Stormblood ending was thoroughly disappointing

[Pastahnak]

Stormblood felt off to me. Particularly the first and last bits in ala mhigo. It felt very rushed and the areas of ala mhigo felt partly unused. The lochs especially felt tacked on. Even the Doma stuff felt a bit long winded for me. I didn't feel a connection to the doma of ff14. I was fighting for the doma of ff6.

It's funny because the devs admitted doma was the one that got tacked on so it wasn't "just another desert area" but they ended up making one or the other feel tacked on to the other.

[Jandor]

It's funny because the devs admitted doma was the one that got tacked on so it wasn't "just another desert area" but they ended up making one or the other feel tacked on to the other.

I feel it would have flowed a lot better if we'd gone to Doma first.

We kick things off there, start raising hell, Zenos comes out to check it out.
Meanwhile back in Eorzea the Alliance sits content to watch Ala Mhigo remain under Garlean rule and Ilberd has watched the Hero of Eorzea sail off to the other side of the world. He riles things ups while we're gone, the wall is attacked, it's a disaster as planned, the Alliance panics and sets Omega off to fight Shinryu, the Alliance takes the wall and Zenos, having already kicked your ass during your failed assassination attempt, bails on Doma to head to where things are a lot more interesting.

Creates a dilemma with the Scions in Othard as well, as the first instinct would be to ditch the rebellion they started mid-way through and rush back home.

Anyway, after that Doma is wrapped up as before and we head back to Ala Mhigo to do that portion but this time without a weird awkward pause in the middle.

I don't know, just my personal opinion. Feels like all the right ingredients are there, just it was put together in an odd order.

[Alleo]

I don't know, just my personal opinion. Feels like all the right ingredients are there, just it was put together in an odd order.

I would have liked it that way better too. Maybe we travel with Yugiri and Gosetsu since they did help us and since we are adventurers at heart this might have caught our interest. Lyse could have stayed at Ala Mhigo so that she can finally learn more about her old homeland and not just leave them behind after the attack at the reach. Alphinaud and Alisea could have traveled with us or maybe just Alisae to give her more screentime while her brother stays back in Ala Mhigo.

It could have been a great way to create a bit of suspense by showing us the attack on the reach and end it without showing us how the characters ended so we would not know if they are still alive. We free Doma and then travel back to Ala Mhigo where we get to know more about the people and their plight, learn about what happened with the rebellion and also give Doma a bit of a time to settle in their own country. (Since they fought their own war in the real story and yet already had to fight in Ala Mhigo shortly after that)

[arcmourn]

Such a boring contrived story that felt less like a "war" and more like a schoolyard brawl. And the "villains" motivations in this story... just... could square not think of anything more interesting other than "bitter peasants" given power. Seriously it's just bloody lazy writing and world building.

[Aniond]

I also prefer Heavensward over Stormblood so far. In Stormblood, I didn't really fell attached to any of the the characters really. It's hard to say but Heavensward to me felt more like "Final Fantasy" compared to Stormblood. It might be due to that fact the Heavensward felt more like a journey for our character while Stormblood felt like I was just...there for some reason. It might be due to the fact that ARR and HW put your character more in the spotlight basically saying "you are the MC and things happen around you" while SB was more felt more like "You are the MC but also not really the MC those other guys are and you are just along for the ride". That's just personally how I saw it.

Maybe I'm just not a fan of the type of story telling on Stormblood. Even with the recent story patches I still don't feel excited as I did when I was going through HW.

It really depends on what FF you are talking about. FF has always been about 1) War with Gods and Dragons 2) War against the empire.

For example. FF VI started out against the Empire, and ended with Kefka being a god. Much like Stormblood story.

[arcmourn]

yes but Kefka had character building and was interesting.

[Jollyy5]

In my mind Stormblood was weaker than Heavensward, because at the end of HW we were doing really well, so well that we could spare time to wage war against the Garleans to reclaim land. There was never really any sense of impeding dread in the air.

Meanwhile at the end of ARR and the beginning of HW we had fallen from grace, had to clear our names and claw our way back into the good graces of authorities.

In other words, the underdog's rise to power usually makes for a more compelling story than that of a winner winning some more.

I'm hopeful for Shadowbringers as it looks like we'll be falling from grace like in HW, but this time our enemies seem a bit bigger than some upset authorities.

[Mansion]

I feel like the Stormblood MSQ patches are kinda better than 4.0 itself. I have great expectations for 4.5!

While I loved 3.0, 3.3 and 3.4, i have NO memory of 3.1 3.2 and 3.5.

[TheHeavenAbyss]

Personally, I preferred Stormblood over Heavensward, even if I liked both, specially when considering the patch stories (3.0 ending with a cliffhanger), and one of the main reasons was the villain Zenos. I didn't really care about Lahabrea and Thordan in Heavensward, with Thordan's objective being kinda vague imo. Niddhogg was way better, but he was still a relatively simple character motivated by hatred.

I think Zenos was a really good antagonist, having a similar nihilistic view of the world as Kefka from FFVI, where he can't find much joy on anything except a good battle (as for Kefka, he can only find joy in destruction). So he does everything to find and even make that one person that will give him the battle of his life and fill the void inside him. That's why when you finally defeat Zenos at the end he looks to freaking happy and fulfilled and even calls you a friend.

True, he doesn't have a backstory, but I don't think you need one when the character is interesting on his own. Kefka also doesn't have a backstory other than "he got experimented on and went mad" and is one of the most popular villains.

[Dreggit]

To me. Entering SB, with the big dry spell of 3.5, it was driving home that, to me, the focus of the expansion a going to be Ala Mhigo. Hell, o was even expecting some additional notable dialogue for being the highest ranking in the Imortal Flames but that wasn't even really a thing either.

Except, when it came to the day of release, it wasn't. Narratively, I felt we spent most of the expansion in Othard. Many of the major characters and conflicts seemingly come from Othard and while the story segments in Othard was great. I kept feeling that it was shoehorned in for us to go to this region.

Hell. I was far more interested in how operations were handled and how we were going to do than what we got.

I feel the sorry is far better when there's a focus and not spread out over the two regions.

I really don't know why we weren't given more importance in Ala Mhigan liberation since we publicly bested The Bull of Ala Mhigo in that PvP story segment in 3.x. I felt that most of what we did do could have been done with any other person with half a brain.