actually having a reason to log in for Bozja/Firmament.

I think Stormblood was the best state that the game has been in but Shb was nowhere near as much of a downgrade as Ew and Dt. Endwalker and Dawntrail have been more like compactions than expansions.

Anything but a hero?
We restored night to a world tainted by light
Gave them hope for the future and provided aether to the empty wasteland so it could flourish

I don't know what you mean by that, because if it's renown then we're not known in Tural eiher. Only a select few know of our exploits, and we don't see how 'the final days' impacted them

Meanwhile countless NPCs will sing our praises as the warrior of darkness
It took what we were familiar with and flipped the idea of light vs dark on its head

I don't even disagree, Shadowbringers is my favorite of the expansions but it's the culmination of plot threads brought up from what came before. Dawntrail was always going to have a tough time proving itself when it went up against years of story built up

It's why I am willing to give them a chance and see what comes next
They have built mystery on a few new things such as the key we obtained and who the new antagonist is. We don't even know where the the story will end up or where we will be heading next

As a side note, I don't really know why people treat characters that have died as their story being over. The main example I can think of is Zoraal Ja, because people complained we won't see more of him or any of his backstory

Despite this being a pretty common trope in the game
We had no real knowledge of who Lahabrea was despite the generic bad guy villain and we didn't learn more about him personally until Endwalker

Or Yotsuyu who we presumed dead and it turned out she wasn't, and we were able to get somewhat close to her and see why she turned out the way she did

Zenos is another pretty good example because that man would not stay away from us lmao

Basically, I don't think that just because a character dies their story is over. They alluded to a few things with Zoraal Ja and I have some questions and thoughts about it which will probably be expanded upon later

also his voice being Jotaro Kujo in JP floors me every time he's on screen because I imagine Zoraal Ja decked out in his gear

Personally I’d say every expansion has its strengths and (sometimes glaring) weaknesses. There hasn’t been one yet where I’ve been like, ‘this is unforgivably bad’ lol. I wouldn’t say any was the ‘de-facto best/worst’ expansion - more like they’ve all some things right, and another thing completely wrong lol.

And that’s as someone who’d give Dawntrail like a 5/10 on a good day lol. I wouldn’t call it ‘the worst expansion’ though; I wouldn’t call anything except maybe 1.0 ‘the worst expansion the game has ever gone through lol’

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Striker44

ShB is widely viewed among players as the "best" expansion. The thing is - it was only able to be a real 10/10 because of the expansions that came before it. Two out of those three books of lore you could write were written in ARR, HW, and SB. The villains that became multi-faceted were introduced as one-dimensional back in ARR.

There's not really much "thought to evoke" in SE. It's already there. You just can't realistically expect the new equivalent of ARR (starting a new narrative) to reach as high as an expansion that had 3 prior installments to build on. Years from now, FFXIV will probably put out another 10/10 expansion - the only question will be whether those "hating" on DT will be willing to acknowledge that the new top-tier installment was able to reach those heights because of the foundation DT laid.

Me? I'm still having a ton of fun with the new stories and lore in DT. *shrugs*

---

The problem with saying DT laid any sort of foundation at all is that it introduced exactly one legitimately interesting concept: interdimensional fusion.

LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE about it was some combination of 1) cringe beyond belief, 2) hilariously undercooked, 3) convenient to the point of being nonsensical, and 4) wrapped up so thoroughly that it's not just a foundation, it's the whole freaking house.

At this point we're all best off just rolling our eyes and waiting for 7.4 to start setting up next expansion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ArchlordPie

The problem with saying DT laid any sort of foundation at all is that it introduced exactly one legitimately interesting concept: interdimensional fusion.

---

And even that's basically just "Ok what if we did a Rejoining, but slightly less catastrophic?"

Shadowbringers was so good Dawntrail just tried to copy the ending (and didn't do as good of a job.)

ShB is the most well made expansion but, for me, story wise and emotion wise, HW is the best.
On the emotion side i found ShB flat and generic.... the story wasn't bad, but not amazing either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Striker44

ShB is widely viewed among players as the "best" expansion. The thing is - it was only able to be a real 10/10 because of the expansions that came before it. Two out of those three books of lore you could write were written in ARR, HW, and SB. The villains that became multi-faceted were introduced as one-dimensional back in ARR.

There's not really much "thought to evoke" in SE. It's already there. You just can't realistically expect the new equivalent of ARR (starting a new narrative) to reach as high as an expansion that had 3 prior installments to build on. Years from now, FFXIV will probably put out another 10/10 expansion - the only question will be whether those "hating" on DT will be willing to acknowledge that the new top-tier installment was able to reach those heights because of the foundation DT laid.

Me? I'm still having a ton of fun with the new stories and lore in DT. *shrugs*

---

This is only partly true. SHB is the beneficiary of years upon years of build up--since HW post at *minimum*--that's absolutely correct. But all that build up still required a good performance for the payoff to be worth it. It required a sense of pacing, subtlety, and well crafted moments between deep characters to make the most of the phenomenal buildup SHB was given. Fortunately when set up for its grand slam, SHB knocked it out of the park.

DT's writing team in the same situation don't manage to do that, because DT suffers heavily from a shallowness to its characters and some of the worst sense of pacing in all of FF14's narrative.

To be fair, in a vacuum, Post was an improvement, so far. I'm hoping to continue to see improvement, but to say "DT isn't as good just because it's a new beginning" is laughably erroneous. It's in these smaller side stories or beginnings that it's imperative the characters are well fleshed out because you can't rely on the hype of a 10 year story to cover up your flaws. DT doesn't deliver there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lorika

ShB is the most well made expansion but, for me, story wise and emotion wise, HW is the best.
On the emotion side i found ShB flat and generic.... the story wasn't bad, but not amazing either.

---

I don't know if I agree with that per se, but I will say that HW is somehow criminally underrated. It's probably the only "low power" FF14 story that had a clear direction for its narrative and written to a more modern standard of quality.

SHB is the best expansion and here is why.

DRK is the posterboy
MSQ is peak FFXIV
Casual content is peak FFXIV with Bozja.
Extreme trials were separate storyline from MSQ and had great world building.
Good content for crafters and gatherers.
Revival of Diadem.

SHB took core concepts from previous expansions and build on those ideas.
The MSQ was built up by post SB but SHB was also contained in its own unique story.


DT is still early but it clearly failed on the MSQ part.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EusisLandale

And even that's basically just "Ok what if we did a Rejoining, but slightly less catastrophic?"

---

Or i maybe crazy to say this but what if we actually had an adventure just did minor rhings helped here saw new sites there leading into a new mystery. It take us back to our roots and we be going where ever the wind takes us.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zakuyia

Or i maybe crazy to say this but what if we actually had an adventure just did minor rhings helped here saw new sites there leading into a new mystery. It take us back to our roots and we be going where ever the wind takes us.

---

Which is fine, but the standard of writing needs to be better. An RPG lives or dies by its story and characters. Some hardcore raiders might disagree, but I don't think that's most of us.