By no means was Stormblood a bad expansion, i enjoyed the story, the scenery, music and characters very much. The reason why i compared it with ARR is cause ARR is regarded by the community as the most atrocious part of FF14 to chew trough before you get to the fun and they are right, but to me the parts with the Ala Mhigo felt worse than the bad parts of ARR. The reasons for me are: while doma's people were taken into forced labor by the empire and worked to death, you were gallivanting with dragon people, taking part into feats of strenght, go hunting for dinner and having large feasts because we need their forces in the coming uprising to set doma's people free and to bring doma home. The pacing went from 100 to 0 and to be honest the quest are tedious and boring, the music and scenery are bad and the characters are forgettable. It would better suited as a part of the epilogue instead of were it is placed now.
Lyse was in my opinion, a very bad protagonist.....no character development prior to and really came from nowhere. Her midget boyfriend who sacrificed himself was far more interesting than her. During Stormblood i came to dislike her and she also got the skip scene treatment, and now i hope she explodes to pieces in Endwalker.
The part with the doma and the retaking of his castle i liked very much, and i hoped for a redemption arc for Yotsuyu so she and big daddy could be together for a bit of happy time, but it ended to my satisfaction....i really felt for the girl and that story line was amazing. Her psychopath brother was a good character really liked his mental episodes. I like asian asthetics so i might be a bit based, but the short quest line with Tataru, and the turtle guy and the spirit animals, should be twice as long, and all the easter eggs hinting towards Chinese and Japanese fairy tales troughout the whole expansion, made me a happy man.
I started playing FF14 and now maining a RDM around 5 weeks ago so probably got the short version^^, i love the game so far but sometimes i want to strangle the developers for their quest design,and the amount of trannies, furry's, weeaboo's and autistic leftism is sickening, got into several FC while friendly nice people at first, all of them talk in baby, furry owo uwu speak in chat, go deep into substance abuse or child abuse they had in the past which make them want to kill themselves but not yet since a new expansion is coming soon, and they treat their game toons like an extension of themselves like wtf. So i fly solo and having the single player JRPG experience......which can be a bit boring but much preferred over a a 41yo woman who is crying tiny tears because the tiny sultan has a tiny hard time UwU.