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

[Nedkel]

I hate lalamhigo.

[Esmoire]

Glad you enjoyed Heavensward as much as I did! My favourite expansion not just for FFXIV but gaming in general.

Stormblood is a bit complicated. It clearly took some rather contrived liberties with content-focused narrative, as I bet they really wanted to see Ala Mhigo liberated and have the Far East in the same expansion, which is a terrible thing to drop in the lap of any writer. That said, while I don't like the whole product, I think the writing is good when viewed in guise of isolated experiences. Particularly, the Azim Steppe honestly feels extremely detached from the wider world and the different tribes are very tropey, which honestly was some of the most fun I had. The Ruby Sea had some striking antics of its own. I'll let you be the judge when you witness the stories yourself but I hope you continue to enjoy your adventure.

[Saefinn]

The Ala Mhigan portion of Stormblood felt dull to me, which is annoying, because I think there's a lot of wasted potential there. The cultures they borrowed to build lore out of could have given a whole wealth of character to Ala Mhigo. And there's some plot strings that don't get resolved that I think if fleshed out could have made Ala Mhigo an interesting portion of the game. And Lyse, Lyse didn't feel like a strong or well written character. Her Othardian counterpart in the plot, however, is.

But it looks like they put more of their attention into the Othard side. I think it is as somebody has said, they tried to put 2 expansions into one. Because you get the feeling they tried to do too much. But one thing they do get right is this feeling of having been on a journey, that I felt they nailed in the main plotline. And a couple of the characters that feel weaker in the main plotline of the expansion get better in the subsequent patches, but not Lyse (you can probably tell I don't like Lyse).

Then there's one plot point I won't spoil, but for me, it was a really good hit. And then later completely nullified it and ruined it and made it meaningless.

The Othard side has some great bits. My favourite bit is the Azim Steppe, to me that whole section of Stormblood is the best bit. Not just the story, but the area and all its side quests and lore points. I found the lore points so interesting that it got me reading more into the culture they're referencing and I ended up discovering a newfound interest in a country I hadn't before and discovered new music in the process too. I also roleplay a character from there (which is the one in my avatar funnily enough), so it worked out well for fleshing that character out.

Heavensward is a great expansion and I loved it. Stormblood for me was a love-hate relationship, like the stuff that hits, it hits but the stuff that doesn't is "meh". But think of it as a bridge into Shadowbringers. Shadowbringers' plot got a standing ovation, for me it was one of the strongest Final Fantasy plotlines I've experienced, which is a bold statement to make, Heavensward was already up there for me, but I feel even Shadowbringers surpasses it (however, we've not finished the Shadowbringers patches yet, so can't compare its entirety to Heavensward yet). But it feels like a proper Final Fantasy plot and ends feeling like you've beaten a single player non-MMO Final Fantasy game. I've seen some people say they don't like it and not have the same reaction as me, but I've generally found them to be a minority, as with anything, to each their own. That said, I feel if you loved Heavensward's storytelling then you'll probably love Shadowbringers' too.

One of the great things about Shadowbringers is that it took characters I hated and made them likeable (but not Lyse), it took a plot thread I cared very little about & felt underwhelming and made it awesome.

And how they're going to top Shadowbringers I don't know and I don't think they will.

[Reap00]

Your best bet is to just go play it. Don't fill your head with the perceptions of other players. They may despise something you love or vice versa. Go play it. Then come back and see what people have to say if that interests you.

[Tlamila]

Your best bet is to just go play it. Don't fill your head with the perceptions of other players. They may despise something you love or vice versa. Go play it. Then come back and see what people have to say if that interests you.

This so much.

[StriderShinryu]

Particularly, the Azim Steppe honestly feels extremely detached from the wider world and the different tribes are very tropey, which honestly was some of the most fun I had.

Definitely this. The Azim Steppe was a really fun area to play through and actually contains some of my favourite characters in the entire game.

[Tlachtga]

A lot of people sing the praises of Heavensward while trashing Stormblood.

The reality is HW story isn't actually that amazing. It's just that the bar was at an all time low with ARR, and HW smashed it (it wasn't hard)

It's full of cliché (church bad, dragon good), filler, and generic shonen anime tropes. Suffers from a slow start, peaks shortly after and then drops off a cliff till near the end. It really stands out when you run it more than once and the vast majority haven't (I've done it six times), and are basing HW's quality on that first playthrough.

Stormblood's bad rep stems from people expecting the bar to be smashed and it wasn't. It was more of the same, except with an even slower start and a launch plagued with technical issues.

YMMV. Your best bet is to go in with zero expectations.

[Saefinn]

Stormblood's bad rep stems from people expecting the bar to be smashed and it wasn't. It was more of the same, except with an even slower start and a launch plagued with technical issues.

YMMV. Your best bet is to go in with zero expectations.

Stormblood for me was not so much expecting that bar to be smashed, but there's just parts that feel unfinished or rushed and other parts that don't. Add that our direction was that this was set up as being the Ala Mhigo expansion, with all of the plot pointing to Ala Mhigo and all of the promotional material being about Ala Mhigo and then when they released the completed version of the trailer it was like BTW Othard with no direction to suggest this is where we're going.


Then much of the Ala Mhigan stuff was pushed to the wayside and more of the focus was shifted to Othard. There are definitely some very positive points. It lacked some of the impact Heavensward had, which is fine, but there's parts that just feel weak. Granted that's parts that also very strong.

So I think Stormblood ended up being a mixed bag.

As a few examples of what I mean (spoilers for both SB and ShB):

Lyse wasn't a well written character and a lot of what she gains doesn't feel earned, M'nhaago I think would have been better in her place. They say "don't pretend you're something you're not", for Lyse this would be terrible advice, she was much better when she pretended she was her sister.

Fordola could have opened up some great threads that we don't get to see realised because out of her and Yotsuyu, Yotsuyu was the favourite and she got fleshed out whereas Fordola didn't. Granted, whilst initially hating their writing for Yotsuyu, her arc ends up being really good. But there's whole threads on the Ala Mhigan side that don't get much spotlight because other threads are. Then we get other threads like the whole facility experimenting with ceruleum to create enhanced soldiers, none of this really gets any depth or much fleshing out. Aulus is a villain here that you end up caring nothing about, yet there is a backstory to him and what he does and there's cues to Hojo, but he's dead before we really see anything done with this. But on the flip side, we get enough Asahi to be glad when he dies.

And it seems Stormblood also favoured the principle of "x is now dead" and then later in the plot "turns out they're not", which has ended up with us having the joke in our FC of "did you see the body?", "No", "then they're not dead". Whereas Heavensward had no problem killing off a character people loved. And has yet to revive said character. In ARR it was a mistake, because it didn't feel narratively it'd make sense, hence I was fine with them retconning Nanamo's death, but Haurchie's made sense and was done right as did Papalymo's. And subsequent deaths have been done right and made sense up until it turned out they're not dead, like Zenos, Yotsuyu and Gosetsu. Though so far, Shadowbringers has done this in a couple of moments too (at least with Thancred it was almost immediately apparent he's not dead), but Emet-selch's was on the ball and meant something, so I hope they don't do to Emet what they did to Zenos. That is, give him a good and meaningful death that feels moving and very appropriate to the plot...then bring him back later rendering that moment meaningless. Whilst I'm sure they'll probably do great things with Zenos, it just feels contrived that he's back.

I am glad that we got a decent amount of fleshing out of Xaela, but we didn't get much for Raen.

This is hence my earlier comment. Where Stormblood hits, it hits. But when it doesn't, it feels meh. And this might be because it feels incomplete, rather than it not necessarily hit the same bar as Heavensward (I accepted SB's plot to be a bridge into ShB's, hence it doesn't end with a 'bang' like Heavensward). It's by no means bad and I enjoyed much of it, but as I say, I think its flaw isn't that what it had was bad, just what it had felt incomplete.

[Gemina]

If you go into SB expecting to be disappointed, then that is probably what will happen. Not because the story is bad, but the HW bias will make it difficult. It already sounds like you got an impression of SB based on what most say about it even before starting this thread.

For me, SB was ok. There were a lot of things a liked about it, but I was not blown away by anything like in HW with the exception of the SAM 50-60 questline, which was absolutely fantastic in every sense of the word, but that is apart from the MSQ. Without giving away any spoilers, Fordola and Yotsuyu are immediately what come to mind when I think about what I liked the most. The other thing would be the trials. I loved every single trial in SB, and a certain moon aspected one I think is one of the most well designed fights in the game.

The dual resistance that is going in this expansion is what deflates it for me. I am with the others where I enjoyed the Far East part more than the Ala Mhigan side of things. Hien>Lyse in just about every category when it comes to an interesting protagonist. And if you like things less gloomy and more colorful then you will no doubt enjoy Hingashi a great deal.

Anywho, come back and let us know your thoughts.

[CazzT]

A lot of people sing the praises of Heavensward while trashing Stormblood.

The reality is HW story isn't actually that amazing. It's just that the bar was at an all time low with ARR, and HW smashed it (it wasn't hard)

It's full of cliché (church bad, dragon good), filler, and generic shonen anime tropes. Suffers from a slow start, peaks shortly after and then drops off a cliff till near the end. It really stands out when you run it more than once and the vast majority haven't (I've done it six times), and are basing HW's quality on that first playthrough.

Stormblood's bad rep stems from people expecting the bar to be smashed and it wasn't. It was more of the same, except with an even slower start and a launch plagued with technical issues.

YMMV. Your best bet is to go in with zero expectations.

There must be more than one HW expansion out there because you definitely played a different one than I did.

I started in FFXIV after HW came out. I didn't have any previous notions about ARR to influence my opinion. HW is just plain great. It smashed the bar because it was great, not because you think the bar was low (because it wasn't low).

People expected SB to be great, no denying that. After what we got with HW, why would anyone expect less? Did we expect the bar to be smashed again? No. What did we expect? At least the same level of greatness. What we got, however, was the low bar you're claiming ARR set.

Even with all its clunkiness, I would still rank ARR above SB. Too many lost opportunities in SB.

Best example of this is with Fordola. They had the opportunity to expand on "artificial echo" but just sort of left that hanging, with no indication that it would even be addressed further.