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thatrhen · 5 years

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Shadowbringers, thoughts...

This will likely get rather long winded, so I’ll put it under a cut. This will be all off the dome, so expect it to be a mess and potentially full of holes. (There will be spoilers, obviously)

I went into this expansion without any expectations. That’s not to say I had any expectations going into Heavensward or Stormblood, more that both of those expansions didn’t really give me what I wanted. I was expecting even less this time around, and that might have made things seem better as a result.

The story, this time around, was more enjoyable for me... aside from some glaring issues. I think I’ll touch on those first since they mar an otherwise enjoyable experience (especially in comparison to the last two expansions). Things start out simply enough, but I couldn’t help but feel like the explanations for things we were given, even in the end, were just a little too contrived and formulaic. I’m sure I’m missing some stuff, but given the way the story has gone thus far I’m feeling as though it won’t make much of a difference. The broad strokes are generally well thought out, but the small, more intricate details, tend to get muddled.

I knew who the Exarch was from the moment I saw art of him. I knew it had to be him due to his lineage, ties to the Crystal Tower, and his face, build, and height. He might as well have just shown up as he had before. It’s like when people in movies go undercover and toss on a hat and sunglasses. The other new character, Ryne, was actually pretty great. I have no complaints about her, aside from her manner of dress. She’s like, what, 15-16 max? Also, while on the subject of Ryne; the whole time she is running about as Minfillia she’s got blonde hair and glowing blue eyes. This reads like the whole Super Saiyajin thing. Like, I don’t really need to get into that, because y’all should understand why and how that’s an issue. The other characters were either two dimensional or just plain uninteresting. I could maybe recall them if I looked at them, but otherwise I’m drawing a blank.

The Scions just felt like, well, the Scions. Despite all the time that they have spent on The First, they don’t really seem to have changed much. Yes, a few of them changed Jobs, but they are still the same uninteresting people. Sure, they have their moments where I find myself actually caring... but often times they’d do something stupid, like yeet themselves into the Lifestream for no good reason and brush it off like it was nothing. Typical fare as far as that lot goes. At least I didn’t have to deal with Lyse.

The first big issue was Eulmore. All of it. The whole thing. The whole place couldn’t possibly function in the manner in which it is presented, first and foremost. Then the whole thing where people live in squalor dreaming of a life of servitude for people who blindly follow a clearly evil tyrant. Said Tyrant is, of course, the atypical fat man child villain trope. You know, because of course he has to be fat, you know. Speaking of fat characters, we have one... But she is, for the most part, also a villain. Just because she was willfully ignorant of what was going on and apologized for it doesn’t really make up for the fact that she was, and presumably still is, benefiting from a system that runs on slavery. I’, all for having fat characters, but could they, for once, be out and out good guys? Oh, and let’s not forget the transformation, because when they reach “god hood”, they then become an aesthetically built, fit, dude. If that doesn’t have connotations, what does?

The second big issue is Emmet-Selch (Or, as I liked to call him: Felch). I’m getting really tired of villains being humanized. He has no room to ask for sympathy. He is, by design, a racist zealot bent on mass genocide. He’s literally Space Hitler, and while it’s nice to not hear people drone on and on and on about Zenos for a change... this isn’t better. It’s worse. I’m so glad we got to actually kill this piece of shit. The Ascians have been fucking with us since 1.0 and we haven’t really done jack shit in terms of retaliation until this moment. Maybe now we can finally go fight the Empire too? Like, we’ve had two goals since go; destroy the Garleans and destroy the Ascians. We’ve been doing a piss poor job of both. It’s almost like we are looking for any excuse not to do it at this point. Like, taking both of them out won’t solve all our issues. We’d still have a lot of stuff that could be done, as shown by Heavensward. Like, shit, we haven’t even been to half of the places on the Source.

There were a lot of enjoyable moments, but there were also a lot of moments where I felt like all the momentum the story had built up came to a screeching halt in favor of fetch quests or exposition that didn’t amount to much. I would have much preferred to just been fast tracked through the story, with each leg of the quests keeping me properly geared and leveled (especially leveled) so that I could enjoy the parts in which I was an active participant in a steady stream. That’s not to say that I didn’t like a lot of the story and details that were revealed over the course of 30 some odd hours of play time. But a lot of it either fell flat for me, personally, or directly contradicted things we’ve been told. Things written in the “lore books” that we have, until now, been able to tote as “word of god”. I feel like I know more and, at the same time, less than I did before. It’s like being at square one, despite all that time that’s passed. That sucks a lot of enjoyment out of it for me.

Gameplay has been a bit of mixed bag. Dark Knight feels simplified, but at the same time I now feel like I have way more to do and not enough ways to do it. It’s about how Bard was feeling for me in 4.0; just too much that can be going all at once and any moment not doing something is wasted. It’s exhilarating, but also draining. I haven’t had a chance to really play anything else, but the time I have managed to put into Ninja, Bard, White Mage, Gunbreaker and Samurai has been alright, but definitely not to the level of enjoyment I have with Dark Knight. Maybe that’ll change once I get one of the other Jobs to 80. I feel like Samurai changed the least with Bard and Ninja following just after. White Mage has, seemingly, been pretty ok but I need more time with it.

I enjoyed all the dungeons and I especially enjoyed the Trust system. I would enjoy it even more if it didn’t go tits up at 80... While they were definitely slower than an actual party, I could be at the first boss by the time the queue actually popped. Added bonus; I didn’t have to deal with assholes.

I don’t think I’m going to bother with crafting. I spent so much money and so much time working on Gathering and Crafting throughout both 3.0 and 4.0 with little to no reward. The way in which the systems have been changed for them definitely killed whatever vestige of caring I had left in me. As long as I can repair in combat, I’m good. It’ll be nice to have extra money for once as well.

All in all, I feel like I did back in 2.0. Love and hate, but a good mix of the two. Despite all the bullshit, despite all the issues, despite it all I’m back on board.

#ff14 #ffxiv

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