Now that Endwalker is out I feel Shadowbringers is well and truly over, and it's possible to talk about the expansion in its totality - one of, if not the best MMO expansions I've ever played.
The MSQ - that is the storyline of the expansion on launch - is excellent. Shadowbringers is unusually tight, gambling on a very self-contained, isolated story set in a parallel world to the previous expansions and featuring only a handful of crossover characters. This could've resulted in it feeling like an irrelevant side story, a distraction, but instead it pays off with a tight, satisfying story that builds a phenomenal personal connection between the player and NPCs. Both Ardbert and the Crystal Exarch get fantastic, complete character arcs that brought me to tears. It's borderline miraculous how the game creates the impression of a personal connection between the player and NPCs who, realistically, you have no meaningful interaction with beyond quests. Truly top notch stuff.
There are two blemishes on the MSQ that I cannot gloss over. The first is a lot of sympathy for the game's villain, Emet Selch, a self confessed genocidal dictator. The character has massive personal charisma that makes him a joy to watch, but he'll belt out some horrible fash nonsense about how he has a "bigger soul" than us and that's why he wants us dead, and all the protagonists just sit around going "damn yo guess he has a point his soul is very big". He's generally treated as sympathetic and having "good reasons" for his heinous acts, which is not a good look. The other spot is mini-Minfilia, the replacement for the ARR NPC. I don't want to get into spoilers, so briefly, it sucks that one of the most important female characters in the game is bounced around like a football, everyone's got to get their hands on her, but there's absolutely no payoff where she actually becomes important. It sucks and it's part of a wider pattern of weak writing around female characters in the game that's disappointing. However, despite these two spots, the indelible memories left behind by the MSQ set it above the other expansions.
Beyond the original content of the expansion, the patch content was absolutely amazing. Story-wise it expanded a lot of very satisfying different storylines- continuing the fight against the Garlean Empire in the trial series and Bozja, rebuilding Ishgard, and digging deeper into Norvrdandt's story with the raid series, it gave a fantastic impression of the depth and breadth of the world. The communal crafting with leaderboards and status to fight for in the rebuilding of Ishgard is the best crafting content of any MMO I've ever played.
I want to single out Bozja specifically as the best content in the expansion, and a real cindarella story for concepts that fell flat on their face before. This is to my mind the third attempt XIV has made at this kind of content - the original Diadem, Eureka and now Bozja - and the first time it's actually worked. I was indifferent to the Diadem and hated Eureka, but Bozja successfully brings all these different elements together to create a complex ecosystem of players coming together in adhoc parties, grinding, fighting, leveling, participating in amazing boss battles and a chance to really show your stuff in Duels. So much time in an MMO can be spent playing alone, or in small groups of 4, but this is content that really creates communities, lets you see dozens and dozens of players at once and it's amazing. I dearly hope this isn't lightning in a bottle, and that future expansions can return to this idea.
The MSQ - that is the storyline of the expansion on launch - is excellent. Shadowbringers is unusually tight, gambling on a very self-contained, isolated story set in a parallel world to the previous expansions and featuring only a handful of crossover characters. This could've resulted in it feeling like an irrelevant side story, a distraction, but instead it pays off with a tight, satisfying story that builds a phenomenal personal connection between the player and NPCs. Both Ardbert and the Crystal Exarch get fantastic, complete character arcs that brought me to tears. It's borderline miraculous how the game creates the impression of a personal connection between the player and NPCs who, realistically, you have no meaningful interaction with beyond quests. Truly top notch stuff.
There are two blemishes on the MSQ that I cannot gloss over. The first is a lot of sympathy for the game's villain, Emet Selch, a self confessed genocidal dictator. The character has massive personal charisma that makes him a joy to watch, but he'll belt out some horrible fash nonsense about how he has a "bigger soul" than us and that's why he wants us dead, and all the protagonists just sit around going "damn yo guess he has a point his soul is very big". He's generally treated as sympathetic and having "good reasons" for his heinous acts, which is not a good look. The other spot is mini-Minfilia, the replacement for the ARR NPC. I don't want to get into spoilers, so briefly, it sucks that one of the most important female characters in the game is bounced around like a football, everyone's got to get their hands on her, but there's absolutely no payoff where she actually becomes important. It sucks and it's part of a wider pattern of weak writing around female characters in the game that's disappointing. However, despite these two spots, the indelible memories left behind by the MSQ set it above the other expansions.
Beyond the original content of the expansion, the patch content was absolutely amazing. Story-wise it expanded a lot of very satisfying different storylines- continuing the fight against the Garlean Empire in the trial series and Bozja, rebuilding Ishgard, and digging deeper into Norvrdandt's story with the raid series, it gave a fantastic impression of the depth and breadth of the world. The communal crafting with leaderboards and status to fight for in the rebuilding of Ishgard is the best crafting content of any MMO I've ever played.
I want to single out Bozja specifically as the best content in the expansion, and a real cindarella story for concepts that fell flat on their face before. This is to my mind the third attempt XIV has made at this kind of content - the original Diadem, Eureka and now Bozja - and the first time it's actually worked. I was indifferent to the Diadem and hated Eureka, but Bozja successfully brings all these different elements together to create a complex ecosystem of players coming together in adhoc parties, grinding, fighting, leveling, participating in amazing boss battles and a chance to really show your stuff in Duels. So much time in an MMO can be spent playing alone, or in small groups of 4, but this is content that really creates communities, lets you see dozens and dozens of players at once and it's amazing. I dearly hope this isn't lightning in a bottle, and that future expansions can return to this idea.