Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
I'll start by saying it's OK that you hate Stormblood. You're entitled to like what you like.

Now, I'm going to ruthlessly eviscerate this post, because there's so much wrong with it, you had to have basically been tuned out to think it's Star Wars Sequel Trilogy tier garbage.
"It's okay to not like something, but here's why you're wrong". Okay, let's chat.

To save time: A lot of your rebuttals are saying that things are memorable. Just because something is memorable doesn't make it good. I remember breaking my thumb in high school, I certainly didn't like it. Similarly, an obvious or surprise plot twist is also not always a good thing.

I hated Zenos on my first playthrough of StB, at least until the reveals about him later in the story. His effortless trouncing of the WoL at Rhalgr's Reach really got me hot under the collar, because I found it to make little sense, at the time, but in hindsight it was the writers' way of building personal beef for the player. And again, it's still talked about and can start conversations years later.
I could accept Zenos being stronger than the WoL if he had anything else to his characterization. He really doesn't. He wants to fight and kill because he's bored, and.....that's about it. Hell, his entire arc in Endwalker is about people throwing in his face that he's not important enough to get sidetracked over. I never got mad or felt that there was any personal stake with him. The only reaction I got out of him after his return from his suicide was "Ugh, this guy again."

The first dungeon is the Sirensong Sea, and it is literally an unexpected encounter on the open seas. Basically, it's the storm from Dawntrail's opening, except more interesting and playable. It's basically a ship graveyard around a magitek lighthouse of some flavor. Lorelei is a German Siren equivalent. The cause of the dungeon is that enough restless spirits wound up near that old lighthouse, and caused it to be strong enough to cause the winds and Carvaillain's Ceruleum Engine to die. Basically the Lorelei lured a bunch of sailors there over the years, but at this point, was strong enough to just tractor beam ships in. The dungeon description still in game says, "The Misery was pulled off course by a mysterious force." Clearly, other people who got dragged off course died, and Carvaillain's crew had not been dragged there before. It's lowkey a FFV reference to when Syldra is separated from Faris's pirate ship by the Karlabos, and the ship is put out to drift, winding up in a ship graveyard where the party has to defeat the Siren. It turns out sea travel's not effortless, and the developers wanted the voyage to be memorable. You at least remember it, huh?
Okay, but....seriously, what was the point? It's a spooky ship graveyard, sure, but.....why? It's a mystery they set up, never went back for, and lampshaded with the achievement that it was never going to matter. It doesn't even have a self-contained story like the Dusk Vigil or Shisui of the Violet Tides, it just happens and we move on. The storm in Dawntrail at least has consequences in the first couple of zones.

The Ruby Sea is mostly sea, sure. But it has the tower, later known to be Heaven on High. The pirates. The Blue and Red Kojin. Sui-no-sato. Shisui of the Violet Tides. A volcano. The auspice shrine. Tons of underwater features. It's one of the best zones in the game. Especially in the expansion that introduced swimming and diving.
And it also has a big empty water zone in the middle with little to nothing in it above the water, and a handful of setpieces underneath. The fact that we don't fight in the water also means that there's not much to do but pass over it. It just feels empty to me.

Susano did come out of nowhere, MMO formula be damned, but defeating him was how we got the Red Kojin to not mess with us further, basically. And at least he added to the game world's lore by introducing the Far East's rendition of primals formed from "Kami."
If anything, just being another primal feels like it shrinks the world. If he had been a kami as something distinct, he would've felt unique, but instead he's more of the same.

Lakshmi exists to give us a reason to interact with more Ananta, and to build on their lore as a beastmen tribe. Sure, you described her direct narrative consequence, but Stormblood spent part of its run time doing world building for Etheirys. She was part of that.
The ananta were already part of the Resistance. We could've interacted with them that way. But we needed a trial for gameplay purposes.

You could say this about any final zone in an expansion. It's a critique that means nothing. As for what we actually did, we followed an Ala Mhigan resistance member to a salt refinery in order to make contact with the populace of the Lochs and find an in road to getting into the residential section of the city. We swam into the city. Rescued Krile and beat Fordola at the Resonance facility, thus learning part of the reason Zenos is so strong. Fought some random wolf bro conscripts to change their allegiance and reinforce the allied forces. Assaulted Ala Mhigo proper and took it back from The Empire.
Azys Lla had a continuous story of us traveling through an Allagan hellscape, fighting through forgotten alchemical horrors and dodging Imperial troops to catch up to the Archbishop, plus the meeting with Tiamat for more dragon lore. The Tempest fleshed out the Ondo, as well as Amaurot, a massive lore dump on the Ancients. Ultima Thule has Meteion showing us broken revenents from dead races to explain her message of despair, and the Scions' refusal to surrender to fate (even if it wasn't done very well, it was there). Even Living Memory, for all its....let's say, contentious nature, still has us traveling around the zone and being active in the actual world. The Lochs has a hub, half a city that we barely access before the end of the story, and a few solo duties. We do very little in the actual map.

The Alliance didn't forget. They just don't have war airships of their own, cause I guess the Ishgardians are just never gonna pony up and use that one from Sea of Clouds. Not just a XIV thing. Pretty historical for the Final Fantasy series to have the bad guys have air superiority to keep the good guys as scrappy underdogs. FFII, FFIV, FFIX, FFXI, FFXII, FFXIII, and FFXV all have bad guys pushing good guys back with air superiority.
And they brought no counters for their enemies' greatest advantage. No artillery held back to fire at airships, no mages or machinists to shoot them down. They focused solely on the gates and forgot to cover their biggest weak spot. If the Domans hadn't arrived right in the nick of time, the assault would've failed before they even broke open the gate.

The only real crime is why wouldn't a legion of Garlemald have a dreadnaught like the Gration from Heavensward in waiting? And why couldn't the Alliance take one down like they do at Ghimlyt Dark (off screen)? This is actually touching on Stormblood's real issue, which is the issue of the scale of its war scenarios. Especially vs. established lore and the like.
Either they didn't have another dreadnaught ready at the time, or they didn't trust one to Zenos. Or he just turned it down because it would interfere with his fun. And if the Alliance could take one down later, then once again, why weren't they prepared for airships at the earlier siege?

As for Hien and the Yols, it's established that Yols are bad ass. They're like mega fauna Taruk Makto situation from James Cameron's Avatar.
That doesn't really explain how they could cross a hostile continent, in comparable time to ships sailing the safer sea route (likely less time, since Hien still had to actually organize enough troops on yols to make a difference, not to mention convincing the Xaela to help out again), and still arrived ready to fight. I can excuse them arriving in the nick of time as drama, but how they made it at all is questionable.

Shinryu didn't have buildup. He was a surprise, only vaguely hinted at after his fight with Omega. He is literally controlled by Zenos, Zenos claiming mastery over The Echo gained from The Resonant procedure.
3.5 builds up Shinryu as a mighty primal to rival Bahamut, a threat so dire that the Alliance is willing to unleash Omega to counter it. They get a big epic fight scene that ends in a double knockout. Then Zenos just has Shinryu in his back yard.

Lyse's democratic republic council prided itself on welcoming ALL inhabitants of Gyr Abania, and she even acknowledges it's not a good idea to let them in, but we would let them in, in good faith, and perhaps mend the rift that existed with them. You know, characters trying to be good people. Yes, it can be dumb, but that's what the good and true do.
The entire game up until that point says that tempered thralls cannot be reasoned with, and must be killed for the safety of everyone else. Inviting them in to talk flies in the face of everything the game has established about them.

We had the explanation since Stormblood. He gained the Echo and had mastery over it, allowing him to do what Ascians do. Allowing him to do what WoL does. Come back from seemingly certain death, in a new body, of course, because that's what the bad guys do. Good guys get the Echo Ardbert edition for just getting back up, no biggie.
Any other time we see someone body surfing, it's either an Ascian, or someone the Ascians directly taught to do it. Zenos just figures it out on his own with no explanation. It's also not really comparable to our survivability; there's a big difference between "near death" and "cut his own throat, confirmed dead, and buried".

Tsuyu got away because no one cared enough about her to want to look after her properly. Literally probably a, "If she wanders off she'll probably die, and I want that to happen since Hien has forbidden killing her."
They needed her alive for the hostage exchange. Letting her wander off and die would be contradictory to their own nation's interest. You'd think Hien or Yugiri would put someone more dependable in charge of watching her, knowing Gosetsu couldn't keep up with her for long, but no, she just wanders off.