Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

 PC
User Score
9.1

Universal acclaim- based on 1547 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,419 out of 1547
  2. Mixed: 26 out of 1547
  3. Negative: 102 out of 1547

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. MiriamW
    Aug 14, 2020
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The expansion that ruined the game.

    The remake was fine, an MMORPG, that worked, gameplay, story and so on, enough content.

    The first expansion was better, especially an story that took you more in, more content, some fresh ideas (some not so good ones, but it was oka).

    The third one started the downfall. Content got lesser and worse and the story too a bad turn, starting a full out war, an invasion, but making it feel and look like raiding a bandit camp.

    But even that was harmless in comparison to ShB. Content got even less, close to zero, if you don't care for raiding, which is always the same, an extremely scripted fight you have to learn the 'dodge dance' for.

    But what it killed it the most for me, was the terrible bad writing. It's one thing, when characters are shallow and one dimensional, when none of them ever shows any kind of developement. It's an MMORPG, No need for Shakespear or whatever. It's fine, that you, as the player will of course in the end always suceed somehow, since your death would end the game. That is something you have to work around as a writer and many do that okay or even well.

    Not FF14. FF14 is so utterly bland, that this plot armor is obviously known to all your allies and that you can't die and will win for sure is just the main plan of everything. Something that could destroy you and your whole appears? The reaction of all your allies is, that they have to clean this up like the dishes after food. And then the story bends around them to make just that true.

    It's not necessary to murder NPCs at all ends. But FF14 comes up with war and endtime scenarios and then you solve it like your homework.

    Even worse: they sell this as normal. (Heavy spoiler):
    The background of this game is, that there was one a real planet with its inhabitants. Something tried to murder them all, so a big part of them used their own life force to summon a soul for their planat, that it can defend itself and them. This worked. Since the planet was already ruined, more people gave this soul their life, to revive the planet. This also worked. But then, when life was back and able to recover, a very small minority summoned a weapon that (intended or not) shattered the soul, killed the planet and all inhabitans on it. Through this the planet was cut into pieces, just as all life, which now 'exists' on these pieces, driven by greed, hate, violence, because abominations of what life once was. And this is sold as good and right.

    The player character meanwhile is not even just one of these abombinations, of these raped soul fragments, but directly linked to these original inhabitans and so immensily powerful, that nothing can stand againt him (or her), while for some reason stoicly serving the summoned weapon to make sure it's genocide will not be undone.

    Because that's what the "bad guys" want. They want to heal the planet and return all life to its original, unshattered form. This is sold as evil in this game. Like in the Wolfenstein the Nazis are the good guys (because they have won and the world is theirs now), while those who fight against them are bad, since they don't accept this new world and want the old one back - right?

    Meanwhile the other plot around a more normal war is also going on. And of course war is easy and fun and murder is good, you just have to murder for the "right side". The player character side is maed out of despots and the story is full of sick atrocities (abusing civilians, other nations, mass killing of civlians for miliary purpose, plans, that risk the lives of thousands if not tenthousands of innocent people, spreading of chaos and death on CIA level as "distraction"). Sounds interesting, no? A good side, that acts that bad? Problem is, the game got no problem with it. All this is just fine and heroic in this game. And the other side (btw a giant high tech empire with an army at least on the level of the modern USA), is simply stomped all the time, by something around the size of maybe Luxemburg.

    War is good and easy, murder is fine, genocide is right - as long, as you stand on the right side of it.

    Oh, and if you fight against people who are tenthousand years old, masterminds who have already steered the fate of nations and worlds all the time and got all means to kill you in millions of way: no fear: they will just go to you, stand in front of you and let them beat you to death, what will also make them think, what a wonderful person you are and that you were right from the start.

    So... fascism is a good thing now. At least in this game.

    By the way: the community is one of the most toxic I've ever seen, simply because they also THINK they are so much better than others, while - pretty much like the NPC - are just full of themselves. Snowflakes by all the bad meaning of the word.

    You better never say anything bad against their game or just asking a question, because they WILL hate for that.    … Expand
  2. BigButz
    Jul 18, 2019
    4
    Reused assets galore, washed out and hard to look at backdrops for most of the expansion, terrible english voice acting. Soundtrack is a mixed bag with short annoying loops and some great buttrock toward the end. Story starts off the same uninteresting nonsense as usual but really picks up halfway through till the end, though the setup for the next arc is back to boring nonsense. As goodReused assets galore, washed out and hard to look at backdrops for most of the expansion, terrible english voice acting. Soundtrack is a mixed bag with short annoying loops and some great buttrock toward the end. Story starts off the same uninteresting nonsense as usual but really picks up halfway through till the end, though the setup for the next arc is back to boring nonsense. As good as you can expect from Square Enix really, but that doesn't warrant excessive praise.… Expand
  3. Gans_87
    Nov 12, 2020
    0
    ShB has been around for one and a half year and we know what it is now, you can of course trust all day 1 reviews or the recent ones.

    Lets break this down in 3 Categories. Story, Gameplay and Content. Story: The entirety of 5.x is a side quest, it was not needed to be done. We could have marched for Garemald, instead we visited a different version of our world. 4.x obviously lead up    ShB has been around for one and a half year and we know what it is now, you can of course trust all day 1 reviews or the recent ones.

    Lets break this down in 3 Categories. Story, Gameplay and Content.

    Story:
    The entirety of 5.x is a side quest, it was not needed to be done. We could have marched for Garemald, instead we visited a different version of our world. 4.x obviously lead up to it with the spirited away plot they added but if not for that it came 100% out of the blue.

    The Story that was written for 5.0 was mostly fine, while the game says "Shadowbringers" and treats light as something that's not always good (that's a good idea) it fails to deliver the sentiment by ... making you defeat the final boss (dark based) with light. So i guess light as the ultimate "good" tool.

    5.1 nosedives the story, fetch quests and nothing of value, so does 5.2 to the point you wonder if those things even needed to be there. 5.3 did pick it up again but failed by giving the OG Warrior of Darkness a proper sent off while you defeat the being that has taken his body.

    Gameplay:
    Tanks: Enmity is now a joke as all enmity moves (cept for ranged) are removed, the Stance now offers so much hate that its impossible to lose threat. Warrior which was my main since 2.0 feels boring to play.

    Healers: Lost a lot of their dps spells and skills, Sch faceplanted with a fairy nerf, Ast lost its unique card buffs. Whm is further moved towards a full dps.

    Dps: Full rework on multiple classes, there is STILL not a mnk fix which was a problem in the last expansion.

    Content:
    And this is where ShB shows its NASTY face.

    Dungeons:
    We have cut down from 3 to 2 Dungeons in HW, and now from 2 to 1, they say it helps the quality, however there is a point were you can have the best food in the world and still starve.

    Deep Dungeon: Was fully removed, which was one of the most fun and random things.

    Deep Sea Fishing: Was dead 2 weeks upon arrival

    Bozja: Came out in 5.35 ... once again later then it should have. Eureka was added 4.25 and diadem 3.15, this was one of the big grind things and they keep pushing it further back.

    Relics: We could've used a long and nice grind now during Covid but ... you got the first step for free and the next one had you do fates in a lv 60 zone ... why?

    Recycling ... this is a big one.

    Lets go over the music first, which is a huge deal for this game.

    ShB Dungeons: all feature their own track but they all use the ShB boss theme ... thats okay i guess.
    Titania: Has her own track, nice
    Innocence: Remix of dungeon boss, bad
    Hades: ShB title music, fine
    Ruby Weapon: Remix of ultima, meh
    Memoria: ShB dungeon boss music, wtf
    WoL: Remix of title music, bangs tho

    Eden 1: FF8 Track
    Eden 2: FF8 Track
    Eden 3: Leviathan Remix
    Eden 4: Titan Remix
    Eden 5: Ramuh Remix
    Eden 6: Garuda/Ifrit Remix
    Eden 7: FF8 track Eden 8: Shiva Remix. Fights, almost the entire Eden right is recycled, we now have 5 Shiva fights. Also remember this is not "we are sorry we cant deliver because of covid" nah this is what was planed, every expansion we get less ... players don't realise on how much of a drop we are atm. The rating this game has is based on 80% of "first day impressions" which is shameful. If you believe you can rate an expansion that lasts 2 years on the first 2 months during the honeymoon period ... you are wrong.    … Expand
  4. xmo28726
    Jul 6, 2019
    0
    -Skills were overpruned and rotations feel unnecessarily limited. Something is gravely wrong with the new healing spell values.

    -Main story quests only get you halfway through a level, leaving you to grind FATEs, dungeons and fetch quests for far too long. This gives an otherwise decent story a really janky feel. I was far from the only one complaining in general chat about the need to    -Skills were overpruned and rotations feel unnecessarily limited. Something is gravely wrong with the new healing spell values.

    -Main story quests only get you halfway through a level, leaving you to grind FATEs, dungeons and fetch quests for far too long. This gives an otherwise decent story a really janky feel. I was far from the only one complaining in general chat about the need to join in for fate farming groups.

    -New races lack displayable headgear, this makes otherwise iconic sets, such as red mage or black mage, feel much less so.

    -The OST is great, but you can get that off of Youtube.    … Expand
  5. plasticc
    Jul 14, 2019
    2
    This game doesn't deserve a score higher than 2, no matter how good anything else is, because content in it remains locked behind this utterly broken abomination that is the "housing" system.

    Two expansions with ZERO improvements into this problem, while content continues to be added locked behind something that cannot be accessed by over 98% of the people playing the game. Square    This game doesn't deserve a score higher than 2, no matter how good anything else is, because content in it remains locked behind this utterly broken abomination that is the "housing" system.

    Two expansions with ZERO improvements into this problem, while content continues to be added locked behind something that cannot be accessed by over 98% of the people playing the game.

    Square Enix can't or refuses to deal with this serious issue in the game. Most companies don't ship broken products. This is broken. You can dress up the house, renovate the walls and floors, add an extra floor and call it a new expansion, but you've forgotten the corpse rotting in the living room. Maybe fix the completely broken systems before releasing a new version of the game.    … Expand
  6. Siricosirus
    Jul 11, 2019
    0
    The game has been slashed. How an expansion can offer not just less but remove previous things is shocking to me.
  7. Derex46
    Aug 29, 2019
    0
    Great story, and that's it. Awful job design ruins everything. Tanks and healers butchered, GNB after patch 5.01, NIN, DNC, SMN, RDM deals no damage, MCH is a bunch of bad ideas. I would recommend searching for other games first before going to this one.
  8. DinoBeam
    Mar 20, 2021
    4
    Oh good God help me! This game is endless dialogue from some guy you'll never see again that was going from Point-A to Point-B and then lost his stuff, and then you get it, and then he's gone forever, and then you hand it in with more pointless dialogue about it, and then you have to talk to him again for his new quest, and his quest is to go talk to someone else about the most boringOh good God help me! This game is endless dialogue from some guy you'll never see again that was going from Point-A to Point-B and then lost his stuff, and then you get it, and then he's gone forever, and then you hand it in with more pointless dialogue about it, and then you have to talk to him again for his new quest, and his quest is to go talk to someone else about the most boring inconsequential **** you've ever heard, AND THIS IS THE MAIN **** QUEST! I feel like I'm gonna have a stroke or mental disability if I play this any longer, everyone says it's great after the first 60 hours, how anyone got through those first 60 is beyond me, and if there's better fish in the sea, swim with them. It's too bad, because the combat system is very smooth and has potential. And in case you're wondering, all the side quests are go kill 3 monsters etc.… Expand
  9. ZodaSoda
    Dec 13, 2021
    0
    Ah Shadowbringers what a journey, what a time, much like i said in my Heavensward Review that is was a story any JRPG should not miss, Shadowbringers makes the entire FFXIV story from ARR to Shadowbringers a story any JRPG fan should not miss.
  10. horsefontdead
    Jul 1, 2020
    3
    Expansion had a great start, welcomed us with a good story and after patches everything went downhills, content is cut left and right, nothing was improved much or made into a worse. Way to go SE, that's how you treat title that brings you most income of the year. Worshipers gonna worship until SE milks dry of this game.
  11. Tenarus
    Jul 2, 2021
    4
    Great story, great raids and dungeons, great content.

    The best online game experience out there. EDIT: For quite some time I would have rated it 10/10 BUT: Square simply can't make content work. The new resistance weapons are a senseless grind (completing raids over and over) and require you to play bozja - which for itself isnt bad BUT: Players only join and ask for the big event    Great story, great raids and dungeons, great content.

    The best online game experience out there.

    EDIT: For quite some time I would have rated it 10/10 BUT: Square simply can't make content work. The new resistance weapons are a senseless grind (completing raids over and over) and require you to play bozja - which for itself isnt bad BUT: Players only join and ask for the big event and dont play the zone whatsoever, the event has a player cap which locks unlucky players out... The new content delivered during the current update and the current patches is nothing but a senseless grind in content, which square tries to make interesting again, but turnes out to be a total catastrophe and not fun in the slightest. Raids and Trials (even extreme, savage and ultimate) are far to easy.

    The ignorance on squares side to bring features to the game, the biggest part of the playerbase would like to see shows their low appreciation for their customers in a perfect way.

    The only thing that keeps me playing are friends that still play, the content simply cant entertain me anymore.    … Expand
  12. erazor2021
    Aug 23, 2021
    4
    If you don’t like the Trial / “Realm Reborn” take my word, you won’t like any of it…

    New players hope you are ready for 200+ hours of MSQ which is mainly reading text. I fell for the recent hype. To all the people who says “it gets better” seriously, what is wrong with you? This constant insincerity is what kept me going. IT DOESN’T GET BETTER (a least to the point it serves as a    If you don’t like the Trial / “Realm Reborn” take my word, you won’t like any of it…

    New players hope you are ready for 200+ hours of MSQ which is mainly reading text.

    I fell for the recent hype. To all the people who says “it gets better” seriously, what is wrong with you? This constant insincerity is what kept me going. IT DOESN’T GET BETTER (a least to the point it serves as a valid argument).

    I just finished Shadowbringers 5.5 MSQ, and let me tell you, this is an “interactive Novel” more than it is a video game.

    Sure with each expansion the game (novel) gets a little better, in terms of graphics, animations, storytelling, but the CORE of the game doesn’t change, it is still this outdated mmorpg tab targeting, with its main FOCUS on MSQ, which is basically walls of text.

    Your quests in order of occurrences is: talk, travel, click objects, kill NPCs, do dungeons/trials/story instances.
    They added one different mechanic in Stormblood lol, which is to “click stuff in FPS mode”.

    I can count the EPIC moments of the story in one hand! 3 of them were in Havensward and 2 in Shadowbringers (forget RR and SB).

    The main focus of this game is the MSQ, but the problem is; the MSQ is 90% fluff pointless writing and storytelling, you could cut out 80% of this writing and still get a concise accurate description of the story, albeit just more on point.

    What Square Enix is doing is inflating game time content with more and more text and sloppy animation screens, which I’m not kidding stretches the MSQ than it really needs to be. I’m not even talking about important background build up, I’m talking about content you won’t even remember because it served no purpose in the grand scheme of things. (Anything you wont remember a month from now isn't worth reading about).

    Because the MSQ is mainly storytelling, and single player orientated, why not just play better solo video games that are much, much better technically advanced in gameplay, like GTA 5, Witcher 3, red redemption 2, and hundreds of others titles?

    There were times I was so desperate to just “play” the game, because there is so few dungeons/trials and killing quests in-between all the walls of text.

    One could always pay a story skip potion, but the fact is MSQ is the focus of this game, the endgame is extra stuff. Players and Square have both said that MSQ is the focus of the game, and the more casual player base.

    WoW = focuses on repeatable endgame content after a short introductory (and often crap) storyline.

    FF14 = 200 hours of MSQ (at minimum) at which point you can cycle through some endgame content and get max ilvl gear fairly easily. But levelling others job/crafts, which has its own questlines seems be one of the most popular things to do.

    I won’t be buying Endwalker. People who enjoy reading fluff for hundreds of hours to see one good cutscene here and there, you do that, enjoy! I’ll watch it in a recap YouTube video and do more productive things with my life than read FLUFF MSQ content, which is intentionally used to extend game play time.

    “You can always make more money, but you can’t make more time” think about if you’re really enjoying that 200 hours or if you’re only enjoy small amounts of it. Whilst the epic moments were epic, the pain of going through so much unfun content to see it was not worth it. The balance is definitely not there.

    Even most fans think the post RR quests are so bad, yet square hasnt fixed it by just removing it for new players short narration cutscene to bring players up to date for havensward. (And i heard it was even worse, oh dear God).    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

3
#3 Best PC Game of 2019
23
#23 Most Discussed PC Game of 2019
9
#9 Most Shared PC Game of 2019

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
90

Universal acclaim - based on 25 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 25
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 25
  3. Negative: 0 out of 25
  1. Cubed3
    Mar 27, 2020
    70
    The active story events of ShadowBringers are good fun, but due to the grinding nature of the genre, it suffers from some terrible pacing issues. If you are invested in FFXIV, this DLC will probably excite and please you. It's a fun but forgettable romp that runs just the wrong side of boring during its hours-long retelling and bland A-B mission style. If this tickles your fancy, be sure to start and play with a team of friends - it will easily be 10 times more enjoyable, if infinitely longer.
    Read full review
  2. Multiplayer.it
    Sep 15, 2019
    90
    Shadowbringers is not just a fun and juicy MMORPG thanks to some intuitive design choices and amazing dungeons and encounters, but also a different take on the overindulged "hero saves the world" story with lots of twists and turns.
    Read full review
  3. Game Informer
    Aug 15, 2019
    90
    Shadowbringers is the best expansion yet for Square Enix’s MMORPG, a world that comes alive in the player’s hands, with weight and gravitas moving you through every whimsical corner. Old-fashioned quest design and color-dodging combat add a dull tinge to a truly magical landscape, but those imperfections can’t keep down the scale and scope of excellent environments, grandiose bosses, and majestic music.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »