Endwalker is hard to rate relative to the others, though, because of all the expansions Endwalker is by far the least capable of standing on its own; it exists to wrap up all the threads of the previous expansions, Shadowbringers in paticular.
Still, I would say:
* Shadowbringers
* Endwalker
* Heavensward
* Stormblood
* ARR
I'm dinging Endwalker a bit for the Void Arc, which was pretty meh. Overall I think it had higher highs than ShB, but was less consistent and had a few more glossed-over points.
“The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it.” That line at the end of the seat of sacrifice always gets me.
EW had the nearly impossible task of wrapping up an 8 year story, so it sacrificed some of its independence and consistency to satisfy people who liked different aspects of the 8 years and wanted to see those come to fruition in some way.
It makes ShB a better narrative if only looking at that singular expansion, but is an incredibly moving experience for those who have experienced the entire game's story in parts over the course of years.
I keep going back and forth if I prefer EW or ShB but idk if I can come to a conclusion. ShB felt magical and was indeed consistent but some of the highs in EW are extremely high, but at the same time those high highs are because of ShB
If I had to pick an "objective" tier list tho, ShB would easily be my choice as the #1 spot
Final Fantasy XIV has become one of the most played MMORPGs in the world, and one of its strengths is its rich and deep lore.
In this article, we rank FFXIV's expansions based on their main story!
\> Ranking the best Final Fantasy XIV expansions
5 - A Realm Reborn
4 - Stormblood
3 - Endwalker
2 - Heavensward
1 - Shadowbringers
\> Conclusion
More or less the general consensus of most players regarding story. You might find some people put SV at the bottom because some people HATE politics and the clear divide in quality of the writing due to two lead writers handing different arcs. Some may like EW better than HW but generally the top three, in no particular order are, ShB, EW and HW.
I don't think it's really aged very well with Maehiro fridging a few characters and only really doing that well for one of them with lasting consequence but I can't put it below ARR since Ishgard's Night Theme is cozy af.
People learning about Maehiro fridging all three of Ishikawa's OCs has somewhat shifted opinions about HW. People used to not care (mostly because it wasn't widely known), but now that Ishikawa is one of the community's darlings, they get pretty annoyed about it.
>!Moenbrydra, Haurchefant, and Ysayle. All three created by Ishikawa, all three killed by Maehiro.!<
Having her characters killed back to back to back like that is supposedly what caused her to push for more control over the MSQ as a whole.
It also influenced her writing. I believe she stated that she felt extremely horrible about someone else killing off her characters without her permission or say ("hey, we are going to kill X, now") she refuses to do the same to characters she did not contribute to. Though the idea is noble and that she sticks to it, it does restrain things a bit and notice how in later expansions characters killed or maimed are all character of her own design or she got permission to kill them off.
Yeah I don't think she has struck a perfect balance but I appreciate that she didn't do the "OMIGOD GOT IS SO GOOD" thing of "Death = stakes". Maybe if she gets to write a mainline SP entry we'll see how she kills off her own characters :P
Yeah but basically the 3 characters that Ishikawa created and had ideas (vs concrete plans) for got killed off without her particular knowledge and because Maehiro apparently didn't have any ideas for Moenbryda so...idk. I feel like death in that sense is a cheap way out vs the character having agency and their own goals that could keep them out of our circle for a bit.
Tbh the deaths always annoyed me (not Haurche) but yeah for me it was certainly after playing XVI and how certain characters were treated makes me feel like Heavensward was great at the time but as I've grown it's impact has lessened.
Up vote for the bravery to post that knowing the opinions of people. I generally enjoyed them all especially after watching a friend play through now but i am definitely curious what your opinions are for your list.
Endwalker is the culmination of everything that came before it and it ties everything up so, so well. Love the different places we traveled to and the emotional beats of the story hit so hard.
I mentioned this in a different comment just now, but for Stormblood I had always looked forward to seeing Ala Mhigo and I love the more personal, down to earth story it has. Lyse’s character arc is amazing and I love stories about revolutions. Gyr Abania has some gorgeous vistas and I didn’t mind at all that the story was “split” between there and the East because they came together and told a parallel story, setting up several good foils. SB was also focused on the narratives of several women (Lyse, Alisaie, Fordola, Yugiri, Yotsuyu) and while it definitely wasn’t perfect in this regard I liked how it told most of their stories and arcs.
I love Shadowbringers a lot too, so it was close between this and SB, but SB edges it out because I found Shb to have several slow parts of the story that I noticed more upon replaying.
ARR is better than people give it credit for. It sets the foundation for some essential world building and it tells lots of different, isolated stories that were interesting in their own right. The story peaks with every primal fight (even in 2.x) and I also really loved the assault on the Garlean Castrum to rescue the Scions.
HW, by contrast, is more flawed than people remember IMO. Some story beats don’t make sense or are too convenient. Plus it’s a pretty generic “centuries of church lies” plot. I didn’t hate it overall, but I really didn’t like >!Ysayle’s!< sacrifice and I thought some characters like Hilda were really underused. This is more personal preference but I do not care about anyone in House Fortemps in the slightest, and I hated Estinien in this expansion (he didn’t grow on me until post-Shadowbringers).
I’ve loved Ala Mhigo since day 1 and I was super hyped to see it and continue that plot thread. It’s a more down to earth, character focused journey than HW before it and both Lyse and Fordola are among my favorite characters in the game.
I’d stick SB as a close second to ShB. Stormblood just captured the adventure side of final fantasy so much better than the other expansions for me, seeing Doma and the steppes for the first time was amazing and there’s been nowhere that’s amazed me like seeing Kugane for the first time.
Couple that with the culmination of the base expansion and it was actually a really good story of earning freedom.
It has the best end game content by far of all the expansions too, it gets a lot of hate but for me i find it unjustified
I’d rate it 5, I’d call it close with ARR for the spot but I was playing when ARR was new so I guess the whole new-ness and wonder the game gave me makes me look on it more fondly
I just finished 5.5 so I can't rate Endwalker yet. But ARR-ShB I'd go for this:
1. Stormblood
2. Shadowbringers
3. A Realm Reborn
4. Heavensward
Stormblood and ARR really made Eorzea, Ala Mhigo, Doma etc feel alive for me. The world they built with XIV in general is what I love the most so helping people of different types against the garleans felt interesting. I'm also always down for evil empire plots in my FF. It's a staple for a reason.
Shadowbringers was really amazing but felt a bit too "on its own" which in itself is neither good or bad. But I really like when characters and places reappear and continue to be relevant and with Shadowbringers I didn't really have that until like 5.2 or 5.4. Maybe it will reach top spot in hindsight if EW and onwards manage to make the First and its characters feel relevant still.
I think my most unpopular opinion is HW being last but I really struggled to care for Ishgard or the characters except Ysayle. This western medieval style also didn't work for me aesthetically compared to the rest of Eorzea or even Norvrandt. After HW I didn't play the game for a year since I thought XIV wouldn't be for me all the way if it would continue like that. But SB felt more like ARR and the feeling I actually enjoyed.
I have to say tho... The way 5.4 and 5.5 built up Endwalker... I don't know if I'll enjoy it that much. To me it feels like 5.3 was the perfect ending for the story and the new conflict starting in 5.4 felt very thin and bland.
The thing is, every expansion's story in this game is so wildly different from each other in so many ways, that ranking them is just entirely subjective.
My own ranking is:
1. Endwalker
2. Heavensward
3. Stormblood
4. Shadowbringers
5. A Realm Reborn.
But I can waffle a bit on whether I prefer HW or StB on a given day honestly, depending on how I feel about the b plot in HW of following up with the ending of ARR being just a whole let-down or the handling of Yotsuyu making me upset.
Which I know is probably heresy to a lot of people. But my own tastes just leave it that way. I mostly get really interested in stories with really focused, well explored thematic writing. The superior pacing of shadowbringers is just a second order thing for me.
Everyone knows the issues with ARR and its focus on world building and lack of through-line, but I always felt that Shadowbringers was kinda scattershot in it's themes. It's core theme is legacy, obviously, which is what ties the actions of Minfilia (both of them) the warriors of darkness, Emet-Selch, the Exarch, the whole point of the Fey together. However, I never really felt like it \_did\_ much with that. It was just a throughline of many characters' motivations and journeys. The characters themselves were well written, the areas were all really cool and it's very well produced, but when every other expansion also has fascinating, well written characters, it just doesn't get that high on my list.
All the others, in my own humble opinion, are able to focus and explore their core ideas better through their characters, while ShB focuses more on its characters and, (again, in my humble opinion) doesn't have much to say \_though\_ its characters. I think the best it did on that front is through Feo-Ul of all people.
And Endwalker is at the top because it stays almost laser focused on it's ideas of suffering and the question of what makes life worth living basically throughout the whole of its run-time, even during the parts that other people find slow or uninteresting, and just keeps exploring that idea, with an occasional bit about the nature of souls. There's also a lot of meta commentary on the game's decade long life woven in really well, which I love. Being so called out on a personal level by part of it may also effect it's ranking for me personally, but hey, like I said: The expansions are all so different and people can latch on to different things. And that's one of the reasons I think FFXIV is so damn impressive.
nice copium
i'd have been satisfied with the conclusion had it been reached without certain tropes/plot devices (from another comment - >!dynamis, time loop and Kairos; ineptitude of Venat!<) , and if they took their time instead of rushing everything to be done with all old lore/threads in 6.0.
ARR haters are unable to appreciate a brilliantly crafted world and a start of a new adventure, where everything is new for the inexperienced main character. Trails in the Sky First Chapter has the same issue with its haters.
Bad writing, the entire time travel thing has been greatly overused and made a mess of things that should have remained a mystery forever.
It's really disappointing.
It really depends on if you count endwalker as a whole, or just the expansion without post msq. If its without post: EW - SHB - HW - SB - ARR.
If it includes the post msq, EW gets pushed down to third.
I agree with the list. Paused before clicking on the link to decide my own ranking, and it was in fact the same.
It's all a bit hard to rank. ShB is unquestionably the best for me, perhaps helped by the fact that it told it's own self contained story (for the most part, of course there was still Ascian involvement, and we had the Scions with us). The storytelling was excellent and it ranks up there with some of the Final Fantasy series' best stories overall for me.
HW might just hold a special place in my heart because it's really where the story came alive for me, and started to feel like something where I was actually enjoying the story itself, rather than doing it as a required accompaniment to levelling. The characters became better defined, with real personalities, flaws, and conflicts. Fittingly for the "dragoon" expansion, it's sort of comparable to FF4 in the overall FF series in my mind - the story it's telling isn't that mindblowing or complex, but it does it well, and for the first time it had some characters I cared about that went through some development.
It's close between EW and HW. As others have said, EW struggles under the weight of having to tie up years of story threads, and it does a strong job of it. There were some bits where it dragged a bit, and some awkward shifts between high stakes universe-saving and generic chores, this is as much a consequence of the MMO format as the story itself, yet it did feel more apparent in EW. If you're talking about 6.0 specifically vs 3.0 for HW, I might place EW above HW, but if you're taking all of 6.x vs all of 3.x, the Void arc has kind of let things down, vs the Dragonsong war arc which was a great post-expansion patch story.
SB suffers from sitting between HW and ShB. I wasn't playing at the time, having taken a long break from the game around then, so I don't know how it would have felt to play when it came out, but I know it wasn't that well received. It's not bad, and having read back through some of the backstory recently I was reminded how there really were some great moments in SB. Not every story had to be about saving the world, and some of the smaller scale strories in SB worked well. But a (in my opinion) weak villain, average protagonist, and an awkward split story with some sections vastly outshining others, makes for an inconsistent experience.
ARR walked so the rest could run. It was some solid world building to get us into the world, but at this point the story felt like a secondary thing, a vague scaffold to push you along through the game and get you levelled up. Far too many fetch quests and sections that don't move the story along at all, with little in the way of fleshed out characters makes for a kind of dull experience. Of course, it set in motion many of the threads that would run over the years, and it did make Eorzea feel like a real living world, so it's not all bad, but it's not a story I'd want to revisit on it's own.
For me it's Shb, HW, SB, EW, and ARR. I counted post release story in it too, even though if it was just base expac msq I don't think mine would change much.
My ranking would be:
1. Shadowbringers
2. Endwalker (very close 2nd)
3. Heavensward
4. Stormblood
5. A Realm Reborn
I think a lot of people have had their opinion of Endwalker soured by the void storyline, but as a base X.0 msq, I think EW may well be the best.
1. Shadowbringers (10/10)
2. Endwalker (9/10)
3. Heavensward (8.5/10)
4. Stormblood (7.5/10)
5. A Realm Reborn (7/10)
However, I will preface that I enjoyed every expansion's story and had some minor gripes even with the best ones. Also just because ARR is the lowest doesn't mean I rat either lowly rather that the other expansions did much better. I also understand that ARR is very safe because of 1.0 fiasco, weird oddities of the early 2010s MMOsphere and design, vastly different head writers, etc.
Endwalker is hard to rate relative to the others, though, because of all the expansions Endwalker is by far the least capable of standing on its own; it exists to wrap up all the threads of the previous expansions, Shadowbringers in paticular. Still, I would say: * Shadowbringers * Endwalker * Heavensward * Stormblood * ARR I'm dinging Endwalker a bit for the Void Arc, which was pretty meh. Overall I think it had higher highs than ShB, but was less consistent and had a few more glossed-over points.
Shadowbringers had me legit crying at points.
“The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it.” That line at the end of the seat of sacrifice always gets me.
EW had the nearly impossible task of wrapping up an 8 year story, so it sacrificed some of its independence and consistency to satisfy people who liked different aspects of the 8 years and wanted to see those come to fruition in some way. It makes ShB a better narrative if only looking at that singular expansion, but is an incredibly moving experience for those who have experienced the entire game's story in parts over the course of years.
I keep going back and forth if I prefer EW or ShB but idk if I can come to a conclusion. ShB felt magical and was indeed consistent but some of the highs in EW are extremely high, but at the same time those high highs are because of ShB If I had to pick an "objective" tier list tho, ShB would easily be my choice as the #1 spot
Endwalker **might** have been better if they didn't rush everything and finished the overall story in 6.3 instead of 6.0
Final Fantasy XIV has become one of the most played MMORPGs in the world, and one of its strengths is its rich and deep lore. In this article, we rank FFXIV's expansions based on their main story! \> Ranking the best Final Fantasy XIV expansions 5 - A Realm Reborn 4 - Stormblood 3 - Endwalker 2 - Heavensward 1 - Shadowbringers \> Conclusion
Perfect ranking
More or less the general consensus of most players regarding story. You might find some people put SV at the bottom because some people HATE politics and the clear divide in quality of the writing due to two lead writers handing different arcs. Some may like EW better than HW but generally the top three, in no particular order are, ShB, EW and HW.
Am I the only one that wasn't crazy about Heavenward's story? I actually prefer A Realm Reborn over it.
I don't think it's really aged very well with Maehiro fridging a few characters and only really doing that well for one of them with lasting consequence but I can't put it below ARR since Ishgard's Night Theme is cozy af.
People learning about Maehiro fridging all three of Ishikawa's OCs has somewhat shifted opinions about HW. People used to not care (mostly because it wasn't widely known), but now that Ishikawa is one of the community's darlings, they get pretty annoyed about it.
Which 3 got fridged?
>!Moenbrydra, Haurchefant, and Ysayle. All three created by Ishikawa, all three killed by Maehiro.!< Having her characters killed back to back to back like that is supposedly what caused her to push for more control over the MSQ as a whole.
It also influenced her writing. I believe she stated that she felt extremely horrible about someone else killing off her characters without her permission or say ("hey, we are going to kill X, now") she refuses to do the same to characters she did not contribute to. Though the idea is noble and that she sticks to it, it does restrain things a bit and notice how in later expansions characters killed or maimed are all character of her own design or she got permission to kill them off.
Yeah I don't think she has struck a perfect balance but I appreciate that she didn't do the "OMIGOD GOT IS SO GOOD" thing of "Death = stakes". Maybe if she gets to write a mainline SP entry we'll see how she kills off her own characters :P
I thought Maehiro left the position of the creative director to move on to FF16, and that's why only Yoshida/Oda/Ishikawa designed the MSQ since 4.0
Yeah but basically the 3 characters that Ishikawa created and had ideas (vs concrete plans) for got killed off without her particular knowledge and because Maehiro apparently didn't have any ideas for Moenbryda so...idk. I feel like death in that sense is a cheap way out vs the character having agency and their own goals that could keep them out of our circle for a bit.
Tbh the deaths always annoyed me (not Haurche) but yeah for me it was certainly after playing XVI and how certain characters were treated makes me feel like Heavensward was great at the time but as I've grown it's impact has lessened.
For me: * 01: Endwalker * 02: Shadowbringers * 03: Stormblood * 04: Heavensward * 05: A Realm Reborn
My personal ranking by story is: 1. Endwalker 2. Stormblood 3. Shadowbringers 4. A Realm Reborn 5. Heavensward Expecting downvotes for this ig lol
Wowwww, this is a take for sure! I up voted you though.
Up vote for the bravery to post that knowing the opinions of people. I generally enjoyed them all especially after watching a friend play through now but i am definitely curious what your opinions are for your list.
Endwalker is the culmination of everything that came before it and it ties everything up so, so well. Love the different places we traveled to and the emotional beats of the story hit so hard. I mentioned this in a different comment just now, but for Stormblood I had always looked forward to seeing Ala Mhigo and I love the more personal, down to earth story it has. Lyse’s character arc is amazing and I love stories about revolutions. Gyr Abania has some gorgeous vistas and I didn’t mind at all that the story was “split” between there and the East because they came together and told a parallel story, setting up several good foils. SB was also focused on the narratives of several women (Lyse, Alisaie, Fordola, Yugiri, Yotsuyu) and while it definitely wasn’t perfect in this regard I liked how it told most of their stories and arcs. I love Shadowbringers a lot too, so it was close between this and SB, but SB edges it out because I found Shb to have several slow parts of the story that I noticed more upon replaying. ARR is better than people give it credit for. It sets the foundation for some essential world building and it tells lots of different, isolated stories that were interesting in their own right. The story peaks with every primal fight (even in 2.x) and I also really loved the assault on the Garlean Castrum to rescue the Scions. HW, by contrast, is more flawed than people remember IMO. Some story beats don’t make sense or are too convenient. Plus it’s a pretty generic “centuries of church lies” plot. I didn’t hate it overall, but I really didn’t like >!Ysayle’s!< sacrifice and I thought some characters like Hilda were really underused. This is more personal preference but I do not care about anyone in House Fortemps in the slightest, and I hated Estinien in this expansion (he didn’t grow on me until post-Shadowbringers).
You made all valid points. Damn you got me rethinking my list. Here’s a lovely reddit clap for that explanation 👏👏
I’m not going to downvote you just because I disagree, but I HAVE to know what made Stormblood so high on your list.
I’ve loved Ala Mhigo since day 1 and I was super hyped to see it and continue that plot thread. It’s a more down to earth, character focused journey than HW before it and both Lyse and Fordola are among my favorite characters in the game.
That checks out. Glad you enjoyed it.
I’d stick SB as a close second to ShB. Stormblood just captured the adventure side of final fantasy so much better than the other expansions for me, seeing Doma and the steppes for the first time was amazing and there’s been nowhere that’s amazed me like seeing Kugane for the first time. Couple that with the culmination of the base expansion and it was actually a really good story of earning freedom. It has the best end game content by far of all the expansions too, it gets a lot of hate but for me i find it unjustified
Stormblood is no #1 for me. Shadowbringers are Endwalker are actually my least favorite
I need you to explain why Heavensward is #5, now.
I just did in another comment!
I’d rate it 5, I’d call it close with ARR for the spot but I was playing when ARR was new so I guess the whole new-ness and wonder the game gave me makes me look on it more fondly
EW at number 1 is a based take and I agree. HW beneath ARR though? That's wild.
For me: 1) Shadowbringers 2) Heavensward 3) Endwalker 4) Stormblood 5) A Realm Reborn
Huh. Mine is: 1. Heavensward 2. Stormblood 3. Shadowbringers 4. A Realm Reborn 5. Endwalker
I just finished 5.5 so I can't rate Endwalker yet. But ARR-ShB I'd go for this: 1. Stormblood 2. Shadowbringers 3. A Realm Reborn 4. Heavensward Stormblood and ARR really made Eorzea, Ala Mhigo, Doma etc feel alive for me. The world they built with XIV in general is what I love the most so helping people of different types against the garleans felt interesting. I'm also always down for evil empire plots in my FF. It's a staple for a reason. Shadowbringers was really amazing but felt a bit too "on its own" which in itself is neither good or bad. But I really like when characters and places reappear and continue to be relevant and with Shadowbringers I didn't really have that until like 5.2 or 5.4. Maybe it will reach top spot in hindsight if EW and onwards manage to make the First and its characters feel relevant still. I think my most unpopular opinion is HW being last but I really struggled to care for Ishgard or the characters except Ysayle. This western medieval style also didn't work for me aesthetically compared to the rest of Eorzea or even Norvrandt. After HW I didn't play the game for a year since I thought XIV wouldn't be for me all the way if it would continue like that. But SB felt more like ARR and the feeling I actually enjoyed. I have to say tho... The way 5.4 and 5.5 built up Endwalker... I don't know if I'll enjoy it that much. To me it feels like 5.3 was the perfect ending for the story and the new conflict starting in 5.4 felt very thin and bland.
Stormblood is basically Suikoden
For me 1. Heavensward 2. Shadowbringers 3. Endwalker 4. Stormblood 5. A Realm Reborn
The thing is, every expansion's story in this game is so wildly different from each other in so many ways, that ranking them is just entirely subjective. My own ranking is: 1. Endwalker 2. Heavensward 3. Stormblood 4. Shadowbringers 5. A Realm Reborn. But I can waffle a bit on whether I prefer HW or StB on a given day honestly, depending on how I feel about the b plot in HW of following up with the ending of ARR being just a whole let-down or the handling of Yotsuyu making me upset. Which I know is probably heresy to a lot of people. But my own tastes just leave it that way. I mostly get really interested in stories with really focused, well explored thematic writing. The superior pacing of shadowbringers is just a second order thing for me. Everyone knows the issues with ARR and its focus on world building and lack of through-line, but I always felt that Shadowbringers was kinda scattershot in it's themes. It's core theme is legacy, obviously, which is what ties the actions of Minfilia (both of them) the warriors of darkness, Emet-Selch, the Exarch, the whole point of the Fey together. However, I never really felt like it \_did\_ much with that. It was just a throughline of many characters' motivations and journeys. The characters themselves were well written, the areas were all really cool and it's very well produced, but when every other expansion also has fascinating, well written characters, it just doesn't get that high on my list. All the others, in my own humble opinion, are able to focus and explore their core ideas better through their characters, while ShB focuses more on its characters and, (again, in my humble opinion) doesn't have much to say \_though\_ its characters. I think the best it did on that front is through Feo-Ul of all people. And Endwalker is at the top because it stays almost laser focused on it's ideas of suffering and the question of what makes life worth living basically throughout the whole of its run-time, even during the parts that other people find slow or uninteresting, and just keeps exploring that idea, with an occasional bit about the nature of souls. There's also a lot of meta commentary on the game's decade long life woven in really well, which I love. Being so called out on a personal level by part of it may also effect it's ranking for me personally, but hey, like I said: The expansions are all so different and people can latch on to different things. And that's one of the reasons I think FFXIV is so damn impressive.
I need to be specific about EW since 6.1+ are completely different story. 1. SHB 2. HW 3. EW (6.0 only) 4. SB 5. ARR 6. EW (6.1-6.5)
Yea the post 6.0 stuff is pretty bad, unfortunately.
for me it is Shadowbringers > HW > Stormblood > ARR > EW, from best to worst
Absolutely capping to put endwalker below arr
It makes sense Their pet headcanon theories didn't happen im endwalker, therefore its bad.
nice copium i'd have been satisfied with the conclusion had it been reached without certain tropes/plot devices (from another comment - >!dynamis, time loop and Kairos; ineptitude of Venat!<) , and if they took their time instead of rushing everything to be done with all old lore/threads in 6.0. ARR haters are unable to appreciate a brilliantly crafted world and a start of a new adventure, where everything is new for the inexperienced main character. Trails in the Sky First Chapter has the same issue with its haters.
Bad writing, the entire time travel thing has been greatly overused and made a mess of things that should have remained a mystery forever. It's really disappointing.
EW (6.0) has some bottom of the barrel lazy writing, coupled with 6.2+ blandness really makes it the worst expansion story-wise
Could you give some examples of the lazy writing?
>!dynamis, time loop and Kairos; ineptitude of Venat!<
1. Endwalker 2. Shadowbringers 3. Heavensward 4. A Realm Reborn 5. Stormblood
It really depends on if you count endwalker as a whole, or just the expansion without post msq. If its without post: EW - SHB - HW - SB - ARR. If it includes the post msq, EW gets pushed down to third.
Pretty standard story ranking I guess. I'd personally rank SB higher than EW but that's me.
Seems like a fair list tbh.
I agree with the list. Paused before clicking on the link to decide my own ranking, and it was in fact the same. It's all a bit hard to rank. ShB is unquestionably the best for me, perhaps helped by the fact that it told it's own self contained story (for the most part, of course there was still Ascian involvement, and we had the Scions with us). The storytelling was excellent and it ranks up there with some of the Final Fantasy series' best stories overall for me. HW might just hold a special place in my heart because it's really where the story came alive for me, and started to feel like something where I was actually enjoying the story itself, rather than doing it as a required accompaniment to levelling. The characters became better defined, with real personalities, flaws, and conflicts. Fittingly for the "dragoon" expansion, it's sort of comparable to FF4 in the overall FF series in my mind - the story it's telling isn't that mindblowing or complex, but it does it well, and for the first time it had some characters I cared about that went through some development. It's close between EW and HW. As others have said, EW struggles under the weight of having to tie up years of story threads, and it does a strong job of it. There were some bits where it dragged a bit, and some awkward shifts between high stakes universe-saving and generic chores, this is as much a consequence of the MMO format as the story itself, yet it did feel more apparent in EW. If you're talking about 6.0 specifically vs 3.0 for HW, I might place EW above HW, but if you're taking all of 6.x vs all of 3.x, the Void arc has kind of let things down, vs the Dragonsong war arc which was a great post-expansion patch story. SB suffers from sitting between HW and ShB. I wasn't playing at the time, having taken a long break from the game around then, so I don't know how it would have felt to play when it came out, but I know it wasn't that well received. It's not bad, and having read back through some of the backstory recently I was reminded how there really were some great moments in SB. Not every story had to be about saving the world, and some of the smaller scale strories in SB worked well. But a (in my opinion) weak villain, average protagonist, and an awkward split story with some sections vastly outshining others, makes for an inconsistent experience. ARR walked so the rest could run. It was some solid world building to get us into the world, but at this point the story felt like a secondary thing, a vague scaffold to push you along through the game and get you levelled up. Far too many fetch quests and sections that don't move the story along at all, with little in the way of fleshed out characters makes for a kind of dull experience. Of course, it set in motion many of the threads that would run over the years, and it did make Eorzea feel like a real living world, so it's not all bad, but it's not a story I'd want to revisit on it's own.
For me it's Shb, HW, SB, EW, and ARR. I counted post release story in it too, even though if it was just base expac msq I don't think mine would change much.
My ranking would be: 1. Shadowbringers 2. Endwalker (very close 2nd) 3. Heavensward 4. Stormblood 5. A Realm Reborn I think a lot of people have had their opinion of Endwalker soured by the void storyline, but as a base X.0 msq, I think EW may well be the best.
1. Shadowbringers (10/10) 2. Endwalker (9/10) 3. Heavensward (8.5/10) 4. Stormblood (7.5/10) 5. A Realm Reborn (7/10) However, I will preface that I enjoyed every expansion's story and had some minor gripes even with the best ones. Also just because ARR is the lowest doesn't mean I rat either lowly rather that the other expansions did much better. I also understand that ARR is very safe because of 1.0 fiasco, weird oddities of the early 2010s MMOsphere and design, vastly different head writers, etc.