Doma/Yanxia is still my favorite area

[Vickii]

That is where the expansion fell flat, in my opinion. Too little focus on either region resulted in a rushed story with little time for actual plot and development within. They should have done an expansion for each region, not 2 in 1.

I could actually have done without the whole Ala Mhigo. That could have just been a raid or a single zone for me.

Everything they did in the Far East was fantastic.

But peaks, lochs etc... should have just been one zone.

[MikkoAkure]

I could actually have done without the whole Ala Mhigo. That could have just been a raid or a single zone for me.

Everything they did in the Far East was fantastic.

But peaks, lochs etc... should have just been one zone.

The problem I have with that way of thinking and with Stormblood as a whole, is that Ala Mhigo has always been right on our doorstep and we've known about it and wanted to liberate it from the beginning in 1.0. We've always been able to play Ala Mhigan characters (highlanders), who are all exclusively from Ala Mhigo and the story has always focused more on them than with Doma.

Then when Stormblood came out, we get booted to the other side of the world for a large, uninterrupted chunk of the expansion which split the narrative and ended up making the whole thing feel like it was paced very weird. The Ala Mhigan zones don't look very good compared to the Far Eastern ones, and it didn't feel like we spent as much time in them and we just rushed right through to the end after Doma Castle was finished. The whole thing ended up feeling like the writers care more about Doma and Hingashi than Ala Mhigo, despite Ala Mhigo being in the spotlight for longer.

And then with Doma, we have a Chinese-inspired city-state inside of a region with a Chinese name, with Chinese architecture, and a theme that uses the erhu, which is an exclusively Chinese instrument. But everyone and everything has Japanese names, and they have samurai and shinobi. That part felt a little weird to me, especially after coming out of Azim Steppe where the writers did a very impressive job with the Xaela and portraying them as Mongolian. After all that, I was hoping that we would have some Vietnamese culture infusion with Nagxia since we've been getting Vietnamese clothing and food associated with that region. But the only Nagxian character in the entire game is a hyur with blond hair and blue eyes so I don't think it's going to quite happen.