A coop QTE video game that actually wants to be a 5 hour long movie.

The cooperation aspect is engaging at first, but it becomes uninteresting too quick. The story is at times exciting and dramatic, but it drags on for too long for a predictable twist and dull ending. The optional interactions throughout the game, the inane dialogues and the minigames, manage to keep it somewhat more interesting.

On a more positive note, it has some surprisingly good graphics, camera work and voice acting, considering how it was made by a brand new studio composed by developers with little experience. And I guess I also need to compliment the controls of the third person shooting segment, which are... well, they're not good, but they're also not terrible as I initially expected.

After literally hundreds of hours of gameplay and literally hundreds of mandatory quests, I reached the critically acclaimed ShB expansion. And it's... definitely better than the previous expansions, but I feel it was way too overrated. Too many people selling it as "one of the best FF's, even among the single player titles", which is a major exaggeration.

For starters, ShB isn't some kind of mechanical or narrative revolution. In a lot of ways it sticks with the old formula of HW, much like SB did. Ok, then, what did ShB do right? In 3 words: world, presentation and closure.

This expansion pack is set in a completely new region, which, unlike Gyr Abania and the Far East, allowed them to tell stories without having to worry about the constraints of a previously stablished lore. All the player knows is that it exists, that it's in a way linked to Eorzea, and that it was almost destroyed by the Ascians if not for the sacrifice of a group of characters. Anything else is fair game. Hence, the world.

ShB does a better job than previous expac's in showing the current decadent state of the world (Kholusia, basically) and the dangers that the sin eaters present to the population (remember a certain transformation scene right at the beginning of the expac?). Fight scenes, through a mix of good art style, well edited cutscenes, fantastic soundtrack and gameplay balance (no power creep here, since, y'know, it's the most current content), all feel more creative, more dangerous, and more rewarding upon victory. Hence, the presentation.

Much like the previous expansion packs (and unlike the base game), the story gives a clear objective and sticks with it: to rid the world from the sin eaters and prevent the next umbral calamity. As the game progresses, the player becomes aware of events that explain why so many conflicts, old and new, have transpired over the course of history. A lot of plot elements that were foreshadowed since ARR and throughout the expac's are finally elaborated, and the ensuing battles end this particular chapter that has been worked on for literally years of content updates since patch 2.0. Hence, the closure.

So yeah, ShB does a lot right compared to previous expac's or the base game. But I won't kid myself thinking that a plot about a fat egotistical manchild leading a decadent life is in any way deep. That a story about the main character being the only one capable of fighting the big bad monsters without becoming corruped is really that different than what the player has been doing since ARR. That one of the main antagonists being almost undefeatable and showing up in the most inconvenient times (up until he was defeated just like an average enemy) made for an interesting plot development. That having characters die and come back to life is in any way good for a story narrative. That having the story stretched through hundreds of quests makes it more engaging.

There's more I could say, but these walls of text are getting tiresome. I'm done.

My hot take for SB is that the main story would've been much better received if they had forgotten this whole "fight on two fronts" nonsense and focused their efforts on either Gyr Abania or the Far East exclusively, instead of spreading it out on two different regions (that are very far away from each other).

While I agree with the general sentiment that SB is inferior to HW, plot-wise, I'm also baffled how the game community worships Yotsuyu and Zenos. Two boring characters that somehow get a pass because "she has a tragic backstory" and uh... checks notes ...because "he has a lotta junk in the trunk"? Anyway, I'm almost ok with Yotsuyu, but I absolutely hate Zenos.

After HW it seems the devs found a sweet spot for content delivery, so mechanically SB feels more of the same. This is slightly improved by having a somewhat more challenging content, since SB is a bit closer to the current power cap than ARR and HW.

One aspect that SB improved significantly were the raids. The Omega raids have a silly plot about a thing that only briefly shows up during post-HW, but to balance that, the raid is FILLED with FFV and FFVI fanservice. The Ivalice raids, as the name suggests, is chock-full with FFXII and FFT references. The bosses, soundtrack, and even the gear aesthetics, they did not fail to bring a smile to the jaded FFXIV player that I am.

Despite greatly enjoying the new raid series, overall I felt very apathetic towards this expansion pack.