Okay I have to talk about this

This is the best Final Fantasy game ever made. Not FFXIV, but FFXIV: Shadowbringers.

I had heard all of the hype going into this and it STILL lived up to it. Bodyhorror, intrigue, a great villain, fantastic music, charming characters, fully fleshing out the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, I could go on. This was a masterclass in not only MMOs, but in RPGs. Final Fantasy will never be this good again.

Just finished 5.0 and heck it's nice to enjoy FFXIV's writing again after Stormblood's plot was a frustrating and boring mess. The First is a great setting and I'm glad to have a campaign that focuses on the Scions again. The combat encounters in the game's dungeons and trials also continue to be great.

There's still some questionable stuff with the villains. I didn't appreciate Vauthry's fatphobic design though I do think Emet-Selch is written well here, making him a tragic figure without feeling sympathetic. That being said, the game's infatuation with making fascists sympathetic does still pop up in other places. There's a moment where a character basically goes "oh if only this horrible and blatantly evil fascist could be redeemed" and just, kinda hard to buy into that.

Still, aside from that I generally loved the writing, a couple of moments got me teary-eyed and it probably has one of my favorite endings a video game has had.

Shadowbringers is what every Final Fantasy game should strive to be: whimsical and fantastic, emotional and mature, fun and engaging.

From the moment we are thurst into the expansion's first area, until the very end, the story does not let up, thanks to Natsuko Ishikawa's wonderful writing. It made me fall in love with characters old and new, as I got invested in their personal conflicts and how they were interwoven with the main plot.

Not to mention the music here being arguably one of the best in the series and gaming in general. Soken proves himself to be a household name once again, the mad man.

I wish I were better with words so I could write essays upon essays about this game and how much it positively affected me. Alas. I'll just say this: if you love Final Fantasy, or RPGs in general, or, heck, gaming, please play this game, it'll be one of the best decisions you could ever make, trust me.

Stand tall, my friend.

Shadowbringers was very much a personal journey for me, as was largely the intent of the game I imagine. Its excellent writing between each of the major characters reflected equivalently on the Warrior of Light's development. Its themes of post-apocalyptic despair and the misgivings of humanity of the past are shined brightly on as the shadow of the world is reclaimed. I felt a strong attachment to the setting by the end, an irreplaceable memory of all that transpired that left me walking away at the end bittersweet and in tears. There's a lot to get into, especially in terms of the utopian breakdown in Amaurot, but I would choose to move on with the idea that people on their own can come to play Shadowbringers and think, hear, and feel exactly how these stories came into play.

The music and aesthetics themselves are the best the MMO's ever had too. Though it does similarly work with Heavensward and Stormblood's motif usage, the way tones were remixed and placed in the story were incredible. The oft-memed song is A Long Fall, but I have stronger attachment to Tomorrow and Tomorrow. The cutscenes also have phenomenal lighting and direction, and there's actual animation with some of the scenes now, especially with the latest ones.

The gameplay has also reached new peaks, especially with the latest patch's trial. While there are a lot of issues with how they made classes simpler (that I guess fortunately haven't experienced myself having joined afterwards), the ending rotations in Shadowbringers are still intensely fun to manage, some even for the first time. The solo duties continue to be interesting now since the tail end of Stormblood, and dungeons now let you play with the Scions, which is such a welcome change in terms of making the experience more personal. The raid and trial content especially hits new peaks, with the Seat of Sacrifice being my all time favorite fight in the entire game up to this point. Or at least, my favorite fight on Normal, since I have yet to do any of the Savage/Extreme/Ultimate content.

There are a few issues in the rough through it all. Despite my massive love and respect I hold towards this game and Yoshi-P now, there were definitely still weak points to cross over I can't easily forgive. The first half of the tempest pace breaker and the trashy trolley subplot I could very well have done without. The Alliance Raid, while WONDERFUL NieR fanservice, is mostly disappointing in its story and newest content too. The Raid and postgame Trial storyline are similarly at underwhelming ends here, the latter much worse for the potential it could've explored.

There's still three major patches of content left we haven't seen out of Shadowbringers by the time of this review, but it doesn't matter at this point. Shadowbringers is my favorite FF game, and I recommend anyone reading this make it a point of consideration to get far enough in FF14 to make it to this point.

Pray don't forget us, your bygone kin
With one world's end does a new begin
And should our soul scatter onto the wind
Still we shall live on.

Now that Endwalker is out I feel Shadowbringers is well and truly over, and it's possible to talk about the expansion in its totality - one of, if not the best MMO expansions I've ever played.

The MSQ - that is the storyline of the expansion on launch - is excellent. Shadowbringers is unusually tight, gambling on a very self-contained, isolated story set in a parallel world to the previous expansions and featuring only a handful of crossover characters. This could've resulted in it feeling like an irrelevant side story, a distraction, but instead it pays off with a tight, satisfying story that builds a phenomenal personal connection between the player and NPCs. Both Ardbert and the Crystal Exarch get fantastic, complete character arcs that brought me to tears. It's borderline miraculous how the game creates the impression of a personal connection between the player and NPCs who, realistically, you have no meaningful interaction with beyond quests. Truly top notch stuff.

There are two blemishes on the MSQ that I cannot gloss over. The first is a lot of sympathy for the game's villain, Emet Selch, a self confessed genocidal dictator. The character has massive personal charisma that makes him a joy to watch, but he'll belt out some horrible fash nonsense about how he has a "bigger soul" than us and that's why he wants us dead, and all the protagonists just sit around going "damn yo guess he has a point his soul is very big". He's generally treated as sympathetic and having "good reasons" for his heinous acts, which is not a good look. The other spot is mini-Minfilia, the replacement for the ARR NPC. I don't want to get into spoilers, so briefly, it sucks that one of the most important female characters in the game is bounced around like a football, everyone's got to get their hands on her, but there's absolutely no payoff where she actually becomes important. It sucks and it's part of a wider pattern of weak writing around female characters in the game that's disappointing. However, despite these two spots, the indelible memories left behind by the MSQ set it above the other expansions.

Beyond the original content of the expansion, the patch content was absolutely amazing. Story-wise it expanded a lot of very satisfying different storylines- continuing the fight against the Garlean Empire in the trial series and Bozja, rebuilding Ishgard, and digging deeper into Norvrdandt's story with the raid series, it gave a fantastic impression of the depth and breadth of the world. The communal crafting with leaderboards and status to fight for in the rebuilding of Ishgard is the best crafting content of any MMO I've ever played.

I want to single out Bozja specifically as the best content in the expansion, and a real cindarella story for concepts that fell flat on their face before. This is to my mind the third attempt XIV has made at this kind of content - the original Diadem, Eureka and now Bozja - and the first time it's actually worked. I was indifferent to the Diadem and hated Eureka, but Bozja successfully brings all these different elements together to create a complex ecosystem of players coming together in adhoc parties, grinding, fighting, leveling, participating in amazing boss battles and a chance to really show your stuff in Duels. So much time in an MMO can be spent playing alone, or in small groups of 4, but this is content that really creates communities, lets you see dozens and dozens of players at once and it's amazing. I dearly hope this isn't lightning in a bottle, and that future expansions can return to this idea.

An incredible expansion that greatly improved aspects of the lore and story, not to mention will always be one of my favorites; I'm not sure if anything can top this one. From the first part of the game, the tone hits you heavily about just what situation the people of Norvrandt have been suffering through. It also is genius to take its moment away from the pile of characters and focus on both newer and old ones. Truly, it was a wild road of thrills and sadness with a complimentary soundtrack to support it. Ishikawa's writing--yet again--twists the weaker villains of FF14's story into better ones. Perhaps, the villains may just be the finest this expansion has to offer as a whole. It was worth it spending 2 months to finish this.

yep. (arguably) the best final fantasy. of course, i felt this way about heavensward, too. if you have any contempt for mmorpgs or subscription-based games, but you love an above and beyond exceptional, emotional jrpg tale, it would be well worth it to overcome those issues and dive in. you can play all the way up to level 60 (which includes heavensward) entirely for free, anyhow. i've never known anyone to not completely fall in love with this game once they give it a chance, and shadowbringers is one of the best things square enix have ever made at its absolute peak.

loses .5 stars for FFXIV being kind of stale for me after 3 xpacks, class design was mostly fine here though.

However the writing absolutely carries the main body of the expansion, probably the best written Final Fantasy game in the last 10 years. Incredible return to form after the Stormbloods flop, Endgame is still very stale for me personally but I mean i dropped like 1000+ hours into HW so I'm burnout biased as hell on that front.

It's biggest flaw is having to do 3 expansions of story to get here but fuck its good.

Let me get this out of the way before I say anything else: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers is arguably the greatest story in any medium I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. It's so tightly written, hits on every emotion possible, and has an incredible cast of characters that includes one of my favorite antagonists ever. Just hearing certain songs can put me to tears all over again.

All that aside, as an expansion this is the Final Fantasy XIV at its best. The zones are beautiful and diverse, the soundtrack is INCREDIBLE, new dungeons and trials are engaging and unique, and questing never gets too monotonous.