Whats your review of Shadowbringers /10? *Spoilers*

[Avraym]

So the game has been out for 5 days now with early release and more of us have finished the story.

For those of us who have done so, the real question now is whether or the game offers enough to retain interest for the long term.

With that said I would love to hear what more of the player base thinks about the expansion overall. Will you recommend this expansion to returning players? And does the game offer enough for you to stay subscribed until 5.1?

Story 8.5/10
- By far the most engaging story expansion to date for me. It had some moments that were a little on a predictable side and cliches we've come to experience before, but overall a gripping experience and more enjoyable than Stormblood and Heavensward.

Visuals 9/10
- Stunning Graphics and visuals, the textures albeit can unfortunately still hold back otherwise beautiful zones and models even on high end performances. If they managed to resolve finer details such as hair, grass and rocks - this would've been 10/10.

Audio 9/10
- Soken has gone above and beyond with this one. The battle music leaves something to be desired for me personally.. But we thankfully have the option of disabling this. A lot of tracks have been recycled in dungeons and dramatic scenes, but other than that, the new tracks are very beautiful and keep the player immersed in the new.

Progression 8/10
- Overtime, the story and levelling progression makes the gamer feel they on a path, learning each zones history and with an objective for each individual zone. Progression felt smooth, however, one can't help but feel the main story quest xp should be raised somewhat. Thankfully, farming fates, challenge logs, roulettes and side quests allow players to fill in the gaps.

End Game Content 6/10
- Level 80 dungeons offer no real challenge, and the two extreme fights don't offer enough to keep players entertained once they have received their drops. Eden will be a welcomed and needed addition, but even so one can't help but wonder why there still isn't any 4 man end game content to keep the player sustained this far down the road.

Overall 8/10
- Worth the buy. At this point, you kind of know what to expect from the expansion. Square has a formula and it works. New job additions and some quality of life adjustments were a welcomed addition by most. It honestly felt like Stormblood with a better story and quality of life.

Unfortunately, some things still hold the game back for end game content players compared to the standards of its competitors. What kind of additions would help keep the interest of end game players?

• Level 80 Zone - Players can only experience this upon hitting max level. Gear progession or farming within the zone. Gives players a reason to use their max level characters in open world outside of Face rolling FATEs/Hunts that offer no challenge.
• Challenging Solo or 4 Man Content. It's always baffled me why we don't have any 4 man challenging content with end game rewards when it's proven to be such a success in other games. Perhaps a Savage version of dungeons with a weekly reward.

Would I recommend this to returning players?
- A lot of my friends who like high end gaming, have left since Stormblood and are asking if I they should resub. I've asked them if Stormblood on release offered them enough to keep their interest post hitting max level. If the answer was no, then I had to echo their sentiments.

Will I stay subbed?
- For a month or two. Like a lot of FFXIV players, I'm a completionist. With the max level cap raised there is plenty to do. Once levelling a few classes reaches tedium and I've completed Eden, I will most likely take a break until 5.1.

[Enla]

I'd say 9.5/10 if I counted just the story, audio, graphics and more. Though for class progression it's a solid 4/10, but that's partially because I'm a healer and rather frustrated with the current issues facing both AST and SCH. The reason I set these two scores apart is because the issues will likely be tweaked in the coming patches, so I don't feel comfortable docking the entire game down because the dev's failed to release good healer changes at the start of another expansion. It's kinda their MO at this point. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That said,

ShB >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> HW >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SB > ARR

[SturmChurro]

I thought the Shadowbringers story was fantastic, I was enthralled from day 1. Completely invested. I read every line of dialogue, talked to the npcs before turning in/accepting/inbetween a quest (just talk - not a quest requirement). Some cliches are fine, and can make a story fun at times. The writing was overall top tier, it was great. I love that we had our old cast of characters from ARR throughout - Urianger getting the screen time he desperately deserved. This story had everything you could want in a good story, and Yoshida was not kidding when he said it was equivalent to a full single player rpg experience, it is. I took my time, and I am glad I did.

I particularly like Zenos as a character, and I am very happy to see him returning. Ardbert was a great addition, and I loved our interactions.

The areas were interesting, and nostalgic, the story dungeons are probably the best we have had, overall carried by their boss mechanics and design (aside from the first one which was a bit dull - bosses, again, made up for it).

My jaw literally dropped when I discovered the recreation of the Ascian city. It was amazing.

I have not played anything but a dancer, and I quite like it. I will have to level up my other major classes and roles before I can give an opinion on that. Nor have I completed any actual endgame content, I will have to do that as well. I may write a review for this expansion when I gather my thoughts, and finish up with it. I don't have this game on Steam, so unfortunately I don't think I can write it there. Not like anyone would read it anyway.

Almost forgot, music. Here is where I do not agree with people who say it was top notch. I thought the tracks themselves were great, for the most part, but the timing was awkward in many areas. Sometimes it was jarring.

[Thoosa]

I’ve not finished it yet (around 78) but would say:

The new areas are really good, love the size and the way they look.

I love the new dungeons so far - they have nice mechanics and feel fun to run.

The story is really good when it’s purely focussed on the end goal, great cutscenes and voice acting!

My slight criticisms are:

There are quite a few cutscenes which probably should have just been text boxes and sometimes it feels you are doing nothing except watching cutscene after cutscene for things that aren’t really relevant to the story (like you click one npc and get a cutscene, go to the next, another cutscene, then a tiny thing to do and then another set of cutscenes). I’d much prefer to do a bunch of stuff and then have some cutscenes and then move on to the next set of quests.

Also there are quite a number of fetch quests which seem to be there just to pad the story out.

Aside from that I need to try the new job, and love viera

[xXAzurePrimeXx]

Gonna keep this brief because I'm not really the best with words. But overall for me, Shadowbringers is a 9.5/10
Environmental design, music, story, class progression, everything they gave us is literally all i could ever want. I hope the next patches in the next 2 years deliver the same way.

[Jib]

Im only 78 at the moment, but for me so far it gets a 9/10! It doesnt get a 10/10 because no new healer, which I already new about but still as I main healers its very important for me.

But generally im loving it. So far...

[MOZZYSTAR]

MSQ 9/10 (maybe even 10/10? This is by far my favourite storyline thus far)
Music 10/10 (by far the most beautiful soundtrack I've heard from any of the games. Only complaint is battle track. It's just as beautiful as the rest, but starts off too abrupt/gruff in most areas. Not a good transition.)
Voice acting - 8/10 (there's a lot of it! And I think most of it is very good!)
Graphics 7/10 (the areas are beautiful and that light sky is just phenomenal, but the blatant copy/pasting of Eulmore slums is no bueno)
Race diversity 7/10 (I love seeing the many different races! Only unhappy with Viera always being pale in MSQ, though.)
New classes 7/10 (GNB and DNC are both very fun. GNB almost had me go to the tank side, but confidence hindered me.)
Class overhaul 2/10 (DRK was boring, AST was annoying, BRD had too many empty gaps after adding all new abilities. Some classes benefited from it, like WHM, but none of the classes I play did.)


Overall, it's defintiely the best expansion to date, imo. However, I don't think it's one you can simply jump into storywise. It makes references to happenings all the way back in ARR, but mostly so SB I think.

[Deceptus]

Overall?

Story: 10, AMAZING. So much better than Stormblood

Jobs: 7, Healers are not fun leveling

Launch: 20/10, Can't say how smooth this has been. Best I've ever seen.

Overall: 9/10

[Tempest222]

It looks great, fights are fun, and it actually got me to care about the story instead of getting bored and skipping cut scenes left and right. 10/10 for me.

[Tsuzee]

Story 9.5/10
- Once again they tell a beautiful tale. Wasting no time at all in massaging the heart strings, then gently plucking them out one at a time. More so than any of the other stories does ShB really make you fell a connection with the NPCs of the world. They spring surprises at you all along the way and leave you wanting more at the end. So far this IMHO is the best story, two years time will tell if it has completely out done HW.

Visuals 8/10
- Graphical
-- The art, look, feel, of the world is amazing. They've once again out done themselves for an MMO.

- Technical
-- This time I'm noticing that the LOD system isn't the best. Too many objects pop into view awkwardly and there is not setting to up the distance. The whole world draws and that's pretty sweet but is countered by weird poping and some graphical glitch flashing.

Audio 9/10
- The soundtrack is so good. All of the music was very enjoyable and I look forward to its release.
- SFX were not noticeable great or terrible.

Progression -/10
- Still a bit early to tell as a whole

- Battle 8/10
-- Leveling my first job (PLD) to 80 was great. Only did about half of the side quests and a few extra dungeons to hit 80. The pacing was spot on and there was so much to do. It took me 4 days to complete the MSQ line. Reading and watching all of the main dialogue. Sure it can be done in 2 but
I wanted to enjoy it at a leisurely pace. Not too slow but not rushed either.

- Crafting/Gathering -/10
-- This is still a work in progress. Though it seems they've added a bunch of cool new stuff to make this less grindy.

End Game Content -/10

- The end game has yet to commence. The pre-prep seems the same as SB and that's OK. We need to wait for the first Savage raid to drop before making any real assessments of end game as a whole. Though if it's anything like SB it should be pretty good.

Overall, so far a 9/10. Loving every bit of it.


Early access and launch: As others have said, the best yet. I cannot say enough good things about how smooth the weekend was. I had one error and logging out and back in fixed it. The queue times for logging in were short. The lag was present for me only once on early access day 1.
I've been on for every launch of 2.0+ and this was amazing compared to any other.