Is Dawntrail Any Good? Spoiler Free First Impressions 

Fun fact about that guy complaining about the dungeons being too hard, someone ended up called them out with a post a few years ago asking them to make the game harder

Honestly, the first half of dawntrail was exactly what I was hoping the Endwalker post patch msq was going to be. Just traveling the world and having a fun adventure and learning new cultures. I didnt hate what we got with the void and golbez but it just had too high of stakes too quickly. Overall really happy with the expansion and looking forward to savage

Definitely need 7.1 asap to get past this bad launch story. oof at least we'll be talking about the raid series soon instead of the msq.

LMAO, it’s like people do not realize that you can run dungeons with trusts for xp as well. I know it takes a little longer per run, but when the queues are long, it is worth it. Plus, you can level them trusts up and get the achievement for doing so. Bozja is good as well.

Heck yeah glad you’re back! You got me to finally try eureka and man that was hella fun and a good time consumed in the lull of EW! Overall I’ve had fun. Learning about all the different people that live in Tural was a lot more enjoyable this time around but I think because the new zones and graphics update really helped with the immersion in it. Definitely think a lot of the cutscenes should have been voiced especially before and after the first dungeon. That was a little weird imo. I did enjoy having a more laid back casual adventure this time around especially with all that dread and despair from the prior two expansions lol. Really looking forward to the upcoming fights and extremes because the fights in this expac have been SUPER fun to do and look at!

Overall, I've loved the expansion so far, I spent a majority of my first day leveling pictomancer to 90 and started the MSQ on BLM later in the day. I was someone who had contained their expectations, and instead of going in comparing it to Endwalker and Shadowbringers, which I feel does it a disservice story wise, I looked at it as a new chapter which I believe is how the devs wanted us to do. I think because of my viewpoint going into Dawntrail, I actually had a very different experience than most people I believe, I really enjoyed the first ~3/4 of the story more than the end, I definitely enjoyed the later part and am excited to see where they take the story from here, but there was just something about the little stakes adventure that the first part brought that just drew me in after having these large world ending stakes for the past 2 expansions. When it comes to non story content I definitely agree with the dungeons and trials, I really liked how they eased you into the difficulty of the dungeons, where the first was largely the same as any other dungeon in the game and it got incrementally harder as you unlocked later dungeons until you get to the expert dungeons where I don't think I've ever had more fun in a dungeon as those and am really excited to see where the battle content goes moving forward. A few things I feel I need to say though, because it's not all good, I 100% agree with the cut scenes, though I don't mind reading as much as others might, I would have liked for there to be more voiced cut scenes, it really felt like a step down in that regard from the past few expansions, and expected more, not only that, there were a few voiced cut scenes I felt were poorly voiced, particularly in zone 4. My final gripe with the expansion would simply be BLM, I like to raid, and other than the story it's my favorite thing to do in the game, but in my opinion the BLM changes make it feel hollow, like the soul of the job was taken away, it's way more clunky, Ice phase feels bad, and they reduced the movement opportunities it had. Personally, I'm still trying to enjoy it, but when I went into the first EX, I found myself really enjoying the trial itself, but BLM just didn't feel fun anymore. So even though BLM is my favorite job, and my main throughout EW, it's very likely I'm going to take a break from it at least this first tier and come back to it with hopefully a fresh mindset later on and enjoy it again.

The MSQ would be much better without a certain character, and properly finishing the writing and editing for all the main characters.

welcome back chief, I Cleared TEA in the Party Finder (As Viper) when

Long queue times for dps is one of the reasons why the trust system (duty support) was implemented. There's no reason to wait in queue for a dungeon, when you can just do it with a bunch of NPCs...

The first quarter of the MSQ had me asleep… thankfully it picks up around lvl 94ish MSQs

MSQ is horrible, For me first part is to about 95 lev was alright but nothing special and then everything went down. Extremally disappointed with main story but i was expecting that it will be hard task for them because Shadowbringers and endwalker set really high expectation. Also Yoshi P was doing FF16 so not sure how much involved was he in downtrial.

Yeah the first half is a low burn/slice of life theme which can be pretty polarizing. If i were to rate the story before I finished the 2nd half of the msq, I would've said It was only above arr and stormblood. It's a fun, low stakes story. I loved the later zones though with the 6th being one of my favorite zones ever. I'd put it as #3 now with EW at #2 and Shb at #1. I completely agree with you on dungeons and trials though. It's nice seeing such a big upgrade after personally not liking the msq dungeons in EW as much.

That one lvl 100 Dungeon is the reason i also skip expert roulette if i can currently. It's not the difficulty itself, but more that it has probably the most annoying mechanic ever implemented for the first boss, the punishment for getting hit is either you die, or you have to wait 5 seconds and literally do nothing, which is simply not fun. Also for the second Boss aswell there is a problem imo, you're at a disadvantage to keep track of the aoe's if you don't have a widescreen, because you can't zoom out far enough. This is more minor, but something they could improve aswell

My review would be, I hated the MSQ but I love all the new duties, visuals, music and both new jobs(Picto is my favorite job now). So basically what happened in Stormblood but even more polarized. Worst MSQ but best duties IMO.

I’m hardly getting through the MSQ. I get so bored and don’t want to waste my night on it. I’m going to have to get on there and just start skipping the story to just get through it.

Story was pretty terrible. The latter half was better, but a certain naruto lion girl was insufferable and alone dropped the expansion for me. If only she was killed off or just put somewhere far away.

Hello and welcome back goats! w vid and w expansion

It's hard to compete with going from saving our reality to saving ALL of reality only for our next big adventure be facing down a guy with two heads who we can turn to paste in an instant. Dawntrail was fine, I just didn't find myself engaged. I leveled half of my crafters and 2/3rds of my gatherers before I finished half the MSQ. I was LOCKED IN for Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Not so much for Dawntrail. Not awful, I just wish I cared more about what was goin on though most of that story.

It's ok. I started skipping cutscenes and spamming through dialogue around level 94. First time ever doing that in FFXIV. Dungeons, zones, trials are decent. Story and characters blow dicks.

welcome back goat

I’m struggling to get through the MSQ, haven’t done this since ARR

I personally thought the story was boring, Wuk lamat is literally just naruto/natsu so that already didn't make me like But the dungeons and extreme fights is really really good

I regret using my time off for this expansion and paying for sun I wish I used my limited time on ff7r or something else. Expansion is such a yawn fest. I’m fine with not saving the world but that doesn’t mean sideline me for a bunch of people I don’t care about. Literally only Corn Servant and the role quest were fun because they felt like vacation and full of humor.

Ayyy the phonon theme in the background

Its bad. Only fun for long term players. Hour in i was skipping cutscenes till final 2 zones

Yes the solo garlean soldier part in EW was damn awesome and i barely made it, but damn it felt good!

They just casually nerfed monk into the ground. How strange.

Yes ... they need to add gameplay back into the MSQ. This wasn’t a problem prior to Endwalker, but now, it is just CS after CS, after CS, after CS. If you are lucky you can have a break to go pick three flowers or something.

MSQ is ass but the content is soo good so far. I can live with that.

I didn't know Bozja was still popular with leveling. I haven't touch it since beginning of Endwalker when I was leveling Sage and Reaper. I thought people would use 81-90 deep dungeon as quick leveling.

Yawntrail

I think Dawntrail had the same amount of solo duties as Endwalker. But, they both had less than Shadowbringers and Stormblood.

gathering experience so far is a super slow manual grind with only one timed collectable node up to level 95 and after level 95 the last 5 levels zoom past in an hour or 2 of passive timed node grinding

Big gripe I have had with the games MSQ in EW and it seems this expansion is that there is not much game play through the MSQ. You get quests like talk to Wuk Lamat, Talk to Wuk Lamat again (Wuk Lamat walks off screen). Go to the other side of the map.... and talk to Wuk Lamat again.... And this is something they have been doing for a while now.

The casual Zone exploration, Dungeon and Trial design were fun, I had a good time with all of that, but the MSQ was such a slog to get through. Wuk Lamat is not a good character and that's an issue when the writers make her the face of expansion MSQ. As she is written right now she might be one of the worst NPCs in the entire game for me and it really hurt my enjoyment of the MSQ in the long run even if the story quality improved a bit for the last two zones. (despite going back on their word for a lower stakes story) As for the Wuk Lamat the big issue beyond her toddler level of understanding of how the world works and the lack of any real character development by the end is that shes around way too much and constantly pushes me (and everyone else) into the background to the point I wasn't even sure why my WoL was present for this story. The character writing as a whole feels really strange across the board though this expansion, they could have honestly cut most of the Scions out and it wouldn't have changed much, this was a chance to introduce a new fresh cast of characters and stories and they just kinda backtracked to what was safe and worked in the last two expansions. They didn't even really do the whole "Scions will maybe have conflict with each other" that they hyped up in the pre-release of Dawntrail, stuff. Thancred just kinda caused a cave in dungeon 1 and they were on our side for the rest of the first arc. Really strange. Im hoping for some course correction in the next major patch for MSQ going forward but we'll see I guess, the character writing seems to be very divisive this expansion across the entire world wide player base.

My boyfriend helped me level my PCT to 90 in just under 8 hours just doing dungeons

What gear are you using at the start of the video? I like the outfit.

We need justice for Krile. Her story is 10 times more interesting and shoved into the shadows every-time she tried to bring it up.

Worst expansion by far

I would argue that the writing is abysmal, worse than ARR even if it gets more interesting toward the end. However, you're completely right, this is the best the combat has been has far as normal content goes. I was extremely disappointed when I got to the end credits of the MSQ, but I am really enjoying leveling my classes through the new dungeons and trials.

I understand the complaint about the lack of voice acting, as I felt it as well. But, in reality, there were more voice acted lines in DT than EW. Now, if you want to cut some developers, have less gameplay elements / glam content, then sure, they can fully voice the MSQ. But, the expense would really hurt the rest of the game. After all, they have to pay the English, French, German, and Japanese voice actors a lot more money in order to accomplish all of that. Not to mention the other staff required to record those lines in all those languages.

Daily uploads when ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

MSQ was trash and ARR was better. At least I was the main character in ARR, we had interesting characters and the villain was iconic. I am a story addicted and for the first time I wanted to skip cutscenes. I was the kind of person who likes to click in every character to read what they were thinking, but the text was so generic and ripped of any type of personality that at some point I’ve just gave up.

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.

Yea, the video's dope and all, but what are those viper weapons in the intro. 👀

You have people saying they want the jobs to be more difficult, more complex, more challenging to play ... But, at the end of the day, the majority of the player base doesn’t want that. Also, FFXIV has some of the longest and most complex rotations of any mmo. If they increase the stress placed on the players through fight mechanics, then if jobs were more complex, more people would fail to clear savage / extremes. They are not going to go back to the Heavensward days in terms of difficulty in raids. Also, they don’t want the toxicity that comes with all those failures, as players attack others for not playing “optimally” when they themselves aren’t either. But, in terms of positionals, I say keep them. Seriously, why design the job with them, test it internally with them, they before the game is out for a week remove them, or some of them? Makes no damn sense, unless they are seeing people abandon the job.

i always enjoy some bigbluepurple content!!!

How did you get the weapon skin😮

Leave the viper alone for those can’t do the job play another job simple stop taking the fun away

I'm of the same opinion, i don't hate the story but i don't love it, but the battle content is so good i just can't get enough of it, even tho for now its just a handful of dungeons and 2 ex, i can't stress enough that these are way more engaging than EW dungeons and EX and i have had so much fun just farming the mounts

There are 4 that disappointed me: 1. It about Wuk Lamat (not to mention VA so they are fine as they are to me becuz I don't hate the VA 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 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 very upset but I don't mind waiting for future if they can make all current to have two dye slot happen. 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

I can't speak to the extremes since I haven't gotten to those yet, but I had a lot of fun with the dungeons and trials. I liked the story quite a bit though not to the level of ShB or EW. I actually thought the pacing was better but then the first thing I saw after I finished was how apparently everybody hated thepace and the story lol. I do agree with your criticisms regarding more gameplay like solo instances and such. Will be great to see how the rest of the expansion turns out and your videos along with it!

Story was straight up garbage. 9 year subscriber, 37 years playing FF Games going back to the NES. This was by far the worst FF story I've ever had to slog through. May we never see idiot orange cat ever again(And I've had 2 orange tabbies over 30 years and love them). Poor Krile and Erenville got shafted. Our Warrior of light was a cardboard cutout that smiled and nodded through most of the cutscenes. 139 times we had to talk to Wuk Lamat. The Scions fell in love with orange cat for no reason. Y'shtola contacts Wuk Lamat through link pearl so she can talk to us, even though she has had our linkpearl for the last 10 years.... There's so many things I can nitpick on this expansion I would be here all week. The Dungeons, trials and raids though. So, so much fun. The best opening duties we've had in an expansion yet.

Is more of the same tbh

Dunno why everyone keeps saying they removed the walk back to bosses in dungeons. Ive seen litno change. Even in the new ones

To be honest, the playerbase itself is why I don’t like Dawntrail. I was really enjoying my time with the MSQ, but being yelled at by other people that I’m supposed to hate it and if I like it then I don’t deserve to be part of the playerbase is just way too exhausting. At the end of the day, the XIV community is no better than the WoW community.

MSQ poo, combat/dungeons/trials quite good Why Squeenix makes a story-focused game with amature-hour main story for an Expac, we may never know.

Battle content is grwat. Story is garbage self insert.

I don’t like it.

I really like it so far but I’m lv 93 rn it’s not shadowbringers or endwalker good but it’s better than everything that came 1:05 before shadowbringers

You are very unaware of SE’s financial issues. It’s a “billion dollar company” but it’s been taking loss after loss. This game is literally it’s only form of revenue/profit. Which is sad because, if SE wasn’t poorly ran, this game would probably have bigger budgets to work with which means we could of had a even better game to play. Blame SE’s terrible choice of pairing with sweet baby inc. No doubt the only reason why they paired with that company is because of Disney.

I've been enjoying the MSQ more than the average person. No it's not the best but it doesn't seem like a far step from the quality of ARR or Stormblood, which are still good expansions. If they just would let us guide our journey more ourselves that would go a long way. Give us several objectives to complete and let us explore on our way picking and choosing which way we want to go. I think that would be more fun

I loved the story, with my only gripes being that second later half. I too wish for a bit more combat sections, that train one could have been a great pick and wuk grew on me

The story is mid but I enjoy the 97-100 stuff and cant wait to find out what happens. The actual content is a huge step up and some of the best the game has ever seen. The graphics look amazing for the engine and will be further ironed out and bug fixed. Personally I love the expansion as a whole even though the story is meh and Wuk Lamat is annoying but not exactly terrible. So to summarise we have a divisive expansion with a character a lot of people dislike - paired with a huge step up in PVE content and fun....exactly like Stormblood and what followed SB? the 2 best expansions the game has ever seen.

So far i have enjoyed it. The new updates are fun. The MSQ is ok to an extent. I like Wuk Lamat however she did get alittle annoying, she was just like naurto or that one guy from Black Clover who at some point you just want them to go away. The start the msq was kinda boring to the point I found myself watching other things while the cut scenes played. But now the story has picked up so im loving it alot more now. Alot of reading which I hated! And wayyy tooo many fetch, follow quests ugh. However I enjoyed the new dungeons which is new bc half the time I hate them. So yea Msq is something new I can understand the slow start. At least its not as bad as stormblood.

I enjoyed the story alot, I kind of liked that most of it wasn't an end of worlds type of thing since there wasn't multiple expansions building up to this story like shadowbringers or endwalker was. I liked the last half alot, I do agree that I wish there was a little more voice acting in some of the scenes, as well as I do hate the stealth missions, they drive me crazy. All of the quality of life changes are amazing and the dungeon and fight design is really good! The final story dungeon made my group wipe multiple times on the first and last bosses, extreme trials also were really good and tough, and it seems like they might have fixed issues people had with the extreme versions by skipping things that created a cutscene in the regular fights which is so nice

The one thing I'll say about Dawntrail's MSQ is that it got me to look up WoW's pre-patch date while playing it. Which is odd since I dislike Blizzard and WoW. Like in the middle of what the writers likely intended for me to be focused and engaged, I just tabbed out and looked it up out of no where.

2:46 Shout out for that one healer on the Red Chocobo 4:39 I'm going to be honest, the difficulty level of the dungeons surprised me. If the developers truly intend for Dawntrail to be a second step-in point for future newcomers - and they MUST for the health of the game - then they really overdid it on the dungeons. I'm playing with a long-time friend and the sprout they brought into the game, who story- + job boosted so that we could play Dawntrail together, and said newcomer just doesn't want to do duties anymore because it's way too hard if you're not familiar with the combat language. I warned my friend of the level 97 dungeon after the 95 one left a bitter taste, they decided to run that duty for our newcomer friend instead. I'm confident that our new friend is capable of doing the dungeons eventually, but WoW's toxic dungeon culture has them concerned and scarred for PuG duties, especially if someone messes up. They fear similar reprimands in XIV, and this difficulty spike is not helping. Long term players are elated; for newcomers it can be a massive turn-off if DT _were_ to be a step-in point. I'm now very concerned that the developers want to story-gatekeep newcomers and force them through the Zodiark x Hydaelyn ark. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the story and game, but that's just far too massive a demand to make of newcomers at this point. On MSQ: one could write a full essay on it, but it's clear that veterans did not write it. Ishikawa had a supervisory role, along with the original MSQ writer. Inconsistencies are noticeable all throughout, clever set ups were set, only to never be used. Pacing was all over the place, as was the emotional obtrusion; particularly in the latter half. It's safe to say, however, that Dawntrail is by far the worst part of the entire game from a narrative perspective.

Most people say that the story is the WORST among all expansions: SE has failed hard this time. 🤮

Ive enjoyed it, almost finished. I did find it to be predictable though and the dungeons were fairly easy. I did it all with duty support.

dt story sucks, jobs are not fun except for vpr and picto

It’s genuinely one of my favourite stories in the game. Is it perfect? No. Is the music, zones, dungeons, trials and characters good? 10000000%.

Dawntrail is amazing

Let’s face it. Shadowbringers and Endwalker was a fluke. And the game peaked at those two expansions. Even Yoshi P said in one of those interviews that they didn’t know what to make of the story until shadowbringers. They probably can never pull off an epic story like that again. The story in this expansion doesn’t seem to set anything up for future expansions. The best they can do, is to make the combat better and then play it safe until the game slowly dies. This next 10 years is going to be a slow death for this game.

Dawntrail is a Masterpiece. The story is great and funny. The music is great, graphics update and new challenges and awesome rewards. I cant wait for more 🤩

20+ viper debuffs on one enemy geeeeez 😅