A step back in my opinion. The story feels like they tried cramming two expansion worth of story into one leading to both feeling half baked. I specially hated how much of the story was focusing solely on lyse and how much our main character felt like a side character. A large chunk of the story is also just going to a group of people, asking for help, getting told no, and going to the next set of people to ask for help. Zenos as a villain didn't really grab until the last encounter with him, but by then it felt too late. Yotsuyu is good though. The patch storyline is much better overall and saves it for me.

On the gameplay front, however, Stormblood felt like a big leap in quality, maybe its because characters feel more complete at level 70 or the encounter design got better but it just felt more fun to play.