Hi Everyone; Chris here, make sure to stick around to the end for something silly. Anyway its a new year and a new theme for youtube and twitch. This will be the last video I work on for a few weeks as I'm moving to Manchester on Friday and taking some time off finally. Mike will probably still be releasing some videos, you'll just have to put up with his editing for a week or two 🙂. As you can see from the video Mike had plenty of issues with Stormblood, what do you think of how they handled the ending?
One of the other reasons they stopped doing job quests with abilities/story is because they release new jobs every Xpack, and it becomes unmanageable to create and maintain. Later, you'll see the the system they moved to, and it's fulfills this feeling of a side story for your "job". Please look forward to it! *bow*
His views seem to be among the common feeling regarding Stormblood. It was good but often slightly off the mark in a lot of ways. A lot of people believe it was meant to be two expansions but they kinda mushed two stories into one which accounts for the disjointed and slightly off feeling it has.
I pretty much agree with his take, pretty similar to mine. I'm greatly looking forward to what he thinks of the raids and the patch content. I think the Stormblood MSQ was the weakest part of the whole expansion, but the rest of the stuff is really good. Pretty much everything from here on out and through EW is incredible. I really wish he'd at least try another job just so he can talk on how the job system works in the game. It's easily one of the best and a majorly defining feature of the game and it's weird to see him giving an honest take on the game but skipping over it. While he's generally doing most things like a regular player would experience which I greatly appreciate, a regular player by this point would have picked up another job or two. I don't know if it's worth mentioning that at the rate he's going he'll wind up at 90 on his BLM and be tossing an absolutely massive amount of MSQ XP. I suspect if he gets to that point he'll be frustrated by it, but it's kind of been his choice to ignore the job system entirely.
14:51 "And then they broke into song, which was so inappropriate." I couldn't disagree more. Perhaps it's because it's my favorite part of the entire expansion, but i feel you've missed the symbolism of that moment. The song they sing is an Ala Mhigan hymm to Rhalgr, which also functions as their national anthem. A song which, in a much earlier cutscene with the Garleans, we find out had been stolen by the Garlean Empire and repurposed as an Anthem for their own country. You can find both versions here on youtube, actually. One is called "The Measure of His Reach," and that's the Hymn. The other is called "The Measure of OUR Reach," which is the one sung to symbolize the conquering force of the Garlean empire. This is just one of the many ways which the Garleans had stolen not just their land, their lives, their people, but also their culture. The Ala Mhigans had just won a war that was long fought, against a conquering force which had subjugated their people for over two decades. What better time to sing their national anthem, in a moment of utter joy and victory? This is also the very first time in-game that we as players hear the lyrics to Measure of His Reach, after first being introduced to it earlier as a Garlean theme. Being that the melody is woven into every part of the expansion, including as a theme in Rhalgr's Reach, we are left to wonder what the theme means, and why the melody is so prevalent. By playing this version at the end of 5.0, we are made to realize that the song had been stolen, the lyrics changed, the meaning removed. Here, at the final moment of victory over Garlemald, we hear the true meaning of the song, and it symbolizes the Ala Mhigan people taking back their land, their lives, and their culture.
A bit of a spoiler for level 60-70 Dark Knight but, though it's not sung in voice, you actually do hear/read lyrics of "The Measure of His Reach" in part of that storyline sung by a character in a rather emotional moment. It adds a little more, I feel, to that final moment in 4.0 when you understand what song those lyrics were for. Additionally, the quests themselves include lyrics from "The Measure of His Reach."
The first watch it seemed cheesy with the whole "the gangs all here!" montage of characters. On watching it a second time it seemed very appropriate and very emotional.
I felt the same; at first maybe kind of cheesy but after connecting the anthems quickly I was like, nope, what a wonderful tie-in to the whole situation of Ala Mhigo. Loved it since!
"And then they broke into song" Yeah of course they started singing, it was the Al Amhigan anthem Mike, they start singing the anthem as they declare their independence from the Empire.
@@pinballanon8531 Its a videogame, what do u expect? Its telling a story, its not going to show the part where everyone gets in place for the final camera shot and the number of times arnevald had to hold up the flag cause the wind wasnt blowing. Suspension of disbelief bro
@@pinballanon8531 The walking was to make Stormblood's logo. If you look carefully at the end result it lines up near exactly to the stylized logo. They could have done it better probably, but there was a purpose to it.
I think Stormblood redeems itself with the post-MSQ patches. One of my most memorable moments in the game occurs there and it will always be special to me.
The 4.x patches really do make it so much better. But what I love about Stormblood is that the entire expansion is world building. We finally get to Ala Mhigo, we're introduced to Hingashi, to the Confederacy, to Doma, to Yanxia, to the Azim Steppes. We learn about so many new cultures and peoples, but for as dragging as the story can be at times, none of the world building feels rushed or forced. In fact, it kind of slickly goes under notice and gets filed away in your brain without every realizing it, so when something is referenced later, you know exactly what it is.
Another way to look at the Shinryu fight is that he's looking for the most exciting fight possible for him. As the primal slayer, he wants a taste of the power you bring to bear against primals.
Yeah my interpretation is that he's not in it for the victory, he's in it for the ecstacy of the fight. He's not even in it for personal pride, honor or self-development. He gets off on grandiose, spectacle fights. When you beat him in his base form, he's not salty about losing, he reaches for Shinryu so that the fight can go on. When you beat him as Shinryu -- which to him at that time, was the most powerful one can get, he then decides to off himself since there would be no further point to continue living.
I find it really weird how you seem to have completely misinterpreted Zenos at the end of 4.0 He didn't immediately seek more power "when thinks didn't work out". He does so BECAUSE things turned out. That was the very first time he has ever felt proper excitement in a fight, and so he wanted to boost that excitement further by escalating your fight to the point of maximum absurdity - i.e. turning into a crystal god dragon and fighting you 1-on-1 on a magic platform in the sky. It's not that he was salty about losing to you in the dungeon and then went "fuck, I need to power up". Rather, he was rock hard when he finally found someone who could stand up to him and thought "FIGHT ME EVEN HARDER" For how much I don't like the "bloodknight" trope that Zenos embodies, I do appreciate that they DID stay true to what that trope means.
@@MrBunchButtons Zenos is an extremely bored Vegeta who just found Goku and doesn't have any pride to get in way of his 'FIGHT ME! NOW FIGHT ME HARDER!' tendencies.
I think it's very much up to player interpretation and there's no "wrong" or "right" way of thinking. We all see and interpret things differently and that's okay!
@@MrBunchButtons Zenos is you, the WoL, with no friends, at lvl cap when he was born and has no raid to do. He’s an end game raider but life doesn’t give him the end game he wants until he meets us, WoL (Ultimate)
You seem to have misinterpreted Zenos a bit, possibly due to over-fixating on Ichi the Killer. All he cares about is feeling something, which he can only do in a life or death struggle. You were correct in your earlier assumption about him, but yes, of course he sought even more power because that would make the grand battle he's seeking all the more invigorating. You can even see it in his dialogue as Shinryu, where your battle is so grand that even the heavens cannot contain it. He wants more power, while also wanting you to gain more power as well, so that he and the one person he sees as worth fighting can have the biggest, most violent, most spectacular combat ever seen in all of history. He wants to be a god, so he can fight another god, and have the greatest spectacle of a fight there ever was.
SPOILER ALERT ...No, I'm serious This right here is exactly why at the end of everything, at the end of Endwalker, I was so fucking pumped for that final battle. The fact that Zenos finally calls you out had me grinning like a child as I just had to admit it... The Warrior of Light may not be a bloodthirsty psychopath, but the idea of being the mightiest being in multiple worlds and finding a challenge the equal of your abilities IS exhilarating! It's why we do Expert, Savage and Ultimate fights - not just for the shiny loot or bragging rights, but to be able to _feel_ that moment of triumph! At the end of it all, past how much I hated him and Fandaniel for what they did, I couldn't deny that I understood Zenos and accepted him as a friend - one I could find satisfaction in beating the ever-living hell out of, while he did the same to me.
@@Archris17 Exactly! When the dialogue choice came up, I had to choose the first option. Then when my character did that smile (the same one that I had on my face), it was just amazing.
@@Archris17 I am not like that. D: I wished that we really could choose to just leave without fighting, like Zenos said. My character just wants to help and bring peace, (and going on adventures to see and learn about new things) nothing more. And I do things for gear and glamour, not for the feeling of triumph. Of course I feel that too, when winning a fight. But I don't fight for that feeling. I don't like stressfull content much and I try to avoid it. xD And savage is not soooo hard. The hard part of savage is at least to get a group of 8 people together. Beyond that it's just learning mechanics and concentration. But even if you are a ff-god player, you loose in that content, when your teammates are not willing to learn or can't concentrate, and so on. The extreme content does not mirror Zenos' madness for fighting the strongest enemy, in my opinion. Zenos is a selfish loner who don't gives a shit for anybody. And extreme content is all about being a team and relying on each other. I really like the FF story a lot. But Zenos is the point I struggle with. His storyline has a lack of logic. If he is soooooo strong...., why he didn't became an adventurer himself? Who should have stopped him? xD We won against the Ultima Weapon. Their super powerful secret weapon to rule the world. And later Zenos easily beat our ass, when we fight him the first time. So he must be much more powerful than Ultima Weapon. I wonder why they need such weapons in general, when they have that overpowered prince. xD I stop it here. Zenos is a part of the story I don't like very much. One problem is maybe, that a big part of the Zenos storyline is not part of the game and most players (me too) don't have acess to it. Maybe Zenos would make more sense if knowing the story. I don't know. But I hope that they will not do things like this again. It's better when the story is 'in' the game. :)
I will say something about the ending scene where every Ala Mhigan sings their national anthem once their country has been liberated. Depending on which country or culture you grew up in i think the perception of this scene changes greatly. It feels like they took a lot of inspiration and imagery from history when countries that had been under occupations by other nations were liberated. My country was one of the countries that was under occupations by the Germans during world war 2. Both my grandmothers lived through that period. Once our country were finally liberated the people celebrated pretty much like how we see in the Stormblood ending. Across the country people sang our national anthem, flower pedals were raining from the rooftops in the cities into the streets. It was a very heartfelt moment in history for our country. I still hear the tales from my grandmother from time to time on how everyone sang until their throats were sore and the level of joy they all felt that day.
I was reading that Stormblood's overall story resonated more in general with people who's nation went through being conquered/oppressed like the Ala Mhigan and Doman
@@jp5125 being in the position of Garlemald, that is to say: the invading oppressor. I'm not going to compare Brits to magitek fascists, but I'm pretty sure most of the people in history who hosted the British did so unwillingly.
The thing with Kojin not being able to recover their relics: many of them were taken by the Red, and they knew that the relics were somewhere in their territory. They couldn't risk crossing over, or there would've been war again. So they kinda *had* to comb the rest of the ocean not under the Red Kojin's control, just in case the ones they were after and/or others could be found scattered elsewhere. Additionally, the reason you're so easily able to traverse their lands is basically the same; you're not a part of the Blue, so the Red would be less likely to retaliate. They do eventually, of course, but you're also the Warrior of Light and leagues above both the Red and Blue in strength by this point. It's less that it's an easy task, and more that it's a task easy for *you* specifically. EDIT: Furthermore the reason as to why the "mcguffin" is so important: *the relics are strong enough to summon primals like Susanoo by themselves.* It's common knowledge in the East that objects and creatures grow more powerful as they age, with the former potentially growing an intelligence and the latter becoming basically demigods known as auspices. So the power of these things doesn't really come from left field - they're pretty well explained by that point, but I honestly hardly blame anyone for skipping around a bit in Stormblood.
I think at this point in the story some folks still don't get how insanely strong the Warrior of Light is. I mean they hammer it home and tell you every 10 minutes, but I think that people assume it's just generic "well done, champion!" fluff. No, dude, you're like, WAY above anyone else. You're a fucking monster. That's why Zenos beating you was initially a big surprise of sorts, and I think Mike got that by assuming he was juicing on Ascian dust. It's hard to sell just how easily the Warrior of Light is able to do what others can't, and why a large focus on the story isn't just you punching every problem, but rather showing the limitations of a single person, no matter how powerful, and consequences of problems that can't be solved with overwhelming strength. Luckily the game only gets better and better at presenting such scenarios as time goes on.
@@Xbob42 I think we don't really get power of WoL way until we get to roleplay these characters. But the biggest power level difference was displayed to me personally in Endwalker. That event that shows how really powerful Warrior of Light is and how weak common people are, compared to him/her.
Another reason I personally felt that they changed how the job story works for learning spells is because it shifted from someone TEACHING you new things to you learning new abilities yourself in a kind of "This is something only you know how to do" kind of way.
I remember Yoshi P's comments from the time. He told that necessity to give new skill after every quest really limited the space of the quests themselves. They wanted, if possible, that skill learned tie in with what is happening in the quest. Thus it strained the writing team. Plus adding new jobs with each expansion compounds the problem. So Preach: this aspect will change more come next expansions.
Yeah, lore-wise, you are usually the only (or one of very few) member of your profession (there are a lot of "thaumaturges", but only you have the "heart of shatotto" and are a "black mage") and so explaining everything post-60 as you pioneering new territory in your job makes total sense. (Even if in actuality the change was for other, more meta reasons.)
Yeah I wish people would understand the difference between explaining why someone is the way they are, and justifying their actions. Yotsuyu isn't justified, but she is explained. She didn't wake up one day and decide to be the Witch of Doma; it was a long and horrible process to reach that point.
Yeah, but the raid itself is so, so different than what you'd expect from a hole in the ground. If you are someone without any FF knowledge before this game it goes some pretty crazy places that are all out of left field. Great raid though. ;)
One thing with Fordola and the "Albert Wesker" reference was that it was also supposed to show how normal enemies see you in combat as well. Like when you dodge their AoEs and attacks, technically you're moving like that from their perspective.
This. The AoE zones, fight markers, and cast-bars are the in-combat representation of the Echo, and when I realised that it blew my mind that they went that far to justify game mechanics in the world.
@@Bottle-OBill its not, its already confirmed that it has nothing to do with the echo, its purely gameplay mechanics. I still like to think its an effect of the echo because its cool, but its a head canon.
@@danilooliveira6580 where was it confirmed? not trying to be confrontational, just really curious why some people say that but offer - so far - no evidence of that.
The "song" is the Ala Mhigan anthem. Early on in the MSQ, you hear the Garlean version of the anthem (The Measure of Our Reach if you want to search for it). So these guys conquer and colonize them, and then use the conquered peoples' anthem to make it their own colonizer anthem, which the people are then forced to sing as well. For 20 years any kids born there would have had to puclicly sing an anthem that glorified the Garlean empire. Of course once they kicked the Garleans out, they sing the anthem of their homeland. Imagine thinking that wasn't appropriate.
Preach is british , i kinda understand why he felt off during that scene As someone whos from nation free from colonizer i was happy during ending anthem for real
it wasn't appropriate and it was weird as well as jarring. You don't just break out into a choregraphed singing out of nowhere a few minutes after the war ended. You first tend to the wounded and get things in order. But it was implied that they have done that and there was a small time skip before they did a group walk and do a choregraphed singing since every leader gathered at the top and people were already lining up below. The biggest problem was not having a blackout transition instead the transition was from one frame right to the other as if they suddenly grouped up and did a choregraphed singing in a span of a few minutes after Zenos killed himself.
Regarding your Cocobusi moment, you've definitely missed some similar moments for other jobs already. When you attacked Doma Castle, the Ninja trainer showed up in the cutscenes outside that, for example.
@@FinalDragoon I leveled summoner after seeing this and it was so cool, but also a little disappointing that I hadn't already done it when doing the MSQ at that time.
One thing to note about the singing at the end: You hear this theme multiple times throughout the MSQ, but only in the Garlean style until the very end. It's actually the Ala Migan nation's anthem but the Garleans spliced it with a Garlean touch as an extra means of colonization which, to my understanding, is a common imperialization tactic. When they sing the true anthem at the end, it symbolizes quite literally that they are now truly liberated.
People sing their national anthem when their local team wins a SPORTS GAME, it's extremely likely to think they'll do the same when they liberate their nation.
SOOOOOO many people dont get why they sing at the end, and it pisses me off, so to clarify, they are singing the Ala Mhigo anthem that was bastardized by the empire early on, and was sang with zenos introduction. Would a nation not sing their anthem when they become free?
i think it just depends on how patriotism is seen from where they are from. i am a german and patriotism is a realy wierd topic for us and we see it as wierd.
@@AbigatorM yeah, now put yourself into the shoes of one of the countries that successfuly got liberated from germany, which is effectively what this was
@@waking00one not my point. My point is that the player might feel awkward. If they are from a non patriotic country. I got it aswell, was just pointing out why some might not.
The criticism of Preach here and something that i agree and felt the same thing it's not about the song , it's the timing of it, it's just felt really ankward and rushed in timing , you just barely killed a primal / zenos offed himself and in a matter of minutes after a hard fought final battle with a lot of deaths (i assume ) , everyone was ready to sing like it was a glee song, to me if they did some kind of official cerimony hours later it would be a lot better and solve this entirely. Hell they could even mirror that zenos introduction but with the original ala migham anthem and it's people just to make even more clear about the song and the meaning behind it .
All of Ala Mhigo bursting out into their national anthem at the moment of their liberation was fucking hype. I teared up it was such a heartfelt moment for the whole nation. The ala mhigo side of SB treats the entire nation as a character in the story. It's a bold decision, but when it works, it *works*.
iI's very fitting to sing a national anthem that they reclaim from garlemald. I really disagree with how people find it jarring aside from the musical performance. After they reclaim their city, they reclaim their pride.
Yes, it felt right to me when I played through that part of the game years ago. i think most people forget the scene at the beginning where the empire is singing their national anthem that was stolen from the conquered Ala Mhigo, and the pride felt by them when they reclaimed what was theirs. It was a bit theatrical, but by no means awkward if you paid attention to what happened before.
I honestly don't understand people who find it jarring or cringe. It's an anthem that has been stolen from them. Of course they are going to sing it once their nation is free once more.
@@hastur6446 because it was inorganic and seem like they choregraphed it before they even won the war without us knowing. They did not have a blackout transition before they do the group walk so it seemed like it happened in a span of a few minutes after killing Zenos without tending to the wounded or getting things in order beforehand.
The only time I cried in Stormblood was at the end with the anthem. I live in a country that only recently (1900s) been independent and is very small, population and geographically. So when I heard the anthem and everyone coming together and singing, with the flag, and it was after the big bad ruler had died, I did shed a tear or two. Also, I liked that the anthem of ala mhigo was first shown in the lvl 81 msq cutscene with abridged garlemald lyrics, its really good story telling. Unrelated to the argument above. Also, I liked that a lot of arguments Preach makes are so genuine and based on limited knowledge, with no spoilers(or even better, gives takes that account for any spoilers hes heard). Limited doesnt mean hes wrong or right in his statements, just that the timeline is visible in his videos.
You see and interact with Estenien prior to the canon moment if you're a Dragoon, it's the same with being one prior to going into Heavensward. NPCs will even occasionally refer to you as the other Azure Dragoon. Stuff that seems to come out of nowhere are usually covered in job quests during this era of FFXIV.
Preach, seriously, how did you miss the giant pit with Omega? I really liked how they actually direct you towards the raid. You are literally, not figuratively, playing footage from the intro questline in this video?!
I keep comparing Stormblood to Diamond Is Unbreakable. It starts of zany, it gets weird, it ends up epic, and people never stop arguing about whether it's too long or too short.
I really liked Stormblood. It did not have the emotional hights of previous expansion,but I liked the more grounded story about war between nations and what It does to people. And I also liked exploration of the new nations.
I personally really liked Stormblood, moreso than HW even. Sacrilege it may be, but I didn't care about Haurchefant. The two moments that emotionally stood out in HW to me were the lyrics kicking in for the Dragonsong and Ysayle's sacrifice. (In hindsight one post MSQ quest also hits hard, but didn't at the time.) Stormblood by contrast has tons of moments and a people and setting I care about. Ishgardians are classist, aristocratic (and a bit racist) so it's pretty hard to empathize with them.
Estenien destroying that cannon was amazing. I kind of love that a wandering dragoon can just screw up the enemies plans so hard. I get that Preach wanted more of a strategic solution, but sometimes things just fall apart in war. I mean it would have been equally possible for the barrel of the cannon to split due to a manufacturing defect. I can totally happen.
It also sets up how the Garleans, who are unable to manipulate Aether, view the people who can. The officer going "how can one man- SHOOT HIM!" is a very deliberate choice. To Estinien, that was a 2 minute CD. To the Garleans, it was one person causing the kind of destruction they built that cannon for... with a _spear_ .
Estinien can solo a raid boss. =| But also, we know he doesn't just *show up* there as he's been wandering around ala mhigo and preach said himself, we're friends. So of COURSE he's going to be aware ya'll are staging a war, you don't just keep that sort of thing quiet. He might be a himbo but he's not daft, but he's also not ready to discuss what happened with Ysayle and stuff yet. You can find out where he's been and what he's been doing with the Dragoon quests. >D Just sayin'.
Estinien journey was justified with him wanting to clean up after his own mistakes. He takes a detour to help with the cannon. Estinien never forgot how shinryu got to be. We did.... thats why the eyes were just there in the end. In a way, it would be embarrassing for alphie and us to just ignore or misplace the eyes *again* Estinien is a true chad
Zenos didn't fuse with Shinryu because 'things weren't going to plan' he fused with Shinryu BECAUSE things where going exactly to plan. the dungeons fight with him only GAVE HIM THE ROCK HARD fight erection he'd been looking for, and now that you've proven you're actually up to the task of 'satisfying him' he seeks only to make the experience even greater for him self, take it to the grandest height he can think of at the moment and draw everything you have out of you. Zenos isn't deep or complicated. he wants one thing and one thing only, and that singular lens is really the only way to look at him with an accuracy. basically. you kinda missed the point at the end regarding Zenos.
i know this has been mentioned already, i'm just saying it again so it's more likely to be seen by preach and his team. the singing at the end was the nathional anthem of ala mhigo and a hymn to their patron deity rhalgr (the measure of his reach) that was stolen from them when garlemald invaded and butchered to be an anthem of their own (the measure of our reach). why wouldn't they sing the proper version of their anthem that was stolen from them after liberating their country after 20 years of oppression? i admit it would have felt more natural if one person started the singing, maybe lyse or raubahn, or even some random person in the crowd, then the rest of the ala mhigans join in, but other than that it feels very appropriate. the other comments explain it a lot better than i do, so please read them as well.
So I recently finished all of stormblood and it was amazing. I’ll be honest getting to the end was all over the place. Some of the lead up was good and some of it was a slog, but looking back all the build up was needed and I honestly regret not having faith in the story until I got to the end. So good and I’m glad I kept with it. So I’m not smart enough to put into words why fordola and yotsuyu being traitors to not only their kin, but their nations is really important and it isn’t just tell tell their tragic backstories. Throughout most of human history where you born, tribe or city or nation, was just as important as who you were born to, your family. So it does kinda sound like you are waving your hand over the fact they had no loyalty to their homelands regardless of their backstories when that is crucial to not only their stories, but the over all theme of stormblood.
I might be generalizing but I feel Westerners have much less nationalism in compare to Asian country (which has its bad and good side). Betraying and even joining enemy force is a big taboo in Vietnam. In fact, we Vietnamese still makes fun of the Vietnamese that ran off and joined America back in the war.
@@ucmanhle9601 my friend, they have never been conquered, that's why they can't relate. Speaking from Puerto Rico (former Spanish colony and now a US one since 1898, although they like to call it "Commonwealth" because colony sounds harsh nowadays).
Yeah, playing through the story as a dragoon made me feel like I was THE main character and everything fell nicely in place. If I didn't spend all those hours with Estinien I probably wouldn't have cared nearly as much for the scenes with him
and also has the benefit of dragoon players to want to throw hands with Estinien on sight vs "wow what a cool character" other players have with him lmao.
Estinien does not come out of the blue if you play as a dragoon. You get extra dialogue with him for the MSQ when playing as a dragoon. He is a complete badass!
1) Shinryu was not on the roof, it was in a research facility until the end. 2) The Raid was pronounced exactly as Alexander and Coil were after the Credits of the base game. Same exact way. 3) The End was PERFECT. It was an immediate music bit that turned to the STORMBLOOD LOGO and signified the Revolutions that succeeded (Revolutions is also what the Main Theme of STORMBLOOD is called) alongside the Anthem of Ala Mhigo being the same as what it was under The Empire but with new Lyrics. 4) STORMBLOOD is amazing. You have no idea what the patches have in store for you. Best time of the entire game. 5) ARR, HW and SB all have 3 Primals on the base game.
It's also my favourite expansion main story, it's so grounded in war and character choices. Everyone being so hyper critical about every little thing when it clearly has strong character and tells a story so much better than what came before. Heavensward main story (not post) is mega cheese in comparison and wouldn't hold up to half the scrutiny.
@@cattysplat Indeed. HEAVENSWARD was amazing, BUT it actually was the one that suffered from poor pacing (2 entirely different stories and themes, Dragonsong War and Uldah political resolution), unlike STORMBLOOD which was a coherent themed perfectly paced story (Revolution against the Empire) alongside actual stupid decisions with grave consequences to the story (Eyes in the pit lol, who knew Ascians that can teleport everywhere could reach them) unlike the small things in STORMBLOOD (Kojin relic and their detectiveness? Really?). Also, the whole STORMBLOOD situation was so amazing, that it even leaked to SHADOWBRINGERS with its whole entire big side stories and content being around... STORMBLOOD (and A REALM REBORN) with Werlyt and Bozja. Finally, any comparison you can make is literally STORMBLOOD wins. -Alliance Raid? STORMBLOOD. -Raid? STORMBLOOD. -Dungeons? STORMBLOOD. -Classes? STORMBLOOD. -Exploration Foreys? STORMBLOOD. Also critical and fan reception too at the time of release. Literally everything. I am convinced the only reason western PC people claim HEAVENSWARD is superior is because of the Aesthetic and medieval Castle like Ishgard and stuff, alongside the Church stuff. If the exact same stories were flipped with the Aesthetic, and STORMBLOOD got castles while HEAVENSWARD got Eastern feel, but with the same stories they have now, people would proclaim STORMBLOOD the best by far. STORMBLOOD is just better than what came before (I personally like A REALM REBORN more though), AND than what came after, as SHADOWBRINGERS was so awesome, but the HUGE plot hole and it not making sense ESPECIALLY after ENDWALKER, ranks it at last position for me.
Zenos will always be my favorite character because its not just about having a fight with an equal. Its always been about finding someone who can push him to his limits and he can do the same. He wants a fight so epic and so beautiful that nothing will ever come close. The idea of becoming the strongest beings and just duking it out. When you fight him in the dungeon he realizes that as he is at the current moment will not be enough to satisfy him. Also lets not forget that its never an even fight. In the dungeon its 4v1 and in the trial its 8v1 Both times he has seen himself as the one who needs to step up and become stronger.
Have to disagree. As a villain, Zenos is more poorly written than your Saturday morning cartoon villain. He is like a little brother that always nags you to play when you have important things to do like go to work. The minor villains in Stormblood actually had real motivations to fight you - Zenos should have been an annoying side quest instead of the main villain.
@@Turamwdd Zenos is a flat/static character. This doesn't necessarily mean that he is a poorly written character, though. Another example of a flat/static character would be Doom Guy from the Doom games. All Doom Guy wants to do is kill demons. Like with Zenos, that obsessive drive for a single thing basically warps everything around them and forces other characters to react.
Some of the stormblood trials were optional content instead of msq, there's 3 iirc behind a questline 8n the ruby sea (plus optional dungeon). You have seen hints of the raid series, you just don't realise it yet ;)
I didn't see the previous video but the Kojin thing was explained very well. They were looking for it in different parts of the ocean and they sent you to a place they hadn't looked for yet, hell they straight up tell you that if it indeed is in the bottom of the ocean, that might be where it is.
I've feel like there's been a number of story moments Mike has missed this expansion. Not sure if it's Covid or something else impacting his attention (very understandable). Which isn't to say SB can't be criticized, it absolutely can, it just felt like he missed some story beats this time. And had the usual "not from a colonized country" cultural disconnect that's typical when people react to SB.
estinien being very batman like is a Dragoon troupe of Final Fantasy. Theyve always been this ally that disappears and reappears the Dragoon lvl 70 questline shows you what happens during his journey and why hes not with you
they did not break out in song. They won and thus decided to sing the Ala migan national anthum. To contrast the first time we saw the royal palace where the Garlean anthum was sung. I found it a great moment to signify the end of one rule and the start of indipendence
Also. The thing with Zenos. He wasn't actually looking for more power with Shinryu. You are the Eikon Slayer. Famed for destroying these creatures, even Bahamut (probably equal in might to Shinryu). Basically a boogeyman to the Garlean Empire. It's no surprise that you'd be able to match that power. What he wants is for you to come at him with bloodlust and a desire to kill. Not to be a righteous hero and just stop him. To desire his death like an animalistic predator with that fervor and passion to utterly destroy him. He literally feels nothing outside of those moments of mortal combat, so in taking over the body of Shinryu, he was hoping that you'd give him that. It's why he asks that question before he releases the dragon from its prison. "If I were to set this creature loose, what would you do to it?" The honest answer is to kill it. Sure, you could choose to bind it, but that's a lie. We literally kill every one of these things we encounter, and Shinryu would be no different. And when he lost the form of the dragon, he saw that he was going to be tried as a war criminal. Not that he necessarily feared the consequences, he just realized that he'd likely spend the rest of his existence in a cell, which for a hedonist like Zenos would be boring af. Dude would probably no-sell whatever form of torture the Ala Mhigans gave to him. Your fight with him was the best he could hope for, and after that, time to call it a day because everything after that would be insufferably dull.
To me, Fordola and Yotsuyu are two sides of a very interesting coin. One is granted a second chance, despite harsh treatment, and earns herself a place in the world. The other is given it by accident via memory loss, but cannot escape her past despite the chance being given to her. In one, we see the potential of what could have been with the other.
I’ve said it many times but the thing that not only saves Stormblood for me but makes me enjoy replaying it more than Heavensward are the patches and all the content they brought. The MSQ is fantastically improved and the raids and trials were really fun. Also, if you’ve not discovered the raids and trails then it’s because you haven’t visited Rhalgr’s Reach and Kugane.
Fordola and Zenos (all of 4.0’s MSQ for that matter) are very hit and miss for most people. The patch story is WAY better and is some of the best story content in the game. Stormblood does a lot of setup for stuff they do way later
as someone who loves Estinien I was so hype when he destroyed the canon so I definitely didn't see any problem with it, and they already teased that he's poking around places, so it's not like it's COMPLEETELY random
If anything, it makes comeplete sense that he would be in Gyr Abania. He was esentially wandering around fixing his own problems, so of course he would go to where Shinryu appeard as soon as he heard it was spawned from the eyes.
You hit the nail with them bringing up various characters from various job quests, alliance raids and certain blue unlock quests in later MSQ. So if you feel like doing it, you get more out of it. But none are mandatory, so it's quite a good balanced way of doing things
@@danilooliveira6580 Wait, quick question: Do you know if the Red Mage Trainer (X'rhun Tia or however his name was again) appears if you have done the lvl 80 Red Mage quests? [POTENTIAL SPOILER:] Alisaie even mentions his absence and I was wondering like, wait wtf, have I done something wrong by not doing the 80 quest?
Three primals/trials per release and the rest as patches has always been the norm. ARR: Ifrit, titan and Garuda. Heavensward: whale, bug and thordan and Stormblood: Laskhmi, Susanno and Shynriu.
"Reroll" is the wowbrain talking again, you don't re-roll. You can play all the classes at the same time and switch between them on the fly outside of combat.
I love watching these reactions and knowing what's coming. Its so exciting to hear how you feel and know you will be excited when your see what's coming. 😂
Im at the same place as him right now and just know that post game is gonna be story madness, cant wait honestly. I imagine what it was like when this all first came out and fans had to wait for the patches, I feel so spoiled lol.
I know he wants to do the raids and stuff first, but I cannot wait for him to get into Shadowbringers. His journey has been great to watch so far, but I'm so excited for him to get deeper into the story.
It's funny cause the last stream he did before the RWF he finished the Yotsuyu Primal fight, he was contemplating on continuing the MSQ cause he was hooked on the story. he said he held back on continuing the MSQ to do the raid cause he felt there is no stopping once he starts the MSQ
1:33 Okay chill dude the omega normal raid is in ralgar's reach in gyr Abania and the alliance raid 24 man journey to ivalice is started in kugane 6:50 actually it's already happened twice y'shtola's sister y'mithra in gridania is the NPC for the summoner's quest line, and the twins who hang around their sister kanne senna are the white mage job quest NPC's. 12:10 he didn't just make it if you were paying attention it's part of the system moenbryde made to gather aether and all urianger did was suggested we used it to disrupt the aether in the area so fordola who is an echo noob couldn't read our moves. Which is also furthering the lore of the echo because as WoL we do what fordola does but we get a visual representation of it as telegraphs.
It's funny. I think Stormblood is lackluster, but I feel like some (not all) of the reasons given are a little bit...off the mark. Like he blatantly misses the point of the song at the very end. He kind of misses Zenos' motivation for merging with Shinryu. I think he'll tie things together better over time, though. Also, seeing some of these cutscenes again...I never realized what Fordola's outfit was. Just...panty shots, everywhere.
There are some Main Scenario Quests that have their dialogue change depending on which Jobs the player has level up, but there are also some Job Quest that have special dialogue if the player has reach certain points in the MSQ, like Red Mage if it's started after beating Stormblood's main story.
safe to assume preach didn't read any of the comments of the last video before making this one? because many people explained the kojin "mcguffin". the lamp you get to find the relic was given to you by a very reclusive village of people who probably never shared this information with the kojin as their sole interaction with them was for trade purposes. the only reason the npc gives you the lamp in the first place is because you brought him news of his daughter, yugiri, and was actually going against the laws of their village just talking to you because him and his wife were so desperate to hear news about yugiri. and the location the relic was found in was never searched because it was too dangerous. the blue kojion are merchants and gatherers, not fighters like the red kojin. they would have been slaughtered by the red before they even got the chance to start searching for the relic. that's why they ask you to look, because you're a fighter and can defend yourself if you get attacked while searching. as for estinien appearing out of the blue to destroy the cannon, it was already established that he was in the area searching for clues to the whereabouts of shinryu and the fighting had been going on for a while at that point, it wouldn't have been unlikely at all for him to notice the commotion with plenty of time to jump over and intervene if necessary. and urianger's mcguffin didn't win you the fight persay, it just prevented her from using her manufactured echo.
Imo the post MSQ in Stormblood is the true diamond,especially when they start building up towards Shadowbringers,at this point i cant stop praising Shadowbringers they really went on a streak with the build up to it,the xpac msq itself and the post msq
The trial and raid releases have settled into a rhythm from HW onward. Every expac so far has 1 trial appear in post patch story, and 3 appear in their own separate story. If you haven't already found it, I think the 8-man raid starts in Rhalgr's Reach and the 24-man starts in Kugane.
The payoffs for SB main MSQ mostly come in the post SB MSQ and beyond. Also the raids trials in the post SB MSQ are still among my favorites in the whole game. Looking forward to your next reaction video!
Love watching the FFXIV streams ❤ big fan of the game and it's been so much fun to be along for the journey on Twitch. A note on the trials: It probably felt like there were fewer trials because Stormblood is longer than Heavensward, but both expansions only had 3 trials at expansion launch. And then a note on the raid: Alexander is shown at the end of Heavensward but Omega is part of the story at the end of Heavensward patches as well! So I felt like I was aware of Omega's presence for a really long time and suspected it may be the raid.
15:04 Actually, do you remember Rhalgr's Reach and how it was protected from the imperials? That was with a glamour that basically masked the reach and made it only visible to the ones, that dispelled the glamour. (Yes, the same type of glamour we use for looking good). Zenos could've just applied a glamour to Shinryu, like it's not that hard to imagine, but they should've totally explained that in game.
Stormblood base game in itself isn't too exciting. It's got It's ups and downs. But it also sets up every single cool thing to come, so I don't mind that sort of worldbuilding existing. Honestly if you want a good story and characters to care about then there will always be points in the story where more development occurs than action. Stormblood is that for FF. It's easy to lose sight of that because as an mmo FF shows it's story off through expansions. And everyone wants every single expansion to be non-stop twists and awesomeness. But if you displayed it all as a book, no one would shake their head at those few pages in the middle that are slow, but sets everything up. Those pages are essential. Heavensward's MSQ was great because it was quite an isolated story. Yeah you see a few of the characters again, but the city itself doesn't show up much. Stormblood ties into everything coming up. That's how I would separate the two. Now the patches are some of the absolutely best ff has to show off. Much better than most other post MSQ patches in the game.
One other thought. I was actually very confused on stream on why you had forgotten the giant hole in the ground and your earlier prediction about omega. You reacted to it. You mentioned omega coming back too. Did you maybe forget all this happened? Like maybe too many days passed between you starting the expansion and finishing it? Because all those hints you say was missing for what the raid was going to be you already talked to us about on stream ages ago. Chat even gave you the usual wall of smiles for when you mused about it.
Keep playing mike lol. I feel like I say this every vid where you talk about the story. They address quite a lot of what you said concerned you/disappointed you if you keep playing. Also, i'm not entirely sure how you missed the raid. The thing it has on the map is pretty damn big.
I envy you so much, I wish I could completely forget everything about the Shadowbringers just to go through that again... Enjoy it, it's really something else.
I remember Stormblood as a disappointing MSQ with a few high points, kind of boring zone design, really great music, and excellent primal fights and raids. Definitely don't skip the Omega fights or the Four Lords.
I agree. I felt that Stormblood basic story was a boring scaffold that was used to get you to and through the better, smaller stories and dungeons and trials. MSQ was always like doing my homework before being allowed to run out and play in the side content. I always did enough to unlock something then went on happy tangents with Four Lords, Ivalice, Omega, Eureka, Temple of the Fist, Great Hunt, Heaven on High, etc. Eventually I always had to make my way back to MSQ, like a kid eating their vegetables.
Cut to Patch 4.2 - 4.3 where Preach is completely hooked on MSQ ^^ Side Note: ALWAYS love your openings to these xD This one and the Hildabrand opening gets me rolling lol
The change with Jobabilitys and Jobquests is also good for everyone who just spends a lot of time playing without playing the story so u are not cockblocked by the story when it comes to learning the new stuff. I hope the do that for HW too in the future
what I like about the change in the job quest (besides the fact that if the story is bad, and it is very bad more often than not and sometimes you just want your damn spells), is that canonically what happens is by lvl 70 you basically learned everything the soul crystal can teach you, and from there on forward you are creating spells yourself, and adding those spells to the soul crystal.
Someone might've mentioned it already, but Shantoto is meant to be massive reference to FF11, where she was a notable mage and quest NPC (and just as haughty)
The thing about Fordola being like Wesker is that thats how its like for other people fighting the WoL. Mechanics in dungeons are just the echo’s precognition telling you how to dodge. Even failing a trial encounter is just the echo telling you how the trial may kill you and providing you with foreknowledge of how you might deal with it.
Honestly, Estinien doing that made complete sense to me when I gave it some thought. He needs us to get to Ala Mhigo to deal with Shinryu, as evidenced by him destroying the eyes after we're gone. He can't do it himself because he can't resist the influence of a primal, and aside from that Shinryu would be WAY too strong, even for him. tl;dr him destroying the cannon to help us gets him closer to his goal faster
I agree with you on practically everything but the song being inappropriate. You've heard that background song before, it's the songs zenos' soldiers use as their anthem. The song being sung at the end lets you know where it really came from. The lyrics are changed to undo it's perversion by the garleans. They've just stormed the city, retaken control of their homeland from oppressors, there are no more threats waiting in the wings. How is singing *the national anthem* that to the people who are left inappropriate? It is like the most appropriate moment in 4.0 to me.
only thing I'll say about only playing one job- in both Shadowbringers and Endwalker, there are 'role quests' for each role, and they're all incredibly interesting and the ones in shadowbringers have a meta quest if you do them all with some really important story information. so I'd recommend trying to level at least one job of each role.
Stormblood's story is probably my least favorite but it still had some great moments and dungeons. Based on the fact you really liked Heavensward's story, then I think you're really going to love Shadowbringers and Endwalker. You have been paying attention to the story so it's honestly such a great ride. Also the dungeons/raids are really really fun.
You have yet to see the character development of Fordola. Sadly most of it are in Job quests that you might do later. (I am a grat Fordola fan myself...)
@5:00 As someone whose first 50 was Black Mage, it was always neat we were the first ones working together with Beast Tribe characters even before those rep quests got added. It's also still my favorite 30-50 job story surprise, even though yes DRK exists and is a great experience as well, but the 50 BLM one surprised me more.
Watching these videos remind me why I stopped caring about the plot armor squad long time ago. I love the world, the lore, but I don't give a damn about characters. There is just a handful of good moments and the rest falls flat.
What I like about FFXIV is that the mcguffins are so well explained in the story and the devs spend so much time justifying certain things that the story becomes so long and ppl inevitably miss stuff. Thats why i enjoy pyros streams. Him calling out lore bits or thinking aloud on stream are my highlights. Edit: Also, Im curious why he thought zenos was not a one note character? Because in SB, it was always apparent to me that all he wanted from me was a good fight. When he merged with Shinryu, I assumed it was because I beated his base form, so he wanted to skip the foreplay and move on to the main course(him as shinryu fighting me). With an empowered shinryu form, he could have a more spectacular battle, which he did get, and he kills himself because he knows he cant get that battle again. Theres nothing more to his character (IN SB).
Had the same reaction when they start singing, but then i remembered that during the start of stormblood it were the garleans singing before. This is to signify that they have won~
This game definitely rewards people for doing all side content and job quests. I had all but one job to max with quests complete by the time I finished ShB MSQ. You'll get so much more of a feel for the world, Easter eggs everywhere! Even more tie ins in EW as well, I feel like my time was well spent, and yeah, if you don't do it, it doesn't ruin the story.
Im pretty sure you find the alliance raid in Kugane, and the smaller raids in Rhalgr's Reach. They're both fun, I especially liked the latter, but the former gave some unique playstyle challenges that we had to think to conquer! I'm sure you'll love them :).
Cant wait for preach to discover all the other classes, and im gonna shed a manly tear the day a preach video pops up in my feed with titles like "Beginners guide to tanking in xiv".
@6:00 there's a lot of cool little stuff starting in Stormblood that references questlines done on your character, there's a couple things in late ARR that do as well (NIN introduction) but Stormblood especially really calls to a lot of stuff done even in ARR. There's... definitely a lot of things that are defensible in intent but wanting in execution, even going about doing the mundane to build trust with Ala Mhigans, it's still a good story, even necessary in the grand scheme, but could have been done better, even when current, pacing was my biggest issue like you mentioned.
I come back to this video for the intro. Same with the "Wow's craftable Legendary problem" or w/e "Are you callin' me an asshole?!" the best intros by far imo
another point about the change in acquiring job skills is that they eventually thought that tying skills through very specific quests is very hard for them later on if they plan to do some balance changes. Like, what if down the line, the level 76 skill should be changed, or deleted - then they'd have to edit the quest chain so that it will match the lore. It's a pretty ingenious way of giving them role quests in shadowbringers as opposed to specific job quests you'd have to go through.
I did a replay of stormblood recently and it was SO FUNNY when Urianger showed up and all but said "yeah the writers ran out of time to give this major subplot the resolution it needs. Here's a win button."
@Preach Gaming I'm a bit surprised Mike hasn't dipped into Blue Mage yet but I'm sure when he does he's gonna have an absolute blast and I can't wait to see his reaction to it.
Hi Everyone; Chris here, make sure to stick around to the end for something silly. Anyway its a new year and a new theme for youtube and twitch. This will be the last video I work on for a few weeks as I'm moving to Manchester on Friday and taking some time off finally. Mike will probably still be releasing some videos, you'll just have to put up with his editing for a week or two 🙂.
As you can see from the video Mike had plenty of issues with Stormblood, what do you think of how they handled the ending?
One of the other reasons they stopped doing job quests with abilities/story is because they release new jobs every Xpack, and it becomes unmanageable to create and maintain. Later, you'll see the the system they moved to, and it's fulfills this feeling of a side story for your "job". Please look forward to it! *bow*
I think the song part was okay. I thought of it as more of a symbolic moment than anything.
Enjoy a well-deserved break, Chris!
His views seem to be among the common feeling regarding Stormblood. It was good but often slightly off the mark in a lot of ways. A lot of people believe it was meant to be two expansions but they kinda mushed two stories into one which accounts for the disjointed and slightly off feeling it has.
I pretty much agree with his take, pretty similar to mine. I'm greatly looking forward to what he thinks of the raids and the patch content. I think the Stormblood MSQ was the weakest part of the whole expansion, but the rest of the stuff is really good. Pretty much everything from here on out and through EW is incredible.
I really wish he'd at least try another job just so he can talk on how the job system works in the game. It's easily one of the best and a majorly defining feature of the game and it's weird to see him giving an honest take on the game but skipping over it. While he's generally doing most things like a regular player would experience which I greatly appreciate, a regular player by this point would have picked up another job or two.
I don't know if it's worth mentioning that at the rate he's going he'll wind up at 90 on his BLM and be tossing an absolutely massive amount of MSQ XP. I suspect if he gets to that point he'll be frustrated by it, but it's kind of been his choice to ignore the job system entirely.
14:51 "And then they broke into song, which was so inappropriate."
I couldn't disagree more. Perhaps it's because it's my favorite part of the entire expansion, but i feel you've missed the symbolism of that moment. The song they sing is an Ala Mhigan hymm to Rhalgr, which also functions as their national anthem. A song which, in a much earlier cutscene with the Garleans, we find out had been stolen by the Garlean Empire and repurposed as an Anthem for their own country. You can find both versions here on youtube, actually. One is called "The Measure of His Reach," and that's the Hymn. The other is called "The Measure of OUR Reach," which is the one sung to symbolize the conquering force of the Garlean empire. This is just one of the many ways which the Garleans had stolen not just their land, their lives, their people, but also their culture.
The Ala Mhigans had just won a war that was long fought, against a conquering force which had subjugated their people for over two decades. What better time to sing their national anthem, in a moment of utter joy and victory? This is also the very first time in-game that we as players hear the lyrics to Measure of His Reach, after first being introduced to it earlier as a Garlean theme. Being that the melody is woven into every part of the expansion, including as a theme in Rhalgr's Reach, we are left to wonder what the theme means, and why the melody is so prevalent. By playing this version at the end of 5.0, we are made to realize that the song had been stolen, the lyrics changed, the meaning removed. Here, at the final moment of victory over Garlemald, we hear the true meaning of the song, and it symbolizes the Ala Mhigan people taking back their land, their lives, and their culture.
A bit of a spoiler for level 60-70 Dark Knight but, though it's not sung in voice, you actually do hear/read lyrics of "The Measure of His Reach" in part of that storyline sung by a character in a rather emotional moment. It adds a little more, I feel, to that final moment in 4.0 when you understand what song those lyrics were for. Additionally, the quests themselves include lyrics from "The Measure of His Reach."
The first watch it seemed cheesy with the whole "the gangs all here!" montage of characters. On watching it a second time it seemed very appropriate and very emotional.
Eh, it still looks a bit awkward to me.
I felt the same; at first maybe kind of cheesy but after connecting the anthems quickly I was like, nope, what a wonderful tie-in to the whole situation of Ala Mhigo. Loved it since!
@@cattysplat i think it depends where you are from. As a german i definetly feel awkward if people sing there hymn after a war they won
"And then they broke into song"
Yeah of course they started singing, it was the Al Amhigan anthem Mike, they start singing the anthem as they declare their independence from the Empire.
Not gonna lie nearly cried, thought it was a really cool moment.
that doesn't explain the choregraphed walking straight out of Broadway.
@@pinballanon8531 especially with Lyse leading them out
@@pinballanon8531 Its a videogame, what do u expect? Its telling a story, its not going to show the part where everyone gets in place for the final camera shot and the number of times arnevald had to hold up the flag cause the wind wasnt blowing. Suspension of disbelief bro
@@pinballanon8531 The walking was to make Stormblood's logo. If you look carefully at the end result it lines up near exactly to the stylized logo. They could have done it better probably, but there was a purpose to it.
I think Stormblood redeems itself with the post-MSQ patches. One of my most memorable moments in the game occurs there and it will always be special to me.
I know what you are talking about and yes it is. :)
just wait til his video on the post-msq patch!
Oh I 100% agree the post MSQ was amazing in stormblood and feeds right into shadowbringers perfectly
The 4.x patches really do make it so much better. But what I love about Stormblood is that the entire expansion is world building. We finally get to Ala Mhigo, we're introduced to Hingashi, to the Confederacy, to Doma, to Yanxia, to the Azim Steppes. We learn about so many new cultures and peoples, but for as dragging as the story can be at times, none of the world building feels rushed or forced. In fact, it kind of slickly goes under notice and gets filed away in your brain without every realizing it, so when something is referenced later, you know exactly what it is.
Post sb is incredible. I consider it better than post shb even
Another way to look at the Shinryu fight is that he's looking for the most exciting fight possible for him. As the primal slayer, he wants a taste of the power you bring to bear against primals.
Zenos’ list: 1. You won’t just let this be around 2. YOU KILL PRIMALS LIKE NO ONE ELSE SO HERE WE GO
Yeah my interpretation is that he's not in it for the victory, he's in it for the ecstacy of the fight. He's not even in it for personal pride, honor or self-development. He gets off on grandiose, spectacle fights.
When you beat him in his base form, he's not salty about losing, he reaches for Shinryu so that the fight can go on. When you beat him as Shinryu -- which to him at that time, was the most powerful one can get, he then decides to off himself since there would be no further point to continue living.
I find it really weird how you seem to have completely misinterpreted Zenos at the end of 4.0
He didn't immediately seek more power "when thinks didn't work out". He does so BECAUSE things turned out.
That was the very first time he has ever felt proper excitement in a fight, and so he wanted to boost that excitement further by escalating your fight to the point of maximum absurdity - i.e. turning into a crystal god dragon and fighting you 1-on-1 on a magic platform in the sky.
It's not that he was salty about losing to you in the dungeon and then went "fuck, I need to power up". Rather, he was rock hard when he finally found someone who could stand up to him and thought "FIGHT ME EVEN HARDER"
For how much I don't like the "bloodknight" trope that Zenos embodies, I do appreciate that they DID stay true to what that trope means.
I-is Zenos just Goku with no friends?
@@MrBunchButtons Zenos is an extremely bored Vegeta who just found Goku and doesn't have any pride to get in way of his 'FIGHT ME! NOW FIGHT ME HARDER!' tendencies.
I think it's very much up to player interpretation and there's no "wrong" or "right" way of thinking. We all see and interpret things differently and that's okay!
@@MrBunchButtons Zenos is you, the WoL, with no friends, at lvl cap when he was born and has no raid to do. He’s an end game raider but life doesn’t give him the end game he wants until he meets us, WoL (Ultimate)
@@SoSakashii Oh my god... Zenos was born in 1.0, it all makes sense now!
You seem to have misinterpreted Zenos a bit, possibly due to over-fixating on Ichi the Killer. All he cares about is feeling something, which he can only do in a life or death struggle. You were correct in your earlier assumption about him, but yes, of course he sought even more power because that would make the grand battle he's seeking all the more invigorating. You can even see it in his dialogue as Shinryu, where your battle is so grand that even the heavens cannot contain it. He wants more power, while also wanting you to gain more power as well, so that he and the one person he sees as worth fighting can have the biggest, most violent, most spectacular combat ever seen in all of history. He wants to be a god, so he can fight another god, and have the greatest spectacle of a fight there ever was.
SPOILER ALERT
...No, I'm serious
This right here is exactly why at the end of everything, at the end of Endwalker, I was so fucking pumped for that final battle. The fact that Zenos finally calls you out had me grinning like a child as I just had to admit it... The Warrior of Light may not be a bloodthirsty psychopath, but the idea of being the mightiest being in multiple worlds and finding a challenge the equal of your abilities IS exhilarating! It's why we do Expert, Savage and Ultimate fights - not just for the shiny loot or bragging rights, but to be able to _feel_ that moment of triumph! At the end of it all, past how much I hated him and Fandaniel for what they did, I couldn't deny that I understood Zenos and accepted him as a friend - one I could find satisfaction in beating the ever-living hell out of, while he did the same to me.
@@Archris17 Yo for real, when he said that line, i was shook. He became more human to me at that moment andfor a split second, I didn't hate him.
@@Archris17 Exactly! When the dialogue choice came up, I had to choose the first option. Then when my character did that smile (the same one that I had on my face), it was just amazing.
@@Archris17 Spoiler
I still want to kick Asahi's face in and SE robbed me of that.
@@Archris17 I am not like that. D:
I wished that we really could choose to just leave without fighting, like Zenos said. My character just wants to help and bring peace, (and going on adventures to see and learn about new things) nothing more.
And I do things for gear and glamour, not for the feeling of triumph. Of course I feel that too, when winning a fight. But I don't fight for that feeling. I don't like stressfull content much and I try to avoid it. xD
And savage is not soooo hard. The hard part of savage is at least to get a group of 8 people together. Beyond that it's just learning mechanics and concentration. But even if you are a ff-god player, you loose in that content, when your teammates are not willing to learn or can't concentrate, and so on.
The extreme content does not mirror Zenos' madness for fighting the strongest enemy, in my opinion. Zenos is a selfish loner who don't gives a shit for anybody. And extreme content is all about being a team and relying on each other.
I really like the FF story a lot. But Zenos is the point I struggle with. His storyline has a lack of logic. If he is soooooo strong...., why he didn't became an adventurer himself? Who should have stopped him? xD
We won against the Ultima Weapon. Their super powerful secret weapon to rule the world. And later Zenos easily beat our ass, when we fight him the first time. So he must be much more powerful than Ultima Weapon. I wonder why they need such weapons in general, when they have that overpowered prince. xD I stop it here. Zenos is a part of the story I don't like very much.
One problem is maybe, that a big part of the Zenos storyline is not part of the game and most players (me too) don't have acess to it. Maybe Zenos would make more sense if knowing the story. I don't know. But I hope that they will not do things like this again. It's better when the story is 'in' the game. :)
I will say something about the ending scene where every Ala Mhigan sings their national anthem once their country has been liberated.
Depending on which country or culture you grew up in i think the perception of this scene changes greatly.
It feels like they took a lot of inspiration and imagery from history when countries that had been under occupations by other nations were liberated.
My country was one of the countries that was under occupations by the Germans during world war 2. Both my grandmothers lived through that period.
Once our country were finally liberated the people celebrated pretty much like how we see in the Stormblood ending.
Across the country people sang our national anthem, flower pedals were raining from the rooftops in the cities into the streets. It was a very heartfelt moment in history for our country.
I still hear the tales from my grandmother from time to time on how everyone sang until their throats were sore and the level of joy they all felt that day.
I was reading that Stormblood's overall story resonated more in general with people who's nation went through being conquered/oppressed like the Ala Mhigan and Doman
@@SemperVII Well, the UK has always been in the Garleans' position when that sort of thing happened.
@@Poldovico Yes I remember in WW1 & 2 when the UK was the equivalent of Garlemald
@@jp5125 There were conflicts before ww1 you know.
They didn't call it the British "Empire" for nothing.
@@jp5125 being in the position of Garlemald, that is to say: the invading oppressor. I'm not going to compare Brits to magitek fascists, but I'm pretty sure most of the people in history who hosted the British did so unwillingly.
The thing with Kojin not being able to recover their relics: many of them were taken by the Red, and they knew that the relics were somewhere in their territory. They couldn't risk crossing over, or there would've been war again. So they kinda *had* to comb the rest of the ocean not under the Red Kojin's control, just in case the ones they were after and/or others could be found scattered elsewhere.
Additionally, the reason you're so easily able to traverse their lands is basically the same; you're not a part of the Blue, so the Red would be less likely to retaliate. They do eventually, of course, but you're also the Warrior of Light and leagues above both the Red and Blue in strength by this point. It's less that it's an easy task, and more that it's a task easy for *you* specifically.
EDIT: Furthermore the reason as to why the "mcguffin" is so important: *the relics are strong enough to summon primals like Susanoo by themselves.* It's common knowledge in the East that objects and creatures grow more powerful as they age, with the former potentially growing an intelligence and the latter becoming basically demigods known as auspices. So the power of these things doesn't really come from left field - they're pretty well explained by that point, but I honestly hardly blame anyone for skipping around a bit in Stormblood.
Annoying that he missed this
I think at this point in the story some folks still don't get how insanely strong the Warrior of Light is. I mean they hammer it home and tell you every 10 minutes, but I think that people assume it's just generic "well done, champion!" fluff. No, dude, you're like, WAY above anyone else. You're a fucking monster. That's why Zenos beating you was initially a big surprise of sorts, and I think Mike got that by assuming he was juicing on Ascian dust.
It's hard to sell just how easily the Warrior of Light is able to do what others can't, and why a large focus on the story isn't just you punching every problem, but rather showing the limitations of a single person, no matter how powerful, and consequences of problems that can't be solved with overwhelming strength. Luckily the game only gets better and better at presenting such scenarios as time goes on.
@@Xbob42 I think we don't really get power of WoL way until we get to roleplay these characters. But the biggest power level difference was displayed to me personally in Endwalker. That event that shows how really powerful Warrior of Light is and how weak common people are, compared to him/her.
Another reason I personally felt that they changed how the job story works for learning spells is because it shifted from someone TEACHING you new things to you learning new abilities yourself in a kind of "This is something only you know how to do" kind of way.
This. You are now the master. The Monk quest illustrates this perfectly by you literally becoming the teacher.
In RDM, its like after lvl 60, its just you freestyling, heck your lvl 90 ability is you just doing aliasaes limit break
@@TheRedAzuki except Alisae's limit break is a lot cooler. but yes, all the rose petals is her stuff
I remember Yoshi P's comments from the time. He told that necessity to give new skill after every quest really limited the space of the quests themselves. They wanted, if possible, that skill learned tie in with what is happening in the quest. Thus it strained the writing team. Plus adding new jobs with each expansion compounds the problem. So Preach: this aspect will change more come next expansions.
Yeah, lore-wise, you are usually the only (or one of very few) member of your profession (there are a lot of "thaumaturges", but only you have the "heart of shatotto" and are a "black mage") and so explaining everything post-60 as you pioneering new territory in your job makes total sense. (Even if in actuality the change was for other, more meta reasons.)
Yeah I wish people would understand the difference between explaining why someone is the way they are, and justifying their actions.
Yotsuyu isn't justified, but she is explained. She didn't wake up one day and decide to be the Witch of Doma; it was a long and horrible process to reach that point.
You didn’t see the giant black hole hinting at the raid? And if I remember right the raids unlock in rhalgers reach.
Kinda goes to show that you can miss something large :P
I think he even asked "what punched the hole into the mountain"
Yeah, but the raid itself is so, so different than what you'd expect from a hole in the ground. If you are someone without any FF knowledge before this game it goes some pretty crazy places that are all out of left field. Great raid though. ;)
He started the raids today so he knows now
@@TheSackmitreis The hole in that mountain's been there since 1.0's concept art. That's where Rhalgr's Comet went BREEWWWWEOOOOWWW
One thing with Fordola and the "Albert Wesker" reference was that it was also supposed to show how normal enemies see you in combat as well. Like when you dodge their AoEs and attacks, technically you're moving like that from their perspective.
This. The AoE zones, fight markers, and cast-bars are the in-combat representation of the Echo, and when I realised that it blew my mind that they went that far to justify game mechanics in the world.
you just blew my mind... for real
@@Bottle-OBill That certainly explains why my squadron just stands in all those effects.
@@Bottle-OBill its not, its already confirmed that it has nothing to do with the echo, its purely gameplay mechanics. I still like to think its an effect of the echo because its cool, but its a head canon.
@@danilooliveira6580 where was it confirmed? not trying to be confrontational, just really curious why some people say that but offer - so far - no evidence of that.
The "song" is the Ala Mhigan anthem. Early on in the MSQ, you hear the Garlean version of the anthem (The Measure of Our Reach if you want to search for it). So these guys conquer and colonize them, and then use the conquered peoples' anthem to make it their own colonizer anthem, which the people are then forced to sing as well. For 20 years any kids born there would have had to puclicly sing an anthem that glorified the Garlean empire. Of course once they kicked the Garleans out, they sing the anthem of their homeland. Imagine thinking that wasn't appropriate.
Preach is british , i kinda understand why he felt off during that scene
As someone whos from nation free from colonizer i was happy during ending anthem for real
it wasn't appropriate and it was weird as well as jarring. You don't just break out into a choregraphed singing out of nowhere a few minutes after the war ended. You first tend to the wounded and get things in order. But it was implied that they have done that and there was a small time skip before they did a group walk and do a choregraphed singing since every leader gathered at the top and people were already lining up below. The biggest problem was not having a blackout transition instead the transition was from one frame right to the other as if they suddenly grouped up and did a choregraphed singing in a span of a few minutes after Zenos killed himself.
@@CL-jq1xs yeah it's almost like Call of duty World at War ending vibe tho
Regarding your Cocobusi moment, you've definitely missed some similar moments for other jobs already. When you attacked Doma Castle, the Ninja trainer showed up in the cutscenes outside that, for example.
Not to mention the dragoon quest LMAO.
Or if you play any of the healer jobs at the very start of Stormblood, you'll be the one to heal Y'shtola.
Or back in Heavensward when getting Y'shtola out of the lifestream you talk with her sister who is a huge part of the Summoner storyline.
@@FinalDragoon I leveled summoner after seeing this and it was so cool, but also a little disappointing that I hadn't already done it when doing the MSQ at that time.
its not even the MSQ, the crafting quests have npcs that show up and if you did the other questlines they remember you.
The aetheric Syphon that Urianger gave you was there since ARR when Moonbryda first used it and Urianger just had it after she >_>
And, Urianger is wont to just randomly visit you out of nowhere, that's just what he does ^^
@@Sherolox Lyse saying "Oh you got to stop doing this" when he appeared right behind her was such a mood. :D
@@Sketchblopp
Yeah, I was thinking about this exactly when I wrote it :D
One thing to note about the singing at the end: You hear this theme multiple times throughout the MSQ, but only in the Garlean style until the very end. It's actually the Ala Migan nation's anthem but the Garleans spliced it with a Garlean touch as an extra means of colonization which, to my understanding, is a common imperialization tactic. When they sing the true anthem at the end, it symbolizes quite literally that they are now truly liberated.
Yeah, I really loved that moment!
People sing their national anthem when their local team wins a SPORTS GAME, it's extremely likely to think they'll do the same when they liberate their nation.
SOOOOOO many people dont get why they sing at the end, and it pisses me off, so to clarify, they are singing the Ala Mhigo anthem that was bastardized by the empire early on, and was sang with zenos introduction. Would a nation not sing their anthem when they become free?
i think it just depends on how patriotism is seen from where they are from. i am a german and patriotism is a realy wierd topic for us and we see it as wierd.
@@AbigatorM yeah, now put yourself into the shoes of one of the countries that successfuly got liberated from germany, which is effectively what this was
@@waking00one not my point. My point is that the player might feel awkward. If they are from a non patriotic country. I got it aswell, was just pointing out why some might not.
The criticism of Preach here and something that i agree and felt the same thing it's not about the song , it's the timing of it, it's just felt really ankward and rushed in timing , you just barely killed a primal / zenos offed himself and in a matter of minutes after a hard fought final battle with a lot of deaths (i assume ) , everyone was ready to sing like it was a glee song, to me if they did some kind of official cerimony hours later it would be a lot better and solve this entirely.
Hell they could even mirror that zenos introduction but with the original ala migham anthem and it's people just to make even more clear about the song and the meaning behind it .
People understand why, that just doesn't change the fact that its a horribly awkward scene that was not executed well.
All of Ala Mhigo bursting out into their national anthem at the moment of their liberation was fucking hype. I teared up it was such a heartfelt moment for the whole nation. The ala mhigo side of SB treats the entire nation as a character in the story. It's a bold decision, but when it works, it *works*.
iI's very fitting to sing a national anthem that they reclaim from garlemald. I really disagree with how people find it jarring aside from the musical performance. After they reclaim their city, they reclaim their pride.
Yes, it felt right to me when I played through that part of the game years ago. i think most people forget the scene at the beginning where the empire is singing their national anthem that was stolen from the conquered Ala Mhigo, and the pride felt by them when they reclaimed what was theirs. It was a bit theatrical, but by no means awkward if you paid attention to what happened before.
I honestly don't understand people who find it jarring or cringe. It's an anthem that has been stolen from them. Of course they are going to sing it once their nation is free once more.
@@hastur6446 because it was inorganic and seem like they choregraphed it before they even won the war without us knowing. They did not have a blackout transition before they do the group walk so it seemed like it happened in a span of a few minutes after killing Zenos without tending to the wounded or getting things in order beforehand.
The only time I cried in Stormblood was at the end with the anthem. I live in a country that only recently (1900s) been independent and is very small, population and geographically. So when I heard the anthem and everyone coming together and singing, with the flag, and it was after the big bad ruler had died, I did shed a tear or two.
Also, I liked that the anthem of ala mhigo was first shown in the lvl 81 msq cutscene with abridged garlemald lyrics, its really good story telling.
Unrelated to the argument above.
Also, I liked that a lot of arguments Preach makes are so genuine and based on limited knowledge, with no spoilers(or even better, gives takes that account for any spoilers hes heard). Limited doesnt mean hes wrong or right in his statements, just that the timeline is visible in his videos.
You see and interact with Estenien prior to the canon moment if you're a Dragoon, it's the same with being one prior to going into Heavensward. NPCs will even occasionally refer to you as the other Azure Dragoon.
Stuff that seems to come out of nowhere are usually covered in job quests during this era of FFXIV.
Preach, seriously, how did you miss the giant pit with Omega? I really liked how they actually direct you towards the raid. You are literally, not figuratively, playing footage from the intro questline in this video?!
I keep comparing Stormblood to Diamond Is Unbreakable.
It starts of zany, it gets weird, it ends up epic, and people never stop arguing about whether it's too long or too short.
The Stormblood patches are some of my favorite, up there with Shadowbringers patches.
The political stuff in the SB patches were so damn exciting. I loved the sit down at the table with the emperor
@@DadsCigaretteRun for sure. Some of my favorite dungeons are from SB too
yep!
This so hard. I feel like the transition from SB to ShB was so smooth and got you so hype for what happens next.
Absolutely. The SB 4.0 MSQ is a lot of setup for EXCELLENT patch payoffs.
I really liked Stormblood. It did not have the emotional hights of previous expansion,but I liked the more grounded story about war between nations and what It does to people. And I also liked exploration of the new nations.
I personally really liked Stormblood, moreso than HW even. Sacrilege it may be, but I didn't care about Haurchefant. The two moments that emotionally stood out in HW to me were the lyrics kicking in for the Dragonsong and Ysayle's sacrifice. (In hindsight one post MSQ quest also hits hard, but didn't at the time.)
Stormblood by contrast has tons of moments and a people and setting I care about. Ishgardians are classist, aristocratic (and a bit racist) so it's pretty hard to empathize with them.
Estenien destroying that cannon was amazing. I kind of love that a wandering dragoon can just screw up the enemies plans so hard. I get that Preach wanted more of a strategic solution, but sometimes things just fall apart in war. I mean it would have been equally possible for the barrel of the cannon to split due to a manufacturing defect. I can totally happen.
It also sets up how the Garleans, who are unable to manipulate Aether, view the people who can.
The officer going "how can one man- SHOOT HIM!" is a very deliberate choice.
To Estinien, that was a 2 minute CD. To the Garleans, it was one person causing the kind of destruction they built that cannon for... with a _spear_ .
@@Poldovico (and some residual dragon blood, but yes :p)
Estinien can solo a raid boss. =| But also, we know he doesn't just *show up* there as he's been wandering around ala mhigo and preach said himself, we're friends. So of COURSE he's going to be aware ya'll are staging a war, you don't just keep that sort of thing quiet. He might be a himbo but he's not daft, but he's also not ready to discuss what happened with Ysayle and stuff yet. You can find out where he's been and what he's been doing with the Dragoon quests. >D Just sayin'.
Estinien journey was justified with him wanting to clean up after his own mistakes.
He takes a detour to help with the cannon.
Estinien never forgot how shinryu got to be. We did.... thats why the eyes were just there in the end.
In a way, it would be embarrassing for alphie and us to just ignore or misplace the eyes *again*
Estinien is a true chad
Estinien probably single handedly prevented yet another expansion's worth of trouble by going back for the eyes.
Zenos didn't fuse with Shinryu because 'things weren't going to plan' he fused with Shinryu BECAUSE things where going exactly to plan. the dungeons fight with him only GAVE HIM THE ROCK HARD fight erection he'd been looking for, and now that you've proven you're actually up to the task of 'satisfying him' he seeks only to make the experience even greater for him self, take it to the grandest height he can think of at the moment and draw everything you have out of you.
Zenos isn't deep or complicated. he wants one thing and one thing only, and that singular lens is really the only way to look at him with an accuracy.
basically. you kinda missed the point at the end regarding Zenos.
i know this has been mentioned already, i'm just saying it again so it's more likely to be seen by preach and his team. the singing at the end was the nathional anthem of ala mhigo and a hymn to their patron deity rhalgr (the measure of his reach) that was stolen from them when garlemald invaded and butchered to be an anthem of their own (the measure of our reach). why wouldn't they sing the proper version of their anthem that was stolen from them after liberating their country after 20 years of oppression? i admit it would have felt more natural if one person started the singing, maybe lyse or raubahn, or even some random person in the crowd, then the rest of the ala mhigans join in, but other than that it feels very appropriate. the other comments explain it a lot better than i do, so please read them as well.
So I recently finished all of stormblood and it was amazing. I’ll be honest getting to the end was all over the place. Some of the lead up was good and some of it was a slog, but looking back all the build up was needed and I honestly regret not having faith in the story until I got to the end. So good and I’m glad I kept with it.
So I’m not smart enough to put into words why fordola and yotsuyu being traitors to not only their kin, but their nations is really important and it isn’t just tell tell their tragic backstories. Throughout most of human history where you born, tribe or city or nation, was just as important as who you were born to, your family. So it does kinda sound like you are waving your hand over the fact they had no loyalty to their homelands regardless of their backstories when that is crucial to not only their stories, but the over all theme of stormblood.
I might be generalizing but I feel Westerners have much less nationalism in compare to Asian country (which has its bad and good side). Betraying and even joining enemy force is a big taboo in Vietnam. In fact, we Vietnamese still makes fun of the Vietnamese that ran off and joined America back in the war.
@@ucmanhle9601 my friend, they have never been conquered, that's why they can't relate. Speaking from Puerto Rico (former Spanish colony and now a US one since 1898, although they like to call it "Commonwealth" because colony sounds harsh nowadays).
Just wait until he does the post story trials. ohhh boy, some of the coolest fights i’ve seen in gaming
Yes, the rest of the primals are in the patches, and the raid intro was the Omega-Shinryu fight at the end of Heavensward
In addition the trials are (with one expection) moved to side content
@@whitehawkomega Yeah they tie one to the .3 patch and the rest through optional side quests
The dragoon quest is one of the best in regards to seeing prominent characters -- wont spoil it but it even changes the MSQ, that's how great it is.
And it makes a certain moment with Estinien make more sense - although that applies to the DRG questline and Estinien in general.
Yeah, playing through the story as a dragoon made me feel like I was THE main character and everything fell nicely in place. If I didn't spend all those hours with Estinien I probably wouldn't have cared nearly as much for the scenes with him
and also has the benefit of dragoon players to want to throw hands with Estinien on sight vs "wow what a cool character" other players have with him lmao.
Hmm I guess I picked a bad expansion to switch from Dragoon to Bard.
How does it change the MSQ? I always do all available content, so idk what happens if you don't have the DRG quest done.
Estinien does not come out of the blue if you play as a dragoon. You get extra dialogue with him for the MSQ when playing as a dragoon. He is a complete badass!
1) Shinryu was not on the roof, it was in a research facility until the end.
2) The Raid was pronounced exactly as Alexander and Coil were after the Credits of the base game. Same exact way.
3) The End was PERFECT. It was an immediate music bit that turned to the STORMBLOOD LOGO and signified the Revolutions that succeeded (Revolutions is also what the Main Theme of STORMBLOOD is called) alongside the Anthem of Ala Mhigo being the same as what it was under The Empire but with new Lyrics.
4) STORMBLOOD is amazing. You have no idea what the patches have in store for you. Best time of the entire game.
5) ARR, HW and SB all have 3 Primals on the base game.
It's also my favourite expansion main story, it's so grounded in war and character choices. Everyone being so hyper critical about every little thing when it clearly has strong character and tells a story so much better than what came before. Heavensward main story (not post) is mega cheese in comparison and wouldn't hold up to half the scrutiny.
@@cattysplat Indeed.
HEAVENSWARD was amazing, BUT it actually was the one that suffered from poor pacing (2 entirely different stories and themes, Dragonsong War and Uldah political resolution), unlike STORMBLOOD which was a coherent themed perfectly paced story (Revolution against the Empire) alongside actual stupid decisions with grave consequences to the story (Eyes in the pit lol, who knew Ascians that can teleport everywhere could reach them) unlike the small things in STORMBLOOD (Kojin relic and their detectiveness? Really?).
Also, the whole STORMBLOOD situation was so amazing, that it even leaked to SHADOWBRINGERS with its whole entire big side stories and content being around... STORMBLOOD (and A REALM REBORN) with Werlyt and Bozja.
Finally, any comparison you can make is literally STORMBLOOD wins.
-Alliance Raid? STORMBLOOD.
-Raid? STORMBLOOD.
-Dungeons? STORMBLOOD.
-Classes? STORMBLOOD.
-Exploration Foreys? STORMBLOOD.
Also critical and fan reception too at the time of release.
Literally everything.
I am convinced the only reason western PC people claim HEAVENSWARD is superior is because of the Aesthetic and medieval Castle like Ishgard and stuff, alongside the Church stuff.
If the exact same stories were flipped with the Aesthetic, and STORMBLOOD got castles while HEAVENSWARD got Eastern feel, but with the same stories they have now, people would proclaim STORMBLOOD the best by far.
STORMBLOOD is just better than what came before (I personally like A REALM REBORN more though), AND than what came after, as SHADOWBRINGERS was so awesome, but the HUGE plot hole and it not making sense ESPECIALLY after ENDWALKER, ranks it at last position for me.
Zenos will always be my favorite character because its not just about having a fight with an equal. Its always been about finding someone who can push him to his limits and he can do the same. He wants a fight so epic and so beautiful that nothing will ever come close. The idea of becoming the strongest beings and just duking it out. When you fight him in the dungeon he realizes that as he is at the current moment will not be enough to satisfy him. Also lets not forget that its never an even fight. In the dungeon its 4v1 and in the trial its 8v1 Both times he has seen himself as the one who needs to step up and become stronger.
Zenos is a really cool bad guy, even his motivation was pretty badass.
Have to disagree. As a villain, Zenos is more poorly written than your Saturday morning cartoon villain. He is like a little brother that always nags you to play when you have important things to do like go to work. The minor villains in Stormblood actually had real motivations to fight you - Zenos should have been an annoying side quest instead of the main villain.
@@Turamwdd yawn. I had more excitement listening zenos ramble about power and challenge than reading this contrarian doozer comment.
@@Turamwdd Zenos is a flat/static character. This doesn't necessarily mean that he is a poorly written character, though. Another example of a flat/static character would be Doom Guy from the Doom games. All Doom Guy wants to do is kill demons. Like with Zenos, that obsessive drive for a single thing basically warps everything around them and forces other characters to react.
Some of the stormblood trials were optional content instead of msq, there's 3 iirc behind a questline 8n the ruby sea (plus optional dungeon). You have seen hints of the raid series, you just don't realise it yet ;)
its the SB version of the warring triad, so he should already know about that.
@@danilooliveira6580 yeah I just saw another clip from him doing the quest line so he definitely knows by now :)
I didn't see the previous video but the Kojin thing was explained very well. They were looking for it in different parts of the ocean and they sent you to a place they hadn't looked for yet, hell they straight up tell you that if it indeed is in the bottom of the ocean, that might be where it is.
I've feel like there's been a number of story moments Mike has missed this expansion. Not sure if it's Covid or something else impacting his attention (very understandable).
Which isn't to say SB can't be criticized, it absolutely can, it just felt like he missed some story beats this time. And had the usual "not from a colonized country" cultural disconnect that's typical when people react to SB.
@@tangentkatz almost like he's paying attention to a chat conversation between hundreds of people instead of paying attention to the game?
estinien being very batman like is a Dragoon troupe of Final Fantasy. Theyve always been this ally that disappears and reappears the Dragoon lvl 70 questline shows you what happens during his journey and why hes not with you
there was a moment where I saw the ninja trainer in the stormblood MSQ and that got me pretty excited just like mike with his black mages lolol
they did not break out in song.
They won and thus decided to sing the Ala migan national anthum. To contrast the first time we saw the royal palace where the Garlean anthum was sung. I found it a great moment to signify the end of one rule and the start of indipendence
Also. The thing with Zenos. He wasn't actually looking for more power with Shinryu. You are the Eikon Slayer. Famed for destroying these creatures, even Bahamut (probably equal in might to Shinryu). Basically a boogeyman to the Garlean Empire. It's no surprise that you'd be able to match that power.
What he wants is for you to come at him with bloodlust and a desire to kill. Not to be a righteous hero and just stop him. To desire his death like an animalistic predator with that fervor and passion to utterly destroy him. He literally feels nothing outside of those moments of mortal combat, so in taking over the body of Shinryu, he was hoping that you'd give him that. It's why he asks that question before he releases the dragon from its prison. "If I were to set this creature loose, what would you do to it?" The honest answer is to kill it. Sure, you could choose to bind it, but that's a lie. We literally kill every one of these things we encounter, and Shinryu would be no different. And when he lost the form of the dragon, he saw that he was going to be tried as a war criminal.
Not that he necessarily feared the consequences, he just realized that he'd likely spend the rest of his existence in a cell, which for a hedonist like Zenos would be boring af. Dude would probably no-sell whatever form of torture the Ala Mhigans gave to him. Your fight with him was the best he could hope for, and after that, time to call it a day because everything after that would be insufferably dull.
To me, Fordola and Yotsuyu are two sides of a very interesting coin. One is granted a second chance, despite harsh treatment, and earns herself a place in the world. The other is given it by accident via memory loss, but cannot escape her past despite the chance being given to her. In one, we see the potential of what could have been with the other.
I’ve said it many times but the thing that not only saves Stormblood for me but makes me enjoy replaying it more than Heavensward are the patches and all the content they brought. The MSQ is fantastically improved and the raids and trials were really fun. Also, if you’ve not discovered the raids and trails then it’s because you haven’t visited Rhalgr’s Reach and Kugane.
Fordola and Zenos (all of 4.0’s MSQ for that matter) are very hit and miss for most people. The patch story is WAY better and is some of the best story content in the game. Stormblood does a lot of setup for stuff they do way later
as someone who loves Estinien I was so hype when he destroyed the canon so I definitely didn't see any problem with it, and they already teased that he's poking around places, so it's not like it's COMPLEETELY random
If anything, it makes comeplete sense that he would be in Gyr Abania. He was esentially wandering around fixing his own problems, so of course he would go to where Shinryu appeard as soon as he heard it was spawned from the eyes.
You hit the nail with them bringing up various characters from various job quests, alliance raids and certain blue unlock quests in later MSQ. So if you feel like doing it, you get more out of it. But none are mandatory, so it's quite a good balanced way of doing things
later on in EW is quite sad when you see people that didn't do any side stuff, the place is empty.
@@danilooliveira6580 oh really? I didn't know that, I thought they would still appear just people wouldn't know who tf they were. That is sad
@@danilooliveira6580
Wait, quick question:
Do you know if the Red Mage Trainer (X'rhun Tia or however his name was again) appears if you have done the lvl 80 Red Mage quests?
[POTENTIAL SPOILER:]
Alisaie even mentions his absence and I was wondering like, wait wtf, have I done something wrong by not doing the 80 quest?
@@Sherolox I don't remember seeing him, and its one of the few lvl 80 quests I did.
@@danilooliveira6580
Thx for telling me.
I will wait and see if he still appears somewhere in the rest of 6.0.
Three primals/trials per release and the rest as patches has always been the norm. ARR: Ifrit, titan and Garuda. Heavensward: whale, bug and thordan and Stormblood: Laskhmi, Susanno and Shynriu.
"Reroll" is the wowbrain talking again, you don't re-roll. You can play all the classes at the same time and switch between them on the fly outside of combat.
He knows that. Reroll is just a term and can be used to mean reroll class as much as it can mean reroll character.
I love Stormblood and it’s post patch content. Literally lol’d at the intro
Urianger ranting in the background at the beginning xD!
That’s our boy Urianger 😂
“Thou whoth dialogue ye muste skip”
normal raid starts in Rhalgr's Reach while Alliance raid starts in Kugane for stormblood in case you are still trying to find it after reading this
IF you do more jobs and their related quests before Endwalker, you will be in for a treat. The more of them you do, the more callbacks you get to see.
I love watching these reactions and knowing what's coming. Its so exciting to hear how you feel and know you will be excited when your see what's coming. 😂
Im at the same place as him right now and just know that post game is gonna be story madness, cant wait honestly. I imagine what it was like when this all first came out and fans had to wait for the patches, I feel so spoiled lol.
I know he wants to do the raids and stuff first, but I cannot wait for him to get into Shadowbringers. His journey has been great to watch so far, but I'm so excited for him to get deeper into the story.
It's funny cause the last stream he did before the RWF he finished the Yotsuyu Primal fight, he was contemplating on continuing the MSQ cause he was hooked on the story. he said he held back on continuing the MSQ to do the raid cause he felt there is no stopping once he starts the MSQ
1:33 Okay chill dude the omega normal raid is in ralgar's reach in gyr Abania and the alliance raid 24 man journey to ivalice is started in kugane
6:50 actually it's already happened twice y'shtola's sister y'mithra in gridania is the NPC for the summoner's quest line, and the twins who hang around their sister kanne senna are the white mage job quest NPC's.
12:10 he didn't just make it if you were paying attention it's part of the system moenbryde made to gather aether and all urianger did was suggested we used it to disrupt the aether in the area so fordola who is an echo noob couldn't read our moves. Which is also furthering the lore of the echo because as WoL we do what fordola does but we get a visual representation of it as telegraphs.
It's funny. I think Stormblood is lackluster, but I feel like some (not all) of the reasons given are a little bit...off the mark. Like he blatantly misses the point of the song at the very end. He kind of misses Zenos' motivation for merging with Shinryu. I think he'll tie things together better over time, though.
Also, seeing some of these cutscenes again...I never realized what Fordola's outfit was. Just...panty shots, everywhere.
Imagine being somebody who didn't think it was great that Estinien shows up again shaking my head
Validation of side content in the MSQ is gratifying.
That intro though lol
"The guy whos dialogue doth yee skip"
There are some Main Scenario Quests that have their dialogue change depending on which Jobs the player has level up, but there are also some Job Quest that have special dialogue if the player has reach certain points in the MSQ, like Red Mage if it's started after beating Stormblood's main story.
safe to assume preach didn't read any of the comments of the last video before making this one? because many people explained the kojin "mcguffin".
the lamp you get to find the relic was given to you by a very reclusive village of people who probably never shared this information with the kojin as their sole interaction with them was for trade purposes. the only reason the npc gives you the lamp in the first place is because you brought him news of his daughter, yugiri, and was actually going against the laws of their village just talking to you because him and his wife were so desperate to hear news about yugiri.
and the location the relic was found in was never searched because it was too dangerous. the blue kojion are merchants and gatherers, not fighters like the red kojin. they would have been slaughtered by the red before they even got the chance to start searching for the relic. that's why they ask you to look, because you're a fighter and can defend yourself if you get attacked while searching.
as for estinien appearing out of the blue to destroy the cannon, it was already established that he was in the area searching for clues to the whereabouts of shinryu and the fighting had been going on for a while at that point, it wouldn't have been unlikely at all for him to notice the commotion with plenty of time to jump over and intervene if necessary.
and urianger's mcguffin didn't win you the fight persay, it just prevented her from using her manufactured echo.
Imo the post MSQ in Stormblood is the true diamond,especially when they start building up towards Shadowbringers,at this point i cant stop praising Shadowbringers they really went on a streak with the build up to it,the xpac msq itself and the post msq
I love every second they are sitting there explaining things in detail, even if its a bit of a lore dump. Especially when Urianger does it.
The trial and raid releases have settled into a rhythm from HW onward. Every expac so far has 1 trial appear in post patch story, and 3 appear in their own separate story. If you haven't already found it, I think the 8-man raid starts in Rhalgr's Reach and the 24-man starts in Kugane.
The payoffs for SB main MSQ mostly come in the post SB MSQ and beyond. Also the raids trials in the post SB MSQ are still among my favorites in the whole game. Looking forward to your next reaction video!
Love watching the FFXIV streams ❤ big fan of the game and it's been so much fun to be along for the journey on Twitch.
A note on the trials: It probably felt like there were fewer trials because Stormblood is longer than Heavensward, but both expansions only had 3 trials at expansion launch.
And then a note on the raid: Alexander is shown at the end of Heavensward but Omega is part of the story at the end of Heavensward patches as well! So I felt like I was aware of Omega's presence for a really long time and suspected it may be the raid.
15:04
Actually, do you remember Rhalgr's Reach and how it was protected from the imperials?
That was with a glamour that basically masked the reach and made it only visible to the ones, that dispelled the glamour.
(Yes, the same type of glamour we use for looking good).
Zenos could've just applied a glamour to Shinryu, like it's not that hard to imagine, but they should've totally explained that in game.
Shinryu also wasn't located at the Ala Mhigo castle the entire time, he was discovered then relocated by the Garlean Gang
@@MrTalithan
Yeah, they were searching for both Omega and Shinryu.
Stormblood base game in itself isn't too exciting. It's got It's ups and downs.
But it also sets up every single cool thing to come, so I don't mind that sort of worldbuilding existing. Honestly if you want a good story and characters to care about then there will always be points in the story where more development occurs than action. Stormblood is that for FF.
It's easy to lose sight of that because as an mmo FF shows it's story off through expansions. And everyone wants every single expansion to be non-stop twists and awesomeness. But if you displayed it all as a book, no one would shake their head at those few pages in the middle that are slow, but sets everything up. Those pages are essential.
Heavensward's MSQ was great because it was quite an isolated story. Yeah you see a few of the characters again, but the city itself doesn't show up much.
Stormblood ties into everything coming up.
That's how I would separate the two.
Now the patches are some of the absolutely best ff has to show off. Much better than most other post MSQ patches in the game.
One other thought. I was actually very confused on stream on why you had forgotten the giant hole in the ground and your earlier prediction about omega. You reacted to it. You mentioned omega coming back too. Did you maybe forget all this happened?
Like maybe too many days passed between you starting the expansion and finishing it?
Because all those hints you say was missing for what the raid was going to be you already talked to us about on stream ages ago.
Chat even gave you the usual wall of smiles for when you mused about it.
Keep playing mike lol. I feel like I say this every vid where you talk about the story. They address quite a lot of what you said concerned you/disappointed you if you keep playing. Also, i'm not entirely sure how you missed the raid. The thing it has on the map is pretty damn big.
I envy you so much, I wish I could completely forget everything about the Shadowbringers just to go through that again...
Enjoy it, it's really something else.
I remember Stormblood as a disappointing MSQ with a few high points, kind of boring zone design, really great music, and excellent primal fights and raids. Definitely don't skip the Omega fights or the Four Lords.
he did the four lords today as well as the first tier of omega :)
I agree. I felt that Stormblood basic story was a boring scaffold that was used to get you to and through the better, smaller stories and dungeons and trials. MSQ was always like doing my homework before being allowed to run out and play in the side content.
I always did enough to unlock something then went on happy tangents with Four Lords, Ivalice, Omega, Eureka, Temple of the Fist, Great Hunt, Heaven on High, etc.
Eventually I always had to make my way back to MSQ, like a kid eating their vegetables.
Cut to Patch 4.2 - 4.3 where Preach is completely hooked on MSQ ^^
Side Note: ALWAYS love your openings to these xD This one and the Hildabrand opening gets me rolling lol
The change with Jobabilitys and Jobquests is also good for everyone who just spends a lot of time playing without playing the story so u are not cockblocked by the story when it comes to learning the new stuff. I hope the do that for HW too in the future
Stormblood it the ARar type. It’s expanding the world. You will see in the patchem and in the next two expansions how much stormblood is a base.
what I like about the change in the job quest (besides the fact that if the story is bad, and it is very bad more often than not and sometimes you just want your damn spells), is that canonically what happens is by lvl 70 you basically learned everything the soul crystal can teach you, and from there on forward you are creating spells yourself, and adding those spells to the soul crystal.
Someone might've mentioned it already, but Shantoto is meant to be massive reference to FF11, where she was a notable mage and quest NPC (and just as haughty)
The thing about Fordola being like Wesker is that thats how its like for other people fighting the WoL. Mechanics in dungeons are just the echo’s precognition telling you how to dodge. Even failing a trial encounter is just the echo telling you how the trial may kill you and providing you with foreknowledge of how you might deal with it.
Honestly, Estinien doing that made complete sense to me when I gave it some thought. He needs us to get to Ala Mhigo to deal with Shinryu, as evidenced by him destroying the eyes after we're gone. He can't do it himself because he can't resist the influence of a primal, and aside from that Shinryu would be WAY too strong, even for him.
tl;dr him destroying the cannon to help us gets him closer to his goal faster
I agree with you on practically everything but the song being inappropriate. You've heard that background song before, it's the songs zenos' soldiers use as their anthem. The song being sung at the end lets you know where it really came from. The lyrics are changed to undo it's perversion by the garleans. They've just stormed the city, retaken control of their homeland from oppressors, there are no more threats waiting in the wings. How is singing *the national anthem* that to the people who are left inappropriate? It is like the most appropriate moment in 4.0 to me.
only thing I'll say about only playing one job- in both Shadowbringers and Endwalker, there are 'role quests' for each role, and they're all incredibly interesting and the ones in shadowbringers have a meta quest if you do them all with some really important story information. so I'd recommend trying to level at least one job of each role.
Not to forget that Meta Quest has a follow up if he finished The Warring Triad Story in Heavensward iirc
@@wowguy1243 yes, the MSQ won't physically prevent him from continuing, but they're all really interesting story information.
Stormblood's story is probably my least favorite but it still had some great moments and dungeons. Based on the fact you really liked Heavensward's story, then I think you're really going to love Shadowbringers and Endwalker. You have been paying attention to the story so it's honestly such a great ride. Also the dungeons/raids are really really fun.
You have yet to see the character development of Fordola. Sadly most of it are in Job quests that you might do later. (I am a grat Fordola fan myself...)
14:42 it's weird seeing that angle of zenos without seeing 'JUICY' written on his butt cape
@5:00 As someone whose first 50 was Black Mage, it was always neat we were the first ones working together with Beast Tribe characters even before those rep quests got added. It's also still my favorite 30-50 job story surprise, even though yes DRK exists and is a great experience as well, but the 50 BLM one surprised me more.
Watching these videos remind me why I stopped caring about the plot armor squad long time ago. I love the world, the lore, but I don't give a damn about characters. There is just a handful of good moments and the rest falls flat.
Your intro is amazing and the things you point out are hilarious LOL. THE OUTRO THOUGH OMG
What I like about FFXIV is that the mcguffins are so well explained in the story and the devs spend so much time justifying certain things that the story becomes so long and ppl inevitably miss stuff. Thats why i enjoy pyros streams. Him calling out lore bits or thinking aloud on stream are my highlights.
Edit: Also, Im curious why he thought zenos was not a one note character? Because in SB, it was always apparent to me that all he wanted from me was a good fight. When he merged with Shinryu, I assumed it was because I beated his base form, so he wanted to skip the foreplay and move on to the main course(him as shinryu fighting me). With an empowered shinryu form, he could have a more spectacular battle, which he did get, and he kills himself because he knows he cant get that battle again. Theres nothing more to his character (IN SB).
I drop in and check preach videos out every few weeks. haven't since before Endwalker and my lord that hair growth!
Had the same reaction when they start singing, but then i remembered that during the start of stormblood it were the garleans singing before. This is to signify that they have won~
I don't think of Moenbryda as being a mcguffin, as much as explanation of the mysterious methods being used by the bad guys.
This game definitely rewards people for doing all side content and job quests. I had all but one job to max with quests complete by the time I finished ShB MSQ. You'll get so much more of a feel for the world, Easter eggs everywhere! Even more tie ins in EW as well, I feel like my time was well spent, and yeah, if you don't do it, it doesn't ruin the story.
Im pretty sure you find the alliance raid in Kugane, and the smaller raids in Rhalgr's Reach. They're both fun, I especially liked the latter, but the former gave some unique playstyle challenges that we had to think to conquer!
I'm sure you'll love them :).
Cant wait for preach to discover all the other classes, and im gonna shed a manly tear the day a preach video pops up in my feed with titles like "Beginners guide to tanking in xiv".
Preach videos are always great, I love that intro, kudos to whoever did that editing
@6:00 there's a lot of cool little stuff starting in Stormblood that references questlines done on your character, there's a couple things in late ARR that do as well (NIN introduction) but Stormblood especially really calls to a lot of stuff done even in ARR.
There's... definitely a lot of things that are defensible in intent but wanting in execution, even going about doing the mundane to build trust with Ala Mhigans, it's still a good story, even necessary in the grand scheme, but could have been done better, even when current, pacing was my biggest issue like you mentioned.
I come back to this video for the intro. Same with the "Wow's craftable Legendary problem" or w/e "Are you callin' me an asshole?!"
the best intros by far imo
another point about the change in acquiring job skills is that they eventually thought that tying skills through very specific quests is very hard for them later on if they plan to do some balance changes. Like, what if down the line, the level 76 skill should be changed, or deleted - then they'd have to edit the quest chain so that it will match the lore. It's a pretty ingenious way of giving them role quests in shadowbringers as opposed to specific job quests you'd have to go through.
I did a replay of stormblood recently and it was SO FUNNY when Urianger showed up and all but said "yeah the writers ran out of time to give this major subplot the resolution it needs. Here's a win button."
I’m just sitting here like “wait until he gets to the post expansion content”
@Preach Gaming I'm a bit surprised Mike hasn't dipped into Blue Mage yet but I'm sure when he does he's gonna have an absolute blast and I can't wait to see his reaction to it.