When does Stormblood get good?[Spoilers?]

[Siete]

really? are we playing the same game?

Yes? I didn't have that in Heavensward, a bit in ARR but all the SB campaign up until the Steppes was all some SoL anime with Lyse as the MC.

[Lium]

You know how in the Star Trek prime timeline, the odd number movies suck, while the even number movies are good? I feel like that's what's happening with FFXIV's expansions.

[hiedra]

It never got better for me. If anything, I'd say it got worse. Can't really explain much without spoiling anything, but a few of the patches were based around a narrative trope/cliche that added nothing of actual substance to the story (though it did give us a very cool fight) When I say that it added nothing of value I mean that it was just filler. If that hadn't happened the ending of SB would have still been the same.

I know a few people that really enjoyed that particular storyline though so you might enjoy it yourself (some in this thread are even referring to it as being their favorite part of SB.) But personally I thought it was one of the cheesiest things to have happened in FFXIV and most of my friends seem to agree with that sentiment. But maybe we're just being snobs.

Shadowbringers is amazing though, I think it might be my favorite expansion to date. So at least you'll have that to look forward to.

[Mansion]

Shadowbringers is amazing though, I think it might be my favorite expansion to date. So at least you'll have that to look forward to.

I hope the patches will keep that level of quality! ShB had its weaker moments but nothing comparable to Stormblood.

I guess you are mentioning 4.2 and 4.3 story that a lot of people loved but you found it cheesy. Yeah, I think it was overall good and well written but it could have been tied up in a patch and not dragged on two. 4.4 and 4.5 are also pointlessly long and uninteresting when things could have been solved in a few quests.

But this essentially comforts my position, this is all about "smaller stories" with little to no impact on the bigger plot. Stormblood is quite horizontal, there is a lot to it, but nothing really builds up on anything, compared to the "investigation" on the Dragonsong War in Heavensward or the WoL's path in Shadowbringers.

[AncientCrystal]

Hate to play pile-on but another thing bad about SB was the girl who worked for Zenos that had good potential but they didn't do mich with her. The one from Ala Mhigo that ended up jailed.

[Enla]

Hate to play pile-on but another thing bad about SB was the girl who worked for Zenos that had good potential but they didn't do mich with her. The one from Ala Mhigo that ended up jailed.

I was always disappointed the story didn't acknowledge that Fordola and her regiment were products of the situation they were born into, and that while it doesn't excuse their actions it makes it understandable /why/ they willingly served the Garleans in hopes of a better life. It really bothered me how the story and Lyse as it's mouthpiece were always demonizing people like Fordola who capitulated for the chance at a better life in spite of the fact that Lyse had be safely ensconced in Eorzea for the majority of her life and thus couldn't possibly understand what life was actually like there. It's okay if Lyse doesn't understand, she needs to grow and coming to understand that life isn't as simple as she thinks it is would have been a good character moment for her. But the writing itself never tries to turn it into a growth moment nor refutes her logic in the narrative beyond the most basic of 'these villagers grew up oppressed and don't want to rise up, but here come our heroes!' sort of moments. Which narrative are basically scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel in a war story.

Stormblood really wanted to be seen as this dark and serious tale with shades of grey marring the whole, but it's moments like that that brought the quality of the writing down to an almost juvenile level for me. There was rarely any nuance and that was especially true in the Ala Mhigo portion of the story which basically ended up being the red-headed step child of the expansion. It's like the writers had surface level thoughts about the implications of life under a regime like the Garleans but never thought to actually take a deeper, non-biased look at what the average person might do to survive in them with no hope of escape.

[Alleo]

Well lets not forget that Fordula was quite ready to let poor people on the land be beaten nearly to death. She did not just serve Garlemald, she and her group went out of their way to torment others. Yes her dad died (but garlean soldiers looked away too..) but just with Yotsuyu, that gives her no right to let it out on those that did nothing to her. And in the end she even sacrificed her own comrades for her goal.

At least she is one of the few villian that truly have to go through a redemption arc by working for it and suffering the consequences of her actions..while the other two just kinda killed themselves...

[Mansion]

Hate to play pile-on but another thing bad about SB was the girl who worked for Zenos that had good potential but they didn't do mich with her. The one from Ala Mhigo that ended up jailed.

You get news from her in one of the StB written stories, and thenn in the 80 SMN quest, and these are quite underwhelming too.

Fordola is a great character because she does not check most of typical villains, she is always in between.
She had a heavy past, but she is not so endearing for that too. (And that bit was explained in 4.1 if I remember correctly? So 4.0 was her pure evil)
Ses she is cruel but she is not pointlessly evil (like Zenos). She has moments of tension and moral struggle (like the part where she decides to kill part of their allies in The Peaks) when neither Yotsuyu or Zenos show that. She is a very good balance to Lyse (who is the weaker character of the two).
She has strong loyalty, accepting the Resonant experiment to punish herself from her own failures. She is condamned to suffer it for the rest of her life.

The character is not perfect but it has a great potential, it's too bad they did not build up on her. Although it's still possible to have her back in the game with Gaius and Zenos at some point in that conflict!

[Bright-Flower]

IMO stormblood is 'good' in 4.1 and 4.4 and 4.5. SB overall is a step down from HW, but SHB is a step back up afterwards.

[Lium]

I was always disappointed the story didn't acknowledge that Fordola and her regiment were products of the situation they were born into, and that while it doesn't excuse their actions it makes it understandable /why/ they willingly served the Garleans in hopes of a better life. It really bothered me how the story and Lyse as it's mouthpiece were always demonizing people like Fordola who capitulated for the chance at a better life in spite of the fact that Lyse had be safely ensconced in Eorzea for the majority of her life and thus couldn't possibly understand what life was actually like there. It's okay if Lyse doesn't understand, she needs to grow and coming to understand that life isn't as simple as she thinks it is would have been a good character moment for her. But the writing itself never tries to turn it into a growth moment nor refutes her logic in the narrative beyond the most basic of 'these villagers grew up oppressed and don't want to rise up, but here come our heroes!' sort of moments. Which narrative are basically scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel in a war story.

Stormblood really wanted to be seen as this dark and serious tale with shades of grey marring the whole, but it's moments like that that brought the quality of the writing down to an almost juvenile level for me. There was rarely any nuance and that was especially true in the Ala Mhigo portion of the story which basically ended up being the red-headed step child of the expansion. It's like the writers had surface level thoughts about the implications of life under a regime like the Garleans but never thought to actually take a deeper, non-biased look at what the average person might do to survive in them with no hope of escape.

After reading this, I'm convinced Fordola would have been a much more interesting main character for Stormblood, rather than Lyse. And I actually like Lyse.