Hands down.
I beseech each and everyone who is into games or MMOs of any sort to go and play this magnificent expansion. In fact, I dare you... *(puts on paladin hard-face)*
I had intentionally held off on updating my blog because the temptation for me to disclose spoilers would have been ridiculously high. However, now that almost three weeks have passed since early launch released on June 28th, 2019 I thought now was a prudent time to establish a good post to underline my intense admiration for the Devs in delivering a truly magnificent story, game dynamics and most importantly, legendary soundtrack.
Where to start? Viewers of my twitch channel can attest that I got online within 20 minutes of server launch for early access and every moment I played thereafter was simply memorable bliss. First off the introductory images to all the zones...
I will definitely leave the sixth one out since it contains massive spoilers.
First of all, it must be said... a [B]massive[/B] thank you to [I]every[/I] single member of the truly global team that were involved in the development of Shadowbringers. There is a sophistication to this particular expansion that just permeates every single element of the game and the incredible intense work that went into this cannot be denied.
Again, I say... Thank you.
The Title:
personally, I get the sense that the Shadowbringers title in itself is one that has dual meaning to it, similar to how the Heavensward expansion had a duality to its essence. I really like this and how it fully explores the Ascian condition while also underlining our role as the Warrior of Darkness.
The Music:
Soken and his entire crew seriously deserve an Oscar at this point. Virtually every new zone had superb music that gave me the gooseys. The first moment I walked into The Crystarium and heard that theme in all its grandeur, the goosebumps had me enthralled. From then on, it was just masterpiece after masterpiece... just to name a few, the compositions for Qitana Ravel, Crown of the Immaculate, and the theme played during every emotionally charged cutscene.
And Soken is right, everyone really should listen to the Shadowbringers music with headphones. Nothing short of utter bliss.
The Story:
I will actually need a separate post to fully substantiate my declaration that the Shadowbringers tale is now officially the best of all the expansions so far. Where should I even begin? One of the main keys to beautiful writing is to generate a feeling so intense in the audience that they get that tear in their eye, that sense of rage at an injustice, that "[I]what the heck just happened?[/I]" moment... and ultimately, that sense of empathy with every main charcater who exhibits a broad range of invigorating facets.
That is where this story shines through and that is what makes Shadowbringers truly brilliant as the credits rolled up. If there were people who skipped through the story, they would have missed the truly wonderful sense of unmistakable pride at becoming the Warrior of Darkness. Plus right now, I constantly labour to imagine how it is even possible to surpass this and ironically enough, I have great faith that you guys will still continue to deliver the amazing.
I particularly love the environments and how several topographies of this world of the First have been brought to life. Seeing Crystarium finally made a reality was really special because exactly fourteen years ago, we had seen its original concept shown as a tech-demo at E3 2005 (also already noted in one of my previous posts). I really love the fact that several aspects of the original concept made it into Shadowbringers. One example of this is the fact that the Devs used the original concept name of FFXIV --which was "Rapture"-- to form the underling essence of the city of Eulmore's story and their belife in the "Ascension".
More of that later in another post so that I can properly hide all the spoilers.
The Log-In sequence:
Apart from having to waiting about 25 minutes when the servers initially came online, I believe I was disconnected only a few times over the last four days which was an incredible vast improvement over Stormblood. I also noticed that the careful choreography for how the quests unfolded once players arrived on the First was cleverly sequenced so that there would be very minimal opportunities for bottle neck issues like the Raubhan fiasco. It is very very well done and only a very keen eye will notice this strategy... I doff my hat as well to the QA/QC team for this.
The Trust system:
- Their dialogue is wonderful and I found a lot of their verbal transactions very instrumental in fleshing out several elements of the story.
- The AI system is actually quite sophisticated and intuitive... very responsive to mechanics.
- What needs work: They need to deliver more damage... please look into this.
The new job skills:
Obviously, I have only tested Black mage to level 80 and I must say it feels much smoother and delivers a heck more damage than before... but what really made it enjoyable for me was the careful streamlining of the rotations. This is also evident in several of the other jobs and I can understand the rationale behind this concept. For some reason, thinking of the new job skill concepts made me remember some discussions on the Alpha forums several years ago... we've all come a very very long way since 1.0. Nonetheless, I shall review more on this later in the job class forums.
The items and armour system:
- I particularly like the direction that the Dev team took on this... recoloring and reconstituting existing armour styles so that they could focus more on the really important aspect of the game: developing a beautiful world, story and environs.
- I reckon this is a great choice... because we already have a problem with item bloat and this strategy builds on your existing assets.
- In addition, the simplified method of players being able to select what weapon/armour they want (as a reward) for a particular job class is really great.
- By the way, I must say, I do like the Roken set and the King weapons very very much... great design that captures that Fae essence.
Quest mechanics:
This was another element I noticed since 2.0 that gradually kept getting more polished with every expansion. This expansion makes a great job of making the player do some backtracking to reveal some amazing hidden gems, which is fantastic in getting players to maintain a very solid engagement with the game. That was how I literally found the quests to unlock the Twinning and the Academia... speaking of which, the scene at the end of the Twinning brought some feels.
Other stuff:
Servers are almost back up for full launch, so I'll stop here and will continue the review later. In the meantime, I do have some minor mutterings regarding the tedious grind for some certain rewards, maybe a commentary or three about the return of the tome/gem system... and a weird brief lag that happens every time I enter Eulmore. However, none of these can overshadow the immense esteem I have for the Dev Team for this truly exhilarating expansion.
Moving along however to the elements i noticed within the first hour... the Devs trolling us again with a new set of tomes grind... I literally laughed when I saw this...
By the way, let me know what you all thin about my Gunbreaker glam...
And a few of my other glams...
