Stormblood
(Finished on October 5th)
(Note half of this review is just me ranting about Monks off the playstyle of two games I just so happened to be playing at the same time feel free to skip that)
Post-Heavensward
I forgot if I already brought this up.
Anyway, what if Estinien went joker mode. Pretty cool follow up to the events of Heavensward, although these kind of quests do kinda make me think "some of this feels like it shoulda been in the main expansion?" but I understand why this is the case, I guess.
Like post-ARR there's some rando missions laid throughout that are supposed to be like "hey! here's the stuff that's leaning into Stormblood get excited!" but it still felt very weird leading up to it. I never really know how to judge these quests/patches as they mostly act as a medley of prepping for the next expansion, of course but then it flip flops to wrapping up a lot of loose ends from the prior expansion. (also this expansion took a bit longer than the other two so much of this honestly left my brain).
STORMBLOOD (Proper)
Leading up to this expansion, I had heard all sorts of opinions regarding this section of FF14. I wasn't entirely sure how to tackle it at first other than to have an open mind and just go through the motions as I went from quest to quest. While I think I understand the hangups a lot of other people had with Stormblood, I still enjoyed it most of the way through. It just has a few sections of GLACIAL pacing, and some really rough character writing depending on where you're coming in from. It's a divisive expansion, but overall I enjoyed it, if only a couple of steps behind Heavensward.
I think one of the more standout points about Stormblood is just how damn good the instances are in this expansion. Heavensward was definitely a step above A Realm Reborn in terms of scenario and the required dungeons, but Stormblood has maybe 1 or 2 dungeons that feel 'mid'. I really enjoyed just about every dungeon or trial that the expansion had, from the Susanoo giant sword blocking QTE to the Mario Party-esque trials of Bardam’s Mettle. The only dungeon I don't think I cared about was the grave shipyard but it was kinda neat as what I think is a FFV callback?
I also really liked most of the areas throughout the middle chunk of the expansion. I'll get to the first and last chunk later, but from the sprawling streets of Kugane to the rolling plains of the Azim Steppe, to the overwhelming Dairyu Moon Gates from the bottom of the Yanxia basin
there was a lot of really nice locales throughout the expansion. You get this weird diving mechanic also which gets shoehorned into a lot of places throughout the expansion, but your first use of this is in this huge ocean map with a bunch of underwater locales throughout.
The main issue regarding Stormblood is that it does have some really slow parts in its plot. It reminds me of Fire Emblem! No but actually, the whole 'we need to gather and unite the oppressed masses to rebel over their imperialist overlords", the arid environments of Gyr Abania, the nomadic tribes... it felt like I was getting a fusion of Thracia, Blazing Blade and Fates Birthright all in one! I mean, if you squint, Yotsuyu is basically like Aversa. I’m not crazy. Regardless, I did enjoy the new rotation of the cast for this expansion, as I appreciated the return of Alisaie into the main lineup for this expansion and in always happy whenever Raubahn is present. On the other hand, Lyse is so milquetoast. I had heard whining and complaining about some of the characters in this being really rought and while I don't think its all that bad -sometimes you like a toxic bitch, who doesn't?- but Lyse really is just way more pushed than she really needs to be. To give her some credit, she's mostly just mid, but she's got so little sauce for who's supposed to be the central character for this expansion. I don't know, I was kind of waiting for her to commit some atrocity- hell if she did do that at least she'd be somewhat more interesting. Nearing the end of the expansion I was wondering if she was gonna do something into post-Stormblood, but nah she ends up leaving the Scions to help rebuild Ala Mhigo.
The two main villains this time around are really fun though, I was really shocked when I heard people were on the fence with Zenos. I guess I can kinda understand with how simple his motives are, but Zenos is so delightfully hammy I can't help but love whenever he's on screen. Hell, if I had one problem with Zenos it'd be that he didn't have enough screentime, he shows up every now and then but it's divvied up between the two main villains, who already take a bit of a break for a 1/3rd of the expansion.
I did wanna get cocky this expansion and see if I could manage two jobs at the same time throughout the expansion but it got to the point where I was underlevelled for pretty simple missions so I decided to hang up the MNK clothes and go full time as a Dark Knight. This felt like a fine decision to me, although I was still left grumbling to myself that I wish levelling was significantly easier in general.
Dark Knight continues to be probably one of the more interesting classes on the docket, continuing the Sidurgu and Rielle sidequest with a new addition in Myste- a young boy who’s stolen a portion of your aether for the purpose harnessing it and of finding some closure for those that have died. The end of this questline was really cool so I'm excited to see what the next expansions have in store, since they brought the writer for the DRK questline onto shadowbringers.
I did decide to try a bit of Samurai as well, considering its one of the new additions in this expansion. It's a little overwhelming at first as its a class that starts out at level 50, using a lot of skills that weave in and out of similar combos. Once I got the hang of it though it felt...okay. I'll probably load into leveling for it every now and then but don't think I'll be wanting it to become a mainstay in my arsenal. Part of me wanted to get back into MNK-ing after a small break throughout the post-HW questline, however with how bad DPS wait times are and how same-y MNK can get I just wasn't feeling up to switching over to that job to level it up.
I had planned an entire rant in my Baldurs Gate review where I wanted to talk about how much I wish Monk was a cooler class but I figured I'd cut that out since it was already a lengthy review, so I'll just graft it into here- man I wish Monk was so much cooler (BG3's version of monks are fine, they're just weird and require a bit of tooling- it just took me 9 levels to get an ability I thought was cool enough). Part of that desire to rant was predicated on going through MNK in FF14 around the same time, though. I always liked classes and weapons that utilized martial arts or bare-handed fighting in their gameplan. It's a unique way of handling the traditional swords and magic (or guns, Fallout has unarmed skills too) you come to find in these types of games by kind of tossing both out the window. No swords, just your bare strength- no magic, but the Ki in your soul. But in reality, what you get is a really boring questline and some okay feeling combat.
It did kinda worry me that Dark Knight was considered the best job sidequest by a wide margin when looking into it- mostly because I wasn't sure if this meant there'd be this wide gap in quality between that and the rest of the jobs. Not sure how consistent of a given that is just yet, but as it stands for Monk, I never really wanted to know what the Monk dude was up to or what's up with the rivalling tribes or whatever.
Also while I do like the new mechanics introduced for Monk in Stormblood, there was a part of me that just wants Monks to have a more interesting energy to them- Lyse being the closest thing to a Monk in the main cast is maybe the worst example you could produce. I dug the pugilist storyline enough, and at first I kinda understood what the ARR Monk arc was going for- I just wish it went more into a spiritual or a more personal direction.
Or you could just make your martial artist class storyline just be Kengan Ashura, that'd be sick. I don't care how involved and bizarre it'd be make the Monk storyline turn into a damn tournament arc with corrupt-business-conspiracy-superhuman-experimenting-nonsense and lemme learn moves that look like they'd break my bones just as much as they break my opponents'. They should give me a suplex like Sabin's- it doesn't need to take the enemy model off screen or anything- but I'd like some allusion that my Monk could just be like Sabin. Some Monk combos should almost look like Bogartian power geysers- Monk abilties that almost feel as good as God Hand roulette attacks- maybe even just give me a BM 'Taunt' ability like im Kiryu.
Hell, give me Asura's 6 arms- why not!
I don't literally need Star Platinum behind my back, but if I had an attack where the animation were my PC holding a stance and an outburst of flying fists came from the side, creating an illusion that I'm just rapidly firing blows from nowhere, I'd think "Monks're really cool!"- instead its some neat acrobatics and whatnot but, not really what I had in mind. You get some neat supermoves in the new 'Master Gauge’ mechanic in Stormblood, it just requires a lot more I guess I wouldn't mind so much but I do like a lot of the Monks that appear in the standard FF games up to the point that I've played. Sabin, Tifa, Yang- hell I think the FFT Monks have more carnal moves early on- they get a damn Ki blast! (Looking over this before I post the review, forgot to mention how much I liked Matthew's playstyle in the most recent XB3 expansion. You can make non-action brawlers feel good!!)
I just wish Monks had a lot more going for them is all. It feels like the class should be flashier and more 'unga' -and maybe by the endgame of FF14 it gets neater moves, I don't know- but I was getting really bored playing Monk by this point (also Baldurs Gate 3s' monk up until Level 9), in terms of questline, moveset and . I could go further into how even non-action game move animations can go a long way, however I started talking about Pokemon and I felt like I should save that for later.
Sorry for the tangent I needed some outlet in which to spew this out, its been stuck in my head for a few weeks.
For what its worth I think this isn't a huge step down from Heavensward, and its just about as good on a lot of fronts, its just sandwiched between an incredibly slow beginning and parts of the end of the scenario. Much of what lies in between I think is a lot neater but anytime you have to traverse back to the Gry Abania map, it always feels a lot more monotonous of a task getting much of anything done. Glad that it's getting added along with HW in being free for new players, as I think this being the first paid content users had to go through for a while there might have been a bit of a mean joke.
(Finished on October 5th)
(Note half of this review is just me ranting about Monks off the playstyle of two games I just so happened to be playing at the same time feel free to skip that)
Post-Heavensward
I forgot if I already brought this up.
Anyway, what if Estinien went joker mode. Pretty cool follow up to the events of Heavensward, although these kind of quests do kinda make me think "some of this feels like it shoulda been in the main expansion?" but I understand why this is the case, I guess.
Like post-ARR there's some rando missions laid throughout that are supposed to be like "hey! here's the stuff that's leaning into Stormblood get excited!" but it still felt very weird leading up to it. I never really know how to judge these quests/patches as they mostly act as a medley of prepping for the next expansion, of course but then it flip flops to wrapping up a lot of loose ends from the prior expansion. (also this expansion took a bit longer than the other two so much of this honestly left my brain).
STORMBLOOD (Proper)
Leading up to this expansion, I had heard all sorts of opinions regarding this section of FF14. I wasn't entirely sure how to tackle it at first other than to have an open mind and just go through the motions as I went from quest to quest. While I think I understand the hangups a lot of other people had with Stormblood, I still enjoyed it most of the way through. It just has a few sections of GLACIAL pacing, and some really rough character writing depending on where you're coming in from. It's a divisive expansion, but overall I enjoyed it, if only a couple of steps behind Heavensward.
I think one of the more standout points about Stormblood is just how damn good the instances are in this expansion. Heavensward was definitely a step above A Realm Reborn in terms of scenario and the required dungeons, but Stormblood has maybe 1 or 2 dungeons that feel 'mid'. I really enjoyed just about every dungeon or trial that the expansion had, from the Susanoo giant sword blocking QTE to the Mario Party-esque trials of Bardam’s Mettle. The only dungeon I don't think I cared about was the grave shipyard but it was kinda neat as what I think is a FFV callback?
I also really liked most of the areas throughout the middle chunk of the expansion. I'll get to the first and last chunk later, but from the sprawling streets of Kugane to the rolling plains of the Azim Steppe, to the overwhelming Dairyu Moon Gates from the bottom of the Yanxia basin
there was a lot of really nice locales throughout the expansion. You get this weird diving mechanic also which gets shoehorned into a lot of places throughout the expansion, but your first use of this is in this huge ocean map with a bunch of underwater locales throughout.
The main issue regarding Stormblood is that it does have some really slow parts in its plot. It reminds me of Fire Emblem! No but actually, the whole 'we need to gather and unite the oppressed masses to rebel over their imperialist overlords", the arid environments of Gyr Abania, the nomadic tribes... it felt like I was getting a fusion of Thracia, Blazing Blade and Fates Birthright all in one! I mean, if you squint, Yotsuyu is basically like Aversa. I’m not crazy. Regardless, I did enjoy the new rotation of the cast for this expansion, as I appreciated the return of Alisaie into the main lineup for this expansion and in always happy whenever Raubahn is present. On the other hand, Lyse is so milquetoast. I had heard whining and complaining about some of the characters in this being really rought and while I don't think its all that bad -sometimes you like a toxic bitch, who doesn't?- but Lyse really is just way more pushed than she really needs to be. To give her some credit, she's mostly just mid, but she's got so little sauce for who's supposed to be the central character for this expansion. I don't know, I was kind of waiting for her to commit some atrocity- hell if she did do that at least she'd be somewhat more interesting. Nearing the end of the expansion I was wondering if she was gonna do something into post-Stormblood, but nah she ends up leaving the Scions to help rebuild Ala Mhigo.
The two main villains this time around are really fun though, I was really shocked when I heard people were on the fence with Zenos. I guess I can kinda understand with how simple his motives are, but Zenos is so delightfully hammy I can't help but love whenever he's on screen. Hell, if I had one problem with Zenos it'd be that he didn't have enough screentime, he shows up every now and then but it's divvied up between the two main villains, who already take a bit of a break for a 1/3rd of the expansion.
I did wanna get cocky this expansion and see if I could manage two jobs at the same time throughout the expansion but it got to the point where I was underlevelled for pretty simple missions so I decided to hang up the MNK clothes and go full time as a Dark Knight. This felt like a fine decision to me, although I was still left grumbling to myself that I wish levelling was significantly easier in general.
Dark Knight continues to be probably one of the more interesting classes on the docket, continuing the Sidurgu and Rielle sidequest with a new addition in Myste- a young boy who’s stolen a portion of your aether for the purpose harnessing it and of finding some closure for those that have died. The end of this questline was really cool so I'm excited to see what the next expansions have in store, since they brought the writer for the DRK questline onto shadowbringers.
I did decide to try a bit of Samurai as well, considering its one of the new additions in this expansion. It's a little overwhelming at first as its a class that starts out at level 50, using a lot of skills that weave in and out of similar combos. Once I got the hang of it though it felt...okay. I'll probably load into leveling for it every now and then but don't think I'll be wanting it to become a mainstay in my arsenal. Part of me wanted to get back into MNK-ing after a small break throughout the post-HW questline, however with how bad DPS wait times are and how same-y MNK can get I just wasn't feeling up to switching over to that job to level it up.
I had planned an entire rant in my Baldurs Gate review where I wanted to talk about how much I wish Monk was a cooler class but I figured I'd cut that out since it was already a lengthy review, so I'll just graft it into here- man I wish Monk was so much cooler (BG3's version of monks are fine, they're just weird and require a bit of tooling- it just took me 9 levels to get an ability I thought was cool enough). Part of that desire to rant was predicated on going through MNK in FF14 around the same time, though. I always liked classes and weapons that utilized martial arts or bare-handed fighting in their gameplan. It's a unique way of handling the traditional swords and magic (or guns, Fallout has unarmed skills too) you come to find in these types of games by kind of tossing both out the window. No swords, just your bare strength- no magic, but the Ki in your soul. But in reality, what you get is a really boring questline and some okay feeling combat.
It did kinda worry me that Dark Knight was considered the best job sidequest by a wide margin when looking into it- mostly because I wasn't sure if this meant there'd be this wide gap in quality between that and the rest of the jobs. Not sure how consistent of a given that is just yet, but as it stands for Monk, I never really wanted to know what the Monk dude was up to or what's up with the rivalling tribes or whatever.
Also while I do like the new mechanics introduced for Monk in Stormblood, there was a part of me that just wants Monks to have a more interesting energy to them- Lyse being the closest thing to a Monk in the main cast is maybe the worst example you could produce. I dug the pugilist storyline enough, and at first I kinda understood what the ARR Monk arc was going for- I just wish it went more into a spiritual or a more personal direction.
Or you could just make your martial artist class storyline just be Kengan Ashura, that'd be sick. I don't care how involved and bizarre it'd be make the Monk storyline turn into a damn tournament arc with corrupt-business-conspiracy-superhuman-experimenting-nonsense and lemme learn moves that look like they'd break my bones just as much as they break my opponents'. They should give me a suplex like Sabin's- it doesn't need to take the enemy model off screen or anything- but I'd like some allusion that my Monk could just be like Sabin. Some Monk combos should almost look like Bogartian power geysers- Monk abilties that almost feel as good as God Hand roulette attacks- maybe even just give me a BM 'Taunt' ability like im Kiryu.
Hell, give me Asura's 6 arms- why not!
I don't literally need Star Platinum behind my back, but if I had an attack where the animation were my PC holding a stance and an outburst of flying fists came from the side, creating an illusion that I'm just rapidly firing blows from nowhere, I'd think "Monks're really cool!"- instead its some neat acrobatics and whatnot but, not really what I had in mind. You get some neat supermoves in the new 'Master Gauge’ mechanic in Stormblood, it just requires a lot more I guess I wouldn't mind so much but I do like a lot of the Monks that appear in the standard FF games up to the point that I've played. Sabin, Tifa, Yang- hell I think the FFT Monks have more carnal moves early on- they get a damn Ki blast! (Looking over this before I post the review, forgot to mention how much I liked Matthew's playstyle in the most recent XB3 expansion. You can make non-action brawlers feel good!!)
I just wish Monks had a lot more going for them is all. It feels like the class should be flashier and more 'unga' -and maybe by the endgame of FF14 it gets neater moves, I don't know- but I was getting really bored playing Monk by this point (also Baldurs Gate 3s' monk up until Level 9), in terms of questline, moveset and . I could go further into how even non-action game move animations can go a long way, however I started talking about Pokemon and I felt like I should save that for later.
Sorry for the tangent I needed some outlet in which to spew this out, its been stuck in my head for a few weeks.
For what its worth I think this isn't a huge step down from Heavensward, and its just about as good on a lot of fronts, its just sandwiched between an incredibly slow beginning and parts of the end of the scenario. Much of what lies in between I think is a lot neater but anytime you have to traverse back to the Gry Abania map, it always feels a lot more monotonous of a task getting much of anything done. Glad that it's getting added along with HW in being free for new players, as I think this being the first paid content users had to go through for a while there might have been a bit of a mean joke.