Like ask your average ShB enjoyer what they liked about it and they'll probably tell you "Emet Selch" or "The ending with Amaurot" because really that was just about all that was good or worth remembering about the entirety of 5.0.
The key to a good 14 experience, and frankly to be remembered as a "good game story" in general is to have moments of absolute wonder amidst passable-and-enjoyable segments which allow the player to overlook the bad shit. Torment has a ton of fucking boring portions and some godawful clunk, but the tone of the whole story and its obscene heights keeps it from falling apart. Bioshock has a lot of "would ya kindly go do that video game thing," Disco Elysium's momentum completely farts out in the final quarter of the game, etc. etc.
Shadowbringers manages to start well - everything from the moment you show up to the moment you kill Titania is told like a proper story. Ardbert serves the point of "exposition-vendor" but does so in a way that inspires interest rather than that dully lists qualities (see: every dawntrail quest), the worldbuilding flows logically, and the stakes are made clear and presented in ways that pack plenty of drama and punch with memorable characters that you want to see the reveal to. Even the general, god-awful as he turns out to be, is this strange figure of intrigue when you first encounter him.
As much as I love Amaurot and the conclusion of Emet-Selch, SHB for me manages to be overall good and well-written because its intro is a glimpse into what the story could be: a plot that feels like it's going somewhere. This is also why Heavensward is regarded so highly, and I think why people enjoy the Doma portion of SB: there's clear goals, clear objectives, clear antagonists. It's nothing phenomenal, but it's very solid stuff.
Which is also why EW and especially DT fundamentally fail. After you kill Zodiark, it's really not clear what you're doing, what the antagonists are, what the objective is, exactly. You fly to the end of the universe... to punch a bird in the face? What were you going to do when you arrived there? And the whole of DT is just - why am I doing this? What are the stakes, really? Who are the antagonists? Why are they antagonists?
My theory that different writers get different portions has a small caveat - I think that the lead retains the authority to intercede where they please at times. The cafe scene before EW's finale is a solid character moment, as is Ryne and Thancred after Thancred slips on a banana peel in the desert. And indeed, the camera movement in these scenes is more complicated and involved than it is in anything sandwiching them.
