Stormblood ending was thoroughly disappointing

[Sinh119]

I thought about this the entire time I was fighting Zenos in Ala Mhigo. Again, it's just subpar writing. In HW, we were able to defeat Nidhogg because we received a portion of Hraesvelgr's powers. That made sense. To defeat a dragon lord we needed the power of another dragon lord.

In SB, it's never explained or shown how we go from losing to Zenos twice, to suddenly defeating him without much trouble (canonically). Hell, even if they gave us some sort of artifact to use, it would have made much more sense.

My understanding is that the level differential between us and Zenos was, quite literally, the canonical difference between ours and his abilities. While obviously levels mean very little in terms of canon, it’s pretty clear that their intention with making him start at 70 and us having to work towards that was to show the power differential, and the ways in which we were working to overcome it. Further, we never really defeated Zenos in the first place. We beat him in the Ala Mhigo dungeon, but even then it’s pretty clear that he wasn’t legitimately trying to defeat us, rather testing us to see if we were worthy of fighting his Shinryu form. This is why after the dungeon ends he has no visible or noticeable injuries of any kind.

Now, the reason why we are able to beat Shinryu is the same as the reason why we could beat any primal; the blessing of light. Thordan is most likely stronger than Zenos is in Canon, but the reason why we canonically soloed Thordan and his knights twelve is because the Blessing of Light rendered us immune to his most devastating attacks (such as Ultimate End). Similarly, the Blessing of Light is the reason we survived Protostar and his other ultimate attacks such as Judgement Bolt and Earthen Fury. The Warrior of Light is essentially an anti-Primal superweapon. Remember, the only real reason Zenos lost at all was because he was a complete lunatic. He could have played it safe, lured us into a trap and abused his Echo akin to Fordola, but that’s contrary to his character. He wanted to be defeated on a grandiose arena by a worthy opponent, hence why he took his own life. I really don’t think we could have beaten Zenos under normal circumstances.

[TaiyoShikasu]

snip

Except the Warrior of Light is a literal godslayer while Zenos is...I don't know, something like Captain America. Only reason he appears to be strong is because of getting an Echo-like thing in him and plot.

Unless future patches explain how someone who is essentially just a man can thwart someone who can't go a week without felling literal gods or going toe to toe with Midgardsormr who may as well be on a whole 'nother level, it absolutely comes off as some Creator's Pet type shenanigans.

[Sinh119]

Except the Warrior of Light is a literal godslayer while Zenos is...I don't know, something like Captain America. Only reason he appears to be strong is because of getting an Echo-like thing in him and plot.

Unless future patches explain how someone who is essentially just a man can thwart someone who can't go a week without felling literal gods or going toe to toe with Midgardsormr who may as well be on a whole 'nother level, it absolutely comes off as some Creator's Pet type shenanigans.

The Warrior of Light is obviously superior to regular people, but in regards to eikons (as in the Allagan definition), it isn't our own skill or abilities that allows us to go toe to toe with eikons, it's the blessing of light. Without it, even if we had the Echo, things like Ultimate End, Protostar, and Ultima would annihilate us. Zenos, a person who has received years of cybernetic enhancements and possesses an incredibly potent version of the Echo himself, is definitely capable of giving us a run for our money, especially since the blessing of light doesn't protect us against non-Eikons. Now why the blessing of light doesn't grant us protection for things that aren't eikons and how the blessing of light even precisely works outside of shielding us from fatal attacks isn't known, but that seems to be intentional.

[Iscah]

How is using glamour to trick the enemy who outnumbers you into a retreat cheap? I guess I'm one of the few who was fine with how we got the Xaela to help. We run across a tribe that says to us their gods say they'll win the ruler fight yet they know they're a weak tribe. Their rules said anyone who proved themselves as a warrior could participate in their next ruler fight. [...] To me I feel like us getting them to help in the freeing Doma was just putting a bigger challenge in front of people who haven't had to fight anyone else but themselves. Which makes two of the toughest tribes drool at the chance at showing who's better and maybe learn some new tricks.

Fair point on the glamoured flag strategy. That was clever. But there seemed to be too many towns where we just walked in and the Garleans had already withdrawn.

And I think... things like labouring the point that the Garleans and their local enforcers are awful people who will take vengeance on uninvolved townsfolk if anyone tries to fight back, only to have us do that regardless - it sets up this awful ominous feeling about what you're trying to do, then basically ignores it while you sweep to victory anyway.

The thing with the Xaela is - if they're so eager to fight, why not just go straight to Magnai and say "hey, we have this awesome plan and you can help us out by taking on a fleet of Garlean airships with nothing but your axe, wouldn't that be a great challenge?" and maybe he'd agree anyway. Even if we still had to run all the minor quests to earn the tribes' trust before they'd agree, it's a very different vibe to walking in, being the 'mighty foreigner who's better than everyone', getting crowned leader of the Steppe even though you're not staying around to actually fulfil that responsibility, and ordering them to fight for you. It would be an alliance, as equals instead of essentially a conscripted (if willing) army, and the outcome would be the same.

(If nothing else, it should have been Hien that claimed the title of khagan. I don't want it. He did, it was his plan to get the Xaela to fight his fight, and he's at least nearby in Doma instead of off adventuring halfway around the world.)

I thought this aspect was WAY more pronounced in Heavensward. You waltz in and, in a matter of weeks, bring peace between dragons and humans that have been at war for more than a thousand years, and have that war deeply entrenched in their culture. Liberating Doma and Abania, Garlean occupied for decades rather than millennia, seemed a LOT more reasonable compared to that.

Trying to work out where the difference is and why I didn't feel the same... The biggest difference between the stories is that in Heavensward you're trying to stop a war and in Stormblood you're leading one! But additionally in Heavensward, you're not "taking a side" but trying to be the wedge that will prevent the two sides (neither of which is truly 'the bad side') from fighting, while discovering and resolving the root of the conflict. You're in a unique position to do so because you're an outsider, not caught up in Ishgard's perception of the dragons as an unholy enemy, and with the rare circumstance of Ysayle being on good terms with the dragons (and you probably being the only person who would think of getting 'that heretic' to help you on your quest).

Stormblood on the other hand... it's a war, not against gods or spirits but against other people, and we're fighting it. For the most part, it's not something we alone are able to do, and we're just another soldier following battle plans.

It's also just a huge contrast in the setting of the two games - one is a fantasy quest in a world of knights and dragons and the other is a gritty desert war between a militia in modern-ish clothing and a human army with guns and mechanical tanks. (Even the new clothes that Tataru gifts to everyone have a more 'modern casual' look to them than the other gear in the game.) It's very jarring.

At the same time the singing at the end pissed me off. We fought against most of the harder enemies, we defeat Zenos and Shinryu..and yet its Lyse standing alone in the first row..why could we not stand next to her? I really felt like I was sidelined here even though they would not have defeated Zenos without us.

[...]

...Lyse being so naive that she even invited tempered Anantas..as a scion she should have known that you cant be reasonable with them and it was way too naive.

Personal taste again, but I was quite happy to be left out of the singing... but also I feel like they really overused that musical theme (and the main Stormblood one) and I was just sick of that music. I think it was a bad choice to use those melodies as the background music for the main cities - they're quite short and repetitive and I was at the point of muting the game while in towns rather than having to listen to it repeat for the umpteenth time.


And I think you're mis-blaming Lyse for that incident with the Anantas. I double-checked the script. Pipin says that all the beast tribes had been invited (not specifying who invited them, but probably not Lyse's personal decision) and it was expected that the Qalyana would simply refuse - but they didn't, thus the awkward political situation that they couldn't prevent them from attending. (They couldn't just leave them out, and it's better to be on good terms with the tribe.) So they let the Qalyana attend as long as they didn't bring any crystals that would allow them to perform a summoning - a reasonable compromise if trickery hadn't been involved.

Tbh I don't think they really set up thordan that well, the first time they have shown him, they also put elidubus and lahabrea on his sides, they could've just left a giant sign with bad guy written on it, not like that him beign a religious figure was already a sign, I mean they could've aired Sean Bean to be his VA since they were there.
Beside that we had really few times with him and while we had even less with nidghogg we could see his effect around us, as in the effect of the dravanian horde, the heretics and so on

I'm a little confused by what you're meaning. You say he "wasn't set up well" but then talk about the things they did to set him up from the start as someone who would be an antagonist later on? What are you thinking they should have done instead?

We might not have seen a lot of the archbishop directly, but enough to establish him - and overall there's enough talk of the church, of their attitude towards the dragons and the heretics, that it was inevitable that we were going to have to confront them at some point.