#and tell me that Zenos VA isn't the best in the game

[sebille]

I love y'sthola the character but like her VA is so.......bad sometimes

[motheatenscarf]

Had a couple days to mull over some Shadowbringers thoughts while I fixate on housing and level up Trust party members as friends catch up to me in the story.

General musings is all.

Officially declaring that yeah, people were right, base Shadowbringers and the first like, 3 patches worth of patch content is far and away the strongest the storytelling has been in this game. It was legit good. Like, single player RPG good. And one of the better single player RPGs I've played kind of single player RPG good. A proud successor to the likes of some of the best entries in the Final Fantasy series good. It even managed to incorporate the MMO elements into the story (making your past life's entire ability being to call upon allies from afar) in a way that felt not only meaningful but on theme.

I loved Heavensward, but in a way that was like... I personally got a lot of mileage out of it, I'm sure others would vary. Shadowbringers was just legit good and I recommend it to everyone. It's... actually worth the slog of getting through through ARR and Stormblood. Stormblood admittedly isn't the... worst, but depending on your sensitivity to uh, let's call it the "George R.R. Martinification of History" in your fantasy settings, you will either be able to roll with the weak storytelling and have fun with the things that work. Or you're gonna be fucking furious and hate a lot of what's going on.

As for the last couple of patches worth of story content in Shadowbringers, i.e., the stuff that's setting up Endwalker... I'm not sure how I feel about it yet? I'm still parsing it. The stuff with the Scions is still fine and it works, it's serviceable, and I'm glad to have Estinien back, there were some fun interactions there. But the villains. Woof.

Zenos is over the top in a fun way, big gestures and waxing poetic on his intentions, grade A villain Presentation stuff. And then Fandaniel just being... every annoying stereotype about queer coded villains and not in a fun way. I think it has everything to do with the VA not being that skilled to start with and these mincing little dances that he does. He's just so fucking tedious. Asahi was already The Worst Character and then they brought him back possessed by The Worst Ascian, but kept the voice actor, and made him somehow even more offensive in doing so. Great. Thanks.

Idk. It's just such a step backwards after all the work they did with Emet Selch to humanize the Ascians and made him one of if not the most compelling characters in the game so far. They even did great making Elidibus sympathetic, if not especially gripping as a character. Time will tell if they do anything interesting with what they're setting up, but that's a couple weeks away for me at this point while my friends catch up.