The Thancred fight got me nervous because these long scripted fights can suck if something glitches 15 mins in or something and you die and have to sit through it all again. Like this happened on the 4.55 zenos fight for me. This one went ok though.
then they kill Thancred and it's like oh shit!
then after the dungeon he's still alive and it's oh ok. I normally hate fake out deaths because you can almost always tell when a death scene isn't real and so it just feels lame and forced and you're just waiting for them to come back, but this was one of the only times it got me and I really thought Thancred was dead. Made sense, he'd been given all these cutscenes lately and flashbacks and stuff and FFXIV's just killed off main characters before, and they do that flash effect thing at the end of his death scene that made it seem like damn they really killed off another scion.
So instead of being lame when Thancred is shown still alive, it's actually kinda nice because at least I really thought he was dead and him and Y'shtola are the only good Scions. Urianger can go die in a fire with how boring he is. 4 games later and the twins are still tolerable at best.
I like Ryne though. I was really hoping they weren't going to bring Minfilia back because like a lot of the dead/ditched Scions, she was boring as hell and her JP voice is kinda of headache inducing. Plus Ryne has a better campaign the way they wrote it and actually has a good JP voice. So was really happy when they kill off Minfilia again
This is one of the spots in the story where I felt Shadowbringers was living up to the hype. The Thancred/Ryne sub-plot throughout was kinda annoying at times in a just talk to her way, but it worked and it built up over time to give a very satisfying scene between Thancred/Ryne when she comes back after the dungeon. I don't really remember the plot in the beginning of the game/lakeland but the fairy story had a good climax, the Night Blessed arc had a good climax, and now Ahm Araeg has had a 3rd good climax to a quest/arc as well. Story's been pretty satisfying since we got to the Fauth.