[Spoilers] I'm getting sick of shonen manga power-ups each arc

[Bright-Flower]

I don't buy that aoe markers are us having 'the echo,' the story never treats it like we have Fordola's specific ability of reading abilities as/before they actually happen. Plus we get those aoe markers during story fights were we are playing characters that do NOT have the echo so that doesn't really make sense.

And shinryu fight aside, we were able to fight Zenos just fine in his dungeon boss fight for no real reason other than 'we levleed up a few more times.' He wasn't. Which might have worked if we were newbie adventurers still the first time we fought Zenos but nothing in SB realyl pushed us to greater heights than ARR and HW did.

Fan theories or nice and all but I dont' recall anything actually in the game suggesting that Shinryu was weakened. The only thing I'm going to grant the story there is that Zenos wouldn't get any satisfaction in just blasting us from the sky to explain why Shinryu hovered in melee range the whole fight. It does still bug me that end of HW patches: omg Shinryu is such a big threat we have to risk unleashing Omega to deal with it. end of 4.0: Just strol lin and kill it like any average primal.

[Khalithar]

And shinryu fight aside, we were able to fight Zenos just fine in his dungeon boss fight for no real reason other than 'we levleed up a few more times.' He wasn't. Which might have worked if we were newbie adventurers still the first time we fought Zenos but nothing in SB really pushed us to greater heights than ARR and HW did.

It's pretty clear to me that they wanted to push an entire rival thing with Zenos, with him being insanely powerful and acting as a motivation to reach greater heights to take him down once and for all. It also is why I absolutely hated Shinryu/Zenos dungeon boss fight. Our last fight against Zenos should have been a 1v1 where we took him down alone and then he merges with Shinryu afterwards for the 8man.

The way I would have done it: Last SB 4 man dungeon against some powerful magitek creation. Takes us to a solo instance where Zenos deigns to finally fight us 1v1 and we bring him down. At which point he survives, retreats, merges with Shinryu, and then we do the 8man. The ending still gets to play out like normal but we got our chance to take him down personally. The entire time of SB I was waiting for my 1v1 rematch with Zenos where I'd get to take him down alone, but I never got to do that. I never got the satisfaction of taking him down by myself 1v1. That really disappointed me.

[testname]

I started playing during Shb so bear with me here. I've just started the Shb campaign and got past the first Ran'jit fight and I am already sighing at the monotony. The first time Zenos did the whole "Imposing Villain you have to strengthen yourself to beat" I was already rolling my eyes about how predictably the arc would play out. Going through this again so soon just makes me want to vent.

Why couldn't we be overwhelmed with numbers? Couldn't he have brought a Sin eater or something? Why does it have to be imposing man X again that we eventually get strong enough to beat, despite still have so little base hp that we get one-shot by random mobs outside town.

Finally, if my character needs to escape, I want it to not be some BS thing that comes out of left field again. Ran'jit should have taken a face full of concentrated Dream Powder to at least stagger him while the party makes away like cartoon villains. I'm the Warrior of Darkness now, I wanted cheapshots and making getaways to feel fun rather than slog through Stormblood story beats again.

I totally agree with You. I ranted dozen of times to my friends about that. I hate That Old papa but more the SE writer.

At the moment WoL is like unstoppable after more Eukons than Papa could ever think of.

Anyway if SE if You want to stop WoL in a proper event don't do it cheap stun move or something, but proper Blackmail of killing some one kid or woman, something very deeply evil which can't WoL and other Hero to move even finger okay?

[Edax]

The fun thing with Gaius. In one of the job quest we fight someone that is said to be even stronger than him and we defeat him solo.

Its just a bit annoying how different the "power levels" are..A good rival could have been Ardbert as a WoD but instead we defeat them quite fast and afterwards they are on our side again. A rival that is there for a longer time and that grows with us (and we see the growth) and that we either later truly defeat or maybe only tie with them makes it imo interesting.

A guy that comes out of nowhere that just stomps us (and then the instanced battle cant be lost until that certain point happens..) and then soon after that we stomp him is not fun imo. Zenos might have also been a rival if we knew about him a bit before Stormblood and if they gave him at least a bit more development. But no he was meant to be the true evil character with no real complexity to him (such a character can be interesting for one story line..but not for longer) that now has overstayed his welcome. He gets power ups even worse than us (being outside his body suddenly makes him even more like an Ascian?) and seems to be built as the big bad at the end..not a great rival at all..just someone that will either get away through some plot means or that will somehow become even stronger than us until we again defeat him..

We fought Estinien before but I buy him as a rival more then I buy Zenos as a rival. He was more powerful / your equal / your rival in the DRG job quest and eventually you fought as his side in the MSQ with both of you sharing the same title of Azure Dragoon. What did Zenos even do to become more powerful then Gaius and Estinien combined? Gaius has been killing Ascians and I can see how Estinien has become powerful after everything he experienced in Heavensward drawing on the rage of Nidhogg but Zenos hasn't even spent the last expansion becoming more powerful, he wasted time in a corpse and somehow he just is more powerful for some reason despite making no effort at any self-improvement since 4.0 Theoretically he should still be level 70 and we'd instantly thrash him but since he's a Mary Sue he'll have just manifested a bunch of powers randomly to become a match to a level 80 Warrior of Darkness.