FFXIV: Dawntrail is a Disappointment | MY HONEST THOUGHTS 

Go easy on me.

I am at the level 97 quests and still can't wrap my head around the plot hole in that part. Spoiler alert for those who wish to stop reading: When you finally discover the city of Gold, it seems like the Scions, including someone as experienced as our Warrior of Light, just forgot their sense of awareness in Eorzea. Why didn't any of your Scion companions decide to delve deeper and inform the king of concerning information, especially knowing that the place is filled with very advanced technology reminiscent of the Allagan Empire? We already know that Zoraal Ja is a twisted warmonger who suddenly disappears in evident frustration. So, you have a formidable adversary driven by anger, abandoning everything, even his duties in the Kingdom and everyone just leave the matter like that. Yet you and some of the best among the Scions leave access to such advanced technology unguarded-a significant threat in the wrong hands. Then everyone simply departs without even inquiring who was responsible for guarding the place and what threats it might pose. Consequently, everything goes awry because no one, not even those who've ventured to the edge of the universe, bothered to seek information or treat the City of Gold with the necessary concern. I remember when we first discovered Omega, the priority was to prevent such advanced tech from falling into the wrong hands. Yet in Dawntrail, we made a mistake that not even a novice at the Waking Sands would commit.

Never gonna understand the Luffy comparison. I hear it all the time. Luffy isn't a self proclaimed hero, he hates being called one. He doesn't want any of the responsibility of leading a nation, and he doesn't care for your culture, he's gonna do his own thing. If anything Wuk lamat is Steven Universe.

I didn't really realize it until you pointed it out but I did enjoy LISTENING to characters other than Wuk Lamat in this expansion, far far more. I noticed that I focused closely when Galool Jaja would speak, or Koana, and even Bakool Jaja, but for Wuk Lamat that feeling went away as the expansion went on. It's amazing how much stage presence a character can have. When Y'shtola speaks, she takes the stage, when Thancred speaks, he demands the stage, when Wuk Lamat speaks, it's like the little sister everyone says "that's nice honey" to.

Dawntrail is without a doubt one of the worst MMO expansions I have ever seen. The story blows, the characters (even the returning ones) are cardboard, and the combat system doubled down on some of the worst ideas introduced in ShB and EW instead of what they should've been carrying forward with. Frankly, the voice acting is pretty bad this time around. Even the Scions are somehow just... off, y'know? Wuk Lamat's delivery (in EN only - it sounds much better in JP) is so wooden you could drive it through a vampire's heart. To top it all off, it seems like the story and dialogue are written for two year olds. Who even approved this?

In Dawntrail, the MSQ turns into WSQ, Wuk's Story Quest.

i remember when i first experienced wuk lamat at the end of EW, & my first reaction IRL was "how are we supposed to support her when we don't know ANYTHING about her platform? we get put into a political situation, with not even a surface-level coverage of what's going on?" being told 'preserving peace' is so vague it could mean anything

I was okay with being a mentor/side character and having Wuk Lamat take center stage. But this was supposed to be a vacation and competition against my friends. The time we spend competing is almost non-existent, and we spend more time working with our competition. Not having much of anything for gameplay in the MSQ and actively avoiding fights with so many stealth missions had me falling asleep. Certain cutscenes could have been cool solo duties. (Rescuing sailors and saving the ship in the intro scene comes to mind.)

The whole Peace and Happiness shit it handled so childishly in my opinion. There’s a respect for the difficulty and complexity of handling these topics throughout the entirety of the H/Z Saga, The City-States & Beastmen in ARR, The Dragons & Ishgard in HW, even within Ishgard itself in regards to adjusting to the Truth of their history, The effects of long term Occupation by a Conquering Empire as seen in Doma & Particularly Ala Mhigo though Fordola, By the end of ShB we finally have alliances with the Beastmen but it’s been a hard road and trust still isn’t complete but it’s a start towards a better future. But in DT everything is solved so easily and simply with trying to understand each others cultures without confronting that some are just fundamentally incompatible. It would have been interesting if Gulool Ja Ja had some skeletons in his closet about how he united Tural, but no, it’s all so easy and simple. Again, Childish and Immature compared to how the subjects were handled throughout the entirety of the Last Saga.

I'll summarize my experience in the MSQ. At first, I thought the WoL would act as a mentor for Wuk Lamat, but this wasn't realized, which I found very disappointing. Another distracting factor was that something happens in a cutscene, the message is subtly understood, but three passages later, the event is brought up again and explained on an elementary school level. There's no room for personal interpretation, except for the plot holes and strange character twists that occur without comment in a very short time. For the brief experience with the new characters, they tried to evoke the same emotions as in Shadowbringer - Endwalker. Another annoying factor for me was the constantly repeating agenda: We can all become friends if we just get to know each other's cultures and customs. This line appears in every third cutscene.

As I was playing through the MSQ I remember thinking to myself "what is up with the writing it feels so flat?" then after I looked up who the writer was and found out that the lead writer stepped down after endwalker. Its no wonder it felt so different

Some of my worst gripes (as a die hard fan): - I thought we'd be competing against the scions. - I thought this expansion wouldn't have a world ending threat as a final boss. - The Endless should've been patch content or a different expansion. We meet Sphene 2/3rd of the way through and I couldn't care less about her. - If the scions weren't going to be used then keep them tf out of the expansion and let characters like Erenville and Krile have their growth. - The Endless are stupid to me because we already went through a storyline about not keeping the memory of the dead alive by sacrificing the living/not being able to handle grief. That was ENDWALKER. And Shadowbringers (when we kill Emet and Elidibus.) - Wuk Lamat leave me alone for 10 minutes so I can 1v1 with other characters please god. - Don't put my WoL in cutscenes where someone dies and I just stand there and watch. - The old fantasy South America/futuristic techno fusion of an expansion did not mesh well and had me feeling visually confused. People wearing headphones and Google Glass headsets talking to Wuk Lamat (who had to remind you every 10 minutes she had no idea what was going on...) - I would've liked Solution 9 and Living Memory more if it wasn't tied to DT. Going from beautiful scenic deserts and blue underground forests to a techno shopping mall didn't sit well with me. There are more but it'd take me all day. At least the trials and dungeons were the best they've ever been. Tender Valley is my favorite.

The WOL is evil is all I can get of this we killed the ancients by not helping them in elpis (we can still go to Elpis btw.) in Alexandria we were too gung ho about getting that final boss battle and killing those people to get that chance to have a dungeon and have a trial. and after basically destroying a reflection the WOL and CO were too happy celebrated 3 days! After basically snuffing out another reflection. There is no questioning what our character is doing it is just conveniently right, so it was ok to stop the endless from living happily because the few named npcs were bored of living and them living happy was deemed unnatural and below standards of what our characters thought living was. It's basically what we fought against in SHB but it is ok because we are the MC doing it. I feel that the writers forced it so that the queen who was not evil when we met her she asked for alternate way multiple times of our chara and of her own side before things fell into place where there would be an awful event. after we beat him and all the damage had been done the wueen for some reason continues to be a scumbag before deciding to become an all world encompassing threat, so the MC would have a villain at the end, and Wuk Lamat even pulled plug on Otis something that WOL should have done. Wuk should have been done with being MC after she became the head of resolve. No way WOL in SHB would be ok with what WOL in DT and EW has done. and the more I think on it the more I hate it. :l the xpac also would have been better if they had more voiced CS no one wants to sit and read all of this slop I skipped almost everything that was not voiced and it saved me a lot of time because no matter what they said I was not going to carte for what happned at the end or how zarul ja didn't change in the time skip and how Bakol Jaja just suddenly became a good guy an tbh I was liking it while it was happening but again the after taste is not landing. but I get them if they added more voiced stuffs the update would have been flipping massive. in end the best moment were when the WOL was taking charge other character can be MC but our character should at least have some moments the scions should at least have some moments.

SFEEEEEEENE LISTEN TO ME.

This was supposed to be the start of the next 10 years. They did nothing new at all with this expansion. It's the same old recipe. I expected GOOD new characters, gear/stat re works, new gameplay mechanics, and the start of a story that would span multiple expansions. This feels like a standalone filler expansion that does absolutely nothing we haven't seen before.

You are right on the yawntrail part. I even skipped some cutscenes and I never did it, even in ARR. They added too many fillers between good narrative moments. ShB and EW (the original part) should be some example as a good story telling.

I don't think the wol took the backseat in this expansion more like they jumped out of a moving vehicle. I think there was a huge missed opportunity not leaning into us being a mentor to wuk lamat. Like some 1 on 1 training solo duties would've been awsome. We're not even bodyguards since she insists on handling things herself it just seems like we're wuks wingmen lol

honestly, it would have been nice if there was at least 1 group/clan that harbors direct aggression towards the rest of tulliolal. Something to show that not every group is meant to live together with the others.

Wuk Lammat's dumber than Lyse in SB and is twice as annoying for it.

I have done and dusted Dawntrail MSQ and just now riding the sadness which was wasted potential. I honestly think that the writing was the one that wrecked Wuk Lamat as a character. The reason being is that they just seem to not know what they're doing with the entire arc of Tural as we all would notice over the course of the 1st half is just that we all end up rushing instead of actually immersing in the world. In my humble opinion, Dawntrail just felt so poorly written like how Wuk Lamat is basically Alphisae with how her story arc pans out being a naive person to becoming a leader but except both Alphinaud and Alisae had to face their demons. Wuk Lamat didn't. Nor did she ever had an L in her life that was her own doing. She was a fundamentally cool and fun character but the way they wrote her essentially just made her insufferable to most. And just disappointed to some.

I legitimately fell asleep during cutscenes on my very first day playing the new expansion. And wuk lamats va has the vocal range similar to sinatra. They just have no urgency in any of their lines. It all sounded so mono tone and was very hard to get into

When dawntrail story skip potions are added to the mogstation, its going to crash the store lol cause so many are gonna buy it.

Good video but I disagree with one point in your video. You said we shouldn't have been surprised with taking a backseat of the WoL and the scions. At least for our character I think it's fine to be disappointed. Be it the Game trailer, the benchmark, the launch trailer or the cover. The WoL was always presented, not in the background, not at the side but in the middle. Nothing of that ever suggested the level of plot-overshadowing Wuk Lamat would have had. I thought we would just go back to the level of Heavensward or Stormblood where we were not the centerfocus but still an important part of the plot. ishgard became our home and we fought the dragons and knights, not just Estinien. We fought Susanoo and Zenos was OUR enemy, not Lyse or Hien. They were the Main characters but we still had our own importance. But we were not even that. there was no mentoring, no importance to us. in one cutscene Wuk Lamat's axe even blocks the view of our character. All the live letters, inteviews and media tours of Yoshida also never implied this at all. I think it should be not surprising with players being taken back by that. If the future of ff14 is making my character just the cameraman then I don't know if I want to be part of that anymore and I'm subscribed since end of ARR early HW.

The story was fine till 95 when wuk became king of games but the whole... "lets talk to these new people about peace and happiness" schtick gets really grating when we go from collecting gym badges to the end of the fking world. Man i wish DT took a page from Stormblood. Hien/lyse are the MC of their respective storyline but they still managed to squeeze in a ton of interesting side characters and we as players get some significance as well because Zenos has a massive crush on us...wether we like it or not.... Meanwhile Dt lives and dies with Oof lmao. If you like her thats neat. If not...just skip cutscenes..it wont get better

The MSQ is poorly written, the bad vocal performances don't help, but the true problem is the writing is childish. It feels like such a huge regression. So many times I simply closed the game because I couldn't take it. Wuk's powerup, rubber bullets, bonding over tacos, Bakool's 360... all just bad.

Even if Wuk Lamat was well written and excellently voice acted (both were atrocious imo). . . that she was IN YOUR FACE so much was unforgivable. When the world threatening stuff happened, it needed to be Scion time. Wuk Lamat should have gone into her throne and been out of the story. FFS, she even shows up in a trial. Utterly overdone and tiring. Also, where was the adventure? We were. . . bartering for a saddle, making tacos, building a parade float, and capturing an Alpaca? WTF? Literally NOTHING in the beginning of the MSQ was remotely close to adventurous. Such a bait and switch. Inane, slow-paced, and pointless was this MSQ. Huge fail. Square Enix should be ashamed of their failure and do a 180 for the patches.

I couldn't agree more man, they got way too formulaic in the way they add content to the game, and they really needed to break from that formula with this new start. When we're not invested in the old story anymore, because it's over, and the game isn't propped up but that investment, the cracks start to show alot more. Even when I was into the story of previous expansions, I hated how formulaic it started to all feel, especially now that dungeons are all the same exact _ _ ! _ _ ! _ _ ! formula. But I disagree about Wuk. It doesn't help that the new story is basically us helping JarJar Binks become the queen, even when there's obviously at least one better candidate to rule than her (the Sharlayan cat boy lol.)

Wuk Lamat is the reason i couldnt deal w/the cutscenes. The acting is just cringe. Might put the game in a different language on my alt playthrough so we'll see if it helps. But they could've chosen a much better voice actor imo.

I knew something was wrong when yshtola sounded like she was talking through a tin can and a string in her audio

My main complaints: 1) Story Pacing - Dear god, the slow parts were too slow while the parts I wanted them to spend more time with went by or were resolved too fast. 2) Good concepts but flawed execution - Too much stuff is handwaved or glossed over. Hopefully this will be remedied in the future 3) Wuk Lamat - Like many have already said, she's an attention black hole. Hell, I couldn't even have the last boss to myself, she had to butt in. For me it was more of "meh" compared to many other players who absolutely loath her so I was pretty puzzled with this reaction to her. I realized later on this was because her VA in Japanese (I've played with JP audio since ARR beta) was excellent and when I was checking out some streamers playing with English audio, her VA was just atrocious. This becomes especially glaring when put side-by-side with the excellent VAs of our crew who we already know and love. 4) Not enough focus on our crew - This is an effect of the previous complaint. All the Scions could have done so much more. Especially Raha and Alphie who have leadership and diplomatic skills and experience. They could have taken more of a mentoring or advisory role with the eventual Vows. Hopefully this is remedied in the upcoming content. What I liked: 1) The combat related content - My God, the dungeons are so good (except you Strayborough Boss #1, you can go die in a fire). The raid that just dropped is great as well and I'm actually invested in the story there plus I'm a pro wrestling fan too so the fights (especially the third one had me rolling). The joke I made to my FC when we finished all the fights: "100 Gil says the mysterious arena president's name is Vincentus McMahonus." haha 2) The music - The level of quality is still great. I really like a good number of tracks. 3) The zones - I know may players don't like the incongruousness of the various zones but I like the variety of zones we got. 4) Gear - Visually, I'm liking a lot of the new gear we've gotten so far. The details look really good with the graphics upgrade. Overall, I'd rate Dawntrail so far as a 7/10. For Lv90-95 I'd rate the story at 4/10. For 96-100 I give it 7.5/10. The combat content lifts the final rating up to a 7/10. It's been the lowest rating for me in a long while. Man, hopefully it only gets better from here.

tbh; i agree with all the points you made in your video. Wuk Lamat ruined the story for me and that resentment grew as every time a legacy Scion appeared on screen, they where only to advance Wuk Lamat's story and easily could have been replaced. Urianger only had 12 voice lines in the entire expansion. In the end; Square took a gamble on Wuk Lamat and it never paid off.

Dawntrail would have been 8/10 if wuk lamat didnt exist and koana was the central protagonist

FFXIV: the Beach Episode We can see Y'shtola in a Bikini with the Trust glam at lv100, which is nice.

I’m happy to have an honest review addressing exactly what I predicted, the same 3 bosses in a hallway full of ads, and I felt that the story was all down hill from endwalker. The game has just felt so meh and I can’t justify spending a monthly subscription when I can play games I pay once and can keep playing

They have become so risk averse that not only did they change up nothing in their formulas, but the story also suffers for it. It was obvious almost from the very start that Koana and Wuk Lamat were going to share the throne. They were the only two good claimants, the other two were so cartoonishly villainous that they were down on ARR Lahabrea cartoon villain levels. That prediction only became easier to guess when we saw how Koana and Wuk were developing during the rite of succession, working more together than against one another. Shocking when it was revealed they would indeed be sharing the throne. /s Boring. Another fine example of risk aversion making the story suffer was the tacos. Instead of having Koana and Wuk team together for that, they should have had each of them team up with the Mamool Ja rivals. This would have made for some more interesting story telling and potential for further character developments on many fronts. Here is where they could have explored Zoraal Ja's burdens of expectation he's shouldering, or perhaps give a sneak peak or hint at Bakool Ja Ja's unfortunate motives for why he was so determined. Perhaps build up a relationship more with Wuk and Zoraal Ja to make the latter half of the game have more meaning. But no, they took the safe pick there instead and foregone all that potential instead. It's hard to believe that this is the same studio that had no problems killing off Scions once upon a time. What the heck happened?

I thought the American accents were passable. But I feel like with Wuk Lamat they didn't even bother to retake some of those lines.

Wuk Lamat's growth is zero because she faces zero challenges. The only bad thing happening was the death scene, but I honestly could not feel bad for her because we just had a super long story about her having found her real dad and all going super duper. When they had the cooking challange I was soooo looking forward for her to be paired with one of the baddies. Her stones were stolen, two quest later we get them back... i dont like Mary Sue's and she is one. Everything goes her way, everything works out well, everything is sunshine and friends and love. People hate thse for a reason, cause you cannot relate...

I wasn't a big fan of EW, base or post, but the nosedive the game has now experienced with DT, well it is something to behold. Think I picked a good time to quit. Regarding the number of concurrent users? Eh, we'll see if they can keep it, if true. I doubt it.

Been playing for 10 years. Good lore, music and instances duties, cannot carry a poorly written story. We as players need to have standards and you voice reasonable complaints. I hope they listen to feedback.

I finished the story a few days ago and pretty much have the same feeling regarding the MSQ. There's some pretty good parts in the last 2 zones but they definitely dont reinvent the wheel compared to the earlier parts of the MSQ. If the patch quests aren't great then I might just start story skipping for the first time because it left so much to be desired man. I don't hate Wuk Lamat either but the amount of time that she's forced to be with you wore me down and made me never want to see her again in the MSQ. The extremes have been a lot of fun. I also really like what they did with the level 100 dungeons. The combat design is definitely one of the better parts of the expac imo. Looking forward to savage to see what they come up with.

I agree on the dungeon design, its a copy and paste with a new color of paint every xpac. This is the reason i went back to play WoW again for their unique dungeons

the whole everyone can be friend bit is WAY overdone. Even when we learn who the real villians are wuk IS STILL TRYING TO BE FRIENDS.... at the end when wuk jumps into the trial i thought "this whole thing is so stupid"....like DT just started we have so many more patches to go for wuk to be the hero. Honestly by the middle of DT i was already so sick of Wuk, im sorry. she is like nails on a chalkboard to me now.

MSQ was boring and predictable. How am I supposed to play my alts thru this now? I don't wanna follow Wuk Lamat EVER AGAIN! The voice acting isn't mixed correctly, sounds so bad. Please stop recording voice lines in bedrooms, we can tell.

Fadaniel: I want everyone to die with me.We all must die! WOL: not on my watch dirt bag. Fandaniel: Ahhhhh oh folly! DAWN TRAIL WOL: I DID eVERYTHInG RIGHT!

If there's one thing Wuk Lamat's brothers and claimants are better at than her, its their ENG voice acting. But that aside, I was fine with Wuk Lamat from start to the end of the rite of succession, despite the overdone and preachy " I want to get to know you better" shebang. I was satisfied and happy it ended that way. Only for my opinion to quickly turn sour once I found out we still have to deal with her and the preaching as we venture to solution 9 and all. I didn't understand the hate when I saw people's reviews and comments about the dt msq and Wuk Lamat yapping alot earlier on, but I think I see now where that came from. And I'm now sharing the same opinion with them.

Say it how it is brother don't apologize. We are in a new era where truth is valued much more than BS.

A lot of my issues with the narrative, characterization and MSQ progression are being commented on here and in the video so I wont just repeat them, but what I will say is how Dawntrail left me feeling once the credits had rolled and my one moment of awesome was stolen by Wuk Lamat denying me a single big hero moment all story. I felt nothing, I felt like I had just wasted a week. For the first time since I started playing I'm not excited to see what happens next, I just feel apathetic. Like right now I'm more interested in replaying SMT V:Vengeance for the third time than I am trying out the post game dungeons. I'm willing to give the next MSQ patch a fair shot as this game has given me nothing but fun since RR but if its as bad as the DT MSQ I may sit this expansion out and hope for better next time. Very disappointing expansion so far.

This is gonna be my opinion about Dawntrail, its a long one and there might be some repetition but here it goes: a bit of a backstory for me, i HATED Endwalker, it killed my motivation to play the game, i didn't wanna log in, i didn't wanna think about the game, i hated the game from all of my heart, its the worst thing that coudlve ever happened to this game, but even still i wanted to give dawntrail a try, the plan was to do MSQ, the extremes and maybe the first tier of savage, if DT was going to be same copy/pasted shit that Endwalker was then i was gonna be done with the game, devs promised that they learned from the EW fights that they are too repetitive, so did they deliver fresh new stuff in DT? absolutely and it rekindled my hope for the game, HOWEVER there is a lot of other problems and im gonna go deeper here with them. first the MSQ was... pretty bad, it was incredibly boring until you learned about the process of making blessed siblings and the main plot that DT started with started to reach its peak, then after that it was incredibly boring again, the 4th zone side-story was the worst thing ever, it was completely pointless filler that was neither enjoyable nor fun to play through but the story got really good when i reached heritage found. now the problems with MSQ besides somewhat boring story mostly, Wuk Lamat being obvious point to hate but more on that later, the quest system is horrible and really really REALLY outdated and in need of a rework, being a postman and walking from A to B for 50 hours is not fun gameplay, why even have the running around, i would rather just teleport to the next spot to talk to the people and get more deeper into the lore if you dont wanna make actual gameplay. now Wuk Lamat, i really wanted to like this character, being a bit goofy but serious when its reasonable is pretty fun, but i dont like how they made her like a classic shounen anime protagonist with the whole "your happiness is my happiness" "my people is my power" really generic lines and way of thinking but i could still get behind her character somewhat, but as was said in the video and i also mean this with all the respect towards the VA, im not saying this because i hate her nor i have anything against transgender people, but she is not a good voice for her, the thing with FFXIV is that in Japanese everyones voice sound like a generic anime voice, no accent or anything, now the english voice acting is that all different city citizens and people actually speak with their proper accents, ishgardians sound french, limsa lominsans speak generic pirate etc. and Wuk Lamat speaks well... tribalish, its rough and has no elegance to it or anything, so i quess she sounds exactly as her should be when it comes to the accent, but her actual performance and the feeling of the voice was god awful (and i feel some really weird hate towards her accent, again not necessarily VA:s fault, its just something i dont personally like) she didn't have enough feeling for the scenes and sometimes felt like she just read the lines from a piece of paper without having any context for the scene, HOWEVER DO NOTE (now this is something i have heard from comment and such, not sure if this legit or nah) Alphinauds english VA has stated that this is actually quite often the case, they are given absolutely no video or any kind of visual context for the scene so it can be quite hard to make proper voice for the scene, but in my opinion, nothing and i do mean NOTHING can make me admit that the Wuk Lamats voice acting in the final trial of DT was acceptable, the cutscene that happens middle of the trial absolutely BUTCHERED my mood for the fight, her voice acting was abysmally bad and it is not acceptable that someone actually said "yep, that is good enough" More about Voice and music of DT: Voice acting overall felt pretty lazy and somewhat rushed, characters didnt have proper voices for some of the characters and overall felt pretty low quality but thats enough for VA, now the DT music part, don't get me wrong the music in DT is again really fantastic, it has some really good songs however i do feel like there was either too few songs or the songs just felt really similar, music in dungeons is absolutely amazing (the final dungeon boss music is my favourite out of all dungeon boss musics) but the music in tuliyollal and some of the early locations is a bit bland, i don't actually remember most of the songs in those places cuz they are so forgetable, so again i think the music was really good most part atleast, but i just think the lack of different musics in some of the locations or lack of memorable musics made the music list feel a bit small and boring. but that is mostly the negative part of the expansion, now the good part: dungeons and fights, ho boi when SE said they learned from EW mistakes, i thought they were bullshitting us again, making promises that they have learned but go right back into their original ways, but so far no, its been really good, the dungeons are really fun and memorable, the trials were also really solid and the extremes were fantastic, i have high hopes for savage and lets hope SE keeps this up throught the entire expansion, now the combat is still not perfect, not even close, the jobs are still really boring to play and we got barely anything new and exciting, getting 1 new button that does just more damage is not exciting anymore, i do think that 7.0 shoudlve been the job rework expansion and 8.0 the fight rework expansion and not the other way, since if ARR-HW-SB has taught us anything, its that even if the fights are a bit boring or repetitive, if the core combat loop of the jobs are fun and exciting then its alright. also devs compeltely forgot the reason why they delayed savage by 2 weeks in EW instead of 1, it was because of the tomes and crafting, but we don't get the tomes or crafting recipes UNTIL savage comes out, so the 2 week wait is completely pointless. if you read all this then thank you, i have high hopes for Dawntrail and i hope devs keep learning from mistakes, DT coudlve been absolutely a lot worse expansion that it is now, the dungeons and trials/extremes saved the game for a lot of us who actually care about the core loop of the game that being the combat, if DT had the boring story and horrible EW dungeons and trials, then i dont think there woudlve been any hope for the game anymore, but this was a long one so thank you again

I was hoping for an Indiana Jones style search for a literal city of gold. I got none of that. Played it up to the last zone and decided im done. I think this game isnt made for people like me anymore. I played since ARR beta till now. Oh forgot to mention Endwalker ruined any kind of serious antagonist or world threat for me. Literally killed 2 gods and a universe ending threat, fuck off lizard threatening me, you're nothing.

hopefully ishikawa goes crazy on ff17 bc her absence is very apparent

I think you sort of have to realize that creative business unit 3 almost can't take risks. I say almost they can do a small bit here and their but I want you to even look at Viper, its getting basically a small rework to make it less busy and it hasn't even been a month since its been out, hell it hasn't been 2 weeks yet. (Slight Spoiler beyond this point) imagine if they took a risk with the story and changed how you interact with it. which is sort of what they have done. The story isn't necessarily about how you the WoL interacts with the people around them its how Wuk Lamat interacts with them, you're just their to "bail them out". Well not really because the things that WuK Lamat does especially near the end suggests she is just as strong as us if not stronger, despite being weak in the beginning. (See the last trial and look at how wuk lamat enters the scene). What I am trying to say is, they can't take risk's with class design, how are they expected to take risk's in the main scenario questline. Everything has to be accessible to everyone including story and how you interact with it. Also for me the story was great in the beginning but it just... fell off hard... and it made no sense in the end. (edit: made risks plural)

From what I can see the less known creators have said that Wuk Lamat and the story telling was poorly executed. I hope larger creators will be brutally honest about this MSQ. It was not good. Wuk Lamat replaces everyone. Luffy, is not a helmsman, doctor, cook and navigator. He recruited people for those roles. Wuk is pretty much a a slow to start Mary Sue. I will not resub for a while. Yes the dungeons are a banger and the trials. Music is awesome. But I don’t feel invested nor care enough about these places due to what a chore MSQ is. I have come to loathe the story and how this was portrayed.

You are not the only one on this. Not having Ishikawa in this expansion, it shows

I believe you have made an interesting point with your comparison with ARR which i did not think about before. that the "gameplay-section's" of the MSQ, as boring as they where sometimes kept the ppl more enganged during the build-up-phase in ARR and DT has to little of it since it got to used to the story being more engaging.

Removed quests from ARR because they were boring filler quests and ruined the pacing, then proceeded to add boring filler quests and ruin the pacing in Dawntrail. What were they even thinking???😅

Wish I could refund and go back to just stopping and chilling until 8.0

I immediately had a bad feeling when they said it would be the New World. It seemed like the least interesting place to go. Looking on the bright side: if they had to mess an expansion up, I'm glad it was this one. I would be mad as hell if they botched Mericydia to this degree.

I really wish that instead of explaining me everything about the first city, they'd give me quests where I come to understand how the city is the way it is. But rly, i'm more a crafter than anything...I was more interested on hitting the market

I just have zero interest in playing second fiddle to a furry fetishists wet dream and its why I checked out the minute I realized Wuk would be the protagonist. As for the voice, I've always played in German so was unaware of the "interesting" choice the activists over at Sqenix NA chose, after seeing some of the vile and sexist shit the VA has said before, I'm very concerned for the future of localization for NA players.

Crazy I completely forgot about this expansion. Literally zero videos are being recommended to me for it. I just happened to remember that it was coming out sometime in July and did a search...

Im so glad you made a point of Koana's actor KILLING IT

The problem is the story feels like there's no stakes. It's always a misunderstood big bad at the end who gets recked by the power of friendship. It's like one of those crappy CW shows where nobody ever dies, and if they do they just come back through some magic boogaloo. No important characters kick the bucket, if something tragic ever happens it gets fixed two minutes later, and the world feels like a JPEG to move from A to B. SE is most certainly afraid to take any big risks. What's the point of having the Scions come back if they disbanded in the last expansions? What's the point of the whole dramatic letter Alphinaud writes at the end of EW? Are we still Scions except the name? Well that's kinda stupid. SE is so afraid that people won't like to play without the characters they're so used to and that just makes it boring and repetitive. Nothing ever changes fundamentally in FFXIV. One of my favorite moments/stories in the game was Yotsuyu's whole "redemption -> death" arc. I thought that was pretty ballsy of them to write. She was a tragic, unredeemable victim of abusive upbringing and was probably one of the characters with the most depth in the whole game. I wish we got more characters like that, deep, nuanced and who don't just turn good at the end because friendship. I want stakes, I want things to change, characters to go through big changes, I want SE to really show that they're not afraid. I'm so tired of the same 6 empty areas of a different color and the same 6 dungeons and the same nothing burger that's just going from A to B.

"They hated him because he told the truth" DT's story was pure garbage. Everything else was a damn 10/10. Especially the damn dungeons

Dawntrail gets so much wrong. Such a staggering discrepancy between where we were 2-3 years ago and now. Throughout most of the msq I felt like abandoning my static and quitting altogether. I get that some people like it, some find nuance here and there, but I despise this expansion so far, with a passion I didn't think myself capable of. Let's start with Wuk Lamat, the cat-shaped elephant in the room. I... cannot stand her. She reminds me of Jar Jar with how she bumbles her way through the first act. If we weren't there to do the heavy lifting for her there is no way she would have made it past the second trial. There are so many points in the story where she should have failed, and her insufferable naivete is almost never punished. On multiple occasions she calls out character's inexcusable crimes, only to forgive them moments later. Bakool Ja Ja sabotaging her bid for the throne on multiple occasions, the Mamool Ja elder who apparently committed infanticide on a monumental scale, Sphene planning a genocide and being partway through executing that plan... if it weren't for the nature of the crimes, all her "let's all just be friends! teehee~" antics would fit perfectly in a cartoon for 8 year olds. FF14 used to have characters like that, who seemed rotten to the core, only to be turned, in slow painstaking processes and believable arcs. Lady Iceheart and Fordola come to mind. Her voiceacting can be a point all its own. Apart from one or two lines it all falls between slightly grating and horrendously missing the tone that should be intended. I think this is more a failing in direction rather than the voiceactress screwing up? Hard to tell, cause it happens with other characters as well sometimes, it just very much stands out with her as 3/4 of voiced lines in the game are hers. The tone and pacing of the story are all over the place. I can forgive that it starts with a whimsical jaunt through the new continent, despite that being a massive tonal shift from everything that's come before in FF14 in terms of broad story arcs. We are in a new beginning of sorts after all. There are zero stakes that I was made to care about for the first 15 hours of the story though. Moments where the already insufferable main character finally has a little pushback are ruined by attempts at that awful Hildebrand style of "humour" or cringeworthy lovey-dovey chummyness. When Wuk Lamat gets kidnapped and saved, and gets thrown in the air, why have that unfunny slow mo derpy expression as she sails through the air "comically". She could have died there! When the 3 red giants show up to kill her, that huge bird farts one of em to within an inch of his life before she steps in and she's like "Woopsie, I kinda just saved you! Teehee~" and them just acceoting her now... Uuurgh it's SO lame! Then suddenly, the scifi nation attacks, people die. Wuk Lamat's father dies, she's sad for a bit but after sleeping on it for a night we're right back to whimsical Wuk. We enter the barrier, immediately it feels off. This is be far the most interesting part of the story btw, where we're left guessing what the hell is going on here, why is everybody so happy in a miserable place like this? What's with the timey wimey weirdness going on? Wuk Lamat's "mother" dies and everyone forgets her instantlly, WTF?Minutes later we're talking to a funny little robot who happens to be Erenville's mother and it's all goofy "precious little bunbun" time again. We kill Zoraal Ja, his son is in tears, not knowing what to make of all this, being like 4 years old. Pretty grim right? WRONG! IT'S THEME PARK TIME! Where we eat popcorn, ride a gondola... find Krile's parents who abaondoned her 20 years ago and wipe the last vestiges of probably tens of thousands of people, if not more, from existence and FFS PICK A TONE ALREADY!!! We went from the best story ever told in gaming in (mostly) ShB and (to a sliiightly lesser extent) EW into this... What the hell happened? The story sucking this bad also really makes it painfully obvious that there's very little to play in this game. Some dungeons, some trials, some solo duties, all of those are nice. Then there's some "point the cursor at the thing" quests (ugh), some "follow the guy and don't get spotted" quests (UUUUGHH), a LOT of running, and eeeendless amounts of tedious dialogue. I hate it xD it's the worst FF14 has ever been by an ASTRONOMICAL margin. Almost everything about it disappoints... shame really...

I must add one IMENSE REASON as to why dawntrail is a horrible expansion. TLDR : IT CANNOT EXIST LOGICALLY IF YOU REMEMBER THE EVENTS OF ENDWALKER ( END OF DAYS ) Now for the detailed version. I am bringin you back to the climax of End walker. Zoldiark is dead, the sky is died red, and dynamis is causing our negative emotions to turn us into blood thirsty frenzied abomination . We cool you all remember ? Perfect. ; now I want everyone to imagine what would happen to a town controlled by a cult , your crops cannot survive bar 1 that is a banana , your village is force breading / doing eugenics to create the perfect blessed kin ( 2 headed lizard ) and some of the woman being forced into this by the cult, WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. Welcome to the city of Mamook in tural. This whole town is a literal primed nuclear bomb . Night almost every citizen will be morphed into BLASPHEMY. And if you take into account that they might on instinct go into the higher jungle and start attacking the wrothgar settlement ? This could start a literal beast tide that would roll up all the way to the capital. And to be brutaly honest, Wuk lamat would likely become one as she would be horified / mortified as her little paradise would become a hell on earth. Lastly.... sorry not sorry it would have been very easy to make this story centered on us the WOL as we explore new land and eho knows sample new tradition and the like as we did with the night blessed. Wuk lamat is an absolute black hile agressively sucking the fun out of everything for me . She is an unrealistic character by any bloody metric i can conceive off , from knowing nothing if the land she wants to govern , to its people and tradition and so on , the more you play the worst her wrighting get

I preordered and I couldn’t get through the msq because of how bad it is.

Wuk Lamat was disappointing when it came to her English voice and her character in general

Absolutely insufferable and predictable msq, very few praiseworthy parts. Lyse Lamat needs no debate, awfully written character with too much screen time. realm reborn is better.

You can tell that there was a shift in the lead writing. I've read C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, David Eddings, John Flanagan (the list could go on) from childhood up through adulthood (Even the first book of 'Rowan of Rin' was better than Dawntrail). I've experienced World of Warcraft storytelling for the duration of when it first launched to present day, I've experienced Guild Wars 2 writing from when it first launched to present day, and I will say this: This helped me take the rose-tinted glasses off for FFXIV. I'm looking at FFXVI and going "THAT'S storytelling", and then I'm looking at Dawntrail and am wondering where the disconnect in the entirety of the writing began (and since it began near the beginning, then it was there from the get-go with the lead writer). The Rite was rigged in Wuk Lamat's favor ("Hey Krile, if you want to know the truth of your heritage, help WUK LAMAT WIN". Oh boy, guess who's going to win the Rite or else the plot won't move forward and we'll have a sad popoto?), the whole theme of 'cultivating' a leader was bogus as the Dawnservant didn't even encourage us to sandpaper his trueborn son (or Bakool) to avoid a bloodbath (but for the sake of having a 'villain' this was overlooked on purpose), Bakool Ja Ja was purposely warped into a Disney villain where you only feel sorry for him at the VERY END of the Rite, and then there's Koana with the most depth and complexity out of the four but on the best terms with Wuk Lamat and therefore given a shoe-in for succession. And that's just my gripe with the Rite itself and how it was presented. I'll try to be succinct about Wuk Lamat since, regardless of who voiced her, the writing would still be terrible and I could easily count on both hands where the lines failed to stick the landing. She's a golden cub who transcended EVERY weakness (including physical) through the power of friendship, peace and love, and no manner of 'relatives and loved ones close to her are dying' sympathetic trope is going to make me feel less strongly on that( "Papa?" was her best line). What else was there to 'cultivate' from Wuk Lamat who was already chosen to become the Dawnservant and the dilemma was that she hadn't 'achieved a mighty feat to be recognized for'? It was unfair and there was far too much praise heaped upon her by the WoL; too much cheerleading, not enough mentoring. The only two redeeming qualities that character had was that she actually went out to face the enemy instead of blubbering about 'why are we being attacked? We haven't done anything wrong' peace idealism, and the other is that she's actually endearing when she's doting on her nephew. That's it. "Anything good to say about Wuk Lamat?" She's a good aunt. She is not a well-written character. It's a shame about Sphene because she was a good villain, but not enough time or depth to grant her the same level of awe that we've grown accustomed to with other villains like Emet-Selch or Zenos.

6:05 would have wished they hired someone like Suzie Yeung for Wuk, who has the range to cover the girlfailure + brave warrior aspects of Wuk, or maybe Allegra Clark

I have had Japanese voices since level 1 and I disliked Wuk Lamat in EW patches, then she grew on me in the first half of dawntrail. Then she started to wear on me, and then grate. Some of the reasons you saw by the time you made this, others in the final two zones. Overall I think this is a pretty good take, I just personally grew very tired of seeing and hearing her even with a fantastic vocal performance. I couldn’t make it through English from what I’ve heard. Dawntrail is the first time I’ve skipped main story cutscenes as it is.

The bossfights in Dawntrail thus far are light years ahead of previous content.

Ive been complaing about the stale cadence since shadowbringers... Which is my favoeite expansion.

I'm like 80% sure my beloved FFXIV is being more and more homogenized for mobile. I can just feel it in my gut. I am so disappointed in the current state of the game.13 hours of the 21-hour expansion are cutscenes. Literally what are we even paying to play? Long gone are the days of Heavensward, OGs know what I mean. It was bizarre in Endwalker how long and grueling the writing and gameplay had become and it is equally sad to see it repeated here even though I literally knew what to expect. No class identity, if you've played one you've played them all. Padded writing, just sad man. This game was something special for so long. But if you share this opinion, you tend to get bullied or harassed by the supposed "nicest/nontoxic community" it's a shame. This game needs to change it up big time.

i like dawntrail. I went in with some friends RP'ing a vacation/exploration. The zones were great, the dungeons were great. The story, omg sooooooooo borig, and don't get me started on Wuk Lmao.

Things I didn’t like in dawntrail: Those stupid parts of the msq that makes us look for npcs to help aid or randomly talk to who have no relevance after that one encounter (waste of time, I felt like in this expansion we did that more than any other) Wuk Lamat voice actor falling short in certain scenes that should have been more impactful Wuk Lamat clenching her fist every 5 seconds in a cutscene (in nearing the last few area of the game) and how she kept on going about “all we need to do is get to know each other” yeah I’m the beginning of the first part of the game sure but in the last area it was pointless. Things I like the Galool Ja Ja fight The wild west I love the American voice actors and however one was carrying a gun The last area (if you played ff9 you would appreciate it more than others) Solution 9

Honestly, if anything, I feel like this isnt harsh enough. Quite aside from its story issues(and they are legion), Dawntrail doesnt just repeat the formula, it actually is even more hollowed out than before. For example: - There are only 4 solo duties in the whole expansion, and theres little variety in them. Stormblood, by contrast, had 8 of them. -There's been a general problem with creeping cutscene bloat in 14 and Dawntrail continues this trend to the point of absurdity, there is so, so, so much unnecessary exposition, especially in the first half. -14 reuses music a lot but in this expansion it is obnoxious. It's not only more common (including heavy use of the dreaded 'machinations' from ARR) owing to the lack of original music, theres also a lot of strange track selection. Like the apocalypse music from Endwalker being spammed when any of the villains do something significant.

Hope you get to make another video after you finish the entire expansion... coz lv90-94/95 Wuk Lamat is a-okay for me; post95.... she outstays her welcome and very tiring.

Thank you for your civility on this and providing actual discussion points for your criticism. It's been exhausting seeing people just shit on this expansion with no other argument than "yawntrail this sucks blah blah blah". I admit, I liked the expansion the first time through, but...looking back on it, I am increasingly having to admit to myself I was not nearly as attentive to cutscenes as I used to be. By the end I was more eager to just finish MSQ to get endgame stuff going than I was to see the finale of the story. Wuk's VA didn't really bother me, but I understand why people are annoyed with it. I just wish the community was less cruel about it to the VA, because there was a lot of really, really unkind commentary towards her when 7.0 launched, and quite a bit of it was directed towards her personal life. I hope the incoming story patches do alleviate these pains, but I agree that this game is desperately in need of change.

I'm a day one player, and I've had these same thoughts for a while now. I played all of ARR, all of Heavensward, and most of Stormblood. I played the main story of Shadowbringers and Endwalker, but immideately quit afterwards each time. Everyone would get outraged when I brought up my greviences, but I truly think this game has no future if it continues down it's current path. Every expansion on launch, without fail, will have EXACTLY the following: 1. Level cap increased by 10. 2. Six new zones. 3. 10 Aether Currents. 4. Two new jobs. 5. A dungeon every other level. 6. A trial around the 3rd level. 7. Another trial around the 7th level. 8. The final quest of the expansion will be the name of the expansion, followed by a trial. 9. Two extreme trials at endgame, one for accessories and one for weapons. 10. Two dungeons to run for that expansion's tomestones. Then, there will be EXACTLY five content patches: 1. Every even patch will have a savage raid, which will be exactly 4 bosses in a bland square or circular arena. 2. Every odd patch will have a 24 man faceroll raid, which will provide catchup gear. 3. Every patch will have exactly 1 new faceroll dungeon. 4. They will add a new relic weapon to grind. 5. They will add a new ultimate raid. I didn't even mention the extreme homogenizing and simplification of the jobs. There's nothing to get excited for anymore, because as you said, you already know what's coming. If they actually took a risk and did something crazy like overhauled gear, added talent trees, or added hard 4 man content, I would genuinely come back to the game. But as it stands, I can't waste my money on the same expansion for the 5th time. Great video by the way!

This expansion would've been...bearable if they cut Wuk Lamat's lines by half. She is without a doubt, one of the worst written characters in the game and the final nail in the coffin for me was the final trial and how in the final bit of it they find a bullshit way to thrust her back into the story for a literal Naruto meme. Also while others will tip toe around it, I will not. The voice actor was a terrible choice, there are clear moment when Wuk Lamat is yelling or there's a tense scene where you can hear his real voice start to come out over his Wuk Lamat voice which again, if Wuk Lamat didn't have as many lines this wouldn't be much of an issue, but here we are.

I think these were all fair and good points!

Ngl you where right about the 4th zone having southern accents which weren’t southern accents and just felt louder then the other VAs with no actual emotion to them

1. Tbh the dungeons were pretty fun. Nothing to add here. Specially the lvl 100 dungeons that you unlock post msq. 2. I enjoyed the msq thoroughly until the second half post lvl 65. Even then most of it was above average in the mmo market. 3 I did feel at times itching to go and do some fighting but wouldn't go as far as to say I was bored. 4. I don't really care for the voice acting. It was fine for me and I think Wuk Lamat nailed it in the moments that counted. Though I am also a guy that would sacrifice voice acting at the altar of roleplaying games for more choice and branching consequences

Lost me at the Luffy comparison. What went wrong with Dawntrail is simple, Ishikawa and Kojifox got promoted, Yoship was busy with FFXVI and didn't provide much, if any, oversight and this is the result. A fanfic tier donut steel oc that loves peace, that steals every single scene and a sidelined wol. I would've been happier with the low stakes vacation filler arc, instead we got another end of the world scenario, but I am not sure sphene ever posed a real threat to anyone.

As an outside viewer who followed my friend's adventures through the game having listened to him talk about it and seeing him play it since launch and having never touched it myself, I figured this was probably going to be what Dawn Trail was going to serve up. It's like Mists of Pandaria for Final Fantasy XIV...with a lot less to do given the cyclical patches of content in World of Warcraft are even a bigger time sink than anything FF XIV has been able to conjure up so far, thankfully. But, it doesn't make it better that anyone even remotely familiar with FFXIV can literally probably see the same ol' narrative and post MSQ patch based shortcomings all of the expansion share. But, honestly, dragging the player base by the nose through similar content droughts and patch cycles has been a problem for even WoW since Wrath of the Lich King and people are still playing that game and Yoshi-P has never made it a secret he had WoW to thank for helping inspire him in redesigning 1.0 so, yeah. Regardless of what bizarre and cyclical direction the game moves in I think it'll still pull through regardless of content droughts and deserts since people put up with WoW in that state for a decade and didn't stop paying for it. Also, I can't imagine the community that will still pay to travel to attend Fan Festival events in the middle of a world wide economic downturn are going to stop supporting the game regardless of how many "Yawn Trails," they develop at this point. Edit: I'm just hoping like the content after Mists of Pandaria in WoW there's more interesting stuff to experience in at least better MSQs down the road. There were some pretty good moments in quite a few expansions after MoP so, I guess I'm still game especially since my friend recently has finally gotten me to actually think about playing the game since Live Service games have finally broken me and made me hate them.

whoever wrote Dawntrail MSQ should be fired

I agree. And the dogshit voice acting only amplifies an already awful story. What a shame.

Day 1 player from ARR. This is the worst expansion (narrative wise). Absolutely banger for fights. I am not going to accuse, but if I learned SQEX was taking that ESG money it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. I was semi excited for Wuk Lamat towards end of EW, but they just rammed her down our throat for so many hours it was just old by 95. Not Texas was such a breath of fresh air for me.

my favorite character in dawntrail is the warrior of light because they dont speak

Not surprised your last video was disliked so much. The ff14 community for the most part is unhinged. I feel like SHB was the Wrath of the lich king for ff14, and now we're on the slow down turn. But since this is an MMO and the ff14 community is so detached and believe yoshi-p can't do anything wrong, the game has zero chance to reach even close to SHB again. Everything feels rushed, the patch quests with the gods could of been fleshed out as it's own expansion, could of been epic, the Endless could of had there own expansion as well, and would of hit harder in the feels if we actually were given time to give a crap about the characters.

As someone who was obsessed with FFXIV since 1.0, I'm glad I stopped at ShB. I knew that the success of ShB will bring in the destruction of story in an attempt to replicate the success. And I was right, served the remaining players the piece of crap that was Endwalker story and ended with the horrendous Dawntrail. When you abandon passion for profit then... good riddance.

For me the best example of everything wrong with the writing is in a very inconsequential cutscene, it's the introduction of the Unbound. Specifically, during that CS, there's a joke at one point where the leader says something like "we will spread our wings and soar through the blue sky !" and then she points out outside and the music cuts out and it's just rainy and shitty, now you might think "that's a good joke !" and I agree, it was a good joke, up until it cuts back to the leader and she says something like "bUt OnLy If ThE SkY iS AcTuAlLy BlUe lolol!!!!", explaining the joke and thus completely ruining it, taking the audience for a bunch of ret*rded pre-schoolers in the process, and that's basically what this whole expansion was like for me. Also, Wuk-Lamat's VA was just a DEI hire, anyone with vague knowledge of what's been going on with game devs could detect that from 10 miles away, she'd be fire a dubbing a robot though considering I asked myself multiple times if her voice was AI generated during the MSQ.

The moment it was announced that Yoshi P was taking over FF 16 and the studio was split between the two games, I had my doubts. We were warned they wanted to change the feel of the story, but I think they throttled back way too much.

I don't see why Wuk La Mat bothered to recruit the WoL and barely utilized the hero. Then there's the false marketing of the "Scions Divided" implying that they would have idealistic differences, leading to conflict.

I finished it today and i feel kinda the same, it definitely picks up after where you are, but I will say I found myself doing something I haven't done since stormblood and that is skip all scenes that arnt voice acted, any scene that is voice acted is integral to the plot anything not voice acted is interesting but not needed to understand the overall story, I've been playing since arr and shadowbringers broke that habit for me cause the story and world was so interesting and well written and that continued into endwalker, but dawntrail i found myself fall back into that habit.

Expansion was worse the Stormblood. its absolutely terrible

I have a 5 part blog series in the Lodestone detailing my pain points with the expansion and one of my two major complaints about Dawntrail is pacing/gameplay (the other being writing quality). Dawntrail probably has the worst gameplay to cutscene ratio of any expansion to come before it. To make a point I've started doing HW in NG+ I'm 54 quests in and it took me a day and 3 hours to get through that many HW quests, while the same amount of quests took me close to 4 days in DT - and that is with constant gameplay, no cutscene skipping and reading every line of dialogue. By the time you recruit Ysayle to your cause, 27 quests into HW you've already completed 5 solo duties. In Dawntrail, the first time you enter a solo duty is to fight Gulool Ja Ja, 24 quests in.

I also agree the constant lets all hug each other and sing kum bay ya is annoying after a while. Its time to accepet that this game is written for 6 year olds

It is one of the most boring plots not just in FF14, but in any game I've ever played, ever.