#one of my bigger quibbles like I said is that I wish they'd leaned in more on people taking burdens from you in post-patches

[tovaicas]

now that I've finished: I enjoyed shb. not as much as I did hw, but I quite liked the msq (with the couple of quibbles that I've mentioned). post-patches I felt suffered from similar problems as hw's did, as in they wrapped up everything and then very quickly and suddenly pivoted to new expac content in a way that didn't feel suuuper natural, but I also think to an extent that's also an MMO curse. with a larger available scope I would've preferred a more natural lead-in, but what can you do.

I'm not sure how I feel abt the heavy focus on zenos and fandaniel, zenos has never been that much of an interesting character to me (stb didn't handle him and what he represents well, and imo he doesn't get more interesting as he keeps appearing) and characters who are written as 'well he's cRaZy so we don't have to explain his motives or erratic behaviour' like fandaniel I find inherently uninteresting. plus I just hate it every second he's on screen HBFSBJ

I wish the grand company of eorzea stuff was the conclusion to a long, real attempt at making amends rather than smth wrapped up as a loose end in two or three patches; feels disingenuous, in a way. I also wish they'd actually leaned with the theming of 'the wol has friends who genuinely care for them and feel genuine remorse for the things they put them through for the sake of others', shb msq's back-half was all about how everyone gambles with your life and how the wol is a tool and how shitty this is (to an extent, at least; one of my bigger quibbles with g'raha is how he's consistently framed as justified for manipulating you and directly playing with your life), but as it stands as soon as you're cured of the lightwarden stuff everything goes back to you feeling like a secondary background player with no outstanding trauma in the post-patches, being told where to go and what to do.

on that similar note, I have strong feelings on g'raha and most of them lean negative. I'm not going to clutter this post with unnecessary character hate that's biased by my own wol's writing (unless like. you want me to), but a lot of my feelings abt him from shb msq haven't really changed.

otherwise I quite liked a lot of the worldbuilding and historical sections, I do think those were well done. the norvrandt goodbye genuinely got me, and I actually really liked elidibus' sections. I miss ryne already

#spoilers #major spoilers #long post #hw is still solidly my favourite but shb is in 2nd place #re: the GCoE stuff they kinda got into it w/ stb but not really and I wish it was treated as smth more than a loose end to be quickly fixed #I'm finding ze//nos to be a pretty one-note character and not suuper interesting so I can't say I'm super excited abt seeing so much of him #I'm kind of hitting the point where I want to see smth *else* other than the gar//lean empire lol. that also might be wer//lyt trauma #one of my bigger quibbles like I said is that I wish they'd leaned in more on people taking burdens from you in post-patches #again MMO protag curse but shb was literally entirely abt how the wol's own passivity nearly gets themselves killed #which is not the first time it's been brought up. it's the entire point of drk 30-50 and it's even mentioned in arr #that the wol needs to learn how to stand up for themselves. there was a real opportunity to meta-question the mmo mold of 'but thou must' #(bc I genuinely thought at first that was the commentary shb msq was trying to make) that wasn't taken. #saint.txt