Heavensward was sublime... I miss it already! Give me hope for Stormblood please!

[Enla]

I really can't sit here and lie to you about how Stormblood was an amazing expansion, because it absolutely wasn't. It's the literary equivalent of taking two somewhat connected stories, smashing them together, and then finding out halfway through you REALLY only cared about one of them but you're stuck still writing for the other one so you phone it in whenever possible before calling it a day.

[Vahlnir]

Stormblood's story wasn't bad, but I wouldn't call it good either. Heavensward was way better. So yeah, I can sympathize to a degree. If you can tough it out Shadowbringers blows Heavensward out of the water. Just stick with it, you will not regret it.

[Avidria]

You do spend most of the expansion in Doma. It was the far more interesting part of the expansion, and tbh Lyse was far more interesting over there than in any quest that actually happened in Ala Mhigo. I liked the characters over there more too... and remember more of them, tbh.

Pushing the two resistance stories together felt like it was supposed to be like... an overarching resistance story, or parallels or something... but really it just ended up making both stories, especially the Ala Mhigo side, feel super compressed. Was hard to get engaged with that side outside of a handful of specific questlines from what I remember.

A setup expansion is a good way to put it :P

[dinnertime]

Stormblood's story was meant to be filler while they were working out what to do with Shadowbringers' story as implied in an interview, so maybe the quality of the writing suffered due to that. It makes sense because Heavensward's later patches made so many connections to Shadowbringers with the Warriors of Darkness and Minfilia travelling to the First to salvage what is left, only to abruptly shift the focus onto Lyse, the Resistance and Ilberd for Stormblood.

Still, it's better than ARR.

[StriderShinryu]

I found SB to be decent but never really settled. Either the Doma (which I prefer) or the Ala Mhigo storyline would have likely been better if it received the full focus of the expansion but because you flit between both without really being invested in either it doesn't really work. SB, to me, also suffers from feeling a lot like you're playing other people's storylines instead of your own. Hien and Lyse are basically the stars of the show and you're clearly just a tag along outside of the Big Bad having a massive hard on for you whenever he shows up.

That said, I really liked a lot of the dungeons and trials in SB. They tried some new stuff that wasn't really present in HW and is sorely lacking in the ShB dungeons. In some ways, it was a bit of a throwback to the dungeons from ARR but without feeling as ancient and easy.

[Lily_Skye]

stormblood msq is pretty generic imo

[Iscah]

I didn't enjoy Stormblood either, and apparently for all the same reasons you're not enjoying it. Too-modern setting, war theme, grim stories about how much the people have suffered and how cruel their rulers can be... the Doman half of the story turns into more of a quest and less of a war, but still doesn't let up on the 'human suffering inflicted by other humans' theme for a while yet.

It does get better in the patch stories, and you start to build towards Shadowbringers.

Basically, ARR - Heavensward - Shadowbringers feels like a continuous story; Stormblood is an awkward sidequest that you just have to get through. It's put some elements in play for the future, but I can't consider it enjoyable itself.


A side note since you're working through the MSQ, and maybe not following up sidequests: make sure you do the Lv50 Crystal Tower raids (starting with the quest "Legacy of Allag" in Revenant's Toll) before you get to Shadowbringers. It ties back into the main story and certain things will make more sense.

Ideally you complete all the major side stories of an expansion before moving on, as they're canonically supposed to happen at that point in the story and may involve characters from the MSQ. The game script adapts itself to fill the gaps if you miss anything, and it doesn't usually matter enough to drop what you're doing and go complete them all now (unless you want to), but definitely do CT.

[jaylicate]

Stormblood is an awkward sidequest that you just have to get through.

EXACTLY this. For me, the story felt more like a generic chore with weak and easy to forget 2nd line characters. I've even thought that this feel the devs created for the expansion was done intentionally - at least it would go well with the whole war theme. When I played SB and had no idea about ShB yet, I thought to myself: "This seems so dull, it's like I'm waiting or preparing for something bigger"

Then again, no reasonable developer makes an expansion feel kind of pointless for a major part of the player base, so perhaps they came to realize the certain SB weaknesses story-wise and kicked the gas pedal with ShB.

[Tlamila]

I loved Stormblood, it's not on Heavensward level but nothing is and probably never will ever be. But it's still still pretty damn good and imho it's the closest to it. Enjoy!

[Diarslade]

Also coming from WoW. HW was amazing...

I actually really enjoyed SB. I enjoyed the characters, the villains and the theme actually more than HW, tbh.

It was such a grounded story in a lot of ways and the themes are dark (the suffering and brokenness of the people and the imperialistic themes) but I was so invested in all of it. Looking forward to the patches and ShB.

To me, so far, it’s ARR < HW < SB (meaning that SE has just gotten new better with every expansion) and I also really enjoyed ARR (except parts of the 7th Astral Era quests)