Why shadowbringers is truely the best expansion in all of FFXIV

[JohnLakeside]

I'm only on 5.4, but ShB had by far my least favorite zones. I get that 90% or something of the population was wiped out, but god the zones are so lifeless. Too much of it feels flat and textureless. Compare it to ARR where there are NPCs even outside of Aetheryte tele areas. Hell, in Shb's Aetheryte areas, most of the NPCs are just standing outside of their homes like mannequins. The fact that we can't even enter most of the buildings makes it even worse. It feels almost insulting that out of maybe the 4 buildings we can go inside in the entire expansion, 2 of them are lalafell only. Yes, the world is pretty, but it lacks a lot of that interiority and detail that makes a world feel alive imo. I also think the Crystarium is the worse expansion city we've gotten so far. I'd really like someone to explain to me how the Crystarium holds a candle to the likes of Ishgard or Kugane.

I'm actually kinda bitter about how underwhelmed I was by ShB. Almost everyone I talked to gushed about how ShB was almost like some life-changing experience. I loved every expansion so far and I thought ShB would reach heights that I couldn't even imagine. But at the end of it all, it was just "pretty good." Like a 7.8/10 for me.

[Kaurhz]

I can't disagree, but much of that was simply down to circumstance, a combination of due to the fact of the previous expansions, it subverted expectation quite a bit, and then there's the fact that it was tying together a lot of what came before it, e.g., with Ascian's motivations, whilst also being able to stay in its own separate world as it were. It was about as much of a blank canvas as you could get.

Realistically they couldn't replicate it no matter hard hard they try, IMO, because everything that made that expansion good was due to the above.

It's going to take a really long time to rebuild that spark. It's not even about what I am willing to accept in terms of quality but more-so just the reality of what made ShB good.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I'm only on 5.4, but ShB had by far my least favorite zones. I get that 90% or something of the population was wiped out, but god the zones are so lifeless. Too much of it feels flat and textureless. Compare it to ARR where there are NPCs even outside of Aetheryte tele areas. Hell, in Shb's Aetheryte areas, most of the NPCs are just standing outside of their homes like mannequins. The fact that we can't even enter most of the buildings makes it even worse. It feels almost insulting that out of maybe the 4 buildings we can go inside in the entire expansion, 2 of them are lalafell only. Yes, the world is pretty, but it lacks a lot of that interiority and detail that makes a world feel alive imo. I also think the Crystarium is the worse expansion city we've gotten so far. I'd really like someone to explain to me how the Crystarium holds a candle to the likes of Ishgard or Kugane.

I'm actually kinda bitter about how underwhelmed I was by ShB. Almost everyone I talked to gushed about how ShB was almost like some life-changing experience. I loved every expansion so far and I thought ShB would reach heights that I couldn't even imagine. But at the end of it all, it was just "pretty good." Like a 7.8/10 for me.

A lot of the Shb hype, imo, comes from people who REALLY liked Emet Selch.

[Zakuyia]

We definitely only fought lahabrea and zenos once.

This right here is proof why I don't get why ppl act like dawntrail is literally on par with shadowbringers....its not and saying things like this means u either skipped the story or just ignored when ever zenos or lahabrea was on screen

[AnimaAnimus]

A lot of the Shb hype, imo, comes from people who REALLY liked Emet Selch.

Well, yeah. A good villain is what can make or break a story. When you have bad villains like sad bird girl or sad robot girl or even sad sword boy and put them up against sad but confident and charismatic Emet Selc, yeah there is a reason ShB was so highly regarded in comparison.

It goes the same with protagonists. Put the heaping spoonfuls we got of a bad protaginist in Wuk up against the likeable and not overwhelming Yugiri, Estinien, Graha, Arenvald or Aymeric, even Lyse or the sparingly used Minfillia and it's obvious why there is so much hate for her.

The bad villains or protagonists we got could have been much better if they were put in the hands of a more competent writer in a game who's story wasn't deliberately rushed because the creatively spent producer/director was getting bored with it. Which in turn would have given even DT more love than it's getting. But that was sadly not the case. Even Emet, and therefore ShB, would have suffered if given the sad bird girl, sad robot girl treatment. Just like there is no way Graha, Estinien and like would be so beloved if given the Wuk treatment. Even with everything else, like the quest design, taken into consideration, the protagnists and antagonists are the most crucial part of a story. Get them right and you have ShB, get them wrong and you have DT.

[BigCheez]

A lot of the Shb hype, imo, comes from people who REALLY liked Emet Selch.

And people who liked the jobs being less homogenised and child-proofed, not having the 2 minute meta and actually having a reason to log in for Bozja/Firmament.

I think Stormblood was the best state that the game has been in but Shb was nowhere near as much of a downgrade as Ew and Dt. Endwalker and Dawntrail have been more like compactions than expansions.

[CVXIV]

Anything but a hero?
We restored night to a world tainted by light
Gave them hope for the future and provided aether to the empty wasteland so it could flourish

I don't know what you mean by that, because if it's renown then we're not known in Tural eiher. Only a select few know of our exploits, and we don't see how 'the final days' impacted them

Meanwhile countless NPCs will sing our praises as the warrior of darkness
It took what we were familiar with and flipped the idea of light vs dark on its head

I don't even disagree, Shadowbringers is my favorite of the expansions but it's the culmination of plot threads brought up from what came before. Dawntrail was always going to have a tough time proving itself when it went up against years of story built up

It's why I am willing to give them a chance and see what comes next
They have built mystery on a few new things such as the key we obtained and who the new antagonist is. We don't even know where the the story will end up or where we will be heading next

As a side note, I don't really know why people treat characters that have died as their story being over. The main example I can think of is Zoraal Ja, because people complained we won't see more of him or any of his backstory

Despite this being a pretty common trope in the game
We had no real knowledge of who Lahabrea was despite the generic bad guy villain and we didn't learn more about him personally until Endwalker

Or Yotsuyu who we presumed dead and it turned out she wasn't, and we were able to get somewhat close to her and see why she turned out the way she did

Zenos is another pretty good example because that man would not stay away from us lmao

Basically, I don't think that just because a character dies their story is over. They alluded to a few things with Zoraal Ja and I have some questions and thoughts about it which will probably be expanded upon later

also his voice being Jotaro Kujo in JP floors me every time he's on screen because I imagine Zoraal Ja decked out in his gear

[Connor]

Personally I’d say every expansion has its strengths and (sometimes glaring) weaknesses. There hasn’t been one yet where I’ve been like, ‘this is unforgivably bad’ lol. I wouldn’t say any was the ‘de-facto best/worst’ expansion - more like they’ve all some things right, and another thing completely wrong lol.

And that’s as someone who’d give Dawntrail like a 5/10 on a good day lol. I wouldn’t call it ‘the worst expansion’ though; I wouldn’t call anything except maybe 1.0 ‘the worst expansion the game has ever gone through lol’

[ArchlordPie]

ShB is widely viewed among players as the "best" expansion. The thing is - it was only able to be a real 10/10 because of the expansions that came before it. Two out of those three books of lore you could write were written in ARR, HW, and SB. The villains that became multi-faceted were introduced as one-dimensional back in ARR.

There's not really much "thought to evoke" in SE. It's already there. You just can't realistically expect the new equivalent of ARR (starting a new narrative) to reach as high as an expansion that had 3 prior installments to build on. Years from now, FFXIV will probably put out another 10/10 expansion - the only question will be whether those "hating" on DT will be willing to acknowledge that the new top-tier installment was able to reach those heights because of the foundation DT laid.

Me? I'm still having a ton of fun with the new stories and lore in DT. *shrugs*

The problem with saying DT laid any sort of foundation at all is that it introduced exactly one legitimately interesting concept: interdimensional fusion.

LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE about it was some combination of 1) cringe beyond belief, 2) hilariously undercooked, 3) convenient to the point of being nonsensical, and 4) wrapped up so thoroughly that it's not just a foundation, it's the whole freaking house.

At this point we're all best off just rolling our eyes and waiting for 7.4 to start setting up next expansion.

[EusisLandale]

The problem with saying DT laid any sort of foundation at all is that it introduced exactly one legitimately interesting concept: interdimensional fusion.

And even that's basically just "Ok what if we did a Rejoining, but slightly less catastrophic?"