FF14 after 15 Years of WoW – FFXIV Stormblood
I’d love to know your thoughts on Stormblood,
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I’ve played WoW for over 15 years but given the state of WoW right now and the lack of content, some of my friends convinced me to try FF14. So I’ve been documenting my FF14 first impressions, showing my journey through FF14 and giving my feedback along the way.
Throughout I will be comparing FF14 to WoW and references the differences between the two. Obviously, I do have some bias, but I will try and keep an open mind all the way. This will contain spoilers for Stormblood and anything before. This contains heavy spoilers for major characters especially leading up to Castle Doma and spoilers for the samurai lvl60 quests.
I’d love to know how you feel about 4.0 and especially zenos. It definitely feels like there are a lot of ups and downs throughout Stormblood, so I’d love to know what you all thought!
FF14 First Impressions Playthrough (ARR Complete):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiLzc…
FFXIV First Impressions Playthrough (Heavensward Complete):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtdVd…
0:00 Intro
0:30 More Doma
2:45 Azim Steppe’s Incredible
7:50 I Am Samurai
10:08 Issues With Zenos
12:44 Castle Doma
16:40 Outro and Thoughts after Part 3
source
Also the final boss in Doma castle is a pun. A horrible.. horrible pun. He is green. He has a chainsaw, rockets and a minigun. He says Rip and Tear… He is the Doom Slayer… or in this case.. the Doma Slayer. Yeah… they went there.
I also found Stormblood the weakest of the expansions. It has definitvely its moments and Gotseku taken that bullet was really heartbraking (again). But actually I never realised how dull Zenos is all the time. I was mostly just thinking: rematch. I want a rematch and this time he'll be down, so I totally blended out how repeatative he is there… ^^'
Your issue with Zenos is that you're unaccostumed to lose and see people who is actually stronger than you demonstrating that power. When we meet Gaius, we are stronger than Gaius already. When we fight Daddy Dragon, he is, in fact, weakened. Every single big fight even if it was not in the climax of the story, was doable. Zenos is meant to be stronger, for many many reasons that you still are not aware of, but he is meant to be stronger than you. And he is also meant to represent the Empire. If one of its heads was easily removable by the Warrior of Light, by us, the war against the Empire would have taken place a lot earlier and nothing would have been necessary to prevent its expansion or regain territories. Furthermore, both scenes with Zenos and both defeats against Zenos come from the very simple place of "you're not one man army, he is". He is a Gary Stu, but a well written Gary Stu. It may not resonate with you, mostly I assume, because aesthetically, the guy is pretty anti climatic. Tall, muscular, but ugly and with long hair. Is contradictory to look at much more with the mask and the uniform. But he is also meant to give you that "I don't like him" vibe. That mistrust that your brain may translate into "He is badly written" but he is not. He is the one pulling from the strings of the actual villains of the expansion (making him the true Villain of it but shhhh). It is true that everything regarding the Ala Mighan conquest is hard to connect with. but that's because it is done that way on purpose. You see only Lyse wanting to fight. Maybe Pipin and Raubahn, but Raubahn is actually hesitant till the very end. Which means, that until the very end, there's no real reason for fighting and you are imposing your way of thinking. That's not weak writing, on the contrary. While HW is the war for truth, war for survival, endless war; SB is war for freedom, except warriors are tired of losing. Because that's the thing: the Empire is stronger than the Dragons, simply because they come in with weapons Eorzea (and Othard) are not prepared for. No one in these continents use technology the level of the Garleans. Magic may come in handy, but not everyone possesses sufficient ether to employ magic. And spears, arrows, fists,… they'r enot enough for everyone. So yeah. I do agree it's a weak expansion and that part of the story didn't resonate as hard within me. But it is not badly written. Neither Zenos. In my case, it is more about how close to my country's recent history is that makes me say "Nope." Zenos is pretty much Fr*ncisco Fr*nco, and the lack of patience for regaining power is the people that saw, in my country, how their fathers, brothers, son,… were executed by them and buried in common tombs without a way to properly give them burial.
It probably has been said to death already, the Azim Steppe's storyline was written by Ishikawa Natsuko, the quill of the Twelve that wrote the amazing story in Crystal Tower, Dark Night, the Binding Coils of Bahamut, and she was also the person who wrote the story for Shadowbringers.
The Steppes has, by far, my favorite sidequest in the entire game, and of course it's a quest with the Dotharl. Everything about them is fantastic, including Sadu, the best character in Stormblood.
I'm sure someone else has already said this, but the Steppe (also my favorite part of Stormblood, except for the very end of 4.0) was written by one of the main writers of Shadowbringers. c: So good! The Mol are my favorite tribe, mostly because I love Temulun Khatun.
Personally, I think the main reason I'm not at all interested in the ala mhigo part of the story compared to the domain section is the scenery. Everything in ala mhigo is so bland and brown, I find it hard to be motivated to save a place that's so bereft of anything interesting, especially compared to how vibrant places like kugane, Yanxia and the azim steppes are. I cant tell you what zone I'm in when going through ala mhigo but that's not an issue I have with any area from any other expac. Hard to be motivated from that.
Reiterating what I said last video about Zenos, I definitely think hes the weakest part of SB and it has everything to do with the forced losses. I would've liked those instances a lot more if the fights actually FELT like you were fighting for your life, but zenos is so slow and so predictable in those battles, I found myself wanting him to kill me faster so I could move on with my day. If he was faster, while remaining nonchalant, actually making it feel like the WoL is giving it their all, I don't think it would feel like I'm wasting my time at least.
And yeah, Gosetsu and Yotsuyu were my 2 favourites from SB. I was super sad to see them go. Although I do find it funny in retrospect how Gosetsu held up the entire castle on his own while everyone took their time monologuing how cool he is rather than actually running.
Sadu? you sir, have great taste.
Zenos is a really one dimensional character. I never liked him. And no wonder you enjoyed Steppe so much, it was written by the same person who did the amazing HW parts and ShB ^_^
Fun? fact- One of the tribes of the Steppe is composed entirely of men, and they increase/sustain their numbers by raiding other tribes and abducting the men from there. Furthermore, while it isn't directly stated, it is heavily implied that this tribe traditionally forms homosexual relationships with each other.
Glad you're enjoying the game!
Keep em coming ^^
The Steppe is Ishikawa showing what she can do when she has completely free reign of the story
I voted u to pass the second boss on first try. Made bank on channel points
When I was playing Stormblood, I liked Zenos. There's a lot of mystery beneath him. I think when people ask "Why can't we just beat him?" it doesn't activate their theorycrafting mode like how it was for me.
Imagine. A pureblood Garlean using aether in his attacks. How is it possible?
I absolutely agree with the Zenos part. I did not, and still don't like the character at all. Simply being "unbeatable" is not in itself interesting in any way. Combine that with the guy brooding most of the time like a mute, its not a particularly interesting build up. The generic "I'm bad because I'm bad, mad and bored" label does not help either. His story progression is also very messy.
SPOILER WARNING – He's unbeatable in his vanilla form. Easily beatable in his primal form. And then supposedly unbeatable(?) again in his vanilla form again for Endwalker. And the only explanation is that the lore takes into account the player's "leveling". And that is a poor way of trying to fix the cracks in your lore. How did we get from barely even able to touch the guy to spanking his insanely upgraded a** in just 5 level-ups? If we're going to use that as a reference point, we're going to wipe the floor him with both our eyes closed and our hands tied behind our backs in Endwalker because that is 20 levels further up. No, that is a messy character progression, and trying to explain it away with player level-up is a poor attempt at best.
TLDR – Not only do I NOT think he's one of the better characters, I'd say he's about as interesting as the infamous Cape Westwind fight.
Poor Ala Mhigo… During SB's development they had to cut a good amount of content and that whole storyline and the characters related to it took most of the hits. You can see the bones of a good story but without the meat it's just not very satisfying to play through. The price of splitting the story between 2 settings. Luckily they learned from their mistakes.
I will weigh in on the Zenos thing when you finish Stormblood. I don't want to spoil anything.
Hien is #1 husbando. My favorite character in the whole game.
I think Zenos up to this point can be summarized something such as this:
He's a great, challenging enemy… and a character with no character.
Your view of him likely depends on which you find more interesting.
My favorite Azim Steppe tribes are the Mol, Sadu's tribe, and the silent tribe. Bardam's Mettle is great, but can be VERY tough to heal–trash mobs hit HARD and tanks often have weak gear.
SAM's great, like RDM it shows how much the team has learned about job design. I found the "twist" really obvious, so it didn't do much for me, but the last cutscene was still good. The 60-70 quests are fine, IMO not amazing but definitely not bad.
Doma Castle is good mechanically, but I dislike the music–it sounds uplifting but…you're intentionally destroying one of the last pieces of Doman culture, it should be sad but full of determination. Gosetsu and Yotsuyu going down…hit hard. Everyone felt the gut punch of their loss.
As I said before, Zenos remains controversial. But you won't get any more long, annoying fights with him. And while he will show up more, the stuff about him up to the end of 4.0 is somewhat better–especially because more of the focus goes on Fordola, who is way more interesting. Also! Post-4.0 story gets better, especially the lead-up to 5.0. I promise, once you get into Shadowbringers…all the struggle WILL be worth it. There's a good reason ShB got nearly universal acclaim for its story.
I like stormblood, it's not as epic as heavensward/shadowbringers, but I find the small worldbuilding details really interesting. So many characters with backstory etc – the flatness of zenos felt less of an issue after doing all of the sidequests, some of which progress into quite involved character arcs. Also i found the maps, trials and dungeons very pretty. Also Fordola and Yotsuyu kinda make up for zenos, and do something to make the conflict with garlemald feel more engaging imo
the samurai story is the worst of all classes though, hands down
lol gotta disagree with all your negatives, loved every part of Stormblood
There are actually 50-something different Xaela tribes, each with it's own gimmick! I think it's awesome
funnily enough, your complaint at 11:00 is actually not too far off; the good parts were written by ishikawa (the writer for DRK questline and ShB), and the other half was written by someone else
I agree with you that Stormblood feels like two expansions smooshed into one. As for the Zenos fights, it will get better towards the end when you start to understand his motivation and who he is. They should have done the fights with him differently though.
Stormblood for me went by very quickly but that might be because I was just focusing on MSQ to be able to finish shadowbringers before the next expansion and start my relic weapon. I have mixed feelings about Storblood. I don't dislike zenos but he does creep me out at the end. The story feels like you're just adding to your ever expanding titles. Imagine you're in WW2 and you're basically fighting for every side except the Germans and you just become the warrior of everything. Being now in Shadowbringers I have to say the sluggish moments of Stormblood were totally worth going through because Sdb just brought it to a whole new level. Just power through it, it's gonna be worth it!
The head writer of Azim Steppe MSQ is the same writer of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. That's why Azim Steppe MSQ is really good. Most of the players back then also enjoy Azim Steppe more than any other area in Stormblood whole expansion, even Nadaam is considered the best instance event in whole Stormblood. Yoshi-P acknowledge this feedback and gave her chance to write the main story of Shadowbringers.
You can assume Stormblood like Star Wars: Force Awakens, it lay down a blank strong antagonist in terms of Zenos that any writer could expand later, but for now, he is a one dimensional and boring villain. Stormblood himself already have two other exceptionally written antagonist: Fordola and Yotsuyu. Fordola and Yotsuyu has a different point of view about Garlemald occupation. You will learn about them later, until patch 5.3.
i really like zenos as a character simply bc he's genuinely batshit crazy and there is NO redeeming quality about him LOL
also funfact the expansion was written by two different writers; the whole eastern arc was written by Natsuko Ishikawa who also wrote the crystal tower quest line, dark knight quest line and shadowbringers
Yeah I'm not fond of Zenos either. To me, he's just horrendously boring. Feels like a total lack of personality and character. And what is there is just so one-note I can't bring myself to care. I usually like the battle nut blood knight archetype, but Zenos sucks all the fun out of the trope – like, to me, that archetype doesn't work if they're not also having fun. I've seen other characters who are bored with their life done well, but this combo just makes it a drag.
level 80 samurai quest is pretty great.
The doma section is written by the writer of shadowbringers.
The Azim Steppe part of SB is also my fav. I love the epicness of it all
Edit: I cried when we buried our teacher overlooking the sea :'(
I really liked the scene where you sat with Gosetsu next to Sadu's camp and then he start talking with a dead body, it was kinda emitional.
And the pace with Ala Mhigo will get faster, last stb area being one of my all game favorite almost only thanks to its themes (night one is amazing)
And to finish with, I really recommand you to check the art of Yoshitaka Amano especially about FFXIV (my profile pic is stb illustration made by him)
I struggled to get through Stormblood too. The whole expansion kind of feels like filler content in my opinion.
Although kind of like in ARR, you appreciate many parts of it more after the fact.