Dawntrail Story Review & First Impressions (Spoilers) 

I think a positive, interpretation for the Otis death, is that he was able die protecting the Queen, the one thing he was unable to do in life, and his biggest regret.

Maybe we should ask three locals? ._.

I feel like they did Bakool Ja Ja dirty. The dungeon would have been a prime opportunity to face the horrors of his countless sacreficed siblings, and maybe lift his torment there. Instead we get another seemingly random temple with a fancy exit. Didn't they explicitly mention sealing those away for fear of danger?

I think one of the worst parts about the whole story was the way zoraal ja killed gulool ja ja, how we were just standing there and watching the duel while outside the civilians were still being murdered by zoraal jas puppet soldiers. Wuk lamat later says that she didnt want to tarnish gulools honor by stepping in but i still think it was absolutely terrible we didnt confront him then. That is because i do not consider gulool ja ja putting his „honor“ over the fact that his people are being slaughtered right outside his palace by his own son. Not to mention that he won the duel and kiled zoraal ja, then he just comes back to life, kills him and walks away, while we, the savior of the world watch that mass murdering psycho go. Yeah, sure he stopped his attack but we should have killed him right then and there, permanently. This fact pisses me off because you could argue that him killing all those people in solution 9 later on is just because of us not stopping him at the first opportunity. So yeah, not tarnishing gulool ja jas honor in a bullshit cheated duel killed a bunch of civilians and endangered all of tural and even the world.

THANK YOU - I had the exact same reaction to Otis' death. Sphene's most defining quality is that she wants to protect her people at all costs, so allowing him to sacrifice himself for her when she's not in any real danger was so stupid.

So basically, the story goes downhill once Ishikawa stops writing it. Looks like I haven't missed much from not preordering Dawntrail for early access. I'll still be getting it at some point, but the reviews have me feeling like we should apologize to Stormblood for treating it too harshly at the time.

The problem with having a bad story in FFXIV is that the game is built around the story. You literally can't progress unless you go through it so if it's slog to get through, you really feel it. Even if you skip cutscenes, doing the fetch quests and "go here" quests still feel really bad and I feel like thats why some people dislike this expansion so far.

Story was frustrating, lots of smart people in our team, none voices what we all think - why Graha only says at last second that the big enemy plan is just simply not sustainable... but not just this, lot of the times there were frustratingly obvious arguments to be had but instead we just either said "friendship wooo" or "fight bad booo"... come on. Gameplay is muuuch better than before, credit where credit is due. Tho the first extreme trial is not so much difficult but more like a dance dance revolution reaction game. Visual update causes a lot of lags to a lot of people. I put most stuff to low setting and i have i9 core cpu with 3080rtx gpu and i still have lag with extreme high resulted benchmark. I cant imagine what its like for other people with lower performing hardware. Music: Big Dinsey Copy pasta... I did not like majority of the voiced musics and im sad that some ambient music can only be heard for few minutes. Like dungeon 2 battle music. I am unhappy with Wuk Lamat's voice for 1 reason only, I think the direction was not well given to the voice actress because there are scenes where the voice is very underwhelming even though the body language would deem much more animated voice paired to the character. Like the last fight, she comes in, she speaks with very casual voice... compare it to how Thancred entered the Hades fight? And you will get what i mean. But I really liked how passionate Bakool Ja's voice actor was. I really believed at the start they are a bully and at the end the emotions come through, (look, his turning to good suddenly made no sense, but credit where credits due, the voice actor did best with what they had)

Watch cutscene introducing new area -> talk to Wuk -> talk to three NPCs -> report to Wuk -> watch cutscene of Wuk talking to NPCs about understanding them and their struggles and wanting to save them all no matter what -> console Wuk and repeat. Snoozetrail. Insane that as the WOL we’re taking a backseat to babysit a new character that just isn’t fleshed out at all with her entire personality being “I will save everyone even if they’re evil!!” and “together we’re stronger!” as if we haven’t seen that a hundred times before. Story-wise, Erenville’s section was honestly the only saving grace. Still with insane cutscene lengths and tedious quests, but it was heartfelt. Thankfully, we got fantastic dungeons and incredible places such as Solution Nine and the wild west town.

I think you nailed it on why wuk lamat is such a badly written character at 4:48. She has all the qualities and personality opposite of a nation's leader. Throughout the ordeal of the rites, not one of the challenges teaches sacrifice or choosing the lesser evil.

I had thought that in EW, the scions should've stayed gone. Let the WOL deal with hope and doubt in their own way in the new expac. But it seems they brought them all back for.. someone else to kinda take over anyways? Perhaps the patch content will correct, but I'd say narratively this is my least favorite since ARR. Disappointing.

They kept billing dawntrail as the "vacation" expansion, and to me personally, our time in Shaaloani (or however you spell it) was the only time where it felt like we were just kinda vibing. Just going somewhere and helping/interacting with folks along the way. In that sense it's actually my favorite zone in the expansion (or maybe also because it's based on Texas, where I live?). Honestly my thoughts on DT are basically the same as what you've said here other than that. Kinda disappointed about the MSQ, but I've been really enjoying the launch from an mmo-standpoint

A cutscene should be a reward to watch, not being used to pad the story and tell us literally nothing. Wuk was very obnoxious and I could not stand her at all. There are a lot of writing inconsistencies and Wol while being presented as a mentor yet doesn't act as a mentor at all. A ton of answers we give all involve praising Wuk to heaven. It was nauseating. Another issue is that they rehashed a ton of writing plots, the whole train part was just a copy of working with everyone on Talos in ShB. Zoraal Ja killing his father like Zenos killed Varis. Some scenes were straight copies. Sphene reminded me immediately of Myste and his excessive use of aether to keep memories alive. I can keep going on how unoriginal the story was. I can't stomach even replaying this story on my alts.

The utter failure of making the entire thing about Wuk Lamat is unforgiveable. We ALREADY had a main story. . . Krile and the mystery of her grandfather's connection to the City of Gold. We travel across the ocean to a new land where no one knows you are the WoL and you can just adventure like a normal person (a normal person that CRUSHES DUNGEONS!). Imagine a scene where you get accosted by bandits and your team laughs at them threatening you. So many opportunities for this to have been a fun adventure. Instead. . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . Accompany Wuk Lamat . . . Join Wuk Lamat . . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . Listen to Wuk Lamat . . . Play as Wuk Lamat. . . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . BARF.

I share your sentiment about the story, Wuk Lamat and the concept of rule and happyness. What left a sour taste more than the story itself though was the way it was told. This doesn't feel like our story anymore, or that of our companions. But someone else's. Which would be fine if people would act in a believable way. Something they did very well before, and in FF16 as well. Less Disney please. And more Final Fantasy.

I d enjoy it more, if Sphene became a big baddie, or had someone controlling her, some "hidden leadership"... Her people talk with Wuk Lamat made me often cringe inside. I badly wanted to get new permanent baddies, these Alexandrians were made for it, but we dealt with it in 7.0 and whats next? Plus they really invaded just cuz Zoraal was butthurt x) Tbh, in the moment the dome appeared and invasion started, Wuk shud have took backseat, scions shud have do a little "takeover" and tell her "this is existential threat for entire planet so u are no longer capable of dealing with it, leave it to us" and WoL shud have taken front seat Imagine a scene where we fight armies of those sentries in some solo instance and u see all those ships from around tuliyolal leaving and heading for us... In the end, proudest I felt was when Queen Eternal removed Krile, Wuk and Graha and kept us as the sole biggest danger to eliminate, that was first time we got proper recognition since end of 6.0 x) from an antagonist

I think you're spot on with a lot of this and I thought the same, I did think however that Zoraal Ja would end up being a good guy and it was that lizard following him about that was making him think all the war and that was good so I'm a bit dissapointed that it didn't end up with the 3 siblings working together for a bigger threat overall It was a decent story, just a lot of filler and pissing about

Dawntrail= scoobie doo + dora the explorer visit Donkey Kong country.

Well put good sir. I've posted pretty much the same feedback on the forums. Hope we can reach SE with this feedback. I wonder how the japanese audience reacted to the MSQ.

I thought the same thing with the last zone, it’s completely the same as Amaurot. Walking around a “phantom” city and arguing with Sphene about ideals. The last fight where Wuk Lamat saves the day is also ridiculous. How does she go from barely being able to phase Bakool Ja Ja with her strongest attack to being stronger than the WoL and SAVING us??

to be honest, after Endwalker, the last thing i was expecting was an entire city of artificial people and dead memories and depressing background music, and in the end, it still takes away the only good thing the zone had, its beauty, because by turning off the 4 zones, I would say that the player has no reason to go back there, except fates. btw Aren't we supposed to be on vacation? What I expected from the "Golden City" was some kind of lost city underground (like Orbonne Monastery on Ivalice Raids), with treasures and goodies for the player to collect, cool world bosses and stuff, not that depressive living memory.

A great way to bring the stakes back down would be to move the story entirely into a new shard, where everything is much stronger than what we've known so far

Ottis's sacrifice makes sense only once the story is complete (a tragedy of their condensed writing). The original queen is a first generation endless like he is with a soul and memories stored in a vessel. Ottis has been hiding from the queen as he "doesn't want to scare her" with his robot body, but his actual reason is that he feels he failed to protect his queen. In any case, he has no idea that the queen he is seeing is different from himself. The queen we are dealing with is a copy of her memories animated by the conservators much later. Ottis assumes the queen is like himself and rushes to save her. This also means post credits that there is a first generation Sphene out there or at least existed. This is because they did not have the technology to animate the memories of others without a soul until much later.

yes i agree so much with u about the filler cutscenes. a lot of cutscenes even in general were too long and didn’t need to exist because the information was either repetitive or not important

I really hope SE's reaction to the Wuk Lamat criticism is not to double down and give her even more screentime to try and redeem her. They just need to let her fade into the background and bring the focus back to the WoL. Or at least create a new second protagonist more like Ryne who actually works with the WoL instead of stealing the spotlight from them in every single cutscene.

Spoilers: I would have liked to see Wuk Lamat go through more development, maybe touch up on that bubbly persona she gives off every time her dialogue pops up, and steer more towards a serious air about her. She seemed like she'd resolved and reverted to her original self in the span of two cutscenes when her father was killed, instead of working through those emotions. Some visual representation of her still battling that turmoil in the 5th zone would have added to the weight of talking about killing her brother and even coming to terms with her affection towards him at the end of the trial. I don't know, something felt off in the mid to later half of the story that didn't sit right with me, at least from my perspective.

I think you absolutely nailed it with this review. It mirrored a lot of my own complaints amd highlighted the ones I hadnt fully considered. Excellent review!

I agree with 99% of this video. Yet one thing I couldn’t help but notice whilst exploring Living Memory, is that we were sort of retracing Emet’s path in the life he had to live post The Final Days. He sent us on this path and yet, we are in the same position he once was. Where he was surrounded with all these different people, he had to come to terms with the fact he will be the one to destroy them for the sake of his own people. I’m not sure many noticed this parallel whilst exploring this area and I believe its partly because there is practically 0 mention of anything that took place in Endwalker which I feel really was a poor writing choice.

I dont need the WoL to be the savior of everyone all the time but WoL and the scions being literal observes and mascots most of the time made playing through the story a drag

gotta love that at 4:10 hes just describing us elections

That's what i think as well, throughout my journey with WK, she never felt like a leader, it feels like she's chosen from the start.

I found the zones, dungeons and trials very fun but man the story's pacing was glacial. Without having hard stats, I got a gut feeling that you could at least 1/3 of the cutscenes and still not miss much. In the end they managed to only make me care about Otis and Eren's mom, I could not care about anyone else. Very disappointed Wuk Lamat never really evolved from her initial "I'm going to be the Hokage and protect my village!" attitude. I'm 99% the line about protecting her people's happiness is dropped at least 3 times in less than one hour when the dawnservant trials are finishing. Fight wise I'm excited to see what the team will cook but right now I'm not looking forward to any potential plot points that would follow on the expansion.

THANK YOU. Why is Wuk lamat the forefront in so so many incredibly important decisions and discussions. On what authority? She never bothers to learn anything or try meaningfully. Just smiles and family. I agree so so so much on all your points. So many contrived decisions, exactly like a poorly written anime. They need to hear our feedback cause the writing of dawntrail was inexcusably bad for a big part.

Tough i was the only one who notice Yshtola voice recording, it felt like it was recorded with a cheap mic compared to other characters

Excellent, honest review. Many thanks.

i agree with your take, going to be hard pressed to make such an emotional story as what we had on the last one. i was wanting some more teasing on whats to come and i feel we missed that here. hopefully we will get some in the comming months to keep me intersted.

If you don't like voice acting in English changing the speech language to Japanese usually helps a lot in my experience

ShadowBringers 15.5hr cutscene. Endwalker: 22 hrs cutscenes. Dawntrail: 28hr cutscene. it was grueling i would say, and at least 40% of the first half of story was filler painful and useless cutscenes. it felt very much like Squeenix padded nearly 30hr of cutscenes just so they can claim XX hours of new content. it was ridiculously painful to get through the cutscenes

I agree with most of this EXCEPT for Shaaloani. That has my absolute favorite music of all the zones in Dawntrail. My biggest complaint if I had to make one is that the mount height in Shaaloani is barely higher than the ARR zones for some reason.

I would have loved to actually fight thancred and Uriange in one of the dungeons. Just a fun spar between friends. I dont know why something like that never happend before

The point in Living Memory was to shut down the devices to erase the Endless thus the Queen having no reason to fight. Just pointing that out.

I feel like in living memory if you got there and found out about what it was then Sphene kind of does with Metion did in Endwalker and not actively engage the instant world death threat. Have you disable the terminals and have her show up threatening you with more and more desperation with each terminal disabled before enabling the big death machine after the final terminal.

I really dislike the decision to leave living memory dead and all black/hollow. I loved the zone and music at the start and it felt like we just killed a crazy beautiful zone for a plot that didn't even do anything for me. It was like the inverse of building Elysion during the omicron tribe quests. Instead of being like "I can't wait to progress to see what new thing is created!" during Elysion, the whole time in living memory I was thinking "Man please don't make me ruin this pretty location that I have to interact with over the next 2 years".

14:06 speaking of Y’shtola - why was she even there? I’m so tired of her at this point. She’s just conveniently there to figure out all the mysteries that the rest of us are too stupid to figure out apparently. What makes her appearance even worse is that she fucks off for a lot of it while she’s with us to “investigate” something. So it just feels like she’s shoehorned in without any real thought of what she should actually be doing other than being fanservice. I really wanted her to leave us alone for JUST ONE expansion.

There were some good points that i got a little excited over, but overall, I was more annoyed with it than enjoying it.

Great video man, I agree with your review for the most part of course I have my own opinions. I was fine with the WoL and the scions taking a back seat so that we had someone else leading the charge, and I love Wuk Lamat but I wish we got to spend more time with Koana and Zoraal Ja to really learn their characters and motivations. Zoraal Ja in particular was really disappointing out of the 3 siblings because they could have set up a much better character. It's shown towards the end that he seems to resent his father but at no point is this ever explored other than hinted at with kriles echo. It would have been so much cooler to see why it is he resents his father but no we just got him go evil sicko mode and die with no real resolution to his story. And speaking of poor storylines. Some might disagree but I was extremely dissapointed with Kriles and Erenvilles story lines. I expected them to play much bigger parts and them finding their whole reason for coming along with us would be more impactful, but no. Everything is pretty much resolved in an hour between the two of them and it just felt completely pointless and empty. And finally Sphene...I liked Sphenes motivation for the most part. Much like Emet she thinks that her people are what important and the end justifies the means. However we've ALREADY had this storyline and it was so much better the first time around. Which makes Sphene just come across as a bit of a joke overall. Travelling between reflections is a neat idea and certainly opens up future possibilities for content, but it just falls flat in this case. Nothing about it is explained at all they could just said oh yeah it was Ascian voodoo or something since the chalice thingie originally came from the 6th or something but nah just smart potatoes? I like the edition of Sphene and Alexandria but it just could have been executed in a much better way that wasnt something we've already done. Overall though I did enjoy Dawntrail for all its shortcomings. I do rank it below Shadowbringers and Endwalker but right now just based on pre-patch expansions I do rank it above stormblood and probably equal to heavensward. It's probably around an 8/10 for me and I am really looking forward to what the future holds for my beloved FFXIV.

Baku jaja changed his mind cause he was a victim of talk no jutsu.

I think it's gonna be like storm blood 2.0, the writing in msq may not have been the best but in all other aspects the game is gonna be dope af. 👌

this was the worst expansion ever, the story is utter cringe trash and makes no sense whatsoever, i'm literally going to uninstall and delete my account if this shit gets any worse in the future ...

Emblematic of the problem of the first half of the MSQ where you're just constantly dumped on with worldbuilding exposition with very little opportunity to 'play' the game is the big set piece between the 4th and 5th zones. A huge moving action piece scene, lots of characters including the WoL fighting - high stakes, explosions, daring rescues and near death escapes... and it all plays out in a cutscene. Would have made a great duty, but you just sit there watching thinking "man, sure would be nice to be playing this".

Well, funny thing for me was, since I use the Japanese vc, it all felt like an anime episode, it went 10/10 for me till the moment we reached the golden city ... and we just forgot about it (??!) 😅 I took me Soo long to forget about this issue, so I didn't enjoy the next map that much due to this issue, when we reached the following map, it looked like we have a pretty solid trail of interest they can pull into, and they still hit and miss a lot there.. Living memory looks amazing and tbh I didn't mind the pause, what did bother me was how the last boss felt, we just wiped out her "people" that she kept doing what she was doing for how many years, and she didn't mention anything about it (?!!) I hope I'm not missing anything, but I was a little disappointed.. there are many great small stories along the way, even the side quests are pretty good! But the main narrative was a bit... poorly weaved I would say.

I honestly really liked the first half. Sure, the characters are a bit flat and its heavy handed with the peace and love and culture stuff, but its like you said - it was a beach episode. Having such an abrupt switch after the succession felt like they got to the end and were like "wait, we need 15 more hours and three more zones worth of content" and tacked it on. Or even that two separate teams did each half and then they just stitched it together after. I'd have rathered we just went off to explore more of the region and got into some crazy foreign primal fights or something. Commit to the beach episode instead of feeling like every expansion needs us to avert some kind of umbral calamity. The lightheartedness and joke bits from most of the NPCs in the first half was kind of a nice break, and it seemed forced to make everything so serious on the back end.

I think one missed mentality. Is that maybe one of the reasons the queen didn't just jump into another body or didn't? Just not worry about her safety is because most of the robots are not in her control. Temporarily speaking, I think it's heavily implied or at least it shows that when Lamatis brother aserts direct mikitary control, she is heavily limited by the bosies she can use. Sure, you can still argue that if she "dies" It doesn't matter but it does disable her and keep her out of the events where she's being shown. She is very helpful and useful with rearranging the area and helping keep people safe, even if she can't directly combat any of her robotic forces

I thought the Otis thing made sense? He completely lost his personality and free will after Zoraal Ja’s order. it seemed that he was acting on programmed protocol to defend the queen at all cost as if it was the actual queen. I remember she said she couldn’t stop the robots by overriding their commands herself upon entering solution 9, so i assumed it also meant she couldn’t freely transfer her consciousness to a new body at the time and if her body would have died at that time she’d have been stuck in a limbo until the order to execute all citizens was over. That’s my interpretation of it and why i thought it made sense

Is there a way to mod wuk lamat into someone else? If I just could just mod her into someone else and change the voice acting to Japanese, it might even be possible to enjoy the story

I hated the final zone. All the momentum came to a screeching halt. I honestly started skipping cutscenes because the story totally lost my engagement. Like you said it’s incredibly asinine to have a multidimensional threat that is imminent and yet you’re trying popcorn for the first time

Harsh but mostly fair. I like Shaaloani quite a bit, contrary to popular belief I felt it was pretty fresh setting for the game. I love the music in it, and I think it's placement, while understandably frustrating, was necessary to contrast it's inhabitants with the unlucky victims of Alexandria's dimensional fusion. It makes that zone mean a lot more than erenville simply telling you what Yyasulani would be like. And if they made you go through the zone only when the dome appeared, it would have felt even worse to have to speedrun it to get to vanguard & heritage found imo I also think that while yes, the writing is worse, they've come out and said they are trying things here. After the Zodiark/Hyda saga, they see an opportunity to take risks: let different staff members try things (exactly what is happening here), try another dual protagonist, try a lighter story etc. I can understand it being frustrating because the MSQ is a large part of the expansion offering, so having one that doesn't meet the usual bar is a little unsatisfying. But I don't think there's a crisis in confidence in their writing; I think they want to pass the torch and that is going to be shaky. I've also been having so much fun with the much improved battle content and zones that it's been hard to genuinely be upset with one of the most risk-averse dev teams in gaming trying new things.

The story simply had too much Wuk, her arc should have wrapped up after winning the contest. Second half of the expac should have been WoL, Krile, and Erenville focused.

Hey guys i wanna get into this game, but i have a question, if i buy dawntrail, do i get all the other content or do i have to buy every other dlc there was

yep, they should have added more action.., just send / force us to do big fates occasionally..

I really wanted to be done with the whole Ascian storyline because, as interesting as it was back in shadowbringers, endwalker just kinda hit us over the head with certain themes. Guess I should have been careful what I wished for 😒

By far the worst story of any of the expansions.

It's not the case that Bakool Ja Ja changed his personality in a vacuum, it's that the context for his immoral behavior were not revealed until the third zone in which we saw his actions were being negatively reinforced by his conservative father/culture. Some players were making the same assuations to Hydaelyn being evil in Shadowbringers.

I agree with basically all of your points, Jolsn. About Otis, though - I think he was defending *all* of us. His passionate defense was for the Queen, sure, but we all benefited. Even if she discarded her drone, I feel like he'd still have defended us to the point of death.

The way I see it is they had pacing issues that affected what was delivered in the later half. They spent a lot of time on the succession ritual. The character of Sphene would have benefited from being introduced earlier in the story to give her more lines and a more personal relationship with the WoL. Figuring out the golden city should have been the next objective immediately after finding the entrance with Shaalaoni being part of that path. Some of the early story content could have been condensed a little to give room for the side cast to perform the feats they are capable of and for what should have been the second half rather than the last third of the story. Alisaie was underutilized in Solution 9 in a way that left out a very touching moment that would have changed the dialogue significantly.

Replying and liking the video for algorithm, but not watching or reading comments as I haven't finished Dawntrail (or even Endwalker...). Love your videos!

So surreal seeing someone I know in your party, hope Niinii is doing well.

It felt like two separate stories to me. The succession story and then the “golden city” story no agree that the characters seemed more one dimensional than I usually expect from squeenix. The dungeons and trial were great but I was expecting more duties and such. Turn the whole expac into the succession and have us do duties with the other characters like they did in shadowbringers/endwalker. Have us play as Thancred with Koana and viper as zoraal ja in some duty. I liked it but I want to see where they go with it. Lots of breadcrumbs dropped so we will see

Solution Nine reminded me of Cocoon from FFXIII and memory wiping was reminiscent of FF Type 0

Oh god your point about Otis was great and I hate you for pointing it out, because I kinda liked the moment, but it really was a waste of a good life.

Yeah, same thought. Some aspect of the story is great, but some are extremely weird. Everything else is 10/10.

Very well said!

This review was spot on. Felt the same about 99% of what you referenced.

The overall consensus is that the story is pretty fcking boring. It's not even "chill beach experience", it's the horrible VA (Japanese is 1000% better), the fetch quests, the lack of engaging content, becoming a glorified retainer of Wuk Lamat. So many tedious quests and dialogue and un-voiced/unskippable cutscenes. We're just on a long ass beast tribe quest. I will be totally honest, when we first met Wuk and we were chasing down that huge Colibri, she DESTROYED that pack of mobs as a warrior, I was like FUCK yeah that our teammate?!...but nope...wtf happened.

An utterly frustrating and disappointing experience. All the things you say in this vid are spot on how I felt. It also felt like the writers just kept referencing key moments from previous expansions, and trying to recreate them in DT; like a bunch of call-backs. And it just felt shallow and lame, because those moments mattered in the previous expansions because they were *earned*. They aren't at all here. "Hey.... people really resonated with Emet doing all he did because of the pain he carried... Let's do that with Bakool!" "People resonated with Amaurot existing from Emet's memory of the city and home he loved... Let's do something similar with this!" Bakool's all "I WILL WIN THIS EVEN IT MEANS CHEATING AND PUTTING COUNTLESS LIVES IN DANGER!!" Then in a single cutscene... "OH.. I SOWWY. I BAD. I DID VEWY TEWWIBLE THINGS"... and we just accept that. Felt like every other quest was just a long cutscene. Sometimes several back-to-back. And on and on. Just lame and disappointing.

I thought i didnt like Shaaloani but then i started shared fate grinding on MCH and it just hits diffy. Plus the music there is 10/10 (for the kind of zone that its in)

Strongly agree with everything you said, especially about certain cutscenes not being necessary or information being rehashed, and everything you’ve said about the characters. I was also displeased with Zoraal Ja’s character starting out with, “I’ll show everyone how terrible war is firsthand so that they crave peace” but having that dropped and changed out of nowhere to “I want to raze the world to the ground.” The shift was completely unbelievable. I also found myself wishing that some of the cutscenes turned into instances instead, even though I don’t love them either, just so I can play the game instead of reading cutscenes. For example, the train breaking in to vanguard could have been a shooter instance since we were manning the cannons. How neat would that have been? The amount of voice acting was so inconsistent too, and at multiple points I was getting really tired of reading the text and wished the characters were speaking instead.

I had much the such feelings on the way the msq was written. I may be mistaken, but I recall something being said about the writing responsibility being handed off to two individuals who were not the primary writers in the past, and if so that may be the source of the problem. They may simply have no experience writing the kind of narrative 14's msq has been known for up to this point. I can see why they might want to pass the torch but the results were a disaster.

The story is on the same level as ARR if not worse but the fights are really fun tho. Haven't finished it yet.

I enjoyed the final zone story telling.

Sphene really prankked Otes by staying as a hologram in that body and not moving.

Never in my 2000+ hrs of playing have I had my finger hovering over the skip button the majority of my time with Dawntrail

the scions shouldn't be here except for Krile and Erenville only problem is even this 2 was like doing nothing, hell you can even remove WoL and it will be same too.

personally i loved DT, but i really enjoyed your perspective on it too

Wuk Lamat just does the same shit over and over again, it's really grating.

"I thought the voice acting for her was really well done" uhhhh...

Oh, gosh, I really dislike the story in this expansion. I agree with everything you mentioned, and you even brought up some valid observations that I hadn't noticed before. Now I have more reasons to be upset about this writing. Let's hope for better future.😢

I could not stand Wuk Lamat, the amount of interaction with her and the voice is just so off putting.

Wuk Lamat, to me, is all of Narutos most annoying traits dialled up to 11. I could not stand her. Plus, the story was filled to the brim with filler that it killed any of the good moments it had. They dropped the ball so many times for the sake of extending the story time.

Everything you said was spot on. I also had issues with the story in the 4th area. We wasted so much time in the whole stolen bracelet thing. It really felt like filler. I had issues with how they handled Bakool Ja Ja as well. Despite all the issues I still enjoyed the MSQ and had a good time overall. But it is one of the weaker one for me for sure. Still better than Stormblood.

Has anyone uncovered so much as a single mention of the final days having occurred in Tural?

Do the ff14 trailers the expansions ever live upto itself in the real game? As i played ff11 for 3 years, my favorite game ever, i played ff14 in 2014 for a few weeks but i just didn't like it with it's over the top tables on the screen and magic stuff and camera being far away during group battles, i miss the simple romanticness of being a real warrior needing to team up in ffxi having a real adventure with people around the world instead of the solo ff14 but ever since i stopped playing i watched the expansions trailers and are blown away by them, heavensward and all tbe others, is the game like the trailers thst blow me away and it gets better and like those trailers after the little weeks i played? If so if it gets like the trailers i might come back.

Honestly as much as I love Wuk Lamat, I feel like the expansion would have been better off with a bit of time away from her. I mean Krile has such a huge part in the story (according to the lore), but honestly she could have not been there at all and the story would have ended up mostly the same. Also the second half was a slog for me and should have been post patch content. I personally think the expansion would have been better off being completely about Wuk and struggle to become the next Dawnservant. It would have given so much more time for her to grow, and for other characters to shine who should have (Krile). I'm not even a Krile fan, but I'm disappointed how she was hyped up in the patches leading up to Dawntrail, only to be side lined as soon as everything kicks off. On a more positive note, I'm kind of glad the WoL took a sideline to be a mentor. Its refreshing. While we arn't the driving force this time around, its clear that without us things would fall apart (as per usual). Important, but in a different way.

Never been happier to be a story skipper. All the new dungeons and trials are amazing. The trials have some really fun new mechanics and the ex versions have been really fun so far too. All the new zones are amazing as well. Honestly have been enjoying this expac so far. Hoping this is a SB situation. Where the story is ass but the raid and combat content is amazing.

There are 4 that disappointed me: 1. It about Wuk Lamat (not to mention VA so they are fine as they are for my opinion) basically the story is about Wuk Lamat tale and not our character story becuz we being supportive to her and I agree that we can help her and believe she can win with everything she got but what she should've have done is let us fight with her expectantly fighting Zoraal Ja during the the fight cutscenes. 2. The story are somewhat complicated (didnt finish the story yet but will do it later so forgive me if I have a little spare to say) like we know about Electrope and everything but Sphene being endless and being the real final boss break my heart plus I dont like the fact about the soul collecting to become one with soul to gain power which make me very angry than seeing 120 dead children in Skydeep dungeon so what Im trying to say here is it just not right with the story. 3. The scions should have bigger role than short like Thancred, Urianger and Estinien if they can be more helpful like before and they could have included Raha and Y'shtola becuz they are part of the story too since the trailer of them appearance so that way we all can enjoy and laugh but in the end it was always short becuz like I said about the 1 part is always about Wuk Lamat, they should have let us play as Scion and heck even Koana becuz it would be so much better than Wuk Lamat. 4. Two dye slot and most of DT I would discuss: they did stated two dye slot but didnt say it would be limited becuz for starter I thought two dye slot meant for all current gear which I hoped to dye and understandable if they will make more room but a lot of ppl complain about it and say it would limited for only attire and gear of lvl 1 and DT which is true but I don't mind waiting for future if they make all current to have two dye slot. Anyway the attire of DT are fine but weird becuz the attire of Bard is like HW and some of them seem alright but weird, I dont know about the rest of classes but the bard and stuff are off

Its easily the worst expansion this game ever got, by far

I just about agrer with you on everything

I didn't like Lyse, but I love SB. I didn't mind Lyse getting some focus because the lead up to SB was YEARS of time with her character from Yda -> Lyse. Wuk Lamat e-rapes us with her screentime. We have no relationship with her or her situation, we basically just paid SQEX $40 to be forced into diversity training in her cutscenes. 4/10 expansion, fights, music are great. Fantastic actually. Writing 1/10.

I don't think it's a huge deal that we're not the protagonist but rather that there is only one protagonist. I don't mind Wuk Lamat but I feel like the writers putting all their chips into one character is bad for the health of a game where the barrier to entry rises by dozens of hours every expansion. ShB's focused on 3 new fan favorites that created intrigue throughout their stories rather than overstaying their welcome and it's disappointing that CBU3 is potentially alienating more newcomers with another expansion that focuses so much on a character that can't handle the weight of that attention.

Couldn’t have agreed more. First half is meh, but last part I enjoyed it. Getting more interested