Stormblood ending was thoroughly disappointing

[Alleo]

I am also more of a fan of the HW story (and cant see how the rest of SB can get better than that) because I bonded with the characters more (even if I still hate what they have done to some of them..). I did like Thordan as an enemy and even the ascians had some important scenes in this.

For SB I just dont really care much for Lyse or her fight. I choose the "its not my fight" sentence at the beginning (I mean we just fought a war before that..can we get a break?) but was still forced in this. I would have loved to help the common people more instead of being at the front and one of the most important fighters again. (Honestly its annoying how we are again one of the major reasons why they even stood a chance) 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.

I also disliked the forced defeat against Zenos and only the Steppe part really got to me, since I loved to get more information about the Auri. (And I do like the Doman characters more) I already felt like the war against the dragon ended too fast but this was even worse in SB with two liberated countries. It never truly felt like war. And I am not a friend of all these redemptions arcs that are going on (still hope that at least one will end badly) or 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. Without Arenvald, Fordola and the WoL they all would have been tempered.

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.

Especially since not much time has gone by between the second fight against him and his defeat (and we even won with him being part of Shinryu) so I cant just see the "we train so hard" as an argument. But thats the problem in a story which should be going on for some years..if you already defeat Thordan and his knights solo (this was written in the lore book) who was powered up by Nidhoggs eyes, Lahabrea and thousand years of prayers...it makes even less sense to lose against one person..an army might be a problem but one person? What sudden next powerhouse will we meet in 5.0?

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.

Its the echo that saves us from primals (but that only makes us able to fight them without being tempered and does not make us stronger). It is not really that clear if the blessing gives us really much off a power up. Hydaelyn had to help us against Ultima by shielding us directly. This and saving Krile decreased her power a lot. So we would not be able to constantly use that blessing because we would suck our crystals dry and with that her. (Or am I missing some clear ingame signs that we are constantly using our blessing?) At the same time we were able to defeat some primals and other foes without our blessing in HW.

We also beat Zenos down before he got into Shinryu so we seemed quite powerful enough. But ingame not that much time has gone by..when did we have the time to train so hard?