While I don't agree with all your points, I thought the SB story to be very lackluster as well. Granted I am not objective about this because Y'shtola is my waifu and I am utterly disgusted by the continued Shtola ryona the developers keep up, but trying to view it in an objective manner:


The story had no twists or turns. We start out liberating not one but two kingdoms and manage it with very little opposition. The Garleans felt absolutely laughable -inb4 Zeons held them back because he wanted a good fight- and the epic feeling they try to invoke in the end had no buildup at all. It felt rushed and in my eyes it would have been served better to have either Doma or Ala Mhigo being the focus. Characters were flat and had no arc except for Hien. Lyse fell completely flat and was mostly annoying in my eyes. The very interesting plot string of the WoL being somewhat like a primal seems to be completely dropped for now.

The hyped rivalry with Zenos resulted to nothing for me, he was as generic as any villan could be. Lavos from Chrono Trigger was better handled and he... it.. had no dialogue in that game. I felt a lot more connected to Grynewaht and felt compassion on how the poor dude ended up.

I actually enjoyed the ARR story more and HW was still the most interesting journey we undertook so far.