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

[dinnertime]

Stormblood isn't really that bad, anyway. It was enjoyable enough but not as great. As an expansion, it was a lot better than Heavensward when it comes to the presentation and the other content, but Heavensward does the MSQ better.

[Bright-Flower]

SB was a step back from HW, but SHB I will give you hope for.

I started posting out a long post about why I was disapointed by SB and ended up over the 3000 character limit and decided not to post that in this thread. In short, I feel the region split in SB made both stories feel rushed and repetitive at the same time, and the 4.2/4.3 patch stories...I would rather redo the Titan fetch quests than ever watch those cutscenes again. Also Zenos is a boring character who doesn't even feel intimidating to me because of how they handled things with him. There were thigns I liked and SB isn't 'awful' just not as good as HW before it or SHB after it.

[Omedon]

As I was hoping, "fantasy japan" has arrived not two days into my Stormblood playthrough to save my Stormblood MSQ experience!

... But not before another rape reference in the Ala Mhigo storyline. Jesus H Christ.

Even getting to Doma though, I find Stormblood can't help going low when it comes to establishing new villains, the scene in the fishing village involving he acting viceroy was just... overkill. Again, give me high fantasy villainy and threats to the cosmos any day over human on human filthiness and suffering.

I absolutely appreciate the Japanese aesthetics over the "hovel in the desert" feel of Ala Mhigo, and man that dungeon out at sea was amazing! Stormblood has gotten a little better for me!

Also I find that I hate the ala mhigan music a little less now that I know that the main theme of the expansion is the imperial national anthem haha! This isn't so much the Doma or Ala Mhigo expansion as it is the Empire expansion!

[Bright-Flower]

As I was hoping, "fantasy japan" has arrived not two days into my Stormblood playthrough to save my Stormblood MSQ experience!

... But not before another rape reference in the Ala Mhigo storyline. Jesus H Christ.

Even getting to Doma though, I find Stormblood can't help going low when it comes to establishing new villains, the scene in the fishing village involving he acting viceroy was just... overkill. Again, give me high fantasy villainy and threats to the cosmos any day over human on human filthiness and suffering.

I absolutely appreciate the Japanese aesthetics over the "hovel in the desert" feel of Ala Mhigo, and man that dungeon out at sea was amazing! Stormblood has gotten a little better for me!

Also I find that I hate the ala mhigan music a little less now that I know that the main theme of the expansion is the imperial national anthem haha! This isn't so much the Doma or Ala Mhigo expansion as it is the Empire expansion!

Regarding the theme, slight spoiler here so feel free to ignore if you want.

There's actually an ala mhigan version of it, that isn't the garlean anthem but rather an altered version of an ala mhigan theme you hear at the end. So it is an ala mhigan theme. The garlean version is just for Gyr Abania, probably a means of incorporating part of the local culture into their rule over them to try and mollify the people a bit.

[Harmonea]

OP, you need to understand that this game does not shy away from the realistic period-typical traumas a character in this setting would experience. While nothing of that sort of trauma is directly portrayed on screen, characters do discuss traumatic backstories as a way of establishing how they came to be who they are today. This is not just the case with Arenvald, as you've seen, but with a second character you will learn more about later in SB.

If your coping mechanisms are damaged due to some past trauma, you need to consider this a standing "trigger warning" and carefully consider whether you can deal with playing a game with characters who have had such things happen to them.

The cultures included here wouldn't feel nearly as real or relatable without a darker side to them, and for many of us who have faced such traumas, it's therapeutic to see how a character who has faced such events grows and what questions a society asks about the role they played in that character's journey.

That said, I can assure you that there is a more fantastical element simmering away in the background. It will reemerge in full force when you deal with Doma, and SHB focuses on much larger scale threats.

[Omedon]

OP, you need to understand that this game does not shy away from the realistic period-typical traumas a character in this seeing would experience. While nothing is portrayed on screen, characters do discuss traumatic backstories as a way of establishing how they came to be who they are today. This is not just the case with Arenvald, as you've seen, but with a second character you will learn more about later in SB.

If your coping mechanisms are damaged due to some past trauma, you need to consider this a standing "trigger warning" and carefully consider whether you can deal with playing a game with characters who have had such things happen to them.

The cultures included here wouldn't feel nearly as real or relatable without a darker side to them, and for many of us who have faced such traumas, it's therapeutic to see How a character grows and what questions a society asks about the role they played in that character's journey.

I'm not one of the people that requires a trigger warning, I assure you. I'm surrounded by them in my circle of RL friends, so maybe my sense of audacity at these devices is heightened. There's also the fact that I've been telling fantasy stories for over three decades myself and have had a standing rule to never "go there," and yet no one has ever complained that my worlds are shallow or that my invented cultures or characters lack depth.

It's a shortcut, an ugly one, and one that doesn't age well in the telling as we evolve as a society. It's not a dealbreaker for me personally, but I feel a medium and a work of art hoping to be enjoyed by the largest possible audience does itself a disservice to "go there" when it pointedly does not have to. Because it doesn't.

[TheUltimate3]

Also from WoW. One of the things that I guess holds SB up for me is that it doesn't shy away at pointing out just how crappy being in an occupied country is. And how a war is fought with something resembling actual tactics instead of two large armies just screaming and racing at each other in an open field.

It's a damn shame the Ala Mhigan portion was so thoroughly side-tracked, as the bits we saw of with Fordola was truthfully my favorite points of the expansion.

Like we helped liberate both Ala Mhigo and Doma from Imperial rule, but from what I can gather, most of Ala Mhigo is still in ruin while the central government seems to be based out of Rhalgar's Reach. Meanwhile we go through a lot of effort to resettle Doman refugees back home, rebuild the central market and try and rebuild the culture that was suppressed.

Maybe one day we'll do the same for Ala Mhigo.

Overall, this may be because I played WoW and have grown very tired of the grandiose storylines, I actually liked that the liberation of Doma and Ala Mhigo felt like sideshows in the grand scheme of things. That just means that our actions felt more personal because of the hilariously smaller stakes.

[Harmonea]

You say your characters, cultures, and worlds don't want for depth while creating them entirely void of the evils of humanity and criticising this game for focusing on them.

No, I have serious doubts about your settings if they draw all their conflict from magic and morally black and white orcs who are just bad because they're bad.

This game is not that. If you think it is, you weren't paying attention during the expansion you find so "sublime." Sympathize with your villains once in a while: A ruler determined to do anything to end his nation's thousand year war. A dragon driven to justified rage at the murder of his sister. A group of heroes who would do literally anything to save their world to make up for their mistake, even if it dooms another.

Everyone has their reasons; no one is just mean because they were born that way. Traumatic motivations are real, not "ugly shortcuts." They give a person a feeling that he'll never be good enough, never be accepted... that she has to be better than her whole society to overcome a deep sense of unwantedness and unbelonging. They give a person a deep hatred to overcome... or not. And most importantly, these are real things that also happen to real people. You can't claim we've evolved past telling these stories when we haven't evolved past committing these acts.

When no child feels unwanted and despoiled, I'll criticise stories with those elements as relics of the past, but for now... this simply may not be the game for you if you need a story of black and white where people are good and only monsters hurt them. Not even the Ascians will provide you that here.

[Omedon]

You say your characters, cultures, and worlds don't want for depth while creating them entirely void of the evils of humanity and criticising this game for focusing on them.

No, I have serious doubts about your settings if they draw all their conflict from magic and morally black and white orcs who are just bad because they're bad.

This game is not that. If you think it is, you weren't paying attention during the expansion you find so "sublime." Sympathize with your villains once in a while: A ruler determined to do anything to end his nation's thousand year war. A dragon driven to justified rage at the murder of his sister. A group of heroes who would do literally anything to save their world to make up for their mistake, even if it dooms another.

Everyone has their reasons; no one is just mean because they were born that way. Traumatic motivations are real, not "ugly shortcuts." They give a person a feeling that he'll never be good enough, never be accepted... that she has to be better than her whole society to overcome a deep sense of unwantedness and unbelonging. They give a person a deep hatred to overcome... or not. And most importantly, these are real things that also happen to real people. You can't claim we've evolved past telling these stories when we haven't evolved past committing these acts.

When no child feels unwanted and despoiled, I'll criticise stories with those elements as relics of the past, but for now... this simply may not be the game for you if you need a story of black and white where people are good and only monsters hurt them. Not even the Ascians will provide you that here.

I don't think you know me well enough to openly insult me like you just did, so I'll end my discussion with you here. Have a nice day.

[Sated]

The best part of Stormblood for me was the patch content and that Alisaie got more time in the MSQ.

I enjoyed being able to help the Domans because I owed them that, and I thought the gameplay for it was fun even if the storytelling was not.

But yea, learning more about the empire was really the only highlight of anything involving Ala Mhigo for me.