“It feels like an amusement park in that you are carted around separate points of interest and come out of it feeling entertained, but you don't get any deeper enjoyment out of it.”
- Synthcrow
“When u need to hit a word limit on your essay so u rephrase yourself in 11 different ways”
- UnfathomedForce
“white women ballin in this expansion, if ur a white woman you gotta hop on this is your people”
- Owentypebeat
Synthcrow and UnfathomedForce describe most of my issues with this expansion in their reviews (and Owentypebeat’s review is incredibly funny so I wanted to include it). The story of Stormblood has many good elements.
You’ll experience a great story moment but before you can think about it too much you get dragged off to the next place where, after a dozen or so boring quests that are just walking around and getting exposition for the new place, you get to experience another great story moment, probably with a very similar theme. The difference between having a coherent theme and feeling repetitive is a fine line to walk and Stormblood too frequently leans towards being repetitive.
The hook for this expansion was the liberation of Ala Mhigo. When the first credits roll, you’ll have spent less than half your time actually in Ala Mhigo. I don’t have an issue with the Doma stuff being in this as well, but I feel like it shouldn’t take up as much space as it does.
The patch stories start out being boring enough that I had to force myself to keep playing, but at some point during 4.3 the story picks up and gets much more interesting and by the time the credits rolled a second time I was as invested as during Heavensward again.
The major side content (i.e. optional dungeons, trials, and raids) also don’t really provide any interesting storytelling. The alliance raid story actually was uninteresting enough to have me skipping dialogue. I know that it’s full of references that fans of FFXII and tactics will enjoy, but I have yet to play either of these games and just got overwhelmed with all of these proper nouns. Leaning too much on references to older Final Fantasy games is actually a common problem the storytelling in this expansion has. The normal raids barely have any story, it’s mostly just a “hey remember FFV/VI/I?” thing. The final boss of the MSQ (excluding patches) has basically no connection to anything going on in the story and is just a reference to FFV.
But aside from all of this, the game is actually really great!
The job quests are, with the exception of Dragoon, all at least good, many of them even being great, at least the ones I played (Dark Knight, Bard, Red Mage, andGladiator Paladin)
The new Red Mage job is mechanically incredibly satisfying and also has very pretty animations and particle effects, it’s one of my favourite jobs. The other jobs also all got mechanically much more interesting, with the exception of Bard, which already got as interesting as the other jobs are now during Heavensward and mostly got damage upgrades during this one, and Dragoon, which crossed the line from engaging to overwhelming for me. The Blue Mage job is also incredibly cool, but I have yet to spend much time with it.
The game got a lot more mechanically fun to play in general. As boring as the story of the side content was, it was mechanically excellent, and the dungeon and trial design of this expansion is top notch. In my Heavensward review I said, “The gameplay still isn’t good enough that I’d play this game just for the gameplay, but it’s getting better”. I think it has now gotten good enough.
Eureka is there for everyone who wants to engage with it and everyone else just doesn’t have to bother. It was a bit unfortunate that shortly after I decided to try it out, the 6.2 patch was released so no one else was actually doing Eureka and it’s the sort of content that gets easier and more fun the more people are doing it. Guess I had really bad luck.
I usually close out these reviews with a joke about how the music is obviously good. This time I actually have a bit more to say about the music though.
The music is, once again, incredible. Triumph is by far my favourite piece of “generic boss mucis” so far. However, remember how I said that “The difference between having a coherent theme and feeling repetitive is a fine line to walk and Stormblood too frequently leans towards being repetitive”?
I think this applies to the music as well. The two main leitmotifs (the Rhalger’s Reach and the Storm of Blood one) are a bit too common. At some point the music just starts to blend together a bit. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still good individual pieces of music, but I wouldn’t listen to the album on shuffle.
- Synthcrow
“When u need to hit a word limit on your essay so u rephrase yourself in 11 different ways”
- UnfathomedForce
“white women ballin in this expansion, if ur a white woman you gotta hop on this is your people”
- Owentypebeat
Synthcrow and UnfathomedForce describe most of my issues with this expansion in their reviews (and Owentypebeat’s review is incredibly funny so I wanted to include it). The story of Stormblood has many good elements.
You’ll experience a great story moment but before you can think about it too much you get dragged off to the next place where, after a dozen or so boring quests that are just walking around and getting exposition for the new place, you get to experience another great story moment, probably with a very similar theme. The difference between having a coherent theme and feeling repetitive is a fine line to walk and Stormblood too frequently leans towards being repetitive.
The hook for this expansion was the liberation of Ala Mhigo. When the first credits roll, you’ll have spent less than half your time actually in Ala Mhigo. I don’t have an issue with the Doma stuff being in this as well, but I feel like it shouldn’t take up as much space as it does.
The patch stories start out being boring enough that I had to force myself to keep playing, but at some point during 4.3 the story picks up and gets much more interesting and by the time the credits rolled a second time I was as invested as during Heavensward again.
The major side content (i.e. optional dungeons, trials, and raids) also don’t really provide any interesting storytelling. The alliance raid story actually was uninteresting enough to have me skipping dialogue. I know that it’s full of references that fans of FFXII and tactics will enjoy, but I have yet to play either of these games and just got overwhelmed with all of these proper nouns. Leaning too much on references to older Final Fantasy games is actually a common problem the storytelling in this expansion has. The normal raids barely have any story, it’s mostly just a “hey remember FFV/VI/I?” thing. The final boss of the MSQ (excluding patches) has basically no connection to anything going on in the story and is just a reference to FFV.
But aside from all of this, the game is actually really great!
The job quests are, with the exception of Dragoon, all at least good, many of them even being great, at least the ones I played (Dark Knight, Bard, Red Mage, and
The new Red Mage job is mechanically incredibly satisfying and also has very pretty animations and particle effects, it’s one of my favourite jobs. The other jobs also all got mechanically much more interesting, with the exception of Bard, which already got as interesting as the other jobs are now during Heavensward and mostly got damage upgrades during this one, and Dragoon, which crossed the line from engaging to overwhelming for me. The Blue Mage job is also incredibly cool, but I have yet to spend much time with it.
The game got a lot more mechanically fun to play in general. As boring as the story of the side content was, it was mechanically excellent, and the dungeon and trial design of this expansion is top notch. In my Heavensward review I said, “The gameplay still isn’t good enough that I’d play this game just for the gameplay, but it’s getting better”. I think it has now gotten good enough.
Eureka is there for everyone who wants to engage with it and everyone else just doesn’t have to bother. It was a bit unfortunate that shortly after I decided to try it out, the 6.2 patch was released so no one else was actually doing Eureka and it’s the sort of content that gets easier and more fun the more people are doing it. Guess I had really bad luck.
I usually close out these reviews with a joke about how the music is obviously good. This time I actually have a bit more to say about the music though.
The music is, once again, incredible. Triumph is by far my favourite piece of “generic boss mucis” so far. However, remember how I said that “The difference between having a coherent theme and feeling repetitive is a fine line to walk and Stormblood too frequently leans towards being repetitive”?
I think this applies to the music as well. The two main leitmotifs (the Rhalger’s Reach and the Storm of Blood one) are a bit too common. At some point the music just starts to blend together a bit. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still good individual pieces of music, but I wouldn’t listen to the album on shuffle.