s3renity

Story-wise, this is the best FFXIV expansion ever. The main plot is just superb, characters are interesting and distinct. Dialogue is great, locations and adventures are interesting. Instances are superbly designed, just like in SB and earlier expansions. You can clearly see the design improvements and progress from ARR and HB. Music and graphics are just a notch better than in SB, as expected. With a new theme of the expansion comes a completely new atmosphere and it's absolutely great. Terrifying and dark at times, sometimes playful and fun. It sometimes feels like the team is just showing off how well they can blend and mix seemingly distinct patterns, colors, and moods. It's a feast. The new races are OK, though I think they were unnecessary. The amount of energy it takes to redesign items in the game to fit these new models could have been put elsewhere, and one particular place comes to mind. Class design and lore. Class (Job) design is the only area I feel they could have done much better. They have redesigned or changed many classes in an effort to make them easier to play. The influx of players from other games, particularly WoW, seems to have caused them to reconsider and simplify job rotations. They probably called it "streamlining" or similar internally. In my view, this caused many jobs to lose their complexity or unique flavor. While still fun to play, some of them just seem to be missing that spark that initially drew me in. In addition to these mechanical changes, they also did not add any new class quests, instead opting for "role quests" - quests aimed at tanks, healers, physical and magical dps. While understandable (with new classes in every expansion, it's just more and more work), I feel it's a bad move. WoW team recently recognized that classes are the lens through which we experience the game, and I think this is true in FFXIV, despite the fact that you can change classes at will. I hope they will go back to class quests in the next expansion. All in all, FFXIV is still miles ahead any other game of this type. Every MMORPG fan should try it out.

Still the best MMO RPG available right now, and probably the best I've ever played (and I've played them since Lineage 2). The sheer vastness and complexity of this game make it almost always interesting to log back in and play for a few hours. And so I have been doing, from the release of this expansion up til the current patch (as of Oct 2018). Graphics are better than they have been before. They ditched ps3 support in an effort to allow for bigger areas and other graphical improvements and it shows. It is still a FFXIV, so the aesthetic is the same, but new areas, new skill effects, and new instances are absolutely great. Music is great, as it has always been. A bit too militaristic in some places for my taste, but plays into the overall theme of the expansion. And the new themes for new primals and other trials are beautiful, each better than another - and with such variety I haven't heard in not only other MMORPGs, but other games in general. New jobs (classes) are pretty good too. Even though they only introduced two dps, they differ enough to make for an interesting experiment (my main hasn't changed since ARR). My only complaint about them is that they don't feel complex enough on higher levels, but that's the situation with many other jobs. Speaking of which, the ability rework is not the highest point of the expansion. Removing and reorganizing many of them was necessary b/c there were just so many, but I feel they could have done better. Expansion to core kits for many jobs do not feel like natural progression, instead it often feels like a few new abilities have been plopped on top of a fleshed out class. All in all, most of it works out well and slight corrections since the initial release have improved the situation anyway. The lowest point of the entire expansion is probably the story. It's not bad - it's just not Heavensward level of epic. Heavensward had me logging in to continue main story with almost religious zeal. Characters were authentic, values rang true and the adventures were immersive (even if they dragged a bit towards the end). Stormblood's story is interesting, fun, the cast is diverse and there are some plot twists here and there but it feels somewhat uninspired. Still good, but not excellent. Additional content, like raids, trials, and dungeons, are pretty great. They are masterfully done and differ amongst themselves enough to keep you interested. While they follow pretty much the same script as before, they offer aesthetic variety and different mechanics so I was never really bored. To be fair, I think this is the part that has improved the most since ARR and I am happy devs are just getting better and better at it. The community has always been one of the reasons I kept playing for years. People are just nice and toxicity is limited. That said, with the game becoming a bit more popular, this has changed slightly with SB. It's still miles ahead of WoW though, so if you want to find friends online to do cool stuff with, this is definitely your game. Finally, I'm not a big fan of the most recent additions and changes to the game. Eureka especially feels dull. Luckily, there are so many other things to do this is really not a problem. Can't say much about PvP b/c I never really had time to try it ^^.

This is my first time playing CoD. Having heard positive opinions from streamers and watched some of them play, I figured I might give the game a try. I have very limited experience in online FPS shooters, so I was curious how well does the game play and if I will I be able to compete. I spent a dozen hours playing the game's different modes. First of all, there is no single player, like most people have noted. That means your experience in this game will be limited to playing with and against others. I was OK with that, but in such situations I expect excellence in how the game does its multiplayer. Sadly, the game fails miserably. As a new player I was hoping to be eased into the game, play with others my or similar level, and get adequate training against bots, etc. None of this happened. The first few games were OK - I expected to under-perform, but as I got more and more into the game's mechanics, I realized how unpolished the entire experience is. Guns and characters are unbalanced, plain and simple. Some simply mow down enemies almost regardless of how far away they are, while some are useless and pretty terrible. It would be OK if I could get all the guns and mods immediately, but as lvl1, you have access to only a basic set of weapons. You just gotta play "like you have a pair" - as the game's commentator puts it, and get repeatedly mowed down by people 50 levels above you to start experimenting with other weapon setups. And while some of these people acquired some aim and tactical skill and will easily outplay you, some will just hold LMB and let ridiculous spray of their weapons take care of you without bothering to even follow you with their cross-hair. Also, some bullets round corners. Don't ask me how - I don't lag and the game runs smoothly on my hardware, so it defies reason. Also, don't get me started on stun grenades and explosives. The maps are OK if a bit dull. Most of them have very similar design so don't expect extreme variety. Character movements and animation are smooth and the game's controls are intuitive, albeit a bit more complex than what I'm used to. The UI is a bit of a mess. Music is ... there? I can't even remember, it feels so generic. Character voices are dull, sound design is weird. You can tell there is a lot of sound and they put effort into making it cool, but the end-result is a cacophony of poor post-production, as if they wanted to stuff it all in no matter what. And the training area for different characters, which doubles as a simple story is laughable at best, and insulting for the most part. The narrator really tries to be funny, ends up being cheesy and dry. The "story" itself is uninteresting and simplistic. They put a lot of effort into displaying vivid, mildly upsetting violence, and not enough into actually putting narrative meat on it. I liked how complex the zombies mode could be but by the time I got to it, I was fed up with the entire experience. I will not debate the game's price - it's a AAA game and you get a few modes, maps, and toys for that. It is unacceptable for me though, that for a game focusing only on multiplayer, it does it so poorly. It's simply not enjoyable.