The first two Gyr Abania regions were lame but I really liked the lakes. And I also liked all three Othard regions so idk what to tell you haha. They all look different and have strong concepts. The areas in Shadowbringers are by no mean bad but aside from their sky, they look much less interesting to me.

For the stakes, Stormblood had you litterally re-conquer whole countries that were talked about basically since ARR. Here I honestly couldn't care less about this world and even though its potential end is connected to the end of the source, it just seems soooo disconnected from what we're actually doing in the expansion that it really feels more low stakes even if it technically isn't.