Why shadowbringers is truely the best expansion in all of FFXIV

[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.

[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’

[Arzalis]

Shadowbringers was so good Dawntrail just tried to copy the ending (and didn't do as good of a job.)

[Lorika]

ShB is the most well made expansion but, for me, story wise and emotion wise, HW is the best.
On the emotion side i found ShB flat and generic.... the story wasn't bad, but not amazing either.

[Derio]

SHB is the best expansion and here is why.

DRK is the posterboy
MSQ is peak FFXIV
Casual content is peak FFXIV with Bozja.
Extreme trials were separate storyline from MSQ and had great world building.
Good content for crafters and gatherers.
Revival of Diadem.

SHB took core concepts from previous expansions and build on those ideas.
The MSQ was built up by post SB but SHB was also contained in its own unique story.


DT is still early but it clearly failed on the MSQ part.