The ending to Stormblood...

[Johaandr]

I actually didnt liked being «saved» after the ANNOYING VOICE interupted my battle.
And the voice should frkn go away while im in a battle. Like wth. Idc if its for the story build up. He can frln call AFTER i killed fake zenos.
I tried to tell him to SEND ME BACK. But nop. SE should remove the selective options in cutscene if they do not serve any purpose than different script texts.

That part honestly..., i got so annoyed that i was tempting to skip it. Idc this last part sucked and didnt go within my expectations.

[Reynhart]

No, we didn't kill him. The fight in the Throne room was simply exited by a bored Zenos, and Shinryu we could only beat because of the Echo as advantage against Primals.

Lorewise, the only advantage we gain from the Echo is not being tempered when close to primals, it does nothing for the strength required to beat them.

Zenos decided to take his own life, then.

Yeah, because he finally find someone that's able to beat him.

Personally, I find him to be a pretty weak villain, doing what he does for the evil and for the game, and putting a last minute Foe Yay on us, like we've bonded a lot.

And the voice should frkn go away while im in a battle. Like wth. Idc if its for the story build up. He can frln call AFTER i killed fake zenos.

Well, that was the point of him stopping us. Killing Fake Zenos would apparently trigger something reeeaaaally bad.

[Bright-Flower]

We had no means TO kill Elidibus that i know of.

The two ascians we've killed before required auracite and lots of aether. Lahabreah was killed by Thordan.

We had no auracite nor big source of aether there. There really wasn't a means for us to kill Elidibus there, he would have just kept coming back. Unless we were going to suddenly go super saiyan with light powers or something, but the conversation we had with the annoyingly vague voice guy afterwards didn't lead me to believe that was going to happen. It seemed like he was just desperately trying to bring us to him to talk and he may not have had any idea what we were doing at the time. Felt more like inopportune timing than anything to me.

I'm not thrilled with Estinien. SE don't just turn him into Tuxedo Mask. Him helping us out in the Peaks made sense, him hunting after Shinryu because of Nidhogg's eyes made sense for him to do, and hey why not help out while he's there. Here it felt much more random. If he's helping the war effort that's fine but the way the story was presented it felt random.

[Iscah]

We are going along with him because for all we know he has our Scion buddies. That being said, I'd also like to slap some common sense into the guy. His sense of timing and ability to compose short and meaningful messages clearly could use some improvement...

It seemed to me that he might not have meant to summon us right at that moment? Or perhaps he had no choice but to do it right then. Whatever the exact reason, when we are first transported to that place, he says "this is not where I had intended to meet" - suggesting that he didn't deliberately call us there and then.

More like holding them hostage! In classic trope fashion we have just met the xpac´s true final boss.....

We don't know he's holding them hostage - for that matter we don't actually know if he has them at all!

He didn't say anything about them, and our character apparently didn't think to ask about it - which seems a bit odd, really.

Who knows, maybe once we get a chance for a longer talk with him, we'll ask what he's done to our friends and he'll say "wait, what? I was only trying to contact you! Don't tell me all those failed incantations were pulling other people halfway here...!"

[Gemina]

No, we didn't kill him. The fight in the Throne room was simply exited by a bored Zenos, and Shinryu we could only beat because of the Echo as advantage against Primals. Zenos decided to take his own life, then. Basically, we never won against/defeated Zenos so far.

Zenos was bored in the first encounter, easily humbling the WoL. The second fight he was stimulated (perhaps the first time ever) when the WoL damages his helmet during the fight, and commends himself for making the right decision for allowing him/her to live. It's at this point his boredom stops, and his obsession begins. The third confrontation in the throne room he doesn't exit out of boredom; he is thrilled that the WoL's strength now rivals his own, and he retreats. When you retreat during a fight, you lose.

The battle against Shinryu is a serious head scratcher. Zenos merging with the primal was one of my disappointments with him and with SB. When he humbled us in the first fight and said, "Pathetic"; I found myself saying the exact same thing back at him. Ultimately he did decide to take his own life, but iirc he was dying anyway from his injuries. He lost here as well. The way I see it, we're a dead even 2/2 from our confrontations against Zenos.

[Gemina]

Personally, I find him to be a pretty weak villain, doing what he does for the evil and for the game, and putting a last minute Foe Yay on us, like we've bonded a lot.

In fiction, there are bonds that take place amongst adversaries. Sometimes it is even mentioned that enemies know each other more than their loved ones. They also become stronger the more times they face each other, eventually becoming a rivalry. This happens in real life as well in all forms of competition. I wouldn't call it a Foe Yay, but it is a relationship between the WoL and Zenos, and far from last minute. The relationship has taken place over the entirety of SB, and is competitive in nature. Zenos has not expressed any romantic feelings towards the WoL, but does consider him/her an enemy as well as a friend.

He's an antagonist, but is so far from being the main villain in this story which really falls on the Acians and the Empire. And now that the actual Zenos is basically a wanderer, he serves no one but himself, which seems to be the actual role he was meant for.

[TaleraRistain]

I was completely underwhelmed. But I wasn't surprised. We've always had some manner of copy and paste development in this game, but we're getting more and more things that feel like they're cutting corners. I remember a question on their survey about whether I would play another Final Fantasy based MMO and I'm starting to wonder if they're already diverting resources toward that from this game.

[Phileas]

The stormblood story i felt ended with the tsukuyomi arc. Everything else is build up for shadowbringers along with the rather cliff hangery ending. I felt like with battle with zenos was like ‘oh we need at least some kind of duty to finish on.’

Heavensward felt more complete with the end of nidhogg and the build up to Stormblood i felt was better handled with baelsars wall and the teaser of shinryuu.

[Violet_Galaxy]

Very lukewarm in my opinion and honestly fell a bit flat to me which is really concerning. Why did that Zenos encounter feel so last minute tacked on for the sake of content?? Why were there so many loose ends in this expansion not properly tied up? I'm just curious about whether the devs ran out of time and/or resources and decided to split this story in two. SB did A LOT of things right over HW (Trials, dungeons and solo instances) but I feel as a whole, HW remains the better expansion. Hopefully our questions are answered in ShB!

[Reynhart]

He's an antagonist, but is so far from being the main villain in this story which really falls on the Acians and the Empire.

For 4.0, Zenos was our grand imperial villain, like Gaius was in 2.0. But we had too little interactions with him to create a true relation. Most of 4.0 plot revoles around Yotsuyu, and I think it's saying something that she was our trial in 4.3, the point where the story generally "wraps up", and the next patches are used as a setup for ShB.

And now that the actual Zenos is basically a wanderer, he serves no one but himself, which seems to be the actual role he was meant for.

Now, you can build up Zenos to be a rival/friend, with a common enemy, I just feel they tried to put that relation too early. Basically, it's as if he's trying to be our Vegeta but skipped the whole Frieza arc
And Shadowhunters is our Piccolo...