(Finished on November 8th. Funny how the biggest gap between beating expansions so far has been Stormblood)
POST-STORMBLOOD
Earnestly a bit more interesting than the proper Stormblood package, although extremely back and forth in its mission structure. Wasn't a big fan of the amount of times you have to go back to the Doman Enclave, a place I don't think is on the maps? I don't know why a lot of locations in FF14 are like this. At least you can go through the teleport menu to quick travel there but I primarily go through the map to fast travel.
Maybe its a bit of a cop out to have certain characters just resurrected from their supposed death in the main expansion but I thought their presence here was still pretty enjoyable, and one of said characters’ leads into what occurs later in Endwalker from what I’m gathering at the moment so it makes sense.
4.3 onward is when the bar gets raised, a lot of great quests, a fun trial and one of the first main quests putting you in the shoes of another character- Alphinaud. These duties are really weird at first- swapping out your moveset for a much smaller preset that relates to what these characters’ classes are vaguely, while giving you enough resources to not outright perish. These pop up frequently later on in ShB and I think they improve upon your options a bit over time because controlling Alphinaud at first was very weird. Maybe its because I never played an outright caster? Idk.
Shadowbringers
After all this time, finally- the big one. While Final Fantasy 14 had certainly been met with critical acclaim before this point, it was never quite as...explosive as when Shadowbringers was coming out. Personally this is when I started paying attention, and kept a better mental note about character names', plot beats, general thematics, etc. whenever passing discourse. Nothing too specific, but it definitely helped plant the seeds of intrigue in my head.
I'll want to let some of this digest as I'm going through Endwalker- however this is by and far the best expansion thus far in the game. Not infallible, but way more consistent and focused on its cast and paying off on the more ‘lore’ oriented matters of Eorzea.
ARR obviously feels like a cleaning of the slate and a proof of concept as to how a Final Fantasy MMO after XI should have looked, while setting up ideas for later storylines.
Heavensward branches off into ideas that feel a bit more grounded into the world of Eorzea- looking back on it felt a tad weird as a sequel to ARR but it definitely felt more like a story that wanted to be told- more tangible than what ARR's was promising.
Stormblood recenters the focus on the empire as the main conflict and bolsters them with way more interesting figureheads, although much of it still feels like 'Lyse's' character arc, so your mileage varies with how much you care about her struggle in particular.
What I'm trying to summarize is that the first two expansions- while continuing the main storyline in a meaningful manner and branching into other nations of Eorzea- do feel somewhat distant from A Realm Reborn in their arcs. Much of what ARR sets up will pop up from time to time throughout the last two expansions but it's somewhat hard to keep track of where exactly these lines lead at first. Maybe it’s just because I’m downing the MSQ all at once and missed out on like, a decade’s worth of discourse?
Basically, by the time I was finished with Stormblood I was eager to understand exactly what made Shadowbringers so stand-out, as the other two expansions felt pretty natural in their improvements on a mostly technical and intrigue standpoint. It didn’t take too long -hell, it starts up around the end of the post-Stormblood patches- to see where Shadowbringers deviates as it felt less like an expansion on an MMO and more like the usual JRPG. I finally had a ‘party’, I was working alongside.
It did always bother me that there were a lot of neat characters within The Scions, but typically one or three of these Scions are out of the expansion or frequently dips out of the story. HW and SB have their own kind of JRPG party but it’s usually clear one of the characters present is primarily just for this part of the story, or has to go through their own business before meeting back with our WoL (Estinien shaped description here). In Shadowbringers, its our WoL, all of the scions (bar Lyse) , a secret guest, and a crystal man band together throughout the MSQ and I’m incredibly happy this was finally the case. A lot of the scions finally get their chance to grow and develop from the events that have taken place without much interruption from the expansions’ goals. Like, yeah Thancred shows up in Stormblood and you do a duty where he helps sneak you into Ala Mhigo to save Krile- that's important. But here it’s nice to have moments where we finally get some conversation and back-and-forths between these characters that have been putting in all this effort and grief over, now, multiple worlds. It also helps that now I find the entire cast to be at least pretty good, no Lyse exceptions or characters that seem like they’ll just dip once I end the expansion- I feel like I have a reliable party. Much of the interaction between you and a certain ‘other’ warrior that appears before you, is also fantastic. The theme of survivors’ guilt/ the inability to move on paint themselves wide throughout Shadowbringers.
What’s also great is that the expansion does divide them up- this time by areas in the new “world” of Novrandt. Here’s where the ‘lore’ part of Final Fantasy final hooks me, in particular. Previously, there were already seeds of intrigue here and there, but as I’m mostly going off MSQ it's mostly dashing by certain lore drops and ideas. Here’s when it starts forcing you to get it, no longer are we just dancing around certain ideas, we gotta tackle what’s going on. Novrandt perfectly showcases this as it’s a new world with a new set of rules you have to go through. The races and creatures are called different things, the crystals are differently shaped, there’s a strange ‘void’ surrounding the entire area…the lands of Novrandt are by far some of my favorites in the game. Because of the manner of Novrandt each place has a new, unknown flavor to it while obviously parallelling many of the areas found previously in Eorzea. Each place feels like a weird or, at the very least, more interesting take on the main three hubs from ARR while still maintaining their own identity and core issues. Even the drab and dry Amh Araeng (probably my least favorite area here) manages to have shades of intrigue throughout with its tie to the Flood and the plotline involving those contaminated by the light. The Crystarium also makes for a strong hub centered between each of the areas in Novrandt- dunno if its my favorite thus far but its a warm welcome from Stormbloods’ lack of a clear hub (I guess its Kugane but I didn't feel like we stayed that long there…). Hell even when I thought I was near done with Shadowbringers, it managed to reveal one last location that swept me away in its overwhelming presence.
Complimenting many of the locations throughout Shadowbringers are the instances and trials that sprinkle throughout the adventure. From the starting routes of Holminster Switch under attack from sin eaters to the triumphant climb up Mt. Gulg, many of the dungeons this time around up the ante and there isn't really a weak one in the line up. This is also the ‘formal’ introduction to the trust system- where you can bring along your Scion pals to act as replacements for real people. They’ll also talk from time to time, mostly just natural dialogue, but sometimes commenting on something relating to whichever character you’ve brought in (e.g. Alisaie recognizing a mini boss in one dungeon and momentarily turning dour after defeating it). The trials themselves are pretty good as well, although fairly top heavy all things considered. From expansion to expansion there’s only a few of these, with the post patches adding one or two more to the MSQ but here I was near cap before they gave the second of generally three. It's not really a big deal, but I was wondering when the next big full party fight would be after about half the expansion. Thankfully all of these are also slam dunks, even the “”least plot heavy”” one, Titania, is an incredibly fun romp.
Big ups on the soundtrack this time around too, the composition crew firing on all cylinders this time around. I started enjoying the overworld music. Prior locations sure I thought the music was fine and I’d probably enjoy it going back, but the music in Shadowbringers felt like it was more actively striking interesting chords or taking me off guard. Obviously there’s more rock and electric guitar this time around but even places like Amh Araeng chooses to go with a way more trip-hop(? electronic genres allude me) vibe rather than something more akin to the series’ sweeping orchestra. All of the boss themes this time around are also a big thumbs up.
Lastly, man… Emet Selch. I won’t go too heavy on the details but this was one of the few characters I had always heard about but had very little clarity as to what exactly he was outside of an antagonist. Between him, Zenos and Yotsuyu the cast of main antagonists has gone up drastically. Main thing I’ll say that separates him from the prior two villains is how often he appears. He’s not inactive or even (that) dishonest presence in the expansion, he’s constantly popping up to check in on your party. Again, not wanting to go too far into detail but I enjoy that this ‘type’ of villain is as active as he is in your quest as I feel like these kind of ‘wandering, undying, apathetic yet all powerful beings’ tend to save themselves for the end yet here he’s actively trying to dissuade our party and informing us about his stance- he’s super interesting as a foil.
Shadowbringers' finally feels like the payoff to a lot of what prior expansions have been building toward, which is a funny thing to say given that it feels so distant from the actual conflict on Hydaelyn. I don’t think its my favorite FF experience so far but it could slowly crawl its way upward. There’s still some stretches of downtime that I felt coulda been cut and maybe certain plot beats are pretty easy to guess, as I did pretty often throughout but I really can’t think of a lot of negatives to my time in Shadowbringers. It went by way too fast? Also man! Final Fantasy 14 REALLY likes Dark Knight! I dunno maybe a lot of this stuff hits a lot more having mained DRK; I cannot see myself getting to this point as Monk, lmao (You get a fucking shadow clone at DRK level 80??? Cmon). I hear the patches after this aren’t nearly as strong but I’m almost to the end, at least. I did not earnestly expect to go through this at the start of the year but…damn! Almost to Endwalker…
Oh right, that trailer rules- loved seeing in with a new context but what the fuck were they on spoiling that much stuff lmao.
POST-STORMBLOOD
Earnestly a bit more interesting than the proper Stormblood package, although extremely back and forth in its mission structure. Wasn't a big fan of the amount of times you have to go back to the Doman Enclave, a place I don't think is on the maps? I don't know why a lot of locations in FF14 are like this. At least you can go through the teleport menu to quick travel there but I primarily go through the map to fast travel.
Maybe its a bit of a cop out to have certain characters just resurrected from their supposed death in the main expansion but I thought their presence here was still pretty enjoyable, and one of said characters’ leads into what occurs later in Endwalker from what I’m gathering at the moment so it makes sense.
4.3 onward is when the bar gets raised, a lot of great quests, a fun trial and one of the first main quests putting you in the shoes of another character- Alphinaud. These duties are really weird at first- swapping out your moveset for a much smaller preset that relates to what these characters’ classes are vaguely, while giving you enough resources to not outright perish. These pop up frequently later on in ShB and I think they improve upon your options a bit over time because controlling Alphinaud at first was very weird. Maybe its because I never played an outright caster? Idk.
Shadowbringers
After all this time, finally- the big one. While Final Fantasy 14 had certainly been met with critical acclaim before this point, it was never quite as...explosive as when Shadowbringers was coming out. Personally this is when I started paying attention, and kept a better mental note about character names', plot beats, general thematics, etc. whenever passing discourse. Nothing too specific, but it definitely helped plant the seeds of intrigue in my head.
I'll want to let some of this digest as I'm going through Endwalker- however this is by and far the best expansion thus far in the game. Not infallible, but way more consistent and focused on its cast and paying off on the more ‘lore’ oriented matters of Eorzea.
ARR obviously feels like a cleaning of the slate and a proof of concept as to how a Final Fantasy MMO after XI should have looked, while setting up ideas for later storylines.
Heavensward branches off into ideas that feel a bit more grounded into the world of Eorzea- looking back on it felt a tad weird as a sequel to ARR but it definitely felt more like a story that wanted to be told- more tangible than what ARR's was promising.
Stormblood recenters the focus on the empire as the main conflict and bolsters them with way more interesting figureheads, although much of it still feels like 'Lyse's' character arc, so your mileage varies with how much you care about her struggle in particular.
What I'm trying to summarize is that the first two expansions- while continuing the main storyline in a meaningful manner and branching into other nations of Eorzea- do feel somewhat distant from A Realm Reborn in their arcs. Much of what ARR sets up will pop up from time to time throughout the last two expansions but it's somewhat hard to keep track of where exactly these lines lead at first. Maybe it’s just because I’m downing the MSQ all at once and missed out on like, a decade’s worth of discourse?
Basically, by the time I was finished with Stormblood I was eager to understand exactly what made Shadowbringers so stand-out, as the other two expansions felt pretty natural in their improvements on a mostly technical and intrigue standpoint. It didn’t take too long -hell, it starts up around the end of the post-Stormblood patches- to see where Shadowbringers deviates as it felt less like an expansion on an MMO and more like the usual JRPG. I finally had a ‘party’, I was working alongside.
It did always bother me that there were a lot of neat characters within The Scions, but typically one or three of these Scions are out of the expansion or frequently dips out of the story. HW and SB have their own kind of JRPG party but it’s usually clear one of the characters present is primarily just for this part of the story, or has to go through their own business before meeting back with our WoL (Estinien shaped description here). In Shadowbringers, its our WoL, all of the scions (bar Lyse) , a secret guest, and a crystal man band together throughout the MSQ and I’m incredibly happy this was finally the case. A lot of the scions finally get their chance to grow and develop from the events that have taken place without much interruption from the expansions’ goals. Like, yeah Thancred shows up in Stormblood and you do a duty where he helps sneak you into Ala Mhigo to save Krile- that's important. But here it’s nice to have moments where we finally get some conversation and back-and-forths between these characters that have been putting in all this effort and grief over, now, multiple worlds. It also helps that now I find the entire cast to be at least pretty good, no Lyse exceptions or characters that seem like they’ll just dip once I end the expansion- I feel like I have a reliable party. Much of the interaction between you and a certain ‘other’ warrior that appears before you, is also fantastic. The theme of survivors’ guilt/ the inability to move on paint themselves wide throughout Shadowbringers.
What’s also great is that the expansion does divide them up- this time by areas in the new “world” of Novrandt. Here’s where the ‘lore’ part of Final Fantasy final hooks me, in particular. Previously, there were already seeds of intrigue here and there, but as I’m mostly going off MSQ it's mostly dashing by certain lore drops and ideas. Here’s when it starts forcing you to get it, no longer are we just dancing around certain ideas, we gotta tackle what’s going on. Novrandt perfectly showcases this as it’s a new world with a new set of rules you have to go through. The races and creatures are called different things, the crystals are differently shaped, there’s a strange ‘void’ surrounding the entire area…the lands of Novrandt are by far some of my favorites in the game. Because of the manner of Novrandt each place has a new, unknown flavor to it while obviously parallelling many of the areas found previously in Eorzea. Each place feels like a weird or, at the very least, more interesting take on the main three hubs from ARR while still maintaining their own identity and core issues. Even the drab and dry Amh Araeng (probably my least favorite area here) manages to have shades of intrigue throughout with its tie to the Flood and the plotline involving those contaminated by the light. The Crystarium also makes for a strong hub centered between each of the areas in Novrandt- dunno if its my favorite thus far but its a warm welcome from Stormbloods’ lack of a clear hub (I guess its Kugane but I didn't feel like we stayed that long there…). Hell even when I thought I was near done with Shadowbringers, it managed to reveal one last location that swept me away in its overwhelming presence.
Complimenting many of the locations throughout Shadowbringers are the instances and trials that sprinkle throughout the adventure. From the starting routes of Holminster Switch under attack from sin eaters to the triumphant climb up Mt. Gulg, many of the dungeons this time around up the ante and there isn't really a weak one in the line up. This is also the ‘formal’ introduction to the trust system- where you can bring along your Scion pals to act as replacements for real people. They’ll also talk from time to time, mostly just natural dialogue, but sometimes commenting on something relating to whichever character you’ve brought in (e.g. Alisaie recognizing a mini boss in one dungeon and momentarily turning dour after defeating it). The trials themselves are pretty good as well, although fairly top heavy all things considered. From expansion to expansion there’s only a few of these, with the post patches adding one or two more to the MSQ but here I was near cap before they gave the second of generally three. It's not really a big deal, but I was wondering when the next big full party fight would be after about half the expansion. Thankfully all of these are also slam dunks, even the “”least plot heavy”” one, Titania, is an incredibly fun romp.
Big ups on the soundtrack this time around too, the composition crew firing on all cylinders this time around. I started enjoying the overworld music. Prior locations sure I thought the music was fine and I’d probably enjoy it going back, but the music in Shadowbringers felt like it was more actively striking interesting chords or taking me off guard. Obviously there’s more rock and electric guitar this time around but even places like Amh Araeng chooses to go with a way more trip-hop(? electronic genres allude me) vibe rather than something more akin to the series’ sweeping orchestra. All of the boss themes this time around are also a big thumbs up.
Lastly, man… Emet Selch. I won’t go too heavy on the details but this was one of the few characters I had always heard about but had very little clarity as to what exactly he was outside of an antagonist. Between him, Zenos and Yotsuyu the cast of main antagonists has gone up drastically. Main thing I’ll say that separates him from the prior two villains is how often he appears. He’s not inactive or even (that) dishonest presence in the expansion, he’s constantly popping up to check in on your party. Again, not wanting to go too far into detail but I enjoy that this ‘type’ of villain is as active as he is in your quest as I feel like these kind of ‘wandering, undying, apathetic yet all powerful beings’ tend to save themselves for the end yet here he’s actively trying to dissuade our party and informing us about his stance- he’s super interesting as a foil.
Shadowbringers' finally feels like the payoff to a lot of what prior expansions have been building toward, which is a funny thing to say given that it feels so distant from the actual conflict on Hydaelyn. I don’t think its my favorite FF experience so far but it could slowly crawl its way upward. There’s still some stretches of downtime that I felt coulda been cut and maybe certain plot beats are pretty easy to guess, as I did pretty often throughout but I really can’t think of a lot of negatives to my time in Shadowbringers. It went by way too fast? Also man! Final Fantasy 14 REALLY likes Dark Knight! I dunno maybe a lot of this stuff hits a lot more having mained DRK; I cannot see myself getting to this point as Monk, lmao (You get a fucking shadow clone at DRK level 80??? Cmon). I hear the patches after this aren’t nearly as strong but I’m almost to the end, at least. I did not earnestly expect to go through this at the start of the year but…damn! Almost to Endwalker…
Oh right, that trailer rules- loved seeing in with a new context but what the fuck were they on spoiling that much stuff lmao.