Why shadowbringers is truely the best expansion in all of FFXIV

[sindriiisgaming]

let me explain! playing it back recently. i saw my self untangling the tightly interwoven threads that ll made shadowbringers feel so good. It had everything. a mysterious unknown world, the scions. in action and bloody awesome too. Yshtola leading an entire group of people. thancred finding a new cause. alphinaud finding somewhat of a home where he had allways been traveling. and you, the warrior of light., you were not just the warrior of light, in that word you were anything but a hero, and your job was to undoo what "heroes did" you were alone, but yet you werent. you were important, but so small.

the world was filled with wonderful lore that could easily stretch 3 books. each of the gorgeous cities lost to time, they're history, people and magics still remaining in traces. beautiful ancient styles that make you want to know more. nothing futuristic or dystopian. just pure fantasy. nowhere is this handled better than in il mheg. what can i saw about titania? was she not extremely popular? beloved and adored. what about feo ul. you're number one fan. it all felt so magical. there were multilayered villain's and hierarchy's and even something massive beyond the whole scope of what YOU even thought possible. And at the heart of all of it. a villian that we will NEVER see again. A man, a friend, a human. empathic, emotional, tired of fighting tired of the same cycles of misery and fighting. but he really did try and he suffered great losses doing so.

there are no ways to fully explain how truly narratively amazing from every direction SHB really was. how beautifully every character brought everything together, every city having its own story and wonder for you to unpack piece by piece. and all of this handled in just ONE expansion. shb could have ended on 5.0 and it would have been a complete perfect story. yet somehow even the patches got better. ardbert is one of the most inspirational characters i have ever seen. he was forged not in being given power, but in being tasked with how to use it properly, and he is a beautiful tragic character. when the exarchs story ended in 5.3 i knew he was gone and it hurt and my character hurt too, and i felt every aching minute of it and it was amazing.

so why do i bring this up. perhaps to evoke thought in SE. to look back at a previous masterpiece, and untangle the narrative threads of genuis and success. perhaps they need to find that spark again. or perhaps in your downtime to inspire you to replay shb, and experience it all again with newfound appreciation. the comedy the tears and the amazing sense of adventure.

[Striker44]

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*

[Supersnow845]

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*

You can say that ARR released one dimensional villains that were expanded later but that specifically because they actually left open ends

DT didn’t, DT is such an enclosed story they had to rezz its main antagonist literally a patch after it finished just to have some kind of conflict

DT isn’t another “build up” expansion like ARR was because it closed off all its plot lines at the end of itself. I don’t get why people still pretend like it was a “prep” expansion

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

You can say that ARR released one dimensional villains that were expanded later but that specifically because they actually left open ends

DT didn’t, DT is such an enclosed story they had to rezz its main antagonist literally a patch after it finished just to have some kind of conflict

DT isn’t another “build up” expansion like ARR was because it closed off all its plot lines at the end of itself. I don’t get why people still pretend like it was a “prep” expansion

We definitely only fought lahabrea and zenos once.

[Supersnow845]

We definitely only fought lahabrea and zenos once.

Lahabrea has reasons for why our initial defeat of him because we specifically didn’t understand how ascians worked and so all we really did is purge him from thancred compared to sphene where we specifically completely shut down his he meso terminal. “Oh they had a backup” if that’s actually the reason is not remotely similar justification

Zenos’s revival in EW was stupid contrived nonsense I agree. But he was also basically an afterthought compared to the endsinger and the actual plot of EW

People would be more mad on Zenos if 4.1’s story was basically “somehow Zenos returned” especially since the other half of 7.1’s story is nuking the last bit of nuance from koana’s backstory

[SkankyRoe]

ShB is the worst expansion because it's where they really committed to the stale content formula that everyone complains about and it had the least amount of content out of all the expansions. Story was alright tho, not as good as HW or EW but still decent.

[Dastan]

The regulators literally bring people back from the dead and you're surprised the main antagonist just comes back nonchalantly? Pay attention to the story man.

we kill Nidhogg and yet he was able to come back in a stupid way as well, if you want to simplify everything down like that.

[Sacae]

At the time, this forum was raging about how Shadowbrings made the story "too anime," and how the game was going downhill because it lost all the politics-driven drama from ARR, HW, and SB.

[Dastan]

At the time, this forum was raging about how Shadowbrings made the story "too anime," and how the game was going downhill because it lost all the politics-driven drama from ARR, HW, and SB.

I started playing this game again at the tail end of Stormblood and even I know that we should just let them cook. You may not like the direction a story is going now, only for it to really ramp up in the later patches. Then have people come in 3 years later being like "Dawntrail was the BEST expansion!" It's like a cycle.

[Rueby]

I started playing this game again at the tail end of Stormblood and even I know that we should just let them cook. You may not like the direction a story is going now, only for it to really ramp up in the later patches. Then have people come in 3 years later being like "Dawntrail was the BEST expansion!" It's like a cycle.

I don't think it can get any worse than this to be honest...