So Stormblood

Prior to starting the expansion, i heard different things, such as it's the least favored expansion in the community as it follows the previous expansion HW and precedes ShB. I also heard that I would love StB as it lines up with my taste in fiction... and they were right... they were so right... Jake, you're so right stormblood STORMBLOOD AUGGHHHH, IT'S SO LAURENCORE

I wrote a 13 1/3 page doc - soon to be 14?? 15??? 16?? who knows - compiling all my thoughts. (I wrote one for HW, and that doc counting post-HW was 6 pages).

I really really enjoyed StB. I enjoyed the story, the characters, and the themes they emphasized, and I ENJOYED IT my favorite part of Stormblood was how the theme of power, the strong, the weak, wasn’t only in Eorzea. These themes have been present since ARR, but they were slowly fed to us throughout ARR, Post-ARR, HW, and even HW to finally show the overwhelming power the empire has. Not only that, it shows these topics aren’t in one place. There are people who are experiencing the same feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, despair, and so many feelings.

The story immediately grabbed my attention at the line said by a Skull Swordsman, "I've worked and toiled harder than any man! I'm a citizen, godsdammit! And what are you? A stupid, stubborn little dog who'd sooner bite the hand that feeds him and pine for the good old days!" This line right here just changed everything for me. It was here that I realized I have to pay attention. Pay attention to every little detail, every line, every action.

(I don't know how this review is going to go right now I'm kind of taking parts of the doc and pasting them here)

StB is a journey of self-discovery and a journey of identity for Lyse because she's lived as her sister for so long and spent a large portion of her childhood not in Ala Mhigo. Lyse is very naive as she doesn't know how deep the empire has on Ala Mhigo. She thinks it's so easy to get everyone to rally together and fight against the empire, but throughout the story, she realizes this isn't the case. There is a lot more to this. As Lyse journeys through the East she begins to understand and see the extent the empire has done. She learns about different cultures and traditions and starts to ask herself what makes her Lyse? Who is Lyse? She lived as her sister for so long that she never got the chance to figure out who she is. It is at these points in the story - specifically at the steppe - Lyse really thinks about what makes her Lyse. And you can see when she comes back to Ala Mhigo she isn't impatient anymore. She's become patient and more understanding. She's grown a lot, and I love Lyse's character story so much.

(this is a short version of my Lyse summary)

God... there is so much to talk about... I- just- it's so laurencore. And these topics, the topic of oppression, colocalization, traditions, culture, equality, and identity are all real topics in our own history. Stormblood portrays these topics in such an interesting way. It isn't only Ala Mhigo who is suffering from imperial rule. It's also Doma and other nations, giving them something in common and a way to understand each other.

There are some points in the story that fall short, but are picked up by post-StB. I do think if these were implemented into the main story and not the patches, it would have made StB a lot stronger.

Anyways... StB is very good it's very Laurencore there is so much I want to say in this review, but I want to keep it short. It's highly underrated (I'm sorry this is a mess maybe I'll post the link to the doc idk)

A significant step down in terms of story, but it makes up for it with a ton of great gameplay content.

The story this time takes us to both Ala Mhigo and Doma, two places that we've had a lot of teasers for up until now, and tries to take us through the liberation of both from the Empire. While this sounds good on paper, in theory I feel that the writers bit off a bit more than they could chew here. Cramming all of the worldbuilding and story and liberation of two entire unrelated nations into one expansion leaves both of them feeling kind of rushed and underwhelming. More than anything it makes the liberation feel anticlimactic - and Ala Mhigo suffers from this much worse than Doma due to how the expansion's story is laid out. Ala Mhigo's story begins at the start of the expansion, and then right when things are starting to get interesting it gets put on hold while we go to Doma. The Doman storyline plays out from start to finish mostly uninterrupted, and then we pivot back to Ala Mhigo at the end. The problem here is that by the time we return to Ala Mhigo I've forgotten or stopped caring much about what was established there earlier, and the time between going back and successfully liberating the nation is so short that it ends up feeling way too easy. If the two nations' storylines played out in full one after the other it might've felt a bit more like two unrelated stories slapped together, but at least it wouldn't have undercut the climax so badly.

Related to this are my problems with Zenos. When he's first introduced as a powerful edgy pretty boy villain I was all on board - I am a Final Fantasy fan after all. When he beat me in battle multiple times I was excited to see how we would eventually defeat him. The answer is... you just kinda beat him. He comments about your time in Doma making you stronger, but why exactly would it have made me that much stronger? I understand that mechanically I'm level 70 instead of level 63 or whatever but that doesn't really jive with me as a canonical reason - if you start acknowledging levels in canon then you start needing to ask why there are packs of sheep in the sewers of Ala Mhigo that could easily defeat the Ultima Weapon. Sure I defeated a few primals in Doma, but nothing stronger than what I had already beaten dozens of times previously. I just don't get why my character went from barely being able to touch Zenos to suddenly winning.

On top of that, I felt like I was being teased with some master plan Zenos was cooking up regarding "The Hunt", and that I would be lured into a trap or he would have some way of quashing the rebellion at the last minute. But then "The Hunt" turned out to be just... fighting me. And he loses. And that's it. Considering that a number of earlier Ala Mhigan victories happened because Zenos intentionally let us win in order to facilitate "The Hunt", in retrospect it feels like the only reason we won is because Zenos is a total fucking idiot with regards to tactics and shot himself in the foot repeatedly for no reason. It's another thing that makes the Ala Mhigan story seem seriously anticlimactic.

Beyond that there's the other characters who by and large are, well, fine. Lyse is a perfectly serviceable shounen protagonist who's a little self-serious and fights for her friends, but I could never really shake the feeling that she was now a completely different character from the person I met in ARR. I know that's intentional, but it felt less like natural character development and more like a change of writers and of story priorities. If her goofy comic-relief personality still reared its head every once in a while it would feel more real. Alisaie is a little better in that she at least doesn't feel like her character was completely changed, and she's a good character overall, but she's a little too normal to be exciting, and she keeps getting random injuries that remove her from the story for long stretches.

The non-Zenos villains on the other hand are great. Yotsuyu and Fordola are the two best and most developed villains in the whole game so far and do a fantastic job of mirroring each other - they end up on fairly different paths by the end of Post-Stormblood despite having fairly similar upbringings and life circumstances. They were both highlights of the main story but their post-SB stories really shot them up into the highest tier of characters.

All in all the story was serviceable but really messy. A few more revisions could've done wonders for cleaning up the loose ends. The post-story is pretty great on the other hand, but it feels slightly unfair to credit Stormblood too highly just for having great Shadowbringers setup.

The GAMEPLAY on the other hand, that's a whole different story. Not only do you get into the levels where each job starts having quite a lot to do, but the boss mechanics start going crazy even in normal dungeons. The Trial and Raid bosses have some insanely flashy and cool moments, and many of the dungeons have memorable or unique moments even just in traversal. The breadth of content is also insane - not only do we get the standard-issue max-level dungeons, raid series, trial series (with extra dungeons included!), and Hildibrand (with duties!), but on top of that there's also a bonus Monster Hunter trial, the first Ultimate raid, a whole new Deep Dungeon, and an entire mini-MMO (Eureka) complete with an old-school WoW-style raid of its own. The sheer amount of content in Stormblood blows Heavensward out of the water, and the intensity level of that content is way higher on average which makes a lot of it really fun. This is also the expansion that added Blue Mage, so if you count that then it's an even bigger swath of content.

Overall this expansion felt very gameplay-first. If you're here mostly for the story you'll probably be disappointed until the post-expac story, but if you love hard bosses and having tons of stuff to do then this could easily be one of your favorite expansions. Personally I rate it lower than Heavensward, but not by much.

The story isn't the worst in the world but it is not great. It fumbles in a lot of areas and the highs are far and few inbetween. I think the best thing this expansion introduces to the game overall are the 24 man raids based on FFTactics and FFXII. This is the peak of the expansion and still my favorite raids to date. I also like Zenos as an antagonist to some degree they don't do enough with him but he fits the intimidating force when on screen. The Aura were a nice addition as well but a new race to play is always welcomed.

Lyse (while I have nothing against the character and actually like her) is the worst poster child for this expansion. Everything pointed to this story following Rabhan's perspective but then last minute during post game missions between this and Heavensward they decided it should be Lyse for whatever reason. That's how tacked on her involvement feels. I wish they at least wrote it better in her favor.

The biggest offense (besides how the game handles slavery, imperialism, race, Mongolian-inspired people, etc.) is Lyse regresses from mildly interesting and fun to a very generic character. Not having much screentime before Stormblood did not help.

While this is not the worst thing I ever played Stormblood would be my least favorite expansion if not for the raids. The MSQ is a mess and they try to write themes without applying the level of care needed.

I'll also will always side-eye how the darker skin Ala-Mhigans are usually death fodder/examples of extreme oppression but lighter ones less so. Same with Lyse getting leadership handed to her over Rabhan or even M'naago will forever baffle me.