Hey everyone! A big thanks again for all the support! I had a bit of copyright trouble with this one and the original upload was completely blocked (apparently WWE own the Stormblood trailer lmao), but it's all sorted out now. The Shadowbringers video is up and ready for next week, as well - it clocks in at just over 2 hours! I hope that's not too long... Feel free to make fun of the glaring mistake I made about Cyan's theme 🤣 Not sure why I left it in tbh! Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you guys think! Thanks again!

So about Yotsuyu’s name change, Tsuyu in Japanese is a dewdrop, and Yo is night. So taking out Yo from Yotsuyu suggests that she is now in the light, but what happens to a dewdrop when morning comes? It evaporates. Sadly, this part is lost in English.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but Gotetsu shaving his head a symbol of retiring is a common thing in the past, where samurai and others would shave their heads and become monks as a sign of changing their life significantly and leaving the world. So it makes sense that he did that for this transition.

I really liked this. It's nice to hear a story recap while also getting a review. Stormblood was a fond time for me going through the MSQ, and I think its patches are all fantastic. You are dead on with the trials being so unique and interesting. I've been saying this for over a year to my FC friends who really don't care for Stormblood. Thank you for making me not feel crazy. I really like the expansion's big emphasis on travel and discovering new cultures. It's as much of a globe-trotting adventure as it is a crusade for liberation. Other expansions have you explore and experience new places, but Stormblood goes out of its way to emphasize the peoples' everyday life-their eccentricities, their religion, their perspective towards their invaders, etc. It drives home the main theme that these people deserve, above everything, to be free. I also think the Aether Current quests (although I can't stand aether currents as a concept) have some touching moments to them that further accentuate those central concepts. Stormblood mixes its emphasis on fascinating culture with a gripping rebel story, and it ends up making a pretty grounded and unique experience, especially in comparison to its more fantastical expansion siblings.

the lip syncing isn't an engine limitation. it's the fact that it's this big huge back and forth between 4 different languages and them trying to make it work for all of them.

For what it's worth I remember that when I first played through Stormblood, I had 0 issues with Zenos being in a separate body as he was talking about Echo, Resonance and all that jazz and he was able to control Shinryu. Which meant that he had enough power to control Primal. Ok, but here's the deal - we've already seen those souls that have enough strenght being able to be reborn in the new bodies - back in post-ARR patches with the introduction of Leviathan. So for me it just made sense that Zenos literally did the same thing and got control over the body of a random soldier kinda like what Ascians do. We also should remember that it was during Stormblood when game was heavily updated with old combat system that used cross-class skills, TP and scalable MP was put to rest and current system with role-actions and most actions being strictly limited either by cooldowns or job resource was introduced. Personally I feel that Stormblood suffers with the beginning - as it is rather slow and Fringes and Peaks are not as visually different as Western Coerthas and Sea of Clouds or Kholusia and Ahm Araeng from closest expansions (I am not even starting with differences between early game locations in Endwalker - those are massive)

Stormblood will forever be the expansion where I really started to care about the Scions, the conflict with Garlemald, and when I actually started to really like the actual gameplay of FFXIV (a lot of the QoL changes from HW to SB helped me lol).I love the MSQ, and all the 4.X content; and still think it has my favorite 4man and 24man raid series of the expansions. Also; Lyse is a good character, she's a young woman trapped in a shitty situation of hiding who she even was for years, and torn between Scion dutieis and wanting to liberate her home country. Goes on a coming of age quest; learning from other leaders in Ala Mhigo and Doma, and comes back a smarter and more confident person. It's crazy how much vitriol I remember seeing about her just. . . existing in SB MSQ, despite the fact that she doesn't really do anything wrong? In comparison I remember being surprised at how little there was at Aliphinaud having created the driving force that pushed us into HW, and the player base took the obvious lesson to not judge him too harshly for it. I dunno if its a sexism thing, or just that Alphinaud had been with us longer; but people REALLY hated Lyse and would not let you forget about how bad she was, for an uncomfortably long time lol

A big part of the stormblood's reputation I feel comes from context: we'd been waiting for "The Ala Mhigo Expansion" for six years by that point, and between sharing its storyline with Doma, Ala Mhigo not being a true city zone in favor of Kugane, Lyse's inexperience being so directly contrasted to Hien's experience, and the first catastrophic expansion launch (Raubhan's Wall), Ala Mhigo felt like it was playing second fiddle to Doma and the problems we'd normally wave off actually became topics of discussion. (The "Lyse stole our thunder at the end of 4.0" gripe is the biggest example of something that, at the time, seemed reasonable as a criticism of the MSQ, yet now is looked back on with confusion.) It doesn't help that Kugane, while really awesome and a needed contrast to the rural Doma and full of side quest goodness, has never actually been relevant to the MSQ in basically any way beyond "where Hancock lives", yet we spend a full level getting a full tour immersing ourselves in it in an expansion that didn't really feel like it had room to spare. Stormblood aged really well, thanks to the 4.2 and 4.3 stories and some of the best patch cycle side content we've had, but at release we didn't have those mitigating factors to tie everything together. Playing it through now, as a full experience (particularly with duty support helping fight the notion that Lyse is redundant with us around)? It's a much more solid expansion.

1:01:42 With Gosetsu, he becomes a monk (not the job but an actual monk). So he shaves his head as it's part of the ritual for entering into monkhood in the real world and FFXIV seems to be taking inspiration from that. In some cultures, such as Thailand, they even shave their eyebrows. Also, i love SB's story, its my second fave after ShB XD !

The story, music, atmosphere, raids and how the jobs played back then were my favourite. It was my favourite expansion and remains so.

I like Stormblood as well over Heavensward and almost on par with Shadowbringers. The reason is, the plot is really grounded to reality and horrors of war and maybe that's the reason why it didn't resonate with people because it didn't feel like a "fantasy". You have a character, who essentially escaped the Empire with her older sister. This older sister is often depicted as brave and bright because she was intelligent, strong, compassionate and is seen as the future and hope of their homeland, as she was the legacy of their father. And while their homeland was under oppression, they both spent time away from it, and the older sister found her calling after she became an Archon. Archons are very smart people. However her life was cut short, and the younger sister, sensing that if the news of her death would break the spirits and hopes of their people, decided to take older sister's identity and preserve that hope. This younger sister is a hothead, reckless, and impatient. Despite this, she tried to blend in with the intelligent people who were surrounding her, which made her more insecure and question is she has what it takes to be her father and older sister's legacy. These doubts plagued her and was slowly starting to lose sight of who she really is. Then there's the war, wherein the oppressed were so down in the dumpsters, they'd rather not do anything to draw the ire of the Empire due to the fear of losing their loved ones. For them, even if they end up eating dirt, as long as they survive, they'd rather do it, than to lose their lives. This younger sister, who is now a woman, is introduced to the oppressed people and try to inspire them to fight, only to be rebuked because she doesn't know what they went through. She never lived a life of oppression. She lived a life of comfort, away from all the strife in their homeland, and the fact that she comes in stomping and claiming she will help them turn the tides of war, is an insult to her people who only knew the life of oppression. She never understood why her people would rather stay oppressed, and it was driving her mad. Only through the course of her journey, seeing their struggles firsthand, acknowledging their suffering while staying true to her conviction, experiencing losses and eventually finding herself outside of her older sister's shadow, she realized that she had to grow from being a hothead, reckless, and impatient to a wise, competent, and calm leader if she wanted to help her people and she is still working on these qualities. She was chosen as a figurehead of the rebellion from the start, a designation she never wanted in the first place, as she deems herself unfit for the role. Nevertheless, she took the responsibility of it, and eventually became the heart of the rebellion. It's a very compelling storyline, that's grounded in reality. The horrors of war, and the lengths mankind would go through for the sake of their survival. It's just that, majority of players prefer the more fantasy tropes of the previous expansion. I for one really enjoyed it.

I've been on the train since 1.0, but I still watched from stem to stern. Having been in love with XIV from the jump off, I feel dutybound to support others that are passionate for it.

This has been making passing time at work so much better. And it's nice seeing an updated, concise revisitation of all of the expansions. 10/10

I’ve always been a huge lover of war stories. I went into Heavensward hearing all the praise, expecting to play through a war story, & it completely disappointed. Never focused on the normal folk reacting to what’s going on until the patches, & was just a big “dragons sad, elves bad.” Stormblood I’d heard was bad, even the guy that got me to start playing, who knows me, told me it was bad And it blew me away. It’s focusing on the normal villagers, showing how once we prove we can fight back, they rise up to fight. I loved Lyse & Fordola & how they contrasted to each other as different sides of Ala Mhigo. Not to mention Zenos is my favorite trope in media for villains/antagonists, the “oh? You’re stronger this time. Yes, keep getting stronger!” Even after alt playthroughs I still utterly love Stormblood

Heck yes! I've been hyped for this. Gonna be great background noise as I plow through Endwalker (I'm relatively new and loving the story! Can't wait to get ready for Dawntrail!) Personally I agree with you, I loved Stormblood's MSQ

Stormblood is definitely one of my favourite Expansions. I loved how more grounded it felt, though I was disappointed with how short Ala Mhigo content was compared to Doma.

I was a little shocked at the perception of Stormblood and Lyse after finishing the expansion for myself. I love her attitude and her growth - even if it could have been done better, it doesn't mean what's there isn't good. My major gripe with the story was how unseriously the writing took the straight up human trafficking in the Azim Steppe, and perhaps the Shinryu fight. Everyone else was a lot of fun, and really dark.

So here's the fun thing about Lakshmi. As we learn in Shadowbringers, beings of pure light are tied with the elements of water, earth, ice, and passivity. And well.. ok spoilers for shadowbringers: many of the sin eaters "forgiven " titles get to a point where it's practically "Forgiven Breathing" and you gather to Light-based beings free will is bad only order and passivity allowed. Anyway, what Lakshmi does with her followers are fairly related (not nearly as exacerbated by the world she's in being aetherically charged towards light) to what happens on the First. The weather effect also is something about light; I don't remember the exact wording. Basically, Lakshmi is our first encounter with a Light-based entity outside of the scrub monsters and bosses of Lost City of Ambdapor (Hard). And that kind of subtle foreshadowing of what light can do is great.

I actually really liked Lyse when I played through Stormblood last year. Had no idea so many people hated her. Frankly I was impressed the writers managed to wrangle a somewhat compelling character out of "Comic Relief Cardboard Cutout #4", oh excuse me, "Yda"

Love these recap videos. A quick note, the lip synching (or lack thereof) is intentional. FFXIV 1.0 had full lip synch for all different languages. When 1.0 fell flat they decided to go with a more stylized version of the talking animations. They did so because this allowed them to create a single cutscene (instead of different versions depending on language region) which saved them a bunch of time and resources. Time and resources better spent on other things.

Happy to see some appreciation for what wound up being my favorite section of the story. Thanks for putting this together. It was a nice little stroll down memory lane.

I agree Stormblood's pretty damn good even if it's not my favorite. I will however defend the linkpearls, no matter how ridiculous they are in the actual lore, specifically the scions' use of them. Seeing as how Minfilia gives us our first one and that is how she was always calling us up telling us to 'pray return', during a time where the scions were meant to be a low-key organization, covertly investigating things with the primals as well as other issues Eorzea had. And several of the scions have been shown to have had them, Thancred most frequently but I am fairly sure even y'shtola has been shown using it. Given again that the silence were mostly covert back in the beginning of ARR, it stands to reason that link pearls are just distributed to any of the scions once they go out on missions. I feel like the only actual new knowledge there is that now alphinaud is now the one coordinating that, but considering he's more or less stepped into the antecedent role without the actual burden of leadership it makes sense. Barring the warrior of light, since on the whole the Scion seem to try not to impede on your personal time more than they have to, the only other person it would have possibly made sense for to be the hub of these communications would have been Tataru. But alphinaud is also a solid choice for that, and to me when I got to that part all my brain said was "yeah that makes sense". I get what you mean about feeling like it can come out of nowhere but it does actually have basis in past Scion tactics.

The head shaving for Gosetsu is part of an historical tradition in samurai life in Japan. Those samurai that were spared from an eroic death in battle and grew too old to keep fighting were shaving their heads and become Biddhist monks, the shaving is one of the role requirements.

There are three times I wished I could speak for my character and two of them happened in Stormblood. One during the royal menagerie because Zenos and the WoL don't actually have any conflicting interests. He wants good fights and we have the best fights. Dude was one static invite away from becoming a Scion. And another was when Varis laid out his plan for the future. I had SO many questions. "Okay, putting aside the mass murder because clearly that's not a dealbreaker for you. It's taken 12k years for them to get about 60% way through rejoining, so maybe another 8k to finish. What's your plan to live that long? Assuming you do have a way to survive six more rejoinings, at the end there, you just become them. Why would you want to fight them after that? You've done their plan and are now them. There is no longer anything to fight over. We've killed at least three or four of them so far, couldn't we just keep doing what we're doing and not create a worldwide suicide cult? Just a thought." Emet-Selch must have been painfully ashamed to be related to someone that embarrassingly stupid. "I'll teach grandpa! I'll do exactly what he wants! That'll show him!" It would have made more sense if he was attempting to do the Ascian plan because he believed it would bring all mankind back to paradise than to do the Ascian plan in order to spite the Ascians. 😂

When it comes to Gaius, I think him being an almost "different" character made sense. The way I saw it is that his defeat in ARR heavily humbled him and he was self-aware enough to realize that it was a good thing, hence why he doesn't seem to harbor any sort of vengeful sentiment towards the WoL. Rather, his anger is both at the Ascians and himself for allowing them to aggrandize his pride and ego to the extents they were at in ARR and before. I think he does believe in his people, honor, and in principles like the determinism of mortal beings and does genuinely seem to respect other peoples especially compared to most Garlean elite but was influenced by both common Garlean propaganda and Ascian manipulation (though, ironically whats the difference?), resulting in his more bombastically expansionist personality in ARR. He legitimately believed in the Garlean MO. Afterwards though, when he was defeated and nearly killed, and his legion scattered to the wind, he was forced to have to see things through a non-garlean perspective especially with the other Shadowhunter members, and I think this really made him realize how much of an ignorant fool he's been, which he channels into taking revenge on every Ascian they can find (and to his credit, they do seem to legitimately kill a *lot* of the remaining lesser Ascians.) as well as confronting the damage that he's done both intentional and unintentional...which comes to a head in the Werlyt storyline in ShB, where he's forced to have to confront his former self via the footprint he left. To me at least, there are bits of the same character there but simply tempered by a regretful humility.

I agree with you, Stormblood is really slept on and has my favorite trials and raids in the game

I hope your videos gain more views as more people get into XIV. Really great summary of the game's story.

thematically speaking, having the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned person in all of Ala Mhigo leading the Resistance is a bad and weird White Savior cliche.

One thing if you are unaware *minor spoilers*: In Endwalker, all the job-specific quests (Ranged DPS, Magic DPS, Healer, etc.) lead back to the main capital cities. So you were talking about future adventures with certain characters like Fordola, and those get expanded on in Endwalker, plus a giant final quest if you complete all of them.

FINALLY! I've been saying Stormblood is great for such a long time and I get so much grief for it, good to see people praising it and giving it the recognition it deserves.

At the moment I don't have time to watch a 1½ hour long video, but I've been saying it for years. Stormblood is amazing, and my personal favourite expansion of the game. While the story have it's ups & downs, I feel like it's paced almost perfectly, it doesn't drag on forever like Shadowbringers or Endwalker, but rather it feels like you're playing it through acts, and each zone have it's own unique story to it. And even if we disregard the story, it still holds up as one of the best expansions, the Omega raid series is amazing, and Ivalice alliance raid is also great, and the Four Lords extreme trials is really fun too, and you can't forget stuff such as Eureka and Baldesion's Arsenal, it's amazing content there for the taking. We could even go a bit deeper and talk about jobs & balance and such, and I feel like most jobs pretty much peaked during STB, not all but the majority of jobs felt very good to play back then. Oh, and we can't forget that they introduced Ultimate raids here as well, also a massive upgrade.

28:15 "Can we just kill this guy already?" honestly sums up my main complaint about Stormblood for a fair few occasions, and how much it undermines a lot of our efforts. And it just happened *so* much. That aside, thank you for highlighting how cool and unique a lot of the encounters were.

I've always felt that the structure of Stormblood made it harder to digest for a lot of people. The 'cold open' in Gyr Abania is a little too short and gives you a bit of whiplash. I know they did it for variety's sake, but I still sort of feel like having the story be AABB, rather than ABBA might've been better. You could've pretty easily said that the assault on Baelsar's Wall put Garlemald on a high state of alert and thus it would be better to use this to fight on another front, Doma. Then come back after Garlemald is already on the back foot. Having the Ala Mhigo be the final act seems logical, with Doma Castle as the middle point, the turning point in the war. I think having the Ala Mhigan bits play out as 'meanwhile' segments with the other scions would work well to set-up that end of things earlier. In fact, it would build up Zenos as having taken out Y'shtola for when we try to ambush him in Doma. This would have the added benefit of taking out one of those annoying Zenos fights. If you really want the second battle, it could be an RP segment playing as Y'shtola. This also makes it feel less like we're just teleporting around the world to fight the empire on 2 fronts months of travel apart. The third act would start with the attack on the cannon castrum, which was already mostly prepped by the scions in Gyr Abania.

I loved going through Stormblood! When we get to the Azim Steppe is when the story really got me hooked. I hope in later expansions we get to see Gosetsu again. Can't wait for the Shadowbringers video! Keep up the great work.

I will always defend the stormblood post game patches nothing felt too rushed and it always had you questioning what was gonna happen next and what direction the next expansion would go

As someone who was maining Ninja during Storm Blood I actually very much liked the blow dart sequences. They felt very in character for Ygiri and my character to be doing. There's also a few moments where Yugiri has some extra bits of dialog for you if you've picked up ninja. So having her reference my Ninja training the same way they'll reference the fact that you are the second Azure Dragoon if you've completed the Dragoon lvl 50 class quest during Heavensward, was pretty cool.

*meanwhile at Castrum Abania* Fordola: "Fire... 'The Compensator!'"

I remember going through stormblood, a lot of people warned me ahead of time that it had a bad story but I really liked going to through it, especially the susanoo fight. Probably helps that Samurai was my favorite dps class until Reaper came out.

I've recently made an alt and played through Stormblood again. Upon doing it a second time I think my opinions on it have changed. I definitely like it a lot more than I did before I replayed it.

I still am not terribly fond of Lyse as the Resistance leader when M'naago really comes across as the better option. Also, Zenos doing body swaps has an even older basis: the Sahaugin priest back when we fought Leviathan.

Gosetsu's shaved head is representative of him taking monastic vows and becoming a wandering monk on a religious pilgrimage. Buddhist monks shave their heads as part of their religious oaths.

I loved Stormblood. I rank it higher - much higher - than Heavensward. Lots of people criticize the focus of Lyse and her incompetency when I talk about it with other people, but that is something I actually really liked. I liked her frustrations and inability to understand the people who were dealing with the oppression. I found it very realistic. I greatly enjoy the zones (so so so much better designed than Heavensward zones, which I think are among some of the worst designed zones in any video game) and amazing battles and music.

In case you haven't figured it out yet Estinien is.....BATMAN!! That's why he just shows up, solves a problem, and disappears. He's Batman.

What i hate so much about zenos returning is how it just ignored the ending of base stormblood he takes his own life because he just had a fight that he knew would never be able to topped and yet he still comes back through his pure will to experience the thrill of a better fight

I think Heavensward was still a better overall story than Stormblood, but Stormblood absolutely does not deserve the supposed criticism that it gets. In terms of world-building and setting up the greater geopolitical stakes, Stormblood is a great expansion that greatly expands the world of FFXIV overall by introducing Ilsabard and Othard as the other two Great Continents. In terms of content and gameplay, Stormblood ranks far superior to Heavensward with all of the job adjustments that it introduced that fixed a lot of the major complaints HW had, as well as introducing Adventuring Foray content. While Eureka is a bit polarizing, I think it's some of the best group content of the game and is a great endgame time sink that was sorely missing in EW.

One thing id like to see once you wrap up the msq, is go over all the optional raid series and trial quest lines as i really enjoy your style of breakdown

Great video! There's one thing I disagree on, though...I don't think Zenos' revival needed any more pointing out than it already got. We've seen Ascians jump bodies, and we've seen mortal bearers of the echo transfer their souls into other vessels (specifically, the elder of the Sahaguin). Along with the Elezen's katana moves and spouting about fighting the WoL again, I always felt like it was a big, glaring neon sign of what happened.

these videos have been an absolute joy to see cant wait for the shadowbringers and endwalker one. I only just started to see this one but im sure im going to enjoy it as much as the other 2

i adore the namazu tribe and i am so happy that one of the rewards you can potentially get for doing all the tribal quests for stormblood is just a huge namazu mask. One of my current fave glams is one where i use the namazu head and the ffxvi gear and call it clive Rosfish in fact one of the videos on my mess of a channel is just me messing about with that glam in my house. Great video looking forward to the shadowbringers one that is gonna be a good one i can tell

It is objectively the best expansion as a FULL PACKAGE (the story is great but not Shadowbringers level) but outside of story, the remaining content is 2nd to none. Peak job gameplay, eureka, HoH, MHW crossover, and 2 ultimates, Omega raids were super engaging and still has the best rewards (O12S) and Ivalice still being the best Alliance Raid to date, Zenos and Yotsuyo were very interesting villains (better than Nidhogg and Elidibus but not Emet) as villains, especially Zenos as the vegeta to my Goku like WoL. The music in SB is epic (the boss theme is still the best). People just hate on SB cause the story wasn't grand and fantastical but more grounded and political which I appreciated for world building!

7:14 can I bring to attention a cool little detail that I feel shouldn't go remiss? During this cutscene, if you're playing as a healer, you get unique dialog from Krile and in animation assist with the healing process. There is similar scenes within Shadowbringers, I do not know if there was one in Endwalker however. Small note but a welcome touch for the healer MSQ players non the less! :3 (Edit: I did find there is also unique healer dialog choices in Endwalker too along with many more cool dialog relating to job and racial choices.)

the patches at the end of stormblood are my favorite part of the story of the game as of now(Ive finished the msq threw EW). it legitimately ask a very hard question

I'm of the opinion that every expansion gets progressively better. Let's hope Dawn Trail keeps up that trend. IDK. It's gonna be hard to beat Endwalker. But damn... I did love Garland & the post Endwalker MSQ. Zero is literally my favorite NPC now

i honestly love stormblood and a lot of my best memories come from playing it. the only real gripe i had was the point you made about Doma and how it should've been its own expansion. honestly yes because the build up to Ala Mhigo's liberation from ARR should have been the star of the show, Doma's story swooping in and stealing the spotlight got me feeling a lil mad. other than that though, rly good expac!!!!

i've been really enjoying having these on while i mess around in game! i think it'd be really fun if you covered the four lords storyline or the omega raids in a separate video! just cos i like those stories both alot.

Cant wait to replay stormblood as a viper

I loved SB when it came out. liked your retrospective saw some things I had not taken into consideration,the like Zeno's Helm for instance . this was enjoyable.

Ive been playing FF14 since 2016 from around 2.3/4 patch and honestly Stormblood was the first time story wise that 14 felt like Final Fantasy to me, as a long time fan, both story and gameplay wise. ARR/HW felt like very generic western fantasy, and while a bit badly paced Stormblood brought alot of color and life to the game that made feel like yeah this is a FF game. (I still do like HW but mainly for its characters than actual story). I also think newer players dont feel how big the gameplay changes were in StB as well, StB was the first time the game actually made all classes viable to a degree instead of "oh youre bring paladin to this raid focused on magic you are actually griefing".

Hien became my favorite faction leader, really wish we had more of him after Stormblood but I understand why. It's not like we get a ton of Merlwyb or Kan-e-Senna. (I almost said Nanamo but she's used almost as much as the Scions it feels like)

Agreed, I absolutely love Stormblood

Cant wait for your shadowbringer video, which personally the best one for me

So to note on Lakshmi's design, apparently she was supposed to have a massive snake body but the engine couldnt handle it if i am not mistaken. So we could have have big snake mommy primal but due to limitations we got what we have now.

I have a feeling Dawntrail has a real chance of being "stormblooded" in a lot of popular opinion because of what it is required to do. Stormblood was not bad in any way. The problem was, it had to serve as a tempo reset coming off of the high of the end of Heavensward and then bring things down to earth again to start another arc. It went from ending a thousand year war by fighting a first brood dragon on the steps of faith to scoutinng for a resistance camp and introducing new groups and situations at a very basic level. After stormblood, the tempo was continuous between expansions. Shadowbringers and Endwalker were just one more step in the same path of a continuing narrative. Stormblood (and now Dawntrail) were tasked with starting something new and introducing people and factions that weren't a significant factor or even a presence until that point.

Of all the chars introduced in Stormblood I truly feel awful whenever I get to the Gotetsu and Yotsuyu storyline She had a chance to regain her memories and be contrite about her past but that was stolen from her by her ahat brothers machinations and Gotetsu wound up losing his own way of coping with his losses.

I think my impression of this expansion will always be marred by the fact that I was stuck trying to get into that Raubahn duty at the start of the msq for 3 entire days lol

Stormblood is definitely the expansion with the highest highs (outside ShB) and lowest lows. It's sad, because the good bits, like Namai and the Azim Steppe and the Peace Negotiations in the patches, are really *really* good. But a lot of Ala Mhigo leaves me completely cold and generally I feel like the expansion was a bit too all over the place to be truly fantastic. My god the fight designs, though! Stormblood is absolutely the highest point of the battle side of the game. Every primal, every boss, does something new and fun. Even the dungeon bosses have you staying on your toes not through overwhelming force (like my biggest issue with a lot of EW patch content is that everything is hard because console/controller play being pretty much impossible to do outside of legacy view adding an extra layer of difficulty on top of already endgame levels of hard) but through mechanics that require you to be able to puzzle out, counter, and take advantage of every single move available to you and your opponents. I hope Dawntrail's fights lean more towards that kind of design. EDIT: The thing about Gosetsu shaving his head was an old Samurai tradition. If an older samurai decided to leave battle behind for religion, they would shave their head to symbolise cutting ties with their ancestry and worldly responsibilities and become a monk, often travelling on pilgrimages to various shrines near battlefields and places of crisis or disaster to offer kindness and guidance to the people there and respect to the spirits of the dead. Monks held and often still hold a much more important and unique position in Japanese society.

I will say, it's... odd, that Lyse or Krile aren't included in those called to by the mystery. Lyse has only recently left the Scions, and Krile joined before SB. So why wouldn't they be included? Particularly Krile, since she's got a particularly telepathic version of the Echo. It would make perfect sense for her to hear the voice, perhaps first, and provide the first inkling of what was about to happen to the Scions.

I thoroughly enjoyed SB for it's story, and it makes few missteps IMO. It truly did feel like two whole stories combined into one. I appreciate it more as it's the most and closest we ever get to challenging garlemald directly. And it was a fantastic exploration into some grim themes. I find it ironic that neither of the two leaders we took down really give a single shit about the war or garlemald itself. Although I disagree with gosetau and yotsuyu surviving. Finally, I'm glad I'm not the only one who did not like that random ass fight with the wolves at the very end. It was such a jarring pace killer and had no purpose.

I love these videos and stormblood is definitely under appreciated

Man I can't believe you thought Raubaun EX was disappointing. That fight was so difficult it took me the entire early access to get through it.

Great video, thank you for giving Stormblood it’s flowers. I can appreciate that objectively Shadowbringers might be the best expansion in terms of MSQ, but Stormblood is still my favorite. I really enjoy the more grounded, political war storylines, and I also think Stormblood really nailed that “going on an adventure” vibe. Which is why I’m super excited for Dawntrail!

I feel Stormblood isn't even hated it's just really has an up hill battle with it being the low teir of the FFxiv expansions.

My big problem with Stormblood is how the front half of it feels like a bunch of nested sidequests. During the Ruby Sea arc there's a bit where your motivation is -Retake Gyr Abania -To do this, we must retake Doma -To do this, we must cross the Ruby Sea -To do this, we must do a favor for the pirates -To do this, we must do a favor for the Blue Kojin -To do this, we must do a favor for the Raen It's by far the worst of it, and that problem goes away pretty much completely once you're back in Gyr Abania, but so much of the expansion feels like you're just going off on tangents that don't have that much to do with the actual driving force of the story that I found it infuriating. Specifically being stuck on the Kojin tangent and the bit where you go do menial work for Magnai really got on my nerves. It's a shame, too, because when you're not trudging through what feels like filler it's often got really good worldbuilding and storytelling, and I still maintain it's got the best group duties out of any expansion on average. It's like ARR in that I think there's a really good story there, but it's covered in layers and layers of distraction and tangent. Like, the Tsuyu arc and the prelude to Shadowbringers with the Scions going down is some of the best stuff in all the MSQ, and the Ghimlyt Dark is my favourite dungeon in all the game. It's capable of true greatness.

Gdam! Speeding through these. Thankyou for the delicious content! 😋😋😍😍

I actually enjoyed the story of Stormblood quite a bit. It was fun being a part of the rebellion and it was paced quite well. But I despise when stories fake out death characters. And this expansion was the worst of all of them with that. Which is the main reason I rank it as my least favorite of ffxiv stories. Apparently the jobs and Endgame content was really fun when this was current content. Wonder what it was like. Anyways another great summary down. My favorite one to relive coming up next!

Varus during the peace talks "DING DONG ALL YOUR OPINIONS ARE WRONG"

I played through Stormblood with an alt well after my main, skipping dialogue and scenes but doing all the quests and picking up content. Later on after a short break I couldn't comprehend being in Shadowbringers because I forgot the entire time spent on Stormblood. Some of these zones are too big and empty or annoying to traverse; other expansions have this too where there's a lot of scenery and travel time with nothing going on, but none more than the Ruby Sea, where the ocean floor is almost exclusively featureless with nothing to do

Love these videos, cant wait for the SHB/EW ones

This is amazing!! Will you be doing an endwalker recap?

For me, Stormblood was when the actual gameplay of XIV was at its peak. I spent many, MANY nights in Eureka, and I enjoyed every second of it.

They brought their A+ Game with the visual designs(and sound holy shit, not just music but things like the water drop in Shinryu's fight.) The trials have oomph and the most of the dungeons look glorious. I really like the Ruby Sea(EXCEPT ITS' AETHERYTE LOCATIONS BEING IN THE NORTHEAST ONLY, LITERALLY A STONE'S THROW FROM ONE ANOTHER) In regards to Lyse, I am one of those left sore by the "lie of Yda", because as a 1.0 player who started in Gridania, having both my Scion friends deleted for the now death-flag-immune anime power hour Scions was very sour to my palate. Would have much preferred Papalymo having to take on a serious persona and try to talk down a revenge-mad Yda who the Ala Mhigans are happy to rally behind, except she has no consideration for losses and gets her countrymen slaughtered even more vividly than Lyse's errors. It could even lead to sidelining them at the end to handle Ala Mhigo, with Papalymo taking up an advisor's role - would've been pretty neat, at least for me. In whole, I rate Lyse as more of a "meh" than as an absolutely shite character. Sadly I didn't get to do Omegascape when it was prog content(burnout struck and I took a 1y break from the game), so outside of scrabbling together seven interested parties for a MINE run or twelve I'll never really get to experience it when some of the fights are super cool.

Thanks for removing my comment youtube. Anyway, StB is my favorite expansion, it was also my first expansion, sure, but I still think I enjoyed it the most out of any expansion. I loved the job design, the raids, we were eating good on content and it was just such a fun game to play. I still love FFXIV, but a lot of people starting in EW or ShB just didn't get to appreciate some really cool stuff Stormblood had, as ShB basically was a wholesale rework and removal of the ARR skeleton that StB still was dragging around by that point.

I will be honest, Lyse is not my fav character. Here is a people, two actually, who have been under oppression for 20+ years, being beaten down and broken repeatedly, and she just comes in saying, "Why don't you just, like, rise up? EZ right?". And this is just one of my gripes. I preferred Yda.

youre pumping these videos out! good work as always

I loved Stormblood. I don’t understand why it’s so underrated.

Call me a softy but I fucking love what they did with Gaius. It was one of the only earned "ressurections" imho and his character progressin made sense, especially with the context of the weapons storyline.

i'm also in the camp of Stormblood being better than Heavensward i know raiders generally see Stormblood as the weakest in terms of Savage/Ultimate, and i think a big chunk of the 'Stormblood is the worst expansion" bit comes from people somewhat ignorantly echoing that (frankly most video game opinions nowadays are just streamer regurgitations anyway) for me, the sequence felt like: ARR is saving the game from the 1.0 disaster, Heavensward is 'sticking to what worked in ARR' but a little higher quality', Stormblood is the devs/game finding their own identity outside of the western mmo influences, Shadowbringers is them hitting their stride, and Endwalker is maintaining that stride

I don't think Stormblood is underrated. Personally, I think the issue is that the base expansion (4.0) is quite lacklustre. There are many valid complaints about the story's pacing and character development. The patch content, however, is very good, as are the trials and raid. But this almost has the effect of making 4.0 feel even worse by comparison, especially as the immediately preceding 3.x patch content was fantastic as well. I think your opinion on StB is going to depend on whether you think about it in terms of the whole expansion, OR the *story arc.* In my head, when someone says "Stormblood" I'm thinking of the 4.0 story arc, and it elicits similar feelings as 2.0 (though I think it's still better than 2.0): It's fine, and without it we couldn't have the really good stories and characters that originate from it - but by itself it's a bit "meh." I think the main issue is that both 2.0 and 4.0 can be summed up to a rather predictable "underdogs fighting the big bad empire" plotline. There's no big twist, no moral dilemma, and not enough emotional weight behind the victory. Furthermore, I think the reason "Stormblood" makes me think of 4.0 alone is because it presents itself as a full arc. The big bad is defeated, and Ala Mhigo is free. Unlike the 3.x and 5.x patches which have their quite definitive end in x.3 with the final defeat of Nidhogg and exit of the scions from the First. Yes, Yotsuyu goes down in 4.3 but this already feels like a totally different arc and with Alphi leaving with the Garleans it all sort of blends into the run-up to ShB which itself feels like its more part of a ShB arc than Stormblood.

Stormblood was awesome, a big step up from Heavensward. Bigger world. More grounded story. Better villains. Lyse was great. Less snow. Namazu. Ninja turtles Great stuff.

“This is our first solo instance and i gotta say it’s pretty underwhelming.” 2017 flashback horrors 🫨😰

I personally preferred Hevensward, but thats only because i really like the themes and aesthetics of Ishgaurd and its politics, but i will say Stormblood definitely had better moments like getting your ass kicked at the start by Zenos, and Emet’s introduction cutscene, im just not a big fan of Doma for some reason

I know this was largely a story based retrospective, but I would like to add that Stormblood also had a great content lineup. The first field based content in the form of Eureka, the introduction of Ultimate raids, the 24 man was actually interesting mechanically, and the jobs themselves all got gauges to play with. People like to complain about job homogenization these days, but oh boy, the jobs were in a bad place in Heavensward.

Thank you for this!!! Hope SHB and EW follow soon

I like Stormblood more than Shadowbringers

About the WoL making reports on dungeons; that's what our quest journal is.

The only thing i find funny they basically abandone the war in ala mihgo. To basically free an entirely new nation.

Stormblood is and always will be the best the game ever was, to me. I'll never understand why people are so down on it.

this was my number 2 xpac behind HW

Stormblood had higher highs than Heavensward, but much lower lows, which averages out just beneath heavensward for me. Doma was wonderful, but it did feel like writers were pulling things out of their asses and making Urianger be an annoyingly vague dick who shows up only to give us the mcguffin they decided was needed rather than let us figure things out and work with our allies to come up with a solution.

Ill put stormblood over heavensward anyday. Love the vibe and music in kugane