I cannot believe that this is the one people have said is the "worst expansion" for years while saying how amazing Heavensward is. Heavensward isn't bad but I feel like people who say this don't remember how fucking badly paced that expansion is while saying this one has tons of filler. I played through both back to back in the span of 2 months so Heavensward and Stormblood are fresh in my mind.

They are structured the exact same but at least in Stormblood it has the narrative context of "we have to convince these oppressed, defensive people who don't want anything to do with us to join our rebellion war effort." So spending your time in the Ruby Sea or The Azimm Steppe don't feel as pointless even if their stories are easily the weakest part. In Heavensward the interesting main story gets completely sidetracked to spend hours on moogle mountain to help them find their sandwich they left on a rock a few miles away and other stupid bullshit like that. While the cataclysm is about to happen. Sorry Estinien, Aymric and everyone else in the ishgard I gotta go fuck around with goblins for 8 hours I can't possibly go fight nidhogg or talk to hysvelgr the moogles NEED ME.

Stormbloods biggest pace breaker is when Krile gets captured and it seems like we are going to save her but then you have to go fight the snake people's primal for some reason. Thankfully this only take 30 minutes but still very odd that they keep strcuturing their stories like this. I wish they would stop its very annoying. But seeing how ff16 does the same thing i guess i should just accept this is their writing style and that the next 3 expansions will be like that too

Neon White is a weird love letter to the edgy anime aesthetics and writing of the 00's with frankly incredible level design and gameplay. I've seen a lot of people taking issue with the writing, which I get-- but I personally enjoyed it a lot.

The word "cringe" isn't exactly right for what's going on here, it's more like "weeb shit" [affectionate]. Violet (the game's most annoying character), for example acts like a violence obsessed yandere. And, well, she is. Fortunately she's got more going on, but her dialogue can be pretty irritating. Everyone else is fine though.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure your enjoyment of Neon White's story will depend on how much you enjoy that 00's anime styling. It did it for me but probably isn't for everyone.

10/10 perfect game imo