I thought Matsuno did a better job in Bozja at handling a storyline involving war and occupation than whatever the Ala Mhigan portion of Stormblood was meant to be. Whoever handled Garlemald in Endwalker also did an excellent job.

At the end of the day, I'm not particularly interested in seeing something as complicated as war and occupation be reduced to 'GUD GUYZ vs BAD GUYZ' since it's rare that people wake up one day and just decide to go and invade their neighbours. There's usually a spark - often multiple sparks - that cause such a thing to happen. Sometimes those factors are internal, other times they're external and then there's the possibility for a combination of both.