Favourite FFXIV expansion

[Dionysos]

A very simple thread.

Which FFXIV product is your favourite so far? I'll add the original FFXIV and A Realm Reborn too just in case people prefer them.
When explaining your reasons, please use spoiler tags where appropriate. Many people (myself included) have yet to catch up with the story.


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Myself?
I've not long finished Heavensward and now thanks to lovely people at Christmas I now have Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

I'm currently storming through Stormblood. At least I intended to just rush through it until I very quickly realised that the game deserves a lot better. A good number of people had told me that Stormblood is a rubbish expansion and I was really planning on finishing it up ASAP in order to reach Shadowbringers (which is highly acclaimed). To tell the truth, I am absolutely engrossed in it. It has far exceeded my low expectations. My guess is that it only suffered because it was sandwiched between two extraordinarily strong expansions (Heavensward and Shadowbringers). Nobody expected Heavensward to be that good, so the bar was most definitely raised.

And Heavensward is a beautiful game with some stunning settings. It has a strong story which presents a tragic moral dilemma. It contains heartbreak, but also hope. It has some outstanding music as well. Basically all of the ingredients of a great Final Fantasy game.

My favourite expansion and FFXIV storyline so far has to be Heavensward, followed by Stormblood. I confess that I have forgotten most of the story for A Realm Reborn now aside from the patches.

How about yourselves?

 

[Dionysos]

I’m genuinely torn now having completed Shadowbringers last night.

I love both Heavensward and Shadowbringers.

Shadowbringers has a peculiar (but effective) mix of quirky madness and deep, heart-wrenching sadness. It has villains which you can actually feel sorry for. The primary antagonist may even have made it into my top three Final Fantasy villains now… I was not expecting that!

I love how this game also made me feel like an actual character. Previously my player character was just some idiot who nods a lot and is praised by everyone he meets. Now I feel like I’m intrigued by my own character and who he really is. I’m theory-crafting for my own character! I think it’s a really interesting and very clever direction they’ve taken us.

And at long last the Ascians are no longer simply shadowy figures with ambiguous agendas like Kingdom Hearts' Organisation XIII. We are now beginning to understand them.

The ending is by far the best ending out of all of the FFXIV games so far. Heavensward’s ending (pre-patch) left a lot unfinished and I would say that Heavensward only truly ended halfway through the patch content. Shadowbringers, on the other hand, feels relatively complete during the core game. I shall leave the current patches until after playing the FFVII Remake. I’m curious to see where the FFXIV story will go next.

I’ll change my vote to both Heavensward and Shadowbringers then.

 

[Safer Sephiroth]

It used to be Heavensward and I still love it but Shadowbringers really stepped up the game. I love that expansion so much.

 

[Dionysos]

I have now added Endwalker to this poll in case people wished to amend their votes, or vote for the first time.


I'll be starting Endwalker soon so I'll be able to judge a bit later, but I'm aware that some people have already completed it on this site.

 

[Jake]

Endwalker lacked the emotional impact of ShB for me. I don't particularly care for a few decisions they made regarding the MSQ.

Spoiler

The whole going back in time and telling the ancients about their impending doom was so cathartic AND YET FIVE MINUTES LATER EVERYONE HAS THEIR MEMORIES WIPED. Sure. I wasn't at all blue-balled. I was hoping for some kind of split timeline thing where we were able to save them and then come back to our own timeline and save that too. But maybe that's just too Avengers for SE.

Spoiler

I also didn't care for beating Zodiark at level 83, regardless of what that did for the plot going forward. SE were building this guy up for years and when we finally meet him, he basically rolled over and died. Sundered or not, it was far too easy. And no one seemed to care about us killing this dude either either. Likewise with the time travel plot point - that SHOULD be a huge deal, but here we are.

Ending was nice but you know. A couple of nitpicks. ShB - especially 5.3 - tugged more at the heartstrings.

I also feel like general quest design was a step back too. I swear to Jesus if I have to follow the same person around and have them run off 7 times again... D:< There seemed to be a lot of padding and I'm not sure why.

 

[Mister Goober]

I chose A Realm Reborn even though I enjoyed the expansions more. Seriously, I enjoyed Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker more than ARR. But ARR is still my favorite because it's the one phase of the game where the three Eorzean leaders mattered the most. And that's important to me.