[Spoiler: Heavensward and post heavensward msq] I completed Heavensward and the dragonsong quests and all I got was this shitty reddit post

Time for a long, disjointed ramble.

For background I'm a big fan of FF and have had a long term quest to play all of the mainline games. I've avoided XIV because of my distaste for MMOs but finally decided to give it a try since it seemed to have a fun job system which are like crack to me. Lo and behold I'm actually enjoying myself. Duties and progressing my job of choice has been fun in addition to exploring my first MMO. The story though has been kind of a miss. ARR had me asleep at the wheel until the end of the Astral era quests which got me at least a little interested. I've also heard people describing Heavensward as some of the best JRPG storytelling ever so I had high hopes...which were not met. Don't get me wrong I wasn't having a bad time at all! It just wasn't as great as I was expecting.

Here's some things I liked!

-Alphinaud really got a glowup! I couldn't goddamn stand him in ARR but they really made him a lot more mature and actually interesting. Him dealing with the consequenses of his actions was great and really gave the player a grasping to point a character that's very integral to the story.

-Some of the characterwork overall was good. Thancred got some much needed fleshing out and Ser Aymeric remained stellar if not a little stale. Cid, Biggs and Wedge were a joy as always. Krile was a fun FFV reference.

-The history behing Dravania and Coerthas was quite interesting and had a lot of thought behind it.

-Sharlayan and it's relation to the characters were great not even mentioning Matoya and her cave straight from FF1 on the NES. I'm also a sucker for magic libraries so that dungeon was a treat.

-The dungeon and boss design in general remained stellar with highlights being the Prime Ascian and Thordan's knights of the round.

-The machinist job quests were a lot of fun and gave some much needed attention to the class disparity in Ishgard.

-The manacutter is a cool mount.

Then the not so positives...

-Ysayle and Estinien really fell flat for me. Ysayle kinda just ended up having the personality traits stoic, dislikes war and likes dragons, which aren't a lot to work off of. Naturally when she died, I didn't really care that much. Estinien on the other hand I just straight up disliked. He was a raving racist who was a dick to Ysayle and then got posessed. Flawed characters can be interesting but Estinien is nothing but flaws until he's saved by the wol and the gang. The problem comes from the Dragonsong quests relying on you caring for Estinien enough to risk life and limb to somehow save him instead of killing him along with Nidhogg. He did get some development after being saved but for the context of this story, it's too little, too late. (I'm also aware that he gets fleshed out in the DRG job quests but my character wasn't a dragoon so I might be missing that)

-In the same vein Haurchefant's death just made me go "well that sucks I guess." He was nice to the wol and gang but that's just kinda all he was. When your singular personality trait is nice it's kinda hard to get super invested. He didn't have a lot of screentime in the first place to boot.

-Raubahn's jailbreak and the state of Ul'dah being solved in a few quests and a cutscene sure was a decision. That plot thread was the thing that actually woke me up from my stupor in ARR but to have it just brushed aside like that felt like a joke. Also the fact that you could still enter Ul'dah all you want while you're wanted for regicide really annoyed me even if I understand it's because of MMO limitations.

-Lots of people who died just didn't. The queen? Nah she's fine. Thancred and Y'shtola? Nope they managed as well. Papalymo and Yda? Doing great. Vidofnir gets her guts pierced? She got better. FFIV did this a lot and it was just as infuriating there. Minfilia actually did kinda die but she was such a nothing character that I almost forgot she existed which is on me I suppose.

-I was kinda disappointed on the MSQs lack of focus on the class disparity in Ishgard. Some of the side quests and the MCH job quests do help with this but I feel like it's such a huge part of the city that just kinda mentioning it with Hilda isn't enough. We spend the whole expansion working with lords and nobles without really considering the actual people of Ishgard that Aymeric loves to talk about.

-On the same note Emmanellain ordering an unarmed protester shot and then getting a slap on the wrist as a consequence really stuck out. Yes Honoroit gets beat up by some people leaving and Emmanellain himself talks about taking responsibility but all of that flies out the window when everything is forgiven once he decides to join a single battle excercise between the city states. The man almost killed a commoner in broad daylight and these are the consequenses?

-The warriors of darkness seem like an interesting continuation of the idea from the end of FFIII but I'm a bit wary here. From the little I've heard of Shadowbringers' premise they seem to be on a journey to restore their light saturated world to normal. Fun idea but they seem to be working with the ascians to accomplish this. The thing I'm wary of is the game going "No look they're also good guys they just wanna restore their world" which is very funny considering all the villain speeches, smug smirks and evil laughs the ascians and the warrios seem to be pulling every other minute.

-Then some complaining on structure which mostly stem from me being new to MMOs and this kind of storytelling so feel free to ignore this if you're heard enough bellyaching about that. The biggest problem here is that it takes a stupid amount of time and countless dull fetchquests to get here. I'm of the mind that insisting someone last through at least 40h of complete boredom to reach some pretty okey fantasy storytelling is absolutely preposterous. Then in comes the big fat crystal in the room. The whole story is centered on a gormless mute lad or lass whose personality consists of nods and emotes. I get that with a custom characters that's how things go but it always kinda itches at the back of my head. This game puts so much weight and value on the protag that it kinda makes everyone around them seem incompetent. Then there's the fact that the presentation is just not great. Generic animations and rows upon endless rows of text to read through is not really taking advantage of the medium here. Overall I feel like FFXIV's story and gameplay seem to be in constant conflict with eachother. It's reading and cuscenes, then some gameplay repeat ad infinitum. You're the big warrior of light but ignore the 29 999 999 other warriors of light. Framed for regicide, nah you can still enter the city no problem. It's frustrating and honestly kinda makes me feel like the story would benefit from just being a book or visual novel instead of being stapled into an MMO. I've heard that they do some meta thing concerning this later so take that with a pinch of salt until I get to Shadowbringers and Endwalker.

And that's all I've got right now. There's a lot more text on the negative side but that's just because it's generally easier to talk about the negatives than the positives. I'm not trying to be a hater nor am I trying to just talk shit for no reason. I really do see a lot of good here as well, it's just Heavensward specifically didn't catch on like I thought it would. I'll still work my way all the way through the game and I'm having fun, I just wanted air my thoughts a little since it's been spinning around in my head for a while. And there's something to be said that the story left that strong an impression in the first place. (Also points for introducing the coolest incarnation of the coolest job in the franchise. Machinist is so sick)