The ending to Stormblood...

[MistakeNot]

Short and anticlimactic... didn't feel like an ending in any sense, and seems to be leading into Shadowbringers like sone kind of sidequest.
"The Garlean threat is exactly where you left off, imminent, impending doom, meanwhile lets go to another world and help them out..."

It wasn't an ending, really. The Stormblood storyline ended back in patch 4.3 after Castrum Fluminis.
Since then we have been working our way through the Shadowbringers prologue.

[Sorimachi87]

It felt...underwhelming, tbh. In ARR, we're fugitives and run to the literal one place that would receive us, in HW, we prepare to retake previously conquered land because someone reignited the war and we had a lost world-ending dragon to catch/kill, now in SB...

it kinda just ends. Literally it just ends. 'go to Crystal Tower' *rolls credits*. There's no tension, no proper climax, no connection to ShB or becoming a WoD, nada.
Sure, you could start ShB with tons of exposition cinematics about how or why we're doing what we're about to do, but this cliffhanger ending - unlike the others - didn't really felt like an expansion finale hyping the next one, more like a 'next patch' type of ending

This, basically this. The excitement scratched a wall big time, but its still on the road driving. Hope the start of Shadowbringers will clear things up a ton. Also

The denial of the victory against zenos was kinda triggering imho. But honestly any normal mortal would have been dead at this point

Thank you Stormblood. Was fun overall.

[Wyssahtyn]

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?

save your burst and offensive abilities for the swords. Requiescat and Holy Spirit should take care of the first two and Spirits Within with a Royal Authority combo should take out the third. Also don't worry that much about standing in a single AoE, they practically do chip damage. The worst that'll happen is you get paralysed.

[BillyKaplan]

Joining the disappointed chorus. This was definitely not worth the patch splitting. The only reason why I understood anything that was happening is because I kept up with news about ShB from fanfests and interviews.

I get why we'd be interested in going to the Crystal Tower and doing whatever given the other Scions are in peril, but they should've done a better job of explaining why we can put aside this war we're fighting, especially since we, as the player, know that the entire thing with Black Rose is far from over and things are only going to get drastically worse in our absence. Also, after a main game + 2 expansions' worth of us being the Deus Ex Machina, to suddenly have everyone tell us to take a break is more than a bit jarring. Last I checked, if I close my eyes to sneeze, the Garleans take over two more provinces, so now you're letting me take a nap?
And uh. Aren't we also supposed to rest given how we almost just died? Instead we immediately go off on another adventure that will become an expansion?

It felt like the story had to be cut prematurely, and as ShB's story doesn't deal with Garlemald, it was the equivalent of pushing everything off the table and spreading a new blueprint with everything broken and dented on the floor. It might not have been that bad if it was paired with the first part of the patch, but it wasn't, so whatever hype I managed to build up to and including the fight just dissipated into nothingness. It was at once "this is why I do love this game" and "this is why I don't". A very weird feeling.

That said I was glad to see more of the other Scions, but it felt bad to realize I didn't even remember most of their names because they only show when the main Scions aren't available.

[MistakeNot]

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?

I just did the duty as a PLD with ilvl 373. I failed the first try, but the second try (with the Echo) I had no problem beating him.

[Ceridwenae]

Welp, it was relatively short. And it comes to something when...

... Greg gives me more trouble* than Elidinos, Elizenos, ... wait, what we calling him again? Meh, whatever. I'm not inspired.

Anyhoo, I'm cool with the Estinien save. I just want to actually see him do it, however it was done. Totally worth it, however, to have Aymeric pop into the bedchamber. Wouldn't say no to that happening a lot more often. And what? You're going back to the front, Aymeric? Er, no, don't do that! I'm still quite injured and think you should probably stay cause that'll definitely help me get better. Just say words at me some more if that's all there is. So, so very injured still. Yeah. It's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Btw! Thanks for popping in, Second Dad (Edmont). I absolutely adore you. When I was told to go home or whatevs your place was the first place I thought of. Then I thought of my FC house, so went there instead. Nothing happened.

Anyhoo, then it was Tataru being teary, and I had to say it was okay, Mummy Cat is here now. Pls, stop making the little 'tato cry. *hugs for Tataru*

So, yeah, stuff happened, and that's all I have to say about that.


*I really suck at trials and I usually know better than to go in blind by myself because of my anxiety. I'm so sorry to the other 7 people that got landed with me in their party. I didn't panic as much as I thought I would, but oof, I did get very shaky to the point button pressing was a little difficult. Sorry again if you realise it was me with your group.

[Iscah]

It ended rather abruptly.

Should have at least given a face and a name to the guy calling us out, anything more than "Enigmatic Figure" and just a quote about "throwing wide the gates".

Well, about that.....

There's definitely more to him, if you put together a few details and/or pick up on a resemblance, especially on the 5.0 poster - or you can cheat and look at his character data which gives a pretty definite answer.

Sorry guys can't post my thoughts because I've been stuck on the credits phase since this morning. Any tips?

I suggest a long tea break.

[Vahlnir]

It sorta left me wondering "is that it?" but it wasn't bad by any means. I'm usually quick to say whether I thought the story sucked, but for the most part it has been decent the last couple patches. The lead up to the expansion was spread over 4.5 and 4.56, I think, instead of having everything happen at once. Before they would have some pretty major stuff saved for the last bit of the story. Wasn't the case this time around. Like I said, they seemed to have spread things out a bit more.

[Metsonm]

The whole thing actually felt somewhat tame as an expansion build-up. I feel they should have maybe ended it with the parley because, while things do look not great, we've hit a relatively comfortable stalemate.

It's not like we have a poisoned sultana and every scion scattered to the winds, or we've been dragged into kickstarting open war with the empire while an interdimensional power hungry robot and a powerful primal have been let loose.

Right now it's just "Ok, we have an idea of how to fix this and have driven the empire back for now. They're pretty busy with internal squabbles, too, so things should be good on that front."

If there was maybe a bit more about the First, or a bigger gut-punch it would probably have held more weight.

What was there was good, but it felt like it was missing some spice.

[Wynn_Storm]

The ending makes a good screenshot.



Overall i was okay with how it ended, i did get a bit emotional during the scene with Tataru. But that's because i'm a big baby when it comes to seeing someone cry.