Valefor.Prothescar said:
»My personal alignment is more or less opposite. Found a majority of Stormblood to be pretty banal and I really think Lyse got way too much screen time. Two parallel stories that were ultimately the same ended up burning me out by the end.
I think what made Shadowbringers better for me was the scope of it. So many microstories woven into the main giant thread of the origins of the entire world and the origins of the Ascians, how they've dictated history's course for thousands of years and how the things we've seen and done all tie up in it, ultimately bringing the entire 10 years of story together into one final nexus. It was so compelling to me (and Amaurot is prolly one of my favorite RPG reveals and locations of all time).
When Stormblood was current my largest disappointment with it was that most of what was supposed to be a "war" expansion didn't feel like it had the proper scale for the armies, except for the Doma segment.
I viewed its story as finally giving answers to stuff like, are we reviving when we fail combat with the Echo and such. Beyond that it felt like a sacrificial expansion that mostly was being put up as a pedestal to place future, better stories on top of, so that people could look back at it and be like, "Holy ***! The foreshadowing!" Which a lot of people are doing now with the khutun or whatever of the Mol tribe describing to us in vague terms what would be revealed in solid terms in Shadowbringers.
Shadowbringers was great, but I think it's a little overrated. In story terms it's much better than Stormblood, but really only as a whole, and then only really 5.0 compared to 4.0. The individual "vignettes" for each of the Scions and what not are ultimately weaker, and they pretty clearly put some of the antagonists on the chopping block to get them out of the way for what they want to do in Endwalkers (Elidibus). The side story content is also worlds weaker, and the denouement for 5.55 is also a lot less compelling than 4.55 with its biggest highlight being Tiamat vs. 4.55's frontline clash with the Garlean Empire and the last of the Scions being Called.
Stormblood was also partially experimental as they tried to tell some of the story through themes surrounding combat and injecting lore/story into combat, confusing a lot of people since usually we story segregate combat and not a lot of people pay close attention to the going ons in solo instances. I think they decided to start implementing the roleplay instances as a way to better convey that they want those battles to stick in our minds too.