Reviews from

in the past


This review contains spoilers

This was so intense... So cool... Lyse is so beautiful... I love Yugiri... Story kind of peaked here, but damn... why they gotta do Gosetsu dirty like that... also thanks for the Estinien cameos...

Whoever designed The Lochs area though? I am too directionally-challenged for that mess of routes for aether currents, gdi

This expansion sets out to ask a simple question: Will Lyse ever stop yapping? The answer is no. I can't believe they went from heavensward to this.

The possible reality i'm facing is that people are calling the next two expansions peak because theyre either ever so slightly better than this or because they're sunk cost into the game. Really hope that isnt the case but so far i havent been blown away by this game in any capacity and i couldnt give less of a shit about any of the characters except for a few of the heavensward ones... Mainly because thats a good expansion

I thought it was funny when they remixed an older final fantasy song for a character in this game. I was like oh! look! they're referencing a video game that they wish they were half as good as! adorablešŸ˜Š

Post interdimensional rift side quest edit: Holy shit

Post ivalice raids: HOLY shit 2

ngl i'd like this more if the plotlines weren't split. ala mhigo felt incredibly underwhelming compared to doma's storyline. liked the characters and concepts though, and the post-stormblood quests were some of my favorite

Not as good as the others, even if the political writting is extremely well done.

But this expansion suffers from bad pacing. Still it has its moments, and is fun to play as always. Cool regions though.

Lyse was kinda being a white savior ngl. But otherwise probably my favorite because of Gosetsu.


Good music, good dungeons, good environments, so-so characters. It felt like they were waiting until the postgame to make Yotsuyu a compelling character, and Zenos is less complex than a megaman antagonist

GAMEPLAY BECOME BETTER STORY BECOME ARR rip gaius

Weakest expansion after ARR, but still great

5 stars for the music and Zenos

(but please learn how to write female characters)

Enjoyed the Doma half more than Heavensward. The Gyr Albania half falls a little flat for me sometimes but Zenos is hype. Best post story yet. Still killing it on the optional content too.

there is a question at the heart of stormblood "are monsters born? or are they formed through existential forces outside of their control."

it explores this question beautifully with the help of two characters, zenos and yotsuyu.

both of them monsters born from a society that did not care for them, did not provide for them, did not nurture them. does that make their actions justifiable? fuck no! but it does not make the choice to to do what they did any less shocking.

for example. doma, before suffering at the hands of yotsuyu. was a society that allowed her to be forced into marrying an abusive noble and then allowed her father to sell her own daughter into sex slavery. no one stopped this. nothing was in place to prevent it. it's not shocking then that the same society who would allow for something like that turned her into someone who despises her own people. if no one came to help her. if this is a society that allowed her to be forced into abusive servitude and sex slavery. how then is it shocking that she would turn around and lash out. if no one from her country or family would nurture her or fuck even allow her to have control over her own anatomy. it is not shocking that she would turn to an evil ideology that feeds off of someones feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. that gives someone power to take back control over their lives. in exchange for manipulating them into literally doing fucking genocide. is it justifiable? again, fuck no. but should it be shocking that it happened. also fuck no.

stormblood is an uncomfortable look at societies that turn their backs, grow complacent, maintain the status quo and do not care about their own failings because it does not benefit them to care. how societies like these with backwards beliefs, systems and complacency. slowly turn people into animals.

speaking of which. zenos. zenos was born into the royal family of the garlean empire. though from an early age he was alone. his mother died from illness and his father was incredibly neglectful. born without the innocence of a normal childhood. a father that abandoned him and did not love him. he was incredibly depressed and forced into strict military training at a young age. even born into a high society. that society gave him nothing. no love. no tenderness. no joy. only loneliness and the idea that you must be strong. it is no shock then that the animal that modern became the zenos we see in the story now was born. he himself even states in the final climactic fight of stormblood that he was born into a merciless, meaningless world. and it was garlemald's and his fathers fault. he just wanted to feel something for once and the WoL eventually provides that for him. zenos is an uncomfortable mirror that shows the player how the WoL might of ended up in a society that was not as caring as eorzea's.

i'm going to be a bit mean here and say that maybe part of the reason why people hate stormblood is because they do not desire to think critically about the world they live in. like the garleans or the domans did not. stormblood also could be seen as an uncomfortable critique of some of our societies and countries that have failed the people in it. and i think some people find the idea of that scary.

the writers aren't forcing you to find the actions of the villains justifiable. they aren't. but they're trying to get you to think that maybe we could take some preventive measures from monsters like them being shaped in the first place. by being better.

ā€œBut what is freedom, really? We may be free to live, to love, to grow old. To have dreams and desires, and to strive for them. But in the end, weā€™re defined by the legacy our forefathers bequeath to us. Even Zenos was once a baby in the cradle, innocent and pure. He was made into a creature that lived only for death, not born one." - Lyse Hext


From The Chronicles of Light - The Hunt Begins: The Offical Short Story of Zenos yae Galvus

ā€œWaitā€¦ We havenā€™t even startedā€¦ā€ Young Zenos muttered groggily as he tried again in vain to clamber to his feet. His tutor did not spare him a backward glance.


ā€œThe dead do not learn. They sleep.ā€

This review contains spoilers

Pretty alright. Compared to Heavensward, it dragged a bit more, especially since this expac was split between two main casts in the same amount of time we spent with one whole cast in HW. Looking forward to ShB, since everyone I know says it's where things start to get really good.

This "nuanced racism" sucked. "i got mistreated growing up, and one day i saw someone from my race get abused in the street, and it made me horny. now i want to genocide my entire race. the writers want you to feel bad for me" SHUT UP! I cannot believe there are people out there who think this is a good story about racism... because it has the most unrealistic portrayals and reasons behind the character's racism.

Really good, most peoples issues with this expansion is from not having the reading comprehension or attention span of an adult. like idk man expansions about poltical drama, rebellion, imperialism, how a systems flaws may not get better before or after occupation, and how broken systems raise broken families and broken people, and how evil is not born, but made as a product of its surroundings. All wrapped up in the tale of a man who lives for the thrill of facing someone who could give him a worthy fight, a fight for reclaiming ones homeland from occupation and raising a nation from slavery to freedom. To find ones culture and ways of life when its been removed from those people during occupation, and also to go fight an ancient superweapon and a powerful primal. Shits good!

it has alphinaud dive and go yeaaaaaaaaaguuggh so yeah its pretty good.

The gameplay here was amazing although I didn't like the story as much as Heavensward. Honestly tho Samurai was my favorite melee dps class for a while so the endgame content and side content being peak combined with that kinda make up for any grievances I had with the story.

Also I want Yotsuyu to abuse me.

Weakest on story but set the bar for bombastic and epic trials for the future.

i dont think that stormblood is as bad as alot of people say. as a whole it improves GREATLY on gameplay aspects of the game and has the most fun raids and content ive done yet. the story falls short in many places for me. however, it still has some really phenomenal moments and characters. good..just not as good as heavensward was.

After sinking 500 hours into this game, patch 4.1 has got to be the first time I've enjoyed anything about ffxiv's story

Too padded out and a villain that overstayed their welcome.

I like stormblood even if it's the weird middle point of the storyline.
Lots of great fights though.

Over hated & under rated by the community despite having the best raid design & class design to date

The characters are great. End game patches go hard. Yotsuyu is one of my faves ever.

I might be biased because I love the characters, but this was a pretty good expansion. Really liked the story and what they did with the characters, and even though the base msq kinda dragged a little, the raid and post game msq made up for it.


Gameplay-wise, it's solid, it's FF14, the trials and raids and whatnot are always enjoyable.

Story-wise, it's exemplary whenever a villain is on screen, basically a snoozefest otherwise. FF14's story has so many great characters and stories and moments but it genuinely feels like its writers cannot tell the difference between the good characters with depth and the bland characters with one or fewer personality traits.

As messy as the launch was and how fairly standard the story comes across due to previous and later highs, Stormblood was some of the most experimental days of the MMO's years. The modern state of the game would not exist without many of the changes and lessons learned through Stormblood.

This expansion was the first time in this game that I felt the story start to drag. Thankfully, Zenos was a captivating villain, and the climax stuck the landing.

I love me a good rebel story. Cool departure from the established setting that focuses on the down to Earth conflict.