> Are you still alive? Activating reserve power. > Are you still alive? Disengaging safeties. > Target area delineated. Commencing erasure. And then chaos ensues...
As a Scholar, that is the time when I'm like okay Expedience go! Need all the movement. Plus throw on as fat as a shield on everyone as I can just to be safe.
fucking hitting us with prey marks after a spread flare x4 and then an acceleration bomb immediately followed while dodging the entire room for a normal trail was ridiculous and i loved it
Gotta love how Absolute Authority was as close to a savage mech that normal can get 3 Flares Triangle Stack markers 2 Gazes on top of only have 2 safe spots for others. Actually goated
I've come to calling it The Kitchen Sink mechanic. Because Queen Eternal throws everything and the kitchen sink at you for that one. Random bullshit go!
Happens around the time you get LB3 too so I wonder if they designed it with that in mind. Like they expect that most of the raid will just die and healer LB3 will be the best way to recover. Though on my first run of it, the other healer DCed and never came back, so I ended up solo healing it and we didn't have the option of LB3.
@@nytheris2848 I was tanking, saw the countdown and instinct made me hit the LB. A bunch of us still died, but somehow we had LB3 again right after and a healer saved it.
I'm the sort of nerd who screamed "IS THAT A FUCKING PENROSE DIAGRAM" when I saw it it's not jsut grid warping, it's using a physics diagram used to show the infinite past and future and infinite space (in 1 dimension anyways) in a finite space the edges are the infinite future she uses a diagram showing the infinite future to kill you, to protect her dream of an infinite future for the endless.
Theres a million good and cool things to say about the trial and Dawntrail. But my biggest joy was that the Azem Crystal was saved for a special occasion. EW patchs really overplayed that hand but its special and cool again, so thank you writers.
I think I actually prefer the crystal more than how the scions were handled this expansion. Trial 2 felt a bit forced with the appearances. At least the crystal is a canonical way we don’t have to fight alone without needing a full roster. The fact it gets played as one of azem’s main fighting tactics I think has some charm in that as their successor we also now hold that power.
yeah a shame theres as many bad things to say about DT. although most of them are just abuot story writing and some bad voice acting (mostly wuk lamat) At least the dungeons and mechanics and music are excellent.
@@zeehero7280 Nah, the direction hasn't been this poor since ARR. Some of the scenes have the proper volume to them, others are yelled in lowercase. Sena just gets the worst of it because Wuk Lamat has, like, a third of the voiced lines this expansion.
@@jacobkern2060 Yeah, some of the scions sound really off. Most of the newer characters sound well. Wuk lamat has some issues, but the VA has a lot of lines and does a really good job in most scenes. The issues is that, be it the actor, accent or direction, fail to reach higher notes. So scenes where she is supposed to be yelling is more aggressive talking.
Who thought it would be a good idea to put a young girl's mind into a processor that is designed to turn the souls of the innocent into fuel? Poor Sphene.
YEAH I kinda got the suspicion that she wasn’t acting ENTIRELY of her own accord, I feel like Preservation’s scientists could have programmed her to prioritize the Endless above all else.
@@DigitalCoffee08 Tbh i have more the feeling it is some kind of "What happens when you give a KI all of your memories without the emotions?" stuff like using technic to bring someone back "from the dead" She know she must protect her people, but she dont fully understand _why_
@@DigitalCoffee08I think Krile's parents straight up said that. Preservation manipulated the memory data so Sphene would overly prioritize preserving the Endless.
It is a bit too subtle, but yeah Sphene's prime directive is to sustain the Endless. She can't think of or entertain defying it, at least directly... hence her hinting to use several time to stop her through the MSQ.
There's something very tragic about it all. We just had the ancients and their utopia, but the Alexandrians' artificial world isn't that. It's a decaying unsustainable digital world filled with tacky attractions and inhabitants that are just recordings of when the place had real people in it. Also just to really make it obvious, the final zone's music is playing on dead mall speakers. The unlost world is a dead mall and your quest is to turn the lights off and close up shop.
Emet Selch: "Yet you claim I recreated Amaurot and populated it with phantoms of our people. A bizarre indulgence that would be insulting to their memory."
@@SoooooooooooonicableLiving Memory is somehow even more sad. The illusionary Amaurot served a purpose for Emet; to remind him what he is fighting for and to show us his people's way of life. Living Memory is not a means to the end, it is the goal. An eternal mural of what was painted with the blood of all that lived.
Living Memory may have been unsustainable, but it wasn't a twisted/empty heaven!! IDK where people keep getting this from. They had no right to juice all of reality to fuel it, but the people we killed were happy. They were real. Children who never were happy in life, lovers who never got to be together. We don't get to pretend we just emptied the recycling bin to save ourselves the trauma.
They definetely amped up regular content difficulty this xpac, and as if that wasnt enough role quests require you to understand and take on multiple mechanics such as tanks needing to mitigate raidwides to save healer, take tank buster towers, intercept tethers and so on. I honestly really like it and look forward to what they are cooking for savage.
@nevy4256 I'm just talking like pinnacle of hype. Hades, Elidibus, Hydaelyn, and Endsinger. Literally in order of "there's no way they can top this" and they did
Meteion and Sphene kinda parallel each other. Meteion was all about killing everyone so that no one needed to suffer anymore, but Sphere was about keeping her people alive forever so no one would have to grieve or be forgotten. Both initially had good intentions, but their ideologies were twisted by circumstances that were put upon them.
The last worlds also mirror each other. While we were bringing hope and adding new connections to Ultima Thule, we were quite literally killing the Memory zone and everyone in it. Turning that beautiful golden world into a gray tomb HURT.
@@0332288both are lessons about how to deal with loss. UT is about having hopes for the future, while LM is about how to let go of the past and move on. Both teaches us that life is beautiful because it is fleeting, just because it may end or doesn’t last forever doesn’t make life not worth living
its reflected on the final map too. As in Ultima Thule for instance, the music, is quiet and distorded but as we progress it gets lively and loud. In Living Memory the music is there , 'alive' and we , as we progress, shut it down, into the silent tomb that it is
We now have a balance in the X.0 final boss category. We now have: - 2 individuals from a warmongering nation with access to deific powers (Gaius, Shinryuu) - 2 old men with a vision (Thordan, Emet-Selch) - 2 girls packing reality-warping firepower (Endsinger, Queen Eternal)
endsinger: i will spare life of the suffering of death by killing them queen: i will spare life of suffering of death by continuing their lives forever
I liked how Endwalker was about the fact that pain is inevitable in life, but Dawntrail was about finding the people that make life worth living and remembering the good times we had with them. 7.0 MSQ had some clunky portions but it was the most human story we’ve ever gotten and it was very touching
Yes, time circles endlessly, the hands of fate trained ahead All things change, drawn to the flame, to rise from the ashes To begin, we first must see the end...
@@skyash7566 exactly. People gotta understand the criticisms. I personally enjoyed Dawntrail's main story, but my final ranking for JUST STORY probably goes Shadowbringers > Endwalker > Dawntrail > = Heavensward > Stormblood > ARR
That's why I was glad I had someone in the trial who'd already done it. They said "don't panic," so I didn't LB. Then everyone else panicked and we wiped like four times. Awesome fight!
Yeah probably the next big setup, who is Azem and what have they been doing? They knew of the WoL arriving to help Elidibus in Panda, they're seemingly involved with this new shard travel tech that's unlike anything the Ascians have done and would have ever done.
Correct me if im wrong. Milalas used the azem key (lets just call it this wat) to escape the 5th rejoining calamity of ice into the shard that was already destroyed from the sources point by the 2nd calamity - lightning? I know they can explain this by shard havung different time flows most of the time. But if not then isnt it technically possible to move across time and spac to go back to Alexandria and save their ppl by taking them to another shard? This opens the nasty can of time travel worms tho. Also another thing lalas originate from southern isles... last time azem was mentioned pre sundering was saving an island from a volcano eruption so they key can be OG Azems.
@@system6bro ShB showed us that time travel with shard travel is possible but until that's covered up fully and we're told time travel was involved I'm going to assume this is the timeline of events Alexandria's shard gets fucked by Levin and the world dies Alexandria figures out a way to save their kingdom and region with the stone technology Lalafells from 5th Calamity arrive some time after rejoining and integrate into the new kingdom, Alexandria starts to suffer from lack of resources to sustain their eternal life system, start to look into shard travel artifact to harvest life elsewhere Lalafells hide the relics away in order to prevent Alexandria from causing harm to others Sphene reaches out to someone for help, events of game happen.
Tbh they've done that as an anti-spoiler measure for a while now That's why Vauthry is Innocence, why Meteion is Endsinger, and one of the reasons why Emet-Selch is Hades in his trial (the name reveal wasn't technically necessary in ShB, but it was a useful gameplay trick) They just know a lot of players will naturally talk about trials, especially once extremes are out. And if you don't know yet, people asking in public chats for a Endsinger party or a Innocence party is a lot less spoilery than using their real names. Though to be frank, Queen Eternal is not that hard to figure out
I've seen people calling Sphene a "copy/paste Emet" already but I feel like you'd have to be painting in pretty broad strokes to think that way. The biggest difference between the two being just how remorseful Sphene is about what she's doing. Emet didn't feel bad about his actions to the very end. He said so just before he poofed for the second time. Sphene on the other hand declares her hatred of the queen she was based on because it turns out being created from a kind woman's memories makes large-scale genocide harder to do. She even goes so far as to delete those memories and reduce herself to the unfeeling Queen Eternal just so that inherited kindness won't stop her from doing what she needs to anymore.
I can see how people might see her as a "copy" of Emet-Selch but, really, the Alexandria situation and Sphene herself are heavily borrowing from FFIX's end of disc 3 reveals and threats. It's an interesting way to open the gates to future MSQ involving crossing the rift, too! I know that post-EW was heavy handed with the FFIV and DT with the FFIX but... I think it's fun that there's shards that are like alternative universes of FF stories.
If sphene is similar to anyone, it’s Eldi, not Emet. She’s been programmed to be a primal like entity guarding her entire people. I actually found the similarities really poignant as a further exploration of Zodiark and how people reach the point where they find soul sacrifice ok.
Saying Emet-Selch didn't feel bad is also a lack of understanding tbh, one of the very reasons he even approaches you in shb is his underlying guilt about the bloody path his kind has taken. It's even mentioned by Y'Shtola how the illusions in amaurot treat you as children, unlike the ancients who treat you as a familiar, because Emet subconsciously recognized modern humans as people, but very immature ones, which added to the guilt. The "not truly living" speech is clearly shown as something he *needs* to tell himself to continue, which is also cemented by the side stories. Yes, he does not regret having fought for his people and won't change his mind on that, but saying he absolutely had no regrets or empathy about the way they chose to do it is a very gross misunderstanding of his whole character.
It's funny. I finished Dawntrail just 24 hours ago and I did it as dps, which means I sat in this boss room with this music playing while waiting half an hour in the queue, yet here I am coming back and listening to it again already
As someone that did the same because of Picto Brain, I'm in the same boat. Just did the fight last night and waited 40 minutes for the queue, but those opening notes had me HOOKED even before the rest of the song played, and here I am for even more lol
It might have just been nostalgia but this particular summoning circle seemed brighter and to pulse more when the pillars emerged. Also do remember this isn't our body, this is our SOUL we're using, Dawntrail's final boss is sending our soul into cyberspace and summoning the souls of other heroes to fight a reality eating super computer in the remnants of a dead world we just permanently took offline
I gotta say using nothing but our Souls to fight a reality eating supercomputer in the remnants of a dead world we just took offline was not on my list of things I thought would happen. But I'm not complaining
Hoping that this is the mount theme when the extreme comes out, I love her phase 1 theme and will gladly suffer for the mount to hear it in the overworld
I absplutely adore how it isn't some redemption story. Its 2 rulers who will do anything for their people. There is no right side just our side against them. We came out on top. Actually overall im really glad it wasnt just a "we are all friends" we need more opposition
i like how this was structured this time every dungeon and trial except this had the option of trust NPC'S and for the final trial its 8 warriors of light story wise it makes you think WoL 2: wait i thought you were on vacati- WHAT THE HELL IS THAT me: i dunno trouble somehow always finds me basically at least thats how i did it
I took it as our characters finally taking shit serious enough to consider needing help that’s on a comparable level to them. Everything until then seemed to imply our character wasn’t putting in 100%.
The mechanical storytelling in this fight is so cool. Right after Sphene uses Absolute Authority, the LB bar fills up to max. That attack drained so much Aether from us that were flooding with Dynamis.
That or it's just the busiest mechanic ever put in a normal mode so they just wanted more casual players to have a healer lb in the pocket just in case :P
That "Random Bullshit, Go" attack during the final phase got me every time. idk if i somehow trigger the acceleration bomb (I've delt with them enough), but I always eat a 1-2 hit knockout.
Sphene is definitely an alternate take on Garnet/Dagger if she never met Zidane (Wuk Lamat being the Zidane of this expansion). Instead we get alternate version of Kuja being Zoraal Ja coming in contact with her first. She ends up becoming a mix of Garland and Brahne now.
I love when the writers for FFXIV remix the characters and themes of previous FF entries. It feels great when you notice a similarity but get to think about it in a whole new way.
Heartening to see others out there noticing this too! It's unfortunate that it's kind of so specific that only the acquainted stand a chance of realising it
Funny story, when I fought her for the first time, there were two separate instances where 3/4 of the party got wiped out… but both times, one of the healers survived and we somehow managed to bounce back. We won first try.
In my first time going through this I had to use the healer LB3 after seeing me and the tank survive after Absolute Authority had finished - very satisfying considering I died to the very first mechanic lol!
Same! I'm a Sage and my Cohealer was a Scholar, even with us having used LB3 like three times we somehow beat it first pull lol, I thought it was over so many times
Same, I was Sage with a Scholar co-healer and we probably used our lb3 at least 4 times. Wiped 5-6 times before the Scholar and one Tank bailed, then we proceeded to have the cleanest 6-man clear, albiet a touch slow. I learned solo healing is kind of pleasant, no worries on wasting cooldowns.
Thank you for making this spoiler friendly with the thumbnail and title. I've already done this trial, but it's a nice gesture for those who haven't. :)
Gotta be my favorite fight in the game. The visuals, music, mechanics and story are all so damn good. I am actually tempted to learn the Extreme once it comes out. Still never done any besides trying and falling at one in ShB.
I'm not the only one thinking that during the fight , she briefly brought us to the Third and Fifth right? Those were the shards ravaged by Earth and Wind if y'all remember
I'm not sure, because while she does absorb the key with Azem's energy from our invocation before the fight starts, the move is all called Virtual X, and we're supposed to be inside the central processor for Everkeep, though maybe it ends up ringing true because of Wuk Lamat commenting on her breaking reality. Very curious thought
It would have to be simulations. The Third and Fifth are gone. Once a Reflection has been rejoined to the source, it no longer exists. You'd need to time travel, like G'raha did with the Crystal Tower, which is a different function than the weird time dilation stuff between Reflections.
@@rallivsalado6806 It might be! I'm just going off feeling here haha. I do wish they'd hurry up with releasing the soundtrack disc, but it's most likely going to be a few more months still.
When I set out to go help a cute lion woman be king, shutting down an interdimensional block chain that feeds on planets was not on my bingo sheet Edit: A part of me wonders how this fight would go if we had our G-Warrior mech from ShB
Can you guys think of any specific song using similar instruments-genre like when this one pops off at your timestamp? I need more of this in my life 🥺
Yeah the final phase of this fight was a forced reminder that this isn't your characters story then the attack patterns are heavily simplified to the point you'd swear it's a realm reborn trial
Last part truly is the cute thematic bow on the fight but they really gave us the boss with the ungodly layered Absolute Authority and couldnt have given us a little spice at the end that maybe couldve been extra thematic with Wuk blocking mechanics from hitting us or something, either way its one poor mark against one of my favorite fights in the game.
This fight and story reminded me of a Lostbelt from FGO, a reality that should not exist nor deserve to exist so we need to delete it for the sake of the living...
ff14 and fgo have SO many similarities, fgo is from the perspective of the original world wanting things to go back to the way they were, ff14 is from the perspective of the newly birthed worlds just wanting to continue existing. WoL and Chaldea Master would get along as people, but as combatants, they're on distinctly opposite sides of the same conflict. Besides that Koyansaka has some Emet/Elidibus parallels, Temple of Solomon and the Final Day have us march onwards and persevere thanks to the bonds we'd forged, both games have a character get replaced by a younger insecure combatant trying to live up the original, etc. Easily my two favorite pieces of fiction and they just share so much in common
During the shift phases you enter two dead reflections where calamity struck. The first one was that of wind, there is so much wind ether around that she begins using only Wind themed attacks. The other one is Earth in a similar manner. Both planets are completely destroyed as well, they are beyond saving, but the planes still exist, which really means that only parts of them get reclaimed by Hydaelyn.
If that's true then that explains how Alexandria continued to exist in its shard via the barrier. I just assumed they pulled a Minfilia and blocked the lightning with the barrier.
I wonder if those Wind and Earth bits are meant to be visions of the 1st and 4th rejoinings given the bigger focus on showing us more of the calamities this time such as the survivors of the Levin infested shard and then descendants of those who escaped the 5th calamity on the source.
This ost is an absolute banger. Im a monk main struggling to learn the new changes. I definitely got the perfect rotation buff hearing this song during the fight.
So. How do we all feel about the story? I personally liked it. If you didn't? That's alright. We can all agree that the music for this expansions' great, at least? EMERGENCY CODE: DUEL
@@MyFeuerFreyI really disliked the way all the cyber stuff is introduced and explored, personally :c I feel like it would have been a blast in its own expansion, with more time to meet the Alexandrians and get to know them. Instead I felt kind of... forced to care?
@@Dharsi We'll most likely learn much more about then in the future patches. I do like how they took Medieval and mixed it with Future Tech, a concept I don't see much in media o:
I like that this fight is a culmination of Wuk Lamat's journey. She develops and grows a lot over the course of the story, and while she's a tad naive and overly idealistic at times, she still manages to connect with people through her empathy. Sphene and her plan is Wuk Lamat's idealism and empathy if it was taken to the absolute most horrific extreme, showing Wuk Lamat how she herself could potentially stray if she doesn't lean on the support of her allies.
I remember the scene of Lamat trying to give a corpse medicine to get better after the first attack from Alexandria. That was raw. And given Sphene's story, makes the paralels clearer in my opinion.
yeah the entire point is her idealism is hitting a wall against two opponents that are not willing nor will be willing to concede and following the WoL steps of confronting an enemy on opposite ideals while also learning about them (what happens with Emet and then eventually Metion) If anything the problem being the game's writing did not try to be subtle enough about this so they do spell it very VERY often
This fight really resonated with me once you realize that Sphene and Wuk Lamat are two sides of the same coin. They want to do right by their people, for their people. But go about it 2 completely different ways
having duty support for the first two trials was great and something i wasn't expecting but ngl i popped off once we pulled out our azem cystal here LOL
This is the theme that plays when there's only one thing left to do and all doubts about the sacrifices you made are gone. The path only goes forward Warriors of Light. March onward to the future!
Dunno why but for me, it's the whistle at 1:10. It's like a Leitmotif of a single-player RPG's main theme that's involve in the final boss music. Can just imagine a "Calm" version of the song with the whistles being a prominent part :)
