The ending to Stormblood...

[nanashinana]

The only thing I enjoyed was the part where in the Zenos Elidibus duty where he has a special line when you play Dark Knight, which went somewhere along the lines of, "You think you may know the power of darkness, but I shall show you our true power!" brought a smile to my face.

Other than that, meh.

[Gihwezi]

To me it was really underwhelming. I'm not gonna lie, I had far more fun doing the Hildebrand stuff.

First off, I was really disappointed in Hien having literally the one basic move like someone else said. I consider Samurai my second main, and it was really jarring hitting hakaze over and over again, not to mention incredibly boring. I couldn't wait for that fight to end. Even if they dumbed it down purposely because of the whole Y'shtola thing, I'm still of the opinion that they did that man dirty. NPCs may not be stronger than the Warrior of Light, true, but damn, just hakaze?? And gyoten too but... lmao seriously dpsing with gyoten... It was just boring to me and lackluster.

I don't even mind the thing with Estinien, because I love Estinien. It's interesting seeing people saying they're upset with his appearance. For me it was probably the one highlight of this part of the story which is saying a lot, because it was a deus ex machina. I guess it's just seeing a character I really love again and all, but the circumstances were still pretty bogus, even I understand that.

The Elezen dude being Zenos was obvious, but dang, are they really not going to let that man sit out? I love Zenos, don't get me wrong, but if he's going to be another antagonist in Shadowbringers it's kind of like, he already had his time to shine. I really hope they don't give him a really significant role in the next expansion. :x As much as I love him I don't love him enough to sit through the same stuff twice. I'm kind of wary on that standpoint. The fight with Ascian!Zenos was pretty cool though I'm not gonna lie, brought me back to the beginning of Stormblood when Zenos completely decimated everyone in Rhalgr's. But the whole 'voice' thing in the middle of it was really cheap, and I hated that they kept that extremely vague. There's no build up or suspense really, just another boatload of questions. We ain't get no name, no nothing. No explanation whatsoever, no exposition. God.

And what about Fordola?? I feel like they did all that stuff in the previous patch way back, set up such a nice story for her and then just put her back in her cell and never really wrapped up where they plan to take her next... disappointing.

And I mean that's pretty much it? Maybe it is because they didn't really need to split this part of the story into two patches which is why this part suffered so hard, but the end of Heavensward and A Realm Reborn really did this better.

I really can't forgive the Hien thing they really had my mans out here spamming hakaze omg this is gonna bother me all day

EDIT x2: Actually with original!Zenos it'd be pretty cool if he just went hog wild on the Ascians himself if Square's smart and totally veers away from making him a tired villain doing the same old 'I think it's hella sexy when we fight and you killing me turns me on' shtick. I'm gonna assume he intends to get his original body back and could totally just see him (or rather I'd like to see him) going full balls to the wall Chaotic Neutral, straight up wild card, an 'enemy of my enemy' thing. I wouldn't even be mad at that and it'd be funny watching Zenos chew on them Ascian ankles.

[Noitems]

I thought it was okay, I'm in the crowd of having the both patches as one as I feel it just flows better overall. I understand they made the decision for this as to get more content out sooner(Mainly for Orbonne) but I feel that it did hamper the MSQ more by accident having us do Ghimlyt prior.

Absolutely the worst roleplay duty we've had. Whoever decided to give Hien just Hakaze, a gap closer and a DoT must have been out of their freaking mind. I understand it's meant for players not used to melee in the same vain Alphinaud and Y'shtola were but give us something else. Have us do his LB move like he does in GD or give us something cool to do. When Lyse and Yugiri are the ones actively doing cool things and you're just off to the side snared, it really takes a lot away from the impact.

I'm looking at it now after thinking about the events like 6 hours after and while at first I was very negative on the ending it's warped out to just be passable. I know it's due to ShB coming out in three months and bracing us for it but SB from the beginning has been a very split story.

I was extremely interested in Ala Mhigo/Gyr Abanian lore due to loving Monk and I was excited to see more of its world but due to SB's story pacing it felt so underutilized. So many parts of Gyr Abania between Dimworld(The swamp marshland area in the Fringes), Nynukrepf's Keep(The big ship on the mountain in the Peaks), and others just were underutilized or ignored in MSQ. I would have killed for dungeons (Maybe revisiting these areas in Shadowbringers?) for these as Gyr Abania gets the shaft especially when the dev team almost forgot about the area when making another primal after Susano (Only reason Lakshmi is in the game which I absolutely love her). I feel the team really hit a homerun on 4.3 as it was just a fantastic MSQ related patch even if it did all take place in Doma. I really wanted something like that just done for Gyr Abania but all I got in the end of 4.5 was a destroyed battlefield, politics, and a united assault (which I don't think is bad persay just a little upsetting considering we just freed them). Not even a chance to really take in the newly found Ala Mhigan culture (4.1 was getting there!) as it was just throttling into Elidibus and ShB.

All in all SB isn't bad by any means, it was my first expansion I followed with everyone and I enjoyed what it had to offer. My only hopes are that the team learn from what people didn't like in the SB story and keep their focus on to one entire plot instead of splitting it into two.

[SunAurel]

Wasn't a fan. It felt very underwhelming and short and I was like 'wait that's it???"
Also the cutscenes were very stale and boring to look at

[Yshal]

So as a PLD with an ilvl of 384, I'm having a hard time DPSing down "you know who"s three swords...

Any pointers? Or so I just NEED to gear up a DPS job for this?

[Gula]

So as a PLD with an ilvl of 384, I'm having a hard time DPSing down "you know who"s three swords...

Any pointers? Or so I just NEED to gear up a DPS job for this?

WHM is king. Aero is your friend. I've tested duties by standing in AOEs and you can totally sit in them if Benediction is ready. Or just git gud at tank DPS.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

Eh, I enjoyed the story as a whole, but the story wasn't nearly enough to stretch into 2 patches, unlike ARR's 2.5/2.55, which were both very meaty in terms of story content, even the end of HW offered more.

I dunno, I can't help but be a bit disappointed, it was far from amazing, I was actually annoyed by how short it was, it didn't really add all that much to be honest, it really didn't warrant being split into 2 parts, there simply wasn't enough for it. Also the Hien section was pretty terrible, mostly due to how obnoxiously limited it is, which was a problem with Y'shtola's duty too, though to be fair, some players are mind boggling bad at this game and had trouble with it, so its no wonder they make them idiot proof.

Overall a bit of a disappointing end to an very mediocre expansion, I do hope the story is more interesting going forward.

[DududeDude]

1. He's not the hero of the story, you are. All the NPCs are shown consistently to not have abilities anywhere near approaching the Warriors of Light, except for the villains.
2. Perhaps more importantly, they're afraid of overwhelming people with a job they haven't played. Did you see how many people complained when they had to play Y'shtola with four abilities just because they had to heal?

He definitely seems more competent than what you can do while playing him in his other portrayals. And while I can agree with people potentially being overwhelmed, I think this might have been a good use case of the autocombo system PvP has. Even if hitting that basic melee attack button would have had the same damage, it would seem less immersion breaking if it at least varied up the visuals.

[AriaFairchild]

Dat rescue...yo dawg...we heard yo like reinforcement...so we put reinforcement to reinforce yo reinforcement so yo can reinforce while yo reinforce.

[Burningskull]

I enjoyed what we got. However I do think what we got didn't need to be split in half. I know they split this part off because they wanted have the "shock" reveal at Japanese FanFest about where we are going, but there's just not a lot there story wise that we didn't know we were getting thanks to the FanFest. Unless you didn't watch the FanFest in which case I guess learning where we are going was a shock so... *shrugs*

I enjoyed the fight with ElidiZenos. I even died once because I thought Lyse was doing damage with her AoE marker and didn't bother to stand in it some times. Ending felt like we were saying goodbye to everyone tho so my theory about us being on the first for a long while while the scene with Y'stola is happening on the Source is coming to the fore front of my mind again.

Hildabrand was good tho and the trial was really fun. Also rather challenging considering most people don't remember the Enchain Mechanic lol.

The beast tribe quest was fun but I'm getting a little sick of the same villain in every one. Would also be nice to get a Grand Beast Tribe Quest next expansion involving all the Beast Tribes in the game... well... all the ones on the same Shard anyway lol.