Stormblood is an expansion that is criminally overlooked, and it suffers from being sandwiched in between masterpieces like Heavensward and Shadowbringers. In this video, I go over my thoughts and experience of playing through the Stormblood expansion and speak about both what it does well, and where it falters. But while having issues and not being quite as good as the other expansions, Stormblood is overall a great experience worth every Final Fantasy XIV player’s attention and time, and by skipping over it the player is simply depriving themselves of the great things the expansion has to offer.
This video goes over many aspects of the experience Stormblood has to offer during its roughly 50 hour run time. This video covers quite a lot from major things like the story and zones, to more minor things like the boost in level cap.
This is episode 7 of my So I Played Final Fantasy XIV series. If you want to watch the whole series in order, you can find every episode on this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLjBfDByYEOLOuxxYR8b1dfoFrXWwDJXS
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:58 Story
28:07 Zones
39:09 Dungeons and Trials
43:12 Important Additions
45:11 Conclusion
47:25 Outro
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Heavensward was a 8/10 and thats it. Only reason people think HW was great is because it came after ARR, and ARR is a 5/10.
Heavensward is not a masterpiece, it's just alot better than ARR. Huge pacing issues in HW. Sidetrack to tie up ARR plotlines, Sidetrack to make cids Ram, Nidhogg dies EZ, Thordan dies EZ, Nidhogg 2.0!!! It's honestly just an okay to good expac, but masterpiece? Uhh no.
Masterpiece is Shadowbringers. Stormblood had better gameplay than HW too, HW clunky skills, illusion of choice with crossclass, accuracy mandatory requirements, useless skills. Stormblood a better game, also better villain, Thordan was weak.
Stormblood is one of the truest EXPANSIONS of any MMO that I have experienced. The sheer amount by which it expanded the world and story and gameplay is shocking in retrospect. It was like the game exploded wide and far after the focused experience of HW. I'm a huge dragon nerd so HW was a pinnacle experience for me, but I LOVE Stormblood too. A full, rich experience.
Also be aware stormblood seems underrated because shadowbringers is soooo good but before that nostalgics were still in heavensward in their hearts so they didn’t give stormblood its due. Not to mention the ddos attacks at launch which gave birth to raubahn and pippin extreme that ppl will no doubt mention in the comments lol
Stormblood for me felt really scatterbrained and hard to follow. I absolutely hate the Azeem Steppe partially because of how long the story dragged on there. It was way more fleshed out than it needed to be imo.
I hated the fake out deaths, I hated that it was split between the Far East and Ala Mhigo, and I find a lot of the Ala Mhigan zones to be really dull with very little differentiation between them.
I never really liked Ala Mhigo to begin with honestly, it just…doesn't interest me. Not my thing at all. I absolutely loved the Far East, and had the entire expansion been there, I feel like I would've liked it a lot more.
I remember very little now of SB and have forgotten 90% of the characters from the resistance in particular because yeah, a lot of characters would get fleshed out and become irrelevant straight after. The resistance was the worst because we hardly ever saw them until like the end.
Characters are popping up now in 5.5, and I have no idea who they are. I don't remember really anything about Fordola other than I found her really annoying. I don't remember any of her backstory, but very vaguely remember her struggling with the echo and seeing some of our memories.
I also really dislike Lyse. Her personality is just completely different to the point where she doesn't resemble Yda at all. You would think she was ditsy and a bit stupid at times because she stepped into a role that wasn't hers, but no, it must have been an act??
finally someone said it.
Stormblood isn't as bad as people make it out to be. It only has poor pacing in the middle. Everything else is great.
Personally, I find Stormblood pretty weak. I found the story pretty bad, mainly because of Zenos and Lyse just being way too naive way too often.
It's no coincidence the hate on Stormblood's story only started after Shadowbringers released
Stormblood gets too much hate because it was very set up heavy but it's great. I did not like the Yotsuyu arc personally because I do not believe her trauma excuses her evil and find her irredeemable even though the game wants us to forgive her, but honestly, she did very, very evil things and her reason behind it is not at all justified IMO so the Yotsuyu waifu trend really soured me to Stormblood, it's like because she's a pretty female, she gets a pass no other villain gets and it's gross to me considering, compared to some of the other villains, her plight does not come anywhere near justifying her aggressively evil actions. I really enjoyed everything outside of that but can't lie, that arc really bothered me
The most egregious sin of Stormblood is having neither Doma City nor Ala Mhigo as a "main city" and instead having that abortion called Rhalgr's Reach. Otherwise I quite liked it.
Stormblood is also underappreciated for the amount of work it did to set up the plot points that start to flesh out in Shadowbringers and will come to fruition in Endwalker.
not a fan of sb story about wars is boring to me
Um no it is just a boring expansion overall. The pacing was awful and all the juggling between Ala Mihgo and Doma made it worst. Zenos is a terrible villain and I don't look forward to seeing him again in Endwalker
Stormblood is AVERAGE at best. not GREAT
Why do people like HW so much? It doesn't contribute to the overall garlrmald/ascian storyline like HW does. The dragon song war is typical fantasy fare imo.Stormblood shows how the garlean empire has affected the different nations,where they were just hinted in 2.0. The majority of HW felt detached from the overall story imo.
Stormblood was an fantastic Addon. so much Drama so much Tragedy.
Azim Steppe is by far my most favorite zone in Stormblood and one of the most favorite in the whole FFXIV for practically the same reasons as yours. I expected absolutely nothing from this area, but the moment I had stepped (pun not intended lol) into it, I instantly fell in love. I play as Raen Au Ra, and while I'm not into RP, I had instantly imagined backstory of her reconnecting with this ancient land which was left by the ancestors of all modern Raen hundreds of years ago. And I have completed every single non-essential side quest there. I never ever complete all side quests in a zone – well, not before Azim Steppe. That says something, doesn't it?
Also, there is the Japanese artist that made art about all canonical 51 Xaela tribes (yes, there are actually 51 of them, I'm still sad that 90% of them aren't in the game) even before Stormblood was released back in the day. Google something like "ffxiv 51 scales" and you'll find Reddit post with the link to his Tumblr account, then open the wiki page with Xaela tribes description and scroll through the art gallery while reading descriptions. Done, your day was made better, no need to thank me.
P.S. I also found this random ass post on Reddit, kinda laughed my ass off, but also it's kinda wholesome:
"I love the Steppe! The Au Ra are all so cute. They think they can lie an manipulate, but they really, really can't. They suck at it. They're so innocent, I want to adopt them all. And it's so refreshing compared to Uldah, Ishgard, Limsa, Kugane, etc. I understand why Hien didn't want to leave, and neither did I tbh.
I have decided my favorite is the Oronir because they're so sweet, thinking they're the defenders of the Steppe, doing jobs they hate because no one else will and it's their responsibility, etc.
Like, that one translator in the markets who really doesn't want to, but that's what it means to be an Oronir, you won't see other tribes doing this.
Also, the Mol scare me. The more time I spend with them the more I think they'd be terrifyingly powerful and ruthless if they actually fought. Like, leave my fish friends alone!"
why yes, Xaela are cute tbh lol
I wish they continued to use lyse after sb.
While hw and shb villains are motivated by loss, SB's zenos is motivated by the possibility of gaining something. And it's interesting how his fight with you ends up being the potential motivation for ew. A lot of people will probably criticize it but the WOL being the catalyst for zenos' drive to burn the world could be a powerful source of guilt for the WOL when they witness countless innocents die and even cause then to doubt their path. Zenos isn't a typical villain. Its hard for players to relate to him (even though endgame raiders are a lot like him and driven by more challenging encounters)
Making Zenos a dungeon boss and having the true final Stormblood boss in 4.3 being Yotsyu is kinda of a giant what the fuck. Emet-Selch as a final boss is peak FFXIV and Shinryu is just like, oh a dragon I know little to nothing about. Ok. Thankfully Zenos is a MUCH more interesting character post-SB but they absolutely wasted him during his introduction.
Never understood the massive hate for stormblood, it was freaking amazing imo. Heck I'd even go as far as to say that it was as good as Heavensward.
who is arguing?? thought most of the world agreed that shadow bringer was the best story out of all ff games in general… atleast i keep hearing it.
Personally I prefer Stormblood to Heavensward. I actually stopped playing the game during HW for months because I hated the Ishgardians so much. I wanted to side with the dragons and lay waste to Ishgard.
Still disappointed that wasn't a story option….
Something that always bugged me about stormblood is that ala mhigo is where the white mages fled following the war of the magi but there was no traces of them except the ark. Plus i was a highlander and felt we didnt get enough historical lore about ala mhigo.
I had a chat with my friends abt this and thinks SB's story is a hit or miss because of this:
HW & SHB: fantasy > political conflict
SB: political conflict > fantasy
I like SB's story but think HW and SHB's are better. On other aspects like raids, job design, and content delivery thou, I feel like SB did a better job than SHB.
Looking at it in hindsight, when I played stormblood what ruined it for me was basically how much of a hurry to get to shadowbringers I was in at the time. I wanted so much to get to what other told me was "the best FF story ever" and stormblood would just never freaking end because of how large it is lol
Now I'm playing again through it via NG+ and having a blast. Such an underrated part of the larger ffxiv story.
I have to agree, expansions zones are empty, bland, lifeless and boring. Thats why i keep replaying base game over and over
ARR: Buildup for the rest of the Exp
HW: DRagons and Epicness and …feells….
SB: Buildup for Politics Liberty
ShB: Climax of the Hydaelyn and Zordiark
EW: Ending of the arc.
So yeah.. not surprised. but SB was definitely still a good exp except its pacing due to its story nature.
Personally as someone who does not give a fk about the main story and skips it all anyways xD Content wise it actually had the best content out of all the expansions so far imo. Easily the best 24 man raids no contest, the introduction to Ultimate content, the Savage raids were all super fun and memorable with a ton of new mechanics, the exception being Alte Roit which was a jk lmao but every expansion has at least one bad fight if not more. All fun EX trials especially for solo healing on old Ast before it was ruined in Shadowbringers :/ Hell even the dungeons were more fun because you didn't have the useless bs side paths that served no purpose in the old dungeons other then to waste time, making speed running dungeons with friends a ton of fun, vs the ARR/HW dungeons which mostly feel like slogs at times, ( Talking about you especially, Aurum Vale, and Dusk Vigil >.> ).
The pacing was awful. Im in the process of clearing Stormblood and its a slough. The msq threw me through 5 different cities with nothing of value in any of them. Just very unimportant characters that Im supposed to care about just to leave them in the next 3 quests.