Quote Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur View Post
It's baffling to me how much people over shill Heavensward and Shadowbringers stories for being these "masterpieces" and highlights of the entire game. Baffling because singling them out kills a lot of the substance owed by everything that came before it. They're all very shallow stories on their own. Ishgard is just a lite version of FF Tactics's plot, Shadowbringers is just a very lite version of FFX and Tales of Symphonia that deal with it's themes and conflict much better.
I just think the way they took a theme (Plato's Loves, Aristotle's concept of a perfect society -> More's Utopia), broke it down into ways that theme can be manifested and explored each in specific sections and people. Then they brought them all back up at the end so that it'd all connect. I like how it draws on philosophy. ARR was mostly worldbuilding, HW was exploring faith and how far a lie can go, SB explored how war is a constant back and forth/the values of freedom/how all it takes is one person to be mistreated to make them agree with opressive regimes... But SHB was mostly just blatant philosophy on the structure of society and the virtues of man. I liked that. And I liked that it wasn't especially preachy with it unlike Endwalker's vague aesop of "Suffering is what makes you appreciate life". Endwalker rubbed me the wrong way. SHB let you explore the concept, see how they do it and draw your own conclusions. And each character grows a little based on those aspects.

But that's just bc I'm a massive nerd and my favourite FF is 12, so I have really bad tastes as far as the FF community sees it.

idk



of course, it does still have flaws, particularly the way they use some characters (Ran'jit) and the weird insistance on some elements. But it was still my cup of tea, and that's why I generally defend it as a good story. If it's not your cup of tea tho, it's fine, it doesn't have to be. Hopefully something else about this game is.