How are you guys enjoying Dawntrail so far? Finished the story? Wiped on the Extreme Trials yet? All geared up and ready for the Savage raids next week? 🔥 I'm a little sad that this expansion ended up so disappointing, to be honest. Here's hoping the patch cycle brings us some fun content!
Wuk Lamat hit that girl boss trope harder than Rocky punched meat. Literally, there is no struggle for her. She was carried through the whole story yet gets all the credit? I'm over here thinking how bad my back hurt after the MSQ. It mirrors what American politics are trying to do. Let's put this ditzy airhead in charge that is riding the waves of other's successes. Also, don't get me started on the build-up of Valigarmanda for it to be some throw-away boss halfway through the story. The only good stuff in the game is when the lightning dome appears, but honestly, I was disappointed when I found out the second half wasn't going to be a western. Also, where are the Blue Mages?
@@Mortified42 Dunno what you mean by "American politics" but I can agree that the expansion finally gets good around the time the dome turns up. Also I expect the blue mages to turn up when the blue mage update comes along, and not a moment sooner 🙄
Dawntrail has inspired me to quit and take a break for a while, maybe things will be fun/fresh then, hopefully things feel a little more fun mid expansion, if not I will probably just wait untill the next expansion
The story is in the telling. The good parts you're describing is just the lore --- the sequence of events as is. The cold factual fictional history, and the implications therein. Story is the audience's experience of said events. You can layout Red Riding Hood in bullet points and that would be lore. An opening line that says "It was cold inside the wolf's belly." -- now that, that's story. If it's "told poorly" as you say, then it's a bad story.
The most frustrating thing for me was how many missed opportunities there were to do something interesting or inject some characterization. The Feat of Repast was the first spot it really jumped out at me. Pairing Wuk Lamat and Koana together was the most boring choice the writers could've made in that situation. Having her paired with one of the antagonists would've been a good opportunity to flesh them out as well as test Wuk's relentless optimism.
Pairing Wuk Lamat with Bakool Ja Ja felt like the obvious choice tbh. Could've had the fight to get her keystone back halfway through, then taken the challenge on by ourselves while he's off licking his wounds.
I disagree, It would have been the most obvious route to take to pair her up with either bakool or zoraal, after watching the cutscene and seeing they were going to be pair up with someone i immediatly called the plot that she would be teamed up with one of them, So i was actually surprised and interested once they decided against the most obvious choice and chose koana. I also liked that they built more on the sibling relationship of koana and wuk and mirrored the eventual choice of leading tural together, it made koana throwing in the towel to support his sister alot more believable, And it made Wuk realizing that she couldnt have done it without her brother also more realistic.
@@nekolover17 I don't think obvious necessarily equals uninteresting. I would've preferred they welcome a little friction in the script, especially after Bakool essentially just committed a terrorist attack and we punched our hand and nodded and said we'd hold him accountable. The good guys teaming up and winning Iron Chef just doesn't really do anything to complicate the plot. It's filler. At the very least they needed to show us the pressure Bakool was under instead of having him go straight from being a cartoonish prick to sobbing over a mass grave of his unborn siblings. Zoraal's motivations and last minute sympathetic turn were even more baffling.
@@FEXOH While i can agree that they glossed over Bakool literally unleashing a living natural disaster free, im curious what you mean by calling the feat of repast filler. Because although the goal at surface level was mundane, just like the rest of the other feats they had depth on why we were doing them and in turn not making them filler. Also while maybe there is an arguement for saying they should have shown Bakools internal struggle with expectations and guilt of what his people did earlier, I think they did a great job at making him very unlikeable, and if they hinted at something deeper earlier on it would have felt very safe. yet another tortured villian troupe. Again maybe this is all just subjective but everyone in my friend group went from absolutely hating him to cheering him on and wishing him well on his path to make things right. and if a story can do that then I think its pretty great.
Thank you for pointing out that them overhyping the scions during fanfest became a letdown in the msq. It validated that I'm not crazy that I felt the same way.
That was such wasted potential. I would've loved a proper rivalry with actual fights against the other Scions. WoL/Wuk Lamat/Krile (or either of the twins) vs Koana/Thancred/Urianger would've been such a cool fight, I just know it 😭
As someone who has exposure to fanfests since 2018, trust me the stuff that is hyped at the NA fanfest always tends to be the least interesting thing or something that is misleading or a red herring. Do you know what was said at the ShB NA fanfest? That we would be taking the fight to the Garlean empire. We never did that in ShB. Turns out the whole thing was a misdirect, YoshiP was actually referring to 4.5 and Ghimlyt Dark, just that he worded it in a way that sounded like he was describing the new expansion's next major story arc.
You will be surprised how many healers I have the pleasure of playing with in Duty roulette at level 90+ who don't even have Esuna, Limit breaks or swiftcast to raise on their hotbar
I can attest to this because my friend is a healer main and we wiped in the first trial because everyone except a tank, him and myself were still alive. We had lb3 up but he didn't have it on his hotbar. He died in the time that he was trying to find it in the menu. I yelled at him for it and he said he never had to use it because healers didn't have much to do in previous expansions
@@kikukat8780 Your friend's never had a rough roulette pull then! I've used Healer LB3 to save a lot of sprout-heavy runs over the six months since I started Heal maining! (I was a dedicated AST main til the rebalance, I've had such a nightmare of a time relearning my cards that I'm WHMing through Dawntrail.)
Healer strike or no, there's definitely a healer shortage. And I think many of us (myself included) are not taking healer into duty roulette. I'm even leveling healers with FATEs, not duty finder.
@iPlayOnSpica mine are levelled up with khloe and front xD As a melee main i levelled up scholar all the way and ast that's all The two others are boring for me ( last time i levelled up white mage i haven't play between 2 raid tier since, it was too much for me xD )
The deal with the Healer Role Quests requiring you to use Esuna is actually a running gag in FFXIV. The joke being that healers never use Esuna in casual content, or forgetting it even exists. So this is sort of a reminder that, yes, you need to use Esuna.
The mulala are actually from the source, not the 5th shard. They were living on AloAlo island when they fled to this particular shard. If you have completed the AloAlo island variant dungeon you can confirm it during the MSQ
It's so implied that when I pointed it out to my friends I thought it was obvious, like how they talked about a calamity striking and Krile having the normal amount of aether as people from the Source, and not suffering from the same issue the rest had when traveling in The First
@@aguncomon I mean she was born in that shard still.. You're telling me because she by blood was born of Source native people a soul just passed through the rift to fill her 'vessel' rather than one native to the lifestream of that shard? My own theory for why she isn't notably weaker than others is due to being present/alive for the 7th Umbral calamity forcing her disjoined shards to meld together.
@@ExileTwilight I believe you have a point here, but on the other hand, maybe these fragments of a soul do seek their own counterparts when a rejoining happen. Maybe they don't seek random people (as you implied they could) And if we consider that her parents are descendants of people who "lived" at least 4 rejoinings (maybe 5 if they traveled to that shard after the rejoining happened) maybe her soul was indeed 7/14 when they delivered her to the source. I know it is a stretch, but that may be possible. It is also possible that fragmented souls on the source act as a magnet during any rejoining, due to the fact that they are the "originals"
If I were to sum up Dawntrail, I'd say I adored the lore they introduced, but felt like the MSQ could have been better. I agree with Preach, there was just too much Wuk Lamat. She completely absorbed all the meaningful screen time, which left me feeling like the Scions were entirely underutilized. In some cases, they might as well not even have been there, at all, which is a cardinal sin. If Wuk had stayed behind in Tuliyollol after the attack, it would have made much more sense. In fact, it would have made more sense for Koana to come with us over her, especially with the technology aspect of Solution Nine. It would have given us more time with the Scions, more focus on Erenville and Krile, and even given us a deeper glimpse into Koana's character as he changed from all-technology to better understanding his people. I don't think they did Wuk Lamat any favors by making her so omnipresent, and they certainly put way too much on the shoulders of a relatively new English VA when they had a huge cast of veterans to lean on.
Yeah, the aggressive focus on Wuk Lamat didn't help (I still like her enough as a character though), and it led to a lot of characters who should have been important feeling somewhat redundant instead. Regarding her VA, I think she was competent, though some of the voice DIRECTION was way off. Having seen a couple of clips of other languages (especially the German one), I can definitely say the English VA could've been better, but again, it's down to the poor voice direction. Some folks are saying it's the US studio's voice direction, because the British actors have all been excellent, but I'm not sure if that's speculation or whatever.
@@DynaChrisI wouldn’t say all of the British actors were 100% compared to normal, the primary example Y’shtola’s. She was definitely a bit stilted, though idk what the issue might’ve been.
THIS, THIS, YES. This is so good. Exactly. Koana would get some development seeing that his "dreams" could have led to a disaster, seeing Alexandrians as a nightmare fuel and a parallel ... just this would have made the MSQ so much better.
@@raisylvaine8398 Thancred also sounded off, I was taken aback when he got to say something the first time. It's like he put on a much huskier tone than usual
In my own in depth review I made for DT, the complaint from 18:52 where you compare it with HW was also one of the things I brought up. The first solo duty you enter in DT occurs 24 quests in, and it's namely the one with Gulool Ja Ja. By the 27th quest of HW, when you recruit Ysayle to your cause, you get a total of 5 solo duties - 2 from the branching paths, Alphinaud and Tataru's trial by combat, Raubahn's rescue, and the fight against the heretics in the Amphitheatre where Shiva was first summoned. Alternatively, by the time I finished 50 quests in DT, I was already about 3-4 days into questing - and that is WITH several long hours of play and reading everything - while completing 50 quest in HW took me about 1 and a half days, playing for relatively the same ammount as with DT. It's surprising how bloody concise the cutscenes are in earlier expansions. In HW and SB they don't spend minutes reacting to an event or running around in circles with the dialogue, without adding any relevant and new information. Every cutscene serves to move the plot along, even the one of Emmanelain trying to impress Laniaitte, for instance, is made in such a way to hint at the idea that Emmanelain will ultimately put himself in danger and will need to be rescued.
That was just off the top of my head, as well. If I actually took the time to think about it, I could've quite easily gone on a ten minute ramble about it 😅
@@DynaChrisyou're right, dawntrail meanders so much and by the time things get going moving at Z4's epilogue and it's far too late to build anything up with the limited amount of time they clearly had left at that point. The biggest issue in the rushed last 3rd of the expac is that sphene really doesn't get enough time to be believable, likeable or trustworthy and wuk comes off like an absolute dipshit for it by the end.
The funny thing is that the story is otherwise solid. A person who grows into herself and overcomes her doubts is the most basic solid story you can tell. Having that tested through the kind but invasive Queen Sphene is also a neat direction that has been done before. Also, all four people who were slated to be Dawnservant are actually lacking in traits Gulool Ja Ja has. They had a great set up, and flung it into the setting of Kagurabachi and left it to fend for itself.
I also get the feeling this is where the cinematic tendencies of Shadowbringers-base Endwalker bit them. In those stories, there are massive amounts of stories that can best be shown through cutscenes, so it makes sense that the cutscenes and the amount of cutscenes would be ballooning. But in that combined story, you were trying to solve the issue of the First while the Garlean Empire was unknowingly on their last breath, and when the end came you finally could get the information that could save everybody that also delved into the final story of the Ascians (and the epilogue in Pandemonium raids). In short, that story did actually have a need to massive amounts of story. But it is also clear that it allowed them to accept that FFXIV should be suffused with cutscenes.
I thought Wuk Evu's gag got tiresome as well, but maybe it''s a cultural difference seeing as he ranked 6th place in the Dawntrail character popularity poll in Japan 🤣
Oh it's definitely a cultural thing - I just hate when people tell the exact same joke over and over. An old friend of mine was like that and it got SO annoying 😂
I posted this elsewhere, but I laughed exactly once duirng the DT MSQ: when we were gearing up to fight for the 7th keystone, the camera pans to each character to strike their battle pose, and then the camera pans to Erenville...and he runs away, I lost it. It did not really seem like something planned by a writing team, but a small touch added by a scene animator at the last minute.
@@bigtimetimmyjim6486 Honestly the whole time I was expecting erenville to pull a "oh I'm actually a highly skilled viper guess it's time to fight since I have no choice now" type moment and when that bit came up I was like wow is it gonna happen? But yeah he's just like nope I'm out so I got a bit of a chuckle there too.
Counter point about the healer role quests. SHOULD healers know about esuna by Dawntrail? Absolutely. But also how many times have we seen people die to the doom in the Fell Court of Troia of the Lunar Subterrane due to not having the debuff cleansed?
I find myself cleansing doom as a bard more frequently than healers ;p I liked the role quests, relatively low stakes comedy all pretty good, would say having done a few I missed from ShB and EW just recently the difficulty is on par for the solo instances, little disappointing compared to the increased difficulty of other DT content but nothing egregious.
At the end of the day though, how much responsibility is up to the player to just.. read what their skills do? Esuna is a really early skill, so it'll be on your hot bar by default for a while, since they autofill with new skills/spells. It kinda contradicts if an "experienced healer" or "bored healer" has forgotten the fundamentals.
One minute in and this is already a better review than others I have seen. I am a heavy reader, and regard this DT story telling as awful. However, I am invested, and when looking for catharsis or someone who is going to help me remember and focus on the things that weren't poorly done without the BS of 'its not that bad, just dont think, consume", well, this video is a bullseye. Well done, even though I would heavily disagree there is any payoff at the end, I liked this video very much.
I'm normally quite positive about FFXIV, and there is a lot to like about Dawntrail (mostly the boss design), but there's a lot about it that's inexcusable IMO. It could (and should) have been better, and that sort of thing will never happen if people just ignore the glaring issues it has.
I think a good example of the first half of DT done well was when we helped out in Stormblood at The Azim Steppe. The plot there was also about helping a young lady become ruler and I think the world building with the various Au Ra tribes there was much more organic.
About the role quest for healers, I don’t know how your experience has been with randoms in roulettes, but you’d be surprised at the ones I’ve often run into doesn’t even use it/never knew it existed. Especially when it comes to Doom x.x So I for one like the healer role quest being there to remind/tell people: “Hey! This exists! USE IT FOR THE LOVE OF THE TWELVE!!! YOUR PARTY WILL THANK YOU!!” XD
Oh I've been getting some horrible randoms - tanks who don't mitigate, players who get hit by a mechanic repeatedly without even trying to figure it out, and in the raids, other healers who barely heal and force me to babysit the whole party. But still, it should've been drilled into their heads how important Esuna is, long before the fifth expansion IMO.
Unfortunately, thanks to level skips, some healers *did* start the game at 80. Double unfortunately, a not too small group of them decided to put zero effort into reading skill/spell descriptions or watching a guide or literally any effort to know what to do, get carried by other party members (or run duty support) and never look back. The healer role quest has some heavy healing (and knowledge of the secret spell, Esuna) but it doesn't require you to learn to heal skillfully. Just spam heals to keep one target alive because funny spear lady *can* kill the boss.
A reason I can think of that the Scions wouldn’t have mattered much is because their stories had concluded long before DT overall. ShB was where Thancred, Urianger, and Y’shtola (mostly) wrapped up what stories they had to tell, with Urianger getting a little bit more closure, even though it wasn’t necessary. The twins have been with us since the beginning, and EW was where their stories ended. Hell, Estinien realistically had his story conclude way back in HW, but he was blackmailed into becoming a Scion thanks to Krile. If not for that, he wouldn’t need to reappear at all. While it is true that Krile and Erenville could’ve had more to their stories, it’s just as true that there wasn’t much more of a story to tell with either of them. Krile already had her moment back in Eureka, and knowing her parents were from another Reflection doesn’t do much to develop her further. She could’ve been handled better, but her story was mostly a narrative dead end either way. With all this in mind, a lot of people seem to have this misconception where Wuk Lamat somehow has too much screen time, when in reality, it’s more accurate to say other characters had little to reason to be in the story at all, and the writers may have overcompensated by filling up time with Wuk Lamat instead. It’s just a theory, but I think it makes sense when you consider how little reason there was to bring in the Scions for something like this. It also feels as if the Scions were only included from fear of fans reactions to the Scions not being together for one expansion. Then there’s my response to your feelings on the role quests, where I honestly have to question where it is you got the idea from that the role quests were meant to challenge your knowledge of each role, when trials, raids, etc already do that just fine. Im not saying you’re not allowed to have opinions, I just don’t see how the role quests were ever really meant to challenge your abilities, especially when remembering how previous role quests didn’t really do that either.
Gulool Ja's existence makes no sense to me. Who is his mother if he has one? Why did his father abandon him and tell him he wasn't his father in one scene? His presence only seems to serve some knee jerk emotional response.
I feel like we'll get more of his story in the patch quests. Either way, Zoraal Ja's last-minute change of heart was such a tonal whiplash that had no impact on me whatsoever 😂
@@DynaChrisI don't know man. I have very little faith that the writers even care about who Gulool Ja's mother is. _Not a single character has bothered to ask about it, not even the intelligent ones._ If the characters don't care, why would I assume the writers care? Zoraal Ja was the only Mamool Ja living in Alexandria. Gulool Ja's existence is impossible.
I didn't actually mind the first part of the msq, I do however agree that they could have focused more on Krile and Erenville in the second half. I kept going through the second half wondering why Wuk Lamat was coming along, right after taking on the role of dawnservant. She should have stayed in her city after the attack to help her people, like she kept telling us she wanted to throughout the first half. I do however love the addition of more trials with npc's. It helps a lot with learning the mechanics, and I don't have to be stuck in dps limbo for ages to continue the story. Other than that I also like that we're seen as an adventurer, and not only the savior of the world, however I also love the small comments here and there about how we're not to be underestimated and taken lightly. Like when we first meet Estinien in the palace or right before Wuk Lamat's solo fight, when we say "don't worry, the scary adventurer won't interfere" or something like that. I had hoped that Y'shtola would have more to say, honestly, considering how hard she's working to find a way to travel between the reflections. It didn't really feel like her to want to stay behind. It also lacked some commentary from Alphinaud about the political aspect of this new world, since he's there, I mean. I was kinda expecting him to want to figure out how shit worked on that side of the world. Overall, it felt refreshing with the low stakes after saving the entire world in the last expansion, and several wars before that. We got to be adventurers this time, and explore this new continent, and their people, while trailing after Wuk Lamat for a bit too long.
43:47 Between how rushed this feels and stuff like Y'shtola being here and then gone. It makes me wonder if the story got changed massively half way through development. It's not like they had way less time this time. Maybe SquareEnix brought in consultants to change stuff or just had some over-active executive make a bunch of demands. Not that we'll ever know regardless..
That's my theory. The character development was extremely lacking in DT compared to other expansions, even Stormblood. English voice acting among the usually good established characters (the Scions) was incredibly lackluster. I honestly thought Thancred got a new voice actor after hearing his first line of dialogue. A last minute change in the story direction and dialogue would explain so many of my complaints with the MSQ.
These video's are amazing mate keep it up, I understand not everything could be covered since the video is all ready so long just following the events of the MSQ but I really hope you'll do more videos that cover the raid storylines and maybe even some dungeons/ trials that have story quests of their own and the job quests for each expansion.
I think taking damage off of tank gap closers is 100% a good change, though I think Dark Knight should have had a new oGCD added to fill the missing spot.
The reason damage was removed from the gap closets of DRK and GNB is because their burst windows are already very busy. So having the fact they had damage made their bust windows even busier. The burst windows for PLD and WAR are not nearly as busy, which is why their gap closers kept their potencies.
For me, taking the damaging gap closer off of both Dark Knight and Gunbreaker. Kinda ruined a big fun factor for me. Though this is coming from someone that rule of cooled it like a combo in a action game instead of optimizing it in raiding content. Like using Plunge to create combo animations in between Bloodspiller, and Salted Earth specifically. Where the effect of the spinning blade traces into the animations of both super well. Or how the damage gap closer of Gunbreaker fills in the animation between Burst Strike and Hypervelocity really well. I loved doing things like that with the Gap Closers that ultimately added to what I enjoyed playing those two jobs for. Which don't get me wrong. I understand why from a mechanical standpoint they had taken it off especially with how busy both Classes burst windows were getting.
Great video ! I'm here since the first one and it's always a pleasure to watch them ! You talk about it in the video but I think FF14 have a big problem with marketing : Dawntrail is NOT the expansion we were sold ! If from the start they were clear what the expansion is about, we could have less false hope (with the Scion, Erenville or Krille). But it's not the first time they "failed" their marketing : Zordiark/Hydealyn spoiler for Shadowbringer and Sharlayan's plan which were spoil at 90% before the launch... Hope they will get better at this for the futur !
People who were around for Stormblood's launch: "First time?" But seriously, they absolutely need to rethink how they advertise and hype expansions up. Thankfully my hopes for the gameplay content in the patch cycle remain high because of the excellent encounter design so far, but the MSQ felt like such a letdown to me.
I have been a big fan of aspects of the story. but there was definitely fatigue with wuk lamat. I think the lore of Tural is fascinating and the lore of alexandria was also interesting. THE BEST THING IN DAWNTRAIL are the dungeons and the music though. Any kind of combat is fantastic feeling. I think they need to overhaul dark knight as a next job getting a rework. The tank just lacks any kind of sustain in dungeons and dungeons are much more punishing now.
I love that the healer role quest revolves around Esuna, since so many healers don’t use it. Even if a removable debuff on me is my fault, no comm for the healer if they leave it on.
The head of reason being dead already is actually a pretty lowkey good part that could have been used to really shit on Zoraal Ja. “You have two souls to fight with. So i’ll do the same!” After already having lost. Zoraal Ja didn’t know the head of Reason passed. So basically, broski got mopped by a heavily nerfed Gulool Ja Ja AND cheated to win 💀💀💀 bro is ASS and I’d have LOVED to reveal that to him before he died 😭😭
Genuinely shocked they didn't pull something like that. All we get is "oh he died 3 years ago" and that's it, then when it matters, WHOOPS WE FORGOT ABOUT IT! 😂
I've gotta say this about the healer role quest: i have encountered more than my share of healers who don't bother using esuna. Like healers who die in dun scaith because they never esuna themselves.
That's pretty much how I felt. The first bit dragged soooo much, the second had actual interesting developments and by the end of the last zone I was crying like a baby, it was very beautiful and tactful(I hope that's the word)how they handled that. Deeply emotional. People hate the last zone, I think it was the best part of the story, in concept and emotionally. Also, I was laughing every time wuk evu did the thing. Idk, I think I'm easy to please.😂 Also, since you are obviously a big FF-fan in general, do you plan to recap the other final fantasy titles? Or even other series you like. I'd be here for it at least 😅
Absolutely! I've just started FF11, mostly so I can experience the story and world before the alliance raids, but I plan on putting a handful of videos out for it. It's one of two mainline FF games I've not played (the other is 16, and I'm waiting for the PC port), and there's a couple I've played but not finished (12 and 15), so those are pretty high on my backlog. I'll probably cover FF7 Rebirth when it comes to PC, as well. As for the rest... I haven't thought that far ahead 😅
58:30 I believe it's elaborated that they're from the source and that's why Krile's aetheric density is close enough to someone else native to the source that Y'Shtola couldn't see the difference.
The two optional dungeons and Arcadion saved the expansion for me. Once I hit levelcap I had a great time. Which is ridiculous cause I spent dozens of hours in the MSQ and much much less in the end game.
I dislike every scene Ketenramm is in. The dude has some kind of curse on him that completely distorts all diegetic causality. Why was he completely fine despite being lost at sea? Letters or other forms of communication were available to him. "I'm fine, I'm going to live out my life in Tural, bye." I have zero reason to assume this will be expanded on, even in the bermuda triangle stuff that will inevitably feature hin. He was living out in the woods, by himseld, just so he could show up out of the blue to remind the mamool ja guy to do his job. The plot needed someone there so they arbitrarily chose him. I know he was there to "watch over the gate" or whatever, but that's just a convenient excuse. He also just happened to be carrying an extra set of macguffins for Zoraal Ja to steal becaude the plot needed Zoraal Ja to fail the rite but still open the gate. I really hope I do not need to state how utterly stupid it is to leave such important macguffins in the hands of a weak old man living by himself in the woods. How did he survive the ambush despite it being established that Zoraal Ja will kill anyone who gets in his way. The reason is obvious: The plot needs him alive. Just like the plot _didn't_ need Sareel Ja alive, despite the fact that he was loyal. If he survived the ambush, why did he not immediately alert his friend Gulool Ja Ja? Why did he wait all the way until Zoraal Ja's attack? Like I said, the diegetic causality just warps around him.
Funny how you found the first half dragging around so much, for me that was the second half but I’m a bit of world-building nut. Msq in general was a slog, encounters in general were great. Wish other characters than Wuk Lamat got more of the spotlight. I’d rate this expansion around Stormblood.
I think the recurring joke of Wuk Evu is the only thing that really got me every time. I have never seen that character trope before, so it was completely unknown to me, which is probably why I laughed at it. The seasickness joke only landed once and the rest of the humor was meh to me.
I have my moments 😉 I'll be doing something more in-depth for Dawntrail when the next expansion comes along, which will probably end up being something like 3 hours long 😂
Personally was one of my favorite expansions when given it the credit of "this is a fresh start, don't expect massive overarching plot hype yet like ShB and EW." That being said, do agree with a ton of the critiques (not the blind hate towards say difficulty or casting however), and have had many a night talking to a close friend who hated most of the expac to bounce ideas on. The Scions (lack of) involvement I think could be managed in a way that keeps them around but not largely overly relevant while also fixing another glaring issue: the role quests which have been in decline since we helped Ardbert's crew. Have each Scion(s) represent the various roles, maybe Alisae taking up the reins as an 8.0 phys ranged or tank, and let the role quests be us learning from and having a moment with our good friends without shoehorning them into places they don't quite fit.
That was in my head too. Like who wouldnt want to go on a journey with Estinien learning something more bout dragons as any melee really? Or just solving some mystery,whatever, just please dont have my dragoon be forced to go solve some random thief in Kugane... where the other main char was actually a hunter (bard) from some Tural tribe.... (A RANGED)
Actually finished the MSQ now! General feelings, spoilers: Wuk Lamat grew on me. The 96 quests felt completely pointless and irritating. Did not expect Bakool Ja Ja to become a favourite. Electrope is going to be an ongoing problem for Eitherys I can tell. The people of old Alexandria were assholes and Sphene never stood a chance. The music is still awesome. The new boss difficulty is REALLY MEAN for console/controller/legacy camera players. The graphical update was a delight, load times on PS4 are slightly longer but the game looks ridiculously pretty. ERENVILLE T_T. Pictomancer is great fun, you gotta really time your motif refreshes though. Viper is a bit like a melee Dancer with more reliable procs and I had a lot of fun playing it. Solution 9 gave me MASSIVE PSO VIBES and I have very mixed feelings about that.
My ultimate thoughts on this expansion are very mixed. Loved some things; hated others. I think my biggest issue is wasted character potential. Take Sareel Ja. I remember being dead certain he was possessed by one of the remaining Ascians, or otherwise had some secret connection to the golden city we didn't know about yet. But no. Wasted character is wasted. Sareel Ja dies without any comment or elaboration. With how much he pushed and enabled Zoraal Ja to be the person he became, I was genuinely expecting something. There are others, of course. Krile is egregious. I was fully expecting an arc and a secondary protagonist role for her like how Urianger was handled in Endwalker or Alphinaud in Heavensward. Maybe not quite as fleshed out as Thancred in Shadowbringers, but way more than we got.
Krile was one of the biggest disappointments for me. Finally joining us in battle only for her whole reason to come along taking a back seat until the last minute sucked. And even then it's not enough. Come to think of it, I did expect more from Sareel Ja as well. Weird how he goes from the mastermind behind a lot of Zoraal Ja's rise to power to just... disposable.
@@DynaChrisI wanted to add one thing after watching your whole video: it's funny. My feelings on Wuk Lamat saying her goodbye to Namika and Erenville to Cahcua were inverted. The fact was, for me, Wuk got to say goodbye. Erenville had spent an entire zone talking up his mother. Slowly opening up and revealing just how much of an impact she had on his life. He seems excited and trepidatious to introduce us. She meets him and is the opposite of Erenville in many ways, but both clearly share an unslakable curiosity. Her calling him her fussy little bun bun really also added to it for me. You can see how much he admired her, even when he was quiet or awkward about it. He spent the last zone brooding. He didn't want to let go. Even though this is her final wish, I felt his pain about this. It was another time for me that I knew the dialog only had one correct choice: Erenville had to be the one to release her. Otherwise he wouldn't never get over it. I did like what they did to him this expansion. I think he has the best arc that's not overdone like Wuk Lamat's or undercooked like Krile. He actually had meat to his story, as he grappled with the possibility of losing his mom got some relief by finding her, only to learn that no, she is gone, and finally, he does learn to let her go.
I'm a bit bitter towards the role quest, that the bad guys are uninspired is one thing, we had a few of them over the story, no big deal. That we have rather bland side kicks, we had these over the years too. But seeing these have replaced the job quest of old, it just makes me miss even more the many characters I met in those. Although it does show us to many more cultures of the continent, I miss the characters I already know.
Dawntrail is certainly an interesting MSQ. There's a lot of cool events going on and I love Tural in general. However, you were right about the pacing and screen time distribution: The 1st half suffers from being too slow, the 2nd half goes a bit too fast to the point where there isn't enough time for explain everything, and Wuk Lamat, though not the worst character, takes up too much screentime. I still don't think this is worst than ARR/Stormblood, though. The former has too many stupid plots like the Titan/Garuda arc and Bloody Banquet is still the game's low point IMO. The latter features Ala Mhigo, which causes the game's writing to drop anytime it plays a role in the plot. I'd rather sit through the slow pace of DT than deal with these annoying plot threads ever again. I'd put this at about equal/slightly better than HW.
I found similar issues with this that I had with Stormblood, its like 2 separate stories that didnt feel like either had enough weight given to them. I especially think that them basically shafting Krile and Erenville screentime really hurt that last zone for me. Their emotional moments didnt hit as hard as the scenes seemed to want it to feel. All in all I still enjoyed the major plot points, just the story beats in between and the storytelling just not quite what I'd like. I rank it above Stormblood still since this one had the decency to keep its deaths permanent.
I'll have to say the tank role quest is very sweet - i regret skipping through half of it, some dialogue hooked me and i payed attention till the end LOL
I am largely indifferent about a good chunk of the MSQ, which is unfortunate but oh well. However I am terrified of the implications for the Azem Key as well as Living Memory. That we will indeed deep dive into futher time travelling and multiverse worldbuilding. Which might seem ideal for a game that wants to continue for another decade from a content perspective. But I am yet to see it being done in a satisfying way in FF14, so I am highly prejudiced against this prospect. Louisoix's little trick between 1.23 and 2.0, Alexander in 3.X, AU-Ironworks in 4.X and 5.X, Warrior of Light and Sharlayan in 6.0 all have their fair share of problems that are not fun to think about.
MY best way to describe DT MSQ is that...I gave it a 7/10, and I think it should've gone back to the writers room a couple more times. I see it, its in there, but it was not delivered how it was intended I believe.
The amount of healers ive come across with things not on their hotbars, like role abilities are a foreign concept... but lucid dreaming sure is there. Told a healer the other day they could repose the mecha adamantoise. After they decided to pull it themselves, thus making it annoying to kill the prior 2 adds and aoe on 3 mobs not being a gain for a lot of jobs. Funny times
Honestly so interesting to see all the criticism and different takes with this one, I feel I liked it more than most seem to have and would put it on the same tier as HW and SB, but I really felt Endwalker missed for me and liked this better. But its been interesting to see, some people love the first half and hate the second, or vice versa, some just hated the whole thing. I understand the criticism and I do hope this is a one off, there are defiantly places the writing is weak and needed refinement, and the cutscenes needed trimming by a good 4 hours minimum. But looking forward to the patch content regardless, I think the criticism could help them to look at making the narrative tighter and I do think there is a lot of directions they could go in to pick the story back up and make it more satisfying. The content though is S tier, leveling 90-100 is fun cause the dungeons are all a delight, and the EX trials and the raids the best .0 content the game has had.
I've seen a fair few people saying how much they liked it, but I can't agree because the pacing and the quality of the writing dragged it down. Really wish they focused more on characters like Erenville, Krile, and Zoraal Ja. The fact that the rite of succession was supposed to "divide the Scions" and it didn't even come close to doing so was kinda disappointing too. But yeah the dungeons, raids, and trials were great and I wanna see more like it!
I'm at Level 97 quests so I won't watch this until I finish the MSQ, but I'm positive it's your usual high quality analysis! I've probably already asked this but in case I haven't, have you considered doing videos on the various raid series? I'd love to see your reactions to the Crystal Tower and Omega raids in particular...
You're at the good bit, at least! It's not as in-depth as my other content, but I'll be doing a full story analysis video when the patch quests are out. Regarding the raids, I did go over the Crystal Tower raids in the ARR video, and I do have some plans involving the others, but the next raid-related video will be on the upcoming Echoes of Vana'diel ones. I WILL get round to covering the older ones, though - don't worry!
"Every healer thus far should know how esuna works"... my friend, I present you the PARTY FINDER, where healers have no GCD single target heals nor Esuna in their hotbars because, and I quote "Why bother, it's not useful anyway?"
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought the same. While its dungeons and trials feel phenomenal and engaging, and its music is some of the best so far, it is arguably the worst-told MSQ to date. I'd consider it being worse than Stormblood which I feel can be attributing to them focusing too much on Wuk Lamat. The same thing was done in Stormblood with Lyse, but at least they kept the WoL as the centerpiece, but here they don't even do that. With all the character backstories being only briefly touched on, it feels like they intended to create a completely different (and more involved) story that they axed partway through because it complicated some aspects they wanted to fit in and had to come up with something to give the players something.
They definitely needed more time to work on the story. I wish Erenville and his relationship with his mother was more fleshed out, and that we actually got to learn about Zoraal Ja. Then there's Krile and how much of a back seat she took. I could go on for hours tbh, but I didn't want the video to be 90% negativity 😅
@@DynaChris I wonder if them limiting themselves to only 6 zones per expansion greatly hindered their ability to tell the story (they completely wasted the potential in that Wild West area). I wouldn't have minded another year or two waiting for a better and more fleshed-out tale. Both Krile and Elen- *Erenville* got completely screwed-over from their stories. Did Gulool Ja just bud off of Zoraal Ja? What happened to his mother??
Stormblood also had other interesting characters that it focused on. Sure, Lyse got a lot of screen time, but so did Hien and Gosetsu and others. They all had a far bigger role in Stormblood than any of the non-Wuk Lamat characters in Dawntrail.
Great video dude. I am at level 98 MSQ and I've just made it to Solution 9. The story is just painful to play. I legitimately started skipping cutscenes in the cowboy area because i just didnt give a shit about these guys. Glad to know nothing in substance was missed
This expansion so far seems to me to have the exact same reception as Stormblood. Cool interesting new jobs, story that won't really do it for people who are really into Heavensward, amazing gameplay content. Basically, I'm finally home.
I bought the expansion but due to IRL things popping up I have not had a chance to finish Endwalker but it seems like I should have waited to see if this expansion would be worth playing. I did not have much fun in Endwalker and was hoping Dawntrail would rekindle the love I had but it seems like it will be another online game that I abandon once played through. I said a few weeks ago in the FC discord that I am amazed how I am thinking chess is easier than this video game at this point.
Wuk Evu's repetitive joke is really annoying after a while. It would have been OK if he only did it once to Wuk Lamat and once to Koana at most. And the tonal back and forth is extremely annoying as well. Its fun if its done sparingly, but throughout the whole MSQ it shifts back and forth between comedy and serious events that just brings everything down together. Regarding the characters, Wuk Lamat's writing is terribly executed. She has great potential, someone who has great ambitions for the best of intentions but is way out of her league, learns to grow into her own right and becomes a leader of a nation. The main story points are great but the way its executed leaves a lot to be desired, the way they intentionally wrote her to be extremely stupid everytime the opportunities presents itself, and that her growth is told to you instead of being shown to you. The writing did subtly try to show some of her leadership growth towards the 2nd half of the arc in how she handles the initial relationship and information gathering from Sphene, but the bulk of the writing ends up with "SPHENE LISTEN TO ME" basically smashes her growth with a sledgehammer. Wuk Lamat was done real dirty by the writers. Also, they threw away the chance they had with Bakool Ja Ja. They tried to write a redemption story which actually works, but his initial characterisation and subsequent role in the story post reveal leaves a lot to be desired. He is driven by desperation to resort to underhanded motives, but he practically did nothing to show that in the first part of the story until towards his big reveal. The feat where they make tacos? They could have paired Wuk Lamat with Bakool Ja Ja and start dropping hints of his desperation at this point to slowly transition into the 2nd half of the story in this zone. Subsequently he suddenly just becomes a character that has next to zero relevance to the whole plot. He had so much more potential and was again wasted by the writers. Why not have him become a supporting character towards the 2nd half, having being won over by Wuk Lamat, starts to lets his wall down and show more of his other sides in the exploration of Alexandria. He could have been one of the trust members for Zoraal Ja fight and it would have wrap up his arc very nicely too, having initially lost to Zoraal Ja and subsequently after putting his burden down and trusting in Wuk, then subsequently growing while travelling through Alexandria with Wuk and eventually being part of the party that brings down Zoraal Ja. Overall, story beats have so much more potential but just writing is very poorly executed.
Pretty much. There is a good story in there, but it needed more time to cook. And I 100% agree about the pairing during the cooking contest. They had an opportunity to make it really fun and interesting, and instead made the most boring decision they could have.
hey just wanted to say I love your videos unfortunately cant watch this one just yet as I have not played it yet, is there any plans on covering the other ff games as I really like your style of video and i would love to see what you can do with other games
Thanks, and no worries :) Other FF games - absolutely! I'm currently playing FF11 so I know what's going on in 14's upcoming alliance raids, so there'll be videos on that next. FF16 and FF7 Rebirth videos will likely happen when they come to PC, and I'll be revisiting some of the older games soon too :)
37:30 "Any healer who's gone through the game should know what Esuna is" LOL. Tell that to the countless times in Endwalker that I died because the healer didn't Esuna something. And at 42:37. I get the WoL standing back so the Dawnservant can retain his honor by defeating Zarool Ja, but once the dude resurrects and then outright empowers himself, is where I'd have jumped in, because then he's just straight cheating, so aiding won't impact the Dawnservant's honor at all.
They should still know, and it's 100% on them if they don't keep you alive (when they're able to - not much can be done about people who like to farm vuln stacks). And yeah I don't get why nobody jumped in when Zoraal Ja got back up either. I wanna give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was supposed to be one of those "it happened so fast we couldn't stop him" things, but how long it takes for him to get up and kill Gulool Ja Ja is kinda ridiculous.
Long one, sorry... Dawntrail was the first segment of the MSQ that I genuinely wanted to end. The game had some good ideas and added some nice world building but... The pacing, character writing, voice direction, and over all "intelligence" of the story were absolutely terrible. It's like they forgot that the people playing this just came through the philosophical gauntlet of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. They stopped every few quests to look right into the camera and flatly explain what you just saw. The presentation of a lot of aspects, for lack of a better word, felt childish. Example: There appears to be a moratorium on the Warrior of Light killing suddenly and out of nowhere. Any fate where you fight a sentient species, the enemy kneels down and then says some cheesy line while running away. The "cowboys" (Rroneekboys?) dual with rubber bullets, Erenville telling us not to kill the bandits, etc. It's a pretty disturbing shift within CBU3 when placed next to the other issues and has me worried. Character wise, Wuk Lamat was written like a "modern western" (if you catch my meaning) Mary Sue. She experienced no challenges. She succeeded at literally everything she tried. She never once experienced failure and had to grow and adapt in a way that would alter how she approached things all along. We spoke to Gulool Ja Ja about how she was "not ready to rule" but the reality is, the Wuk Lamat at the end is the exact same one from the beginning. A well written story might have had her do the absolutely ridiculous "We're just enemies because we haven't gotten to know each other" allowing an enemy to walk away which results directly in someone she cares about being hurt or killed. Thus teaching her that there is a time and a place and a leader has to make the hard choices sometimes and "peace and love" aren't everything. She was endearing in 6.55 and I was interested. Then she became amusing. Then she was annoying. Then I hated her. Not because of the character but because of the brain dead writing. For the record, I thought her VA was perfectly fine, it was the dialogue and voice direction that were the issue. Zoraal Ja was an empty shell. None of the garbage he spouted about motivations made any sense from beginning to end. He was functionally a cardboard cut out with "Bad Guy" written on it. He was nonsensical and none of the babbling at the end of his trial made sense. As for Alexandria... The idea was fine but they didn't take the proper time to really flesh out the mechanics of the partial "rejoining" and the nature of where they came from. For a story this far into the realm of multiple worlds and reflections, we really needed that to happen. I didn't hate it over all though Sphene felt a little thin and her motivations were transparent. Regarding the soul consumption in Solution 9, that has to stop. The entire idea is an abomination. I understand if you're trying to sustain a population in a pocket dimension with no access to an aetherial sea, but no more. They have one now and it can't continue. If the writers don't address that, It's going to kill a lot of my love for the world. Living Memory didn't land with me. I looked at the entire thing from a mechanical perspective. Someone outside died, they ripped the memories off of their soul and plugged them into an AI running with their memories all while burning their soul as fuel for the grisly machine. I was uncomfortable the entire time because I looked at it like one would a puppet show being put on with the corpses of people you know. While the Caciua and Erenville goodbye did land with me as someone who has lost a parent, I didn't feel much more than relief turning off the machines. I really hope they can pivot on the writing style, presentation and technique going forward. ALSO! The Millala fled the source from the criterion dungeon of AloAlo Island. You even get to see the speaker's chamber there. From the looks of things they had the "artifact" which they used to escape the source to escape the 5th calamity then traveled to the 12th reflection but thousands of years into the past by the source's reckoning where they then died in that world's rejoining. So, they left the source in the 5th calamity and went back to die on the world rejoined in the 2nd calamity. Not at all confusing.
glad I'm not the only one that felt that way about living memory, at the very least they went about it in the worst way possible and Im just hopeful that they can clean this dumpster fire of an expansion and get some quality control with the writing, we are too late into this mmo's story to become juvenile
Please don't ask them to add another Raubahn (Savage) solo duty (solo duty in early zones). You don't know how bad it is waiting 8 hours to get into the solo duty.
The server architecture was way different and weaker back then. Even in Endwalker there were never any instance issues with the bajillion people queueing up for roulettes. And the servers were absolutely _packed_ back then.
They gave it far too much time to the boring first half and far too little time to the interesting second half it just didnt achieve much by the end, hopefully the patch MSQ improves upon it.
I suppose if “Dawntrail” means the entirety of Dawntrail including patches, then yes Dawntrail did get off to a rough start. Which is to say if anybody perceives anything good about it by 8.0 it will certainly be the patches save Base Dawntrail Vipers and Pictomancers in general.
"A good story poorly told" was exactly my thoughts on the whole MSQ. And its why it made ne so mad. Such good ideas, and cool concepts. Let down by truly atrocious writing.
My problem is that, on a second playthrough starting from ARR, I'm going to speed run DT since I can't stand Wuk Lamat. She came up as likeable character at the end of 6.55 but in 7.0 her presence was completely oppressive and infantile. The only relief moment from her is the 4th zone where nothing relevant to the story happens, except more setting up for when Wuk Lamat's comes back again. Then there's that last fight where she pulls a Zeno's shattering reality move out of nowhere and by herself holds the boss in place... I felt like an NPC. I'm not really sure this character is salvageable with more screen time in future patches. I have more attachment to the characters of the new gatherer's quest line than to Wuk.
You talking about how insulting the Healer quests are and I know WAY TOO MANY Healers who actually had to put Esuna on their bars for them cause they spent so much time going "fuck Esuna I'll never Esuna" makes me giggle -- the devs literally went for those sorts THROATS.
Big red text boxes!? What frame are these in the HUD? I went through the entire expansion in oh sh*t mode and only now found out about red text boxes. Suggesting to me, that I have them shut off.
There isn't an option to turn them off, as far as I can tell. If you're using some kinda addon that changes HUD elements, it could be that, but otherwise you should be seeing them pretty often.
Truthfully, I found the healer role quest boss fight to be somewhat challenging. Buuuuut, that may be because I really haven't practiced with the class that much. I got my brother's help to level sage. Chances are if I practiced more as a healer, the boss fight would be a lot more disappointing
I have lots of issues with the msq but overall I enjoyed it. Tbh I know a lot of people hated the first half but I'm into lore and I loved the world building. The second half suffered in interest for me, even though the story picked up, but thats more because the storybuilding and character stories kind of fell to the wayside. Erenville and Krile's story was basically stepped over and wuk lamat, though a good character, felt like she only had good character development in the first half. Sphene was too wishy washy (even for an AI) and I couldn't connect with her as a tragic character at all. Regardless of my issues with characters and the latter half of the msq, I still did like DT. The music and combat honestly saved it for me but I do hope the patches clear up some of the missed opportunities the msq had. Fingers crossed!!!!
Like the only part I felt connected to sphene was when you defeat her. Because there she showed a bit of the humanity of the original Sphene. But as you said, even when she first revealed herself to the party I knew she was not to be trusted.
"We were promised a situation which would divide the Scions" This is why I watch almost nothing about upcoming content. I went and blind and honestly enjoyed the little competition factor as it came and went not expecting anything more.
Just FYI, Pictomancer might be a bit odd in lower level content, but you often end up being 50-60% of the damage of your Light Party in the first 50 dungeon levels. Don’t ask me how I know. It’s illegal.
I actually liked the expansion, yeah it has things that could have been handled better, but I say let them cook, this is the first phase of the next arc. A lot of people hated the first part I actually liked it. Again is just my opinion.
On the healer role quests, you underestimate the amount of people who don't know what Esuna is or what it does lol That second boss of Lapis Manalis is a good example....
this is something that i note but i think wuk lamat is indirected inspire by Aru of Blue Archive, she had a lot of things in common with Aru, but is not the best execution and as an Aru lookalike is not close, and thats sad because Aru is one of my favorites but is more than obvious that Lamaty is not close to Aru in the slightest
I never want to see Wuk Lamat again. I recently picked up triple triad and the reward for beating 123 NPCs is a wuk lamat card. What a spit in the face.
I think alot can be forgiven if we idk get to play. Even realm reborn puts you in spots to fight people throughout the story. I think some more traditional mmo stuff can come back into the fomrula, like yes please let me fight a group of 4-5 maybe 10 enemies. Stop putting it all in a cutscene.
I think a lot of it stems from Stormblood's launch issues, where players struggled to get into the first big solo instance. I'd take that over sitting through about 4 hours of cutscenes before something interesting happens, though.
@@DynaChris 100% agree, and there are some content creators doing tests on the xpac showing 50-120min before even having to push a keybind that is insane to not get to play for that long. But one of the big saving graces atm is the group content kicks alot of ass for me at least. Really great encounter design but i hope in post patch or next xpac we get more gameplay in there.
I agree with the title but not the thumbnail; I do not think DT is a good story that was poorly told, but instead was a bad story that squandered the potential of some interesting ideas. Characters that should have gotten development remained static, plot points that should have been center stage were sidelined (Krile, Solution 9's soul consumption), and what we did get was low-hanging fruit meant to use emotional appeal to cover up a lack of a coherent narrative. As a result, I think the second half is worse than the first. The first half was kind of boring and did have moments of nonsense, but it did not disappoint me the way the second half did. The second half pays off the first half in the most basic, vapid ways and finishes off with a premise that borders on fanfiction.
There's a lot of good in there that is bogged down by the slow pacing and repetitive dialogue. That doesn't automatically make it a bad story - it just needed more time to be refined into something that could have (and *should* have, given Creative Studio 3's track record) been great. There's some powerful moments of loss and the characters coming to terms with things, but because those characters aren't given enough screen time to flesh these stories out, it lacks the proper emotional impact on the player. To put it simply, they needed more time to cook.
@@DynaChris So I will be completely honest, I did not find those moments of loss to really be all that powerful, and it is not like I cannot relate, it is just not really handled with a lot of grace or care from the story itself. The Krile moments literally had no real effect on me, and the Erenville moments did, but that was mainly because I cared about him as a character; the story itself did a really poor job of making Cachuia relevant until the very end (a revolution we learn almost nothing about, a sudden appearance in the final zone). DT chose to make us run pointless errands and do trivial crap for Wuk instead of devoting time to perhaps getting to know her while she was still alive. It was a good Erenville character moment, but afterwards we get back to the main plot that lacked moral ambiguity (and they had their chance here if they did not sideline the Solution 9 soul usage dilemma) or logic. It felt like a last minute emotional asspull that vaguely relates to the content of the first half of the story, but not in a way that really feels gratifying. It is difficult to take a message of loss seriously from a franchise that does not share this feeling with the player in any meaningful way; all we lost in the overall narrative were characters we barely knew and it counts on us importing our own personal context to try to derive meaning, which is poor writing to me. Ironically, the raid series is getting to the actual issues I wanted to see explored in the MSQ.
I do agree, some details are excusable by the fact that Dawntrail is a start to a second major story. However, there is surprisingly little that can be excused by it. By which I mean only the initial laid-back attitude and the touring of cultures is excused because only those are directly related to the fact that base Dawntrail is the relaxation and vacation arc and was advertised as such. Repeating Endwalker’s scenario is not that even if I presume the point is that the Warrior of Light is so powerful something akin to Endsinger is no issue now.
My entire issue with the Xpac in general. Is there is SO MUCH faffing about all the time. I know word building is important but they did it so well in the first half. But all the alexandria WB is stuffed into thr last 99 an 100 quests at the last second to a degree. Plus the random faffing about during each section in living memory got exhausting. Could've been way better if it was just RELENTLESS isntead of having that awkward wander moment in the beginning.
I honestly feel the opposite about the story. The first half was dull, but I liked the vibes of being just some adventurer again while the second half perplexed me, made no sense (imo), and felt like tonal whiplash. Though I 100% agree that the fights and raids have been absolute highlights and have me wanting to get into extreme/savage. I hit lvl 100 on my second ever job tonight, Warrior, to hopefully use in a static. I'd also love to see videos on FFXI, I have neither the time to beat it myself nor the energy to navigate the jank.
FFIX nostalgia definitely helps with that second half, and apparently there's a bunch of FFXI references, so maybe once I'm done with that I might find a new appreciation for Dawntrail. And regarding the raids, I can't wait for savage to drop in a few days, especially for the first 2. I think M3 and M4 are the weakest, mechanically, but let's hope they get a bit more interesting.
Honestly I wouldn’t have minded a break from the scions so it would feel better when they come back next expansion and loved Wuk as a character concept but she could have used some more variety with her dialogue in the second part and the execution felt a bit weak in general with how she seemed to backtrack on showing weakness even if it’s understandable and wasn’t in big moments so it mostly felt endearing. The main problem was just how underused Krile and Erenville were and being stuck with the twins again, they’re my least favourite scions even if in small doses I like the little sibling dynamic. Still considering *that* was the worst written one with how everyone immediately decide Endless aren’t alive which is insane because suddenly we’re supposed to be fine with what we’re doing while we got blamed to hell for Amaurot it was definitely good just not great. And Zoraal Ja being boring. I don’t care how deep he is he’s just lame.
I'm always a little stumped when I see the complaint about Dawntrail stretching out the story too much. It's a fair complaint, but having replayed the entire story with a smooth transition into Dawntrail I can confidently say that I literally didn't notice any difference to previous expansions. If Dawntrail's pacing is horrendous, so is that of the entire game.
Yeah, I cannot agree that part 2 was good either. It felt like something that should have happened at the end of dawntrail as an expansion. Not to mention the resemblance to shadowbringers ending is too similar with sphene essentially being emet selch trying to save his people for the cost of everyone on all the shards. Now its Alexandria's survival for everyone else life. Even Alexandria is so similar to endwalkers dungeon dead end in its presentation. Also another world ending, not even just world ending, but a universe/other shards ending threat RIGHT after we just ended one is dumb and uninspired. While I do think the premise of dawntrail initially could work it would be like boiling water with salt the majority of everything would be gone, and your just left with the premise (the salt) they originally started with, cause the rest of the story is filled with so many holes you can't distinguish it as a cohesive story.
@@lokifrostpaw2976 Very good point out, right it was the same shit with gaia coming to help. Yeah it felt ripped strait out from other expansions, really sad.
Personally, its my favourite expansion so far, adored the diverse cultures of tural and getting to know them, i also just straight up really like Wuk Lamat, she's very Luffy to me and that just makes my day every time. Coming from one of the cultures Tural was inspired by also helps so much here, and probably why i was just so happy with the first half of this msq, like, so many moments in there that you can feel how much the team cared about these cultures. And then the second half really speaks to me in ways previous expansions didn't.
With Dawntrail I had the bar set low as because it is fresh start to a new storyline and with how Shadowbringers & Endwalker had set that bar high I felt dawntrail will have a up hill battle. my enjoyment of the story is mix at most but it was do to things outside the game I had no control of I was just glad I could even just get on at all due to login queue times.
After finishing the MSQ, I've come to the realization that: One, Wuk Lamat needs to be louder, happier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Wuk Lamat's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Wuk Lamat"?
Dawntrail did something i never expected from the game: made me somewhat cringe at the Train-Bomb scene. The music did not fit at all man, felt so alienating.
Shit can't believe someone as positive as you still had so much negative to say about DT, it's just that poorly handled I guess, the pacing just kills it no matter how much you like it or have an open mind for it. Also yeah as others said, the marketing felt so dishonest this time, ShB and EW were really faithful and IMO so was Stormblood which promised this Eastern and Ala Mhigan adventure and while the Eastern side was favored heavily we still got the finale all in Ala Mhigo. This though? Oh it's the new world with all your friends and you go on an adventure and finally have a low stakes vacation right? No you're a hired mercenary for this person for a politically motivated journey so it turns into chores BUT also here's some out of nowhere post Ascian reflection plot with world ending and moral stakes, like what???? Also aren't Sage and Reaper all original? Reaper's not only a scythe job but it has a unique gimmick tied to it with a demon/ghost thing that you have a symbiotic relationship with and Sage is this sci fi healer type focused on damage negation, it's not really the mastery of White and Black magic that you see in FF3, the name is borrowed sure but that's all it shares.
For what it's worth, I'm quite skeptical of a lot of things, it's just I try to focus on the more positive side of things because there's far too much toxicity and negativity these days. Regarding the jobs, Reaper took a lot from older Dark Knights (FFXI's was a scythe-wielder using dark magic, for example) and Sage is an original spin on a classic job. At least, that's the way I look at it.
Wuk Evu I think is a bit like Puddingway, in that you either love him or groan internally on sight. Personally the second half didn't have much emotional impact, so this expansion's MSQ very much fell into the "would have dropped, if I wasn't otherwise invested" category. The tone throughout was painfully simple and childish, often boiling cultures and complex issues down to several bullet-points, and 'fixing' them just as easily. Still working through the job-quests, mostly liked them (though that melee one, forcing us to fall for an obvious trap is insulting). The crafting/gathering quests were pretty great however, far more emotionally investing.
I'm inclined to disagree, a "good story poorly told" is not a good story, it's still a poor story. Potential unused remains potential, which makes it irrelevant to the quality of the product we actually got. And unlike with gameplay content, you can't simply patch up a story and retell it; the most you can do in an MMO is reduce the filler quests like ARR did, and much later than release (or else you admit to the original product sucking).
I see a lot of people making the argument that the second half of the story is better, but I'm in the camp where I think it's Dawntrails weaker narrative half. Why? While the pacing of the first half is indeed bad, it largely succeeds in telling the story it set out to tell. You learn about the cultures of Tural, they are all mostly interesting, and there's some genuinely good character moments. The second half, though, cannot say the same thing. It's rushed, and doesn't have the time to establish its characters due to the truncated run time. You just don't have the ability to form a bond to the main villain, either because they weren't introduced early enough, or because the writer didn't know how to make use of the time he was given to make it work. This can be said for all the world building of this half as well, which is painful in how quickly it's glossed over, especially with how complex and interesting the themes are. It's like sitting down to a banquet meal after being starved, and only getting to taste each course. Yes it's more exciting, and in many cases it's better paced, but the latter half needed more screen time to really land what it wanted to do. I just didn't ... care, and that's a shame. Pacing is only one piece of the narrative pie. Yes, it matters, but if something is better paced yet fails in actually landing the narrative it sets out to tell, its a bigger misstep than how plodding the cutscenes can be in the first half. Otherwise, I'm in agreement about everything else. An incredibly thorough review, well scripted and recorded. Well done.
The only point that near enough enraged me, was at level 96, when we stood around and did nothing, as Zoraal Ja cheated in his duel and then casually strolled away. This could have been made so much better by just having him drop a line, that if anyone interferes, or tries to stop him, his fleet will lay waste to Tuliyollal. Just one sentence would have sufficed. And then the most dramatic and sad moment of the MSQ so far, is followed up by goofing off with the train, in a montage to the Smile song... Hey, Wuk Lamat, you father was just killed by your brother, and a whole lot of innocent civilians were slaughtered. This is the perfect time to have some fun, right? ... I'll take slow pacing over this emotional whiplash any day. On a more nitpicky level, I would have liked if Tiamat had come along with her brother Vitra to help us out. It's been since late shadowbringers, that we've seen her. I also wouldn't mind if Midgardsormr might waken from his slumber some time soon. A little less nitpicky is, how the new writers seem to have forgotten (or not known) about proxies. That child, that's paralyzed due to having too much lightning aether, is a parade example of what the porxies were created to cure. This condition was described the exact same way as tempering. The child is essentially tempered, without a master, much like Ga Bu, who we cured. I hope this is something they'll remember (or someone tells them) in the patch content. It might also help a certain lighting user with a damaged soul, but that's a lot less certain. The only mechanic, that I can't cope with, is in the second normal raid trial, against the bee girl, when you have to dodge the aoes. To me it looks entirely random and luck-based, whether you have an actual path to dodge, or are stuck between so many aoes, it's impossible not to get the third heart, after which it's again random luck, whether you can survive the stun, or are hit by so many aoes you die. If there is a pattern I've just not figured out yet, please do tell.
Have you considered deliberately taking a third heart before the Touhou mechanic? From what I've seen, it only charms you and does a bit of damage, so you'll be entering the phase with a completely empty bar, and thus able to soak an extra heart or two if needs be. Also, being close to the boss is a death sentence on Touhou mechanics, less time to react.
I dislike Wuk Lamat as a character. Too much of the spotlight was focused on her, her broken record creed, the consistent inconsistencies of her voiced scenes, the tonal whiplash, the constant idiot ball moments, and the underutilization of so many characters leaving them hollow. Bakool Ja Ja, he was comically evil and then reaching Yak Tural with the cultural dish and being matched with Zoraal Ja, why, and then coming out of left field, his people's plight and the expectations of the Blessed. The Reeds, the first trial, was also just so very out of place with how the celebration empowers the growth of the harvests, when they'd just suffered a disaster and losses and gave an air of it not being the time for celebration. Koana quickly garnered interest with just how real he felt at first, but became a bumpy road further, it was great seeing his interactions with Thancred and Urianger. The lack of growth of Wuk Lamat and repeating the same things over and over; peace, friendship, harmony. Alphinaud, Alisaie, Krile being sidelined when they have experiences that could have brought substance to Wuk Lamat to be tolerable, and showing the same care of input that Koana showed with Thancred and Urianger. Then the lie Erenville told in 6.55 of being able to checkout quietly, and then being forced into becoming close to Wuk Lamat. Still like Erenville, but why did they have him lie like that. The final scenes with Gulool Ja Ja, his end made me upset, but then seeing how underaffected Wuk Lamat is with her tonal landslides as the story progressed, just made me dismiss her existence.
Your criticism is really on point. As well I wished the invasion itself would be a dungeon in tuliyolal as we fend off the unknown invaders, than solo instances as other scions, example being Estinien again and showing his full power which is needed to drive this superior force, but instead we are told all that happens off screen and in the end the invaders are a joke for everyone... Kinda hoped Alexandrians would stay for longer as a threat, Sphene could go on without the early parts, being semi hostile/dismissive towards us from getgo cuz she has no choice, but letting us get rid of Zoraal Ja cuz it kinda serves her point as the deal makes it hard for Alexandrians themselves, and aside from her wanting to suck all the aether as some sort of superweapon, we shud have be witness to a invasion fleet or army or technologies that would vastly outnumber competency of our world, and us stopping her turning it all off, while still keeping her good side in it all, well, mostly intact In fact, the worst part is, that the moment an alien fleet came to invade the Source, Wuk shud have been told "this is no longer your fight, this is threat to everyone, not just Tural, stand aside" and maybe show her what threats lie in the world and let her come along cuz she begs and learns that way about what a real struggle looks like, learn all the things we already did for the star, meanwhile some reinforcments coming from Eorzea to show how we are all already unified so she wud be even more motivated to do same in Tural and with us Content wise: I m happy, tho it feels like weird hybrid of Stormblood and EW, the EW simplicity and predictability still stinks, but the quality of each dungeon went up by a million, each DT part of content I did enjoy, but some jobs feel like they were forgotten, like Dark Knight or Red Mage and black mage. I just hope they ll give us something that isnt following their super streamlined style, and we wont know about all content just from watching LL
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RUBmYqs1jZ0/mqdefault.jpg)
How are you guys enjoying Dawntrail so far? Finished the story? Wiped on the Extreme Trials yet? All geared up and ready for the Savage raids next week? 🔥
I'm a little sad that this expansion ended up so disappointing, to be honest. Here's hoping the patch cycle brings us some fun content!
Wuk Lamat hit that girl boss trope harder than Rocky punched meat. Literally, there is no struggle for her. She was carried through the whole story yet gets all the credit? I'm over here thinking how bad my back hurt after the MSQ. It mirrors what American politics are trying to do. Let's put this ditzy airhead in charge that is riding the waves of other's successes. Also, don't get me started on the build-up of Valigarmanda for it to be some throw-away boss halfway through the story. The only good stuff in the game is when the lightning dome appears, but honestly, I was disappointed when I found out the second half wasn't going to be a western. Also, where are the Blue Mages?
@@Mortified42 Dunno what you mean by "American politics" but I can agree that the expansion finally gets good around the time the dome turns up. Also I expect the blue mages to turn up when the blue mage update comes along, and not a moment sooner 🙄
Dawntrail has inspired me to quit and take a break for a while, maybe things will be fun/fresh then, hopefully things feel a little more fun mid expansion, if not I will probably just wait untill the next expansion
The story is in the telling. The good parts you're describing is just the lore --- the sequence of events as is. The cold factual fictional history, and the implications therein. Story is the audience's experience of said events. You can layout Red Riding Hood in bullet points and that would be lore. An opening line that says "It was cold inside the wolf's belly." -- now that, that's story. If it's "told poorly" as you say, then it's a bad story.
The most frustrating thing for me was how many missed opportunities there were to do something interesting or inject some characterization. The Feat of Repast was the first spot it really jumped out at me. Pairing Wuk Lamat and Koana together was the most boring choice the writers could've made in that situation. Having her paired with one of the antagonists would've been a good opportunity to flesh them out as well as test Wuk's relentless optimism.
Pairing Wuk Lamat with Bakool Ja Ja felt like the obvious choice tbh. Could've had the fight to get her keystone back halfway through, then taken the challenge on by ourselves while he's off licking his wounds.
Feat of repast was awesome though. There was no other choice but Koana and the entire plot was awesome
I disagree, It would have been the most obvious route to take to pair her up with either bakool or zoraal, after watching the cutscene and seeing they were going to be pair up with someone i immediatly called the plot that she would be teamed up with one of them, So i was actually surprised and interested once they decided against the most obvious choice and chose koana. I also liked that they built more on the sibling relationship of koana and wuk and mirrored the eventual choice of leading tural together, it made koana throwing in the towel to support his sister alot more believable, And it made Wuk realizing that she couldnt have done it without her brother also more realistic.
@@nekolover17 I don't think obvious necessarily equals uninteresting. I would've preferred they welcome a little friction in the script, especially after Bakool essentially just committed a terrorist attack and we punched our hand and nodded and said we'd hold him accountable. The good guys teaming up and winning Iron Chef just doesn't really do anything to complicate the plot. It's filler.
At the very least they needed to show us the pressure Bakool was under instead of having him go straight from being a cartoonish prick to sobbing over a mass grave of his unborn siblings. Zoraal's motivations and last minute sympathetic turn were even more baffling.
@@FEXOH While i can agree that they glossed over Bakool literally unleashing a living natural disaster free, im curious what you mean by calling the feat of repast filler. Because although the goal at surface level was mundane, just like the rest of the other feats they had depth on why we were doing them and in turn not making them filler.
Also while maybe there is an arguement for saying they should have shown Bakools internal struggle with expectations and guilt of what his people did earlier, I think they did a great job at making him very unlikeable, and if they hinted at something deeper earlier on it would have felt very safe. yet another tortured villian troupe. Again maybe this is all just subjective but everyone in my friend group went from absolutely hating him to cheering him on and wishing him well on his path to make things right. and if a story can do that then I think its pretty great.
Thank you for pointing out that them overhyping the scions during fanfest became a letdown in the msq. It validated that I'm not crazy that I felt the same way.
That was such wasted potential. I would've loved a proper rivalry with actual fights against the other Scions.
WoL/Wuk Lamat/Krile (or either of the twins) vs Koana/Thancred/Urianger would've been such a cool fight, I just know it 😭
@@DynaChrisI wish I had a choice on who I was supporting. I so badly wanted to join the other actual adults, ie Thancred and Urianger.
As someone who has exposure to fanfests since 2018, trust me the stuff that is hyped at the NA fanfest always tends to be the least interesting thing or something that is misleading or a red herring.
Do you know what was said at the ShB NA fanfest? That we would be taking the fight to the Garlean empire. We never did that in ShB. Turns out the whole thing was a misdirect, YoshiP was actually referring to 4.5 and Ghimlyt Dark, just that he worded it in a way that sounded like he was describing the new expansion's next major story arc.
You will be surprised how many healers I have the pleasure of playing with in Duty roulette at level 90+ who don't even have Esuna, Limit breaks or swiftcast to raise on their hotbar
I HATE THAT. Those are my essentials at every level! God sometimes being a healer is a nightmare...
I can attest to this because my friend is a healer main and we wiped in the first trial because everyone except a tank, him and myself were still alive. We had lb3 up but he didn't have it on his hotbar. He died in the time that he was trying to find it in the menu. I yelled at him for it and he said he never had to use it because healers didn't have much to do in previous expansions
@@kikukat8780 Your friend's never had a rough roulette pull then! I've used Healer LB3 to save a lot of sprout-heavy runs over the six months since I started Heal maining! (I was a dedicated AST main til the rebalance, I've had such a nightmare of a time relearning my cards that I'm WHMing through Dawntrail.)
Healer strike or no, there's definitely a healer shortage. And I think many of us (myself included) are not taking healer into duty roulette. I'm even leveling healers with FATEs, not duty finder.
@iPlayOnSpica mine are levelled up with khloe and front xD
As a melee main i levelled up scholar all the way and ast that's all
The two others are boring for me ( last time i levelled up white mage i haven't play between 2 raid tier since, it was too much for me xD )
The deal with the Healer Role Quests requiring you to use Esuna is actually a running gag in FFXIV. The joke being that healers never use Esuna in casual content, or forgetting it even exists. So this is sort of a reminder that, yes, you need to use Esuna.
me, failing the sch job quest 4 times because I didn't esuna the npc
The dead head reveal should have been saved for Galool Ja Ja's fight with the upgraded Zoral Ja. It would have made it a more powerful scene IMO.
The mulala are actually from the source, not the 5th shard. They were living on AloAlo island when they fled to this particular shard. If you have completed the AloAlo island variant dungeon you can confirm it during the MSQ
It's also HEAVILY implied. I didn't do the variant, but the presence of summoners which use the same magic system was pointed out for a reason.
It's so implied that when I pointed it out to my friends I thought it was obvious, like how they talked about a calamity striking and Krile having the normal amount of aether as people from the Source, and not suffering from the same issue the rest had when traveling in The First
@@aguncomon I mean she was born in that shard still.. You're telling me because she by blood was born of Source native people a soul just passed through the rift to fill her 'vessel' rather than one native to the lifestream of that shard? My own theory for why she isn't notably weaker than others is due to being present/alive for the 7th Umbral calamity forcing her disjoined shards to meld together.
@@ExileTwilight I believe you have a point here, but on the other hand, maybe these fragments of a soul do seek their own counterparts when a rejoining happen. Maybe they don't seek random people (as you implied they could) And if we consider that her parents are descendants of people who "lived" at least 4 rejoinings (maybe 5 if they traveled to that shard after the rejoining happened) maybe her soul was indeed 7/14 when they delivered her to the source. I know it is a stretch, but that may be possible. It is also possible that fragmented souls on the source act as a magnet during any rejoining, due to the fact that they are the "originals"
If I were to sum up Dawntrail, I'd say I adored the lore they introduced, but felt like the MSQ could have been better.
I agree with Preach, there was just too much Wuk Lamat. She completely absorbed all the meaningful screen time, which left me feeling like the Scions were entirely underutilized. In some cases, they might as well not even have been there, at all, which is a cardinal sin.
If Wuk had stayed behind in Tuliyollol after the attack, it would have made much more sense. In fact, it would have made more sense for Koana to come with us over her, especially with the technology aspect of Solution Nine. It would have given us more time with the Scions, more focus on Erenville and Krile, and even given us a deeper glimpse into Koana's character as he changed from all-technology to better understanding his people.
I don't think they did Wuk Lamat any favors by making her so omnipresent, and they certainly put way too much on the shoulders of a relatively new English VA when they had a huge cast of veterans to lean on.
Yeah, the aggressive focus on Wuk Lamat didn't help (I still like her enough as a character though), and it led to a lot of characters who should have been important feeling somewhat redundant instead.
Regarding her VA, I think she was competent, though some of the voice DIRECTION was way off. Having seen a couple of clips of other languages (especially the German one), I can definitely say the English VA could've been better, but again, it's down to the poor voice direction. Some folks are saying it's the US studio's voice direction, because the British actors have all been excellent, but I'm not sure if that's speculation or whatever.
@@DynaChrisI wouldn’t say all of the British actors were 100% compared to normal, the primary example Y’shtola’s. She was definitely a bit stilted, though idk what the issue might’ve been.
Honestly, it may have been better if the scions indeed had not been there. Just so none of us would ask why they're there.
THIS, THIS, YES. This is so good. Exactly. Koana would get some development seeing that his "dreams" could have led to a disaster, seeing Alexandrians as a nightmare fuel and a parallel ... just this would have made the MSQ so much better.
@@raisylvaine8398 Thancred also sounded off, I was taken aback when he got to say something the first time. It's like he put on a much huskier tone than usual
In my own in depth review I made for DT, the complaint from 18:52 where you compare it with HW was also one of the things I brought up. The first solo duty you enter in DT occurs 24 quests in, and it's namely the one with Gulool Ja Ja. By the 27th quest of HW, when you recruit Ysayle to your cause, you get a total of 5 solo duties - 2 from the branching paths, Alphinaud and Tataru's trial by combat, Raubahn's rescue, and the fight against the heretics in the Amphitheatre where Shiva was first summoned. Alternatively, by the time I finished 50 quests in DT, I was already about 3-4 days into questing - and that is WITH several long hours of play and reading everything - while completing 50 quest in HW took me about 1 and a half days, playing for relatively the same ammount as with DT.
It's surprising how bloody concise the cutscenes are in earlier expansions. In HW and SB they don't spend minutes reacting to an event or running around in circles with the dialogue, without adding any relevant and new information. Every cutscene serves to move the plot along, even the one of Emmanelain trying to impress Laniaitte, for instance, is made in such a way to hint at the idea that Emmanelain will ultimately put himself in danger and will need to be rescued.
That was just off the top of my head, as well. If I actually took the time to think about it, I could've quite easily gone on a ten minute ramble about it 😅
@@DynaChrisyou're right, dawntrail meanders so much and by the time things get going moving at Z4's epilogue and it's far too late to build anything up with the limited amount of time they clearly had left at that point. The biggest issue in the rushed last 3rd of the expac is that sphene really doesn't get enough time to be believable, likeable or trustworthy and wuk comes off like an absolute dipshit for it by the end.
The funny thing is that the story is otherwise solid. A person who grows into herself and overcomes her doubts is the most basic solid story you can tell. Having that tested through the kind but invasive Queen Sphene is also a neat direction that has been done before. Also, all four people who were slated to be Dawnservant are actually lacking in traits Gulool Ja Ja has. They had a great set up, and flung it into the setting of Kagurabachi and left it to fend for itself.
I also get the feeling this is where the cinematic tendencies of Shadowbringers-base Endwalker bit them. In those stories, there are massive amounts of stories that can best be shown through cutscenes, so it makes sense that the cutscenes and the amount of cutscenes would be ballooning. But in that combined story, you were trying to solve the issue of the First while the Garlean Empire was unknowingly on their last breath, and when the end came you finally could get the information that could save everybody that also delved into the final story of the Ascians (and the epilogue in Pandemonium raids). In short, that story did actually have a need to massive amounts of story. But it is also clear that it allowed them to accept that FFXIV should be suffused with cutscenes.
I thought Wuk Evu's gag got tiresome as well, but maybe it''s a cultural difference seeing as he ranked 6th place in the Dawntrail character popularity poll in Japan 🤣
Oh it's definitely a cultural thing - I just hate when people tell the exact same joke over and over. An old friend of mine was like that and it got SO annoying 😂
I posted this elsewhere, but I laughed exactly once duirng the DT MSQ: when we were gearing up to fight for the 7th keystone, the camera pans to each character to strike their battle pose, and then the camera pans to Erenville...and he runs away, I lost it. It did not really seem like something planned by a writing team, but a small touch added by a scene animator at the last minute.
There is indeed a humorous archetype of the character who keeps trying to seppuku after any kind of shameful display, so you could be right.
@@bigtimetimmyjim6486 Honestly the whole time I was expecting erenville to pull a "oh I'm actually a highly skilled viper guess it's time to fight since I have no choice now" type moment and when that bit came up I was like wow is it gonna happen? But yeah he's just like nope I'm out so I got a bit of a chuckle there too.
Counter point about the healer role quests. SHOULD healers know about esuna by Dawntrail? Absolutely. But also how many times have we seen people die to the doom in the Fell Court of Troia of the Lunar Subterrane due to not having the debuff cleansed?
I find myself cleansing doom as a bard more frequently than healers ;p I liked the role quests, relatively low stakes comedy all pretty good, would say having done a few I missed from ShB and EW just recently the difficulty is on par for the solo instances, little disappointing compared to the increased difficulty of other DT content but nothing egregious.
Can't say I've had many issues with those 2 you mentioned, purely because I mostly play healer myself 😂
@@DynaChris I’ve seen healers die to not cleansing themselves even
At the end of the day though, how much responsibility is up to the player to just.. read what their skills do? Esuna is a really early skill, so it'll be on your hot bar by default for a while, since they autofill with new skills/spells. It kinda contradicts if an "experienced healer" or "bored healer" has forgotten the fundamentals.
I’m pretty sure the cure for doom in Abyssal Fracture is to be healed to full though isn’t it?
One minute in and this is already a better review than others I have seen. I am a heavy reader, and regard this DT story telling as awful. However, I am invested, and when looking for catharsis or someone who is going to help me remember and focus on the things that weren't poorly done without the BS of 'its not that bad, just dont think, consume", well, this video is a bullseye. Well done, even though I would heavily disagree there is any payoff at the end, I liked this video very much.
I'm normally quite positive about FFXIV, and there is a lot to like about Dawntrail (mostly the boss design), but there's a lot about it that's inexcusable IMO.
It could (and should) have been better, and that sort of thing will never happen if people just ignore the glaring issues it has.
I think a good example of the first half of DT done well was when we helped out in Stormblood at The Azim Steppe. The plot there was also about helping a young lady become ruler and I think the world building with the various Au Ra tribes there was much more organic.
About the role quest for healers, I don’t know how your experience has been with randoms in roulettes, but you’d be surprised at the ones I’ve often run into doesn’t even use it/never knew it existed. Especially when it comes to Doom x.x So I for one like the healer role quest being there to remind/tell people: “Hey! This exists! USE IT FOR THE LOVE OF THE TWELVE!!! YOUR PARTY WILL THANK YOU!!” XD
Oh I've been getting some horrible randoms - tanks who don't mitigate, players who get hit by a mechanic repeatedly without even trying to figure it out, and in the raids, other healers who barely heal and force me to babysit the whole party.
But still, it should've been drilled into their heads how important Esuna is, long before the fifth expansion IMO.
@@DynaChris Oh trust me, I'm of the same mind too, but it's still jarring to see there's still people out there that don't know what it is xD
Unfortunately, thanks to level skips, some healers *did* start the game at 80. Double unfortunately, a not too small group of them decided to put zero effort into reading skill/spell descriptions or watching a guide or literally any effort to know what to do, get carried by other party members (or run duty support) and never look back.
The healer role quest has some heavy healing (and knowledge of the secret spell, Esuna) but it doesn't require you to learn to heal skillfully. Just spam heals to keep one target alive because funny spear lady *can* kill the boss.
A reason I can think of that the Scions wouldn’t have mattered much is because their stories had concluded long before DT overall.
ShB was where Thancred, Urianger, and Y’shtola (mostly) wrapped up what stories they had to tell, with Urianger getting a little bit more closure, even though it wasn’t necessary. The twins have been with us since the beginning, and EW was where their stories ended. Hell, Estinien realistically had his story conclude way back in HW, but he was blackmailed into becoming a Scion thanks to Krile. If not for that, he wouldn’t need to reappear at all.
While it is true that Krile and Erenville could’ve had more to their stories, it’s just as true that there wasn’t much more of a story to tell with either of them. Krile already had her moment back in Eureka, and knowing her parents were from another Reflection doesn’t do much to develop her further. She could’ve been handled better, but her story was mostly a narrative dead end either way.
With all this in mind, a lot of people seem to have this misconception where Wuk Lamat somehow has too much screen time, when in reality, it’s more accurate to say other characters had little to reason to be in the story at all, and the writers may have overcompensated by filling up time with Wuk Lamat instead. It’s just a theory, but I think it makes sense when you consider how little reason there was to bring in the Scions for something like this. It also feels as if the Scions were only included from fear of fans reactions to the Scions not being together for one expansion.
Then there’s my response to your feelings on the role quests, where I honestly have to question where it is you got the idea from that the role quests were meant to challenge your knowledge of each role, when trials, raids, etc already do that just fine. Im not saying you’re not allowed to have opinions, I just don’t see how the role quests were ever really meant to challenge your abilities, especially when remembering how previous role quests didn’t really do that either.
Gulool Ja's existence makes no sense to me. Who is his mother if he has one? Why did his father abandon him and tell him he wasn't his father in one scene? His presence only seems to serve some knee jerk emotional response.
I feel like we'll get more of his story in the patch quests. Either way, Zoraal Ja's last-minute change of heart was such a tonal whiplash that had no impact on me whatsoever 😂
@@DynaChrisI don't know man. I have very little faith that the writers even care about who Gulool Ja's mother is.
_Not a single character has bothered to ask about it, not even the intelligent ones._
If the characters don't care, why would I assume the writers care?
Zoraal Ja was the only Mamool Ja living in Alexandria. Gulool Ja's existence is impossible.
@@Dharengo he is a clone, calling it now.
@@joncross9264 If you say so. There's no reason to believe that though.
I didn't actually mind the first part of the msq, I do however agree that they could have focused more on Krile and Erenville in the second half. I kept going through the second half wondering why Wuk Lamat was coming along, right after taking on the role of dawnservant. She should have stayed in her city after the attack to help her people, like she kept telling us she wanted to throughout the first half. I do however love the addition of more trials with npc's. It helps a lot with learning the mechanics, and I don't have to be stuck in dps limbo for ages to continue the story. Other than that I also like that we're seen as an adventurer, and not only the savior of the world, however I also love the small comments here and there about how we're not to be underestimated and taken lightly. Like when we first meet Estinien in the palace or right before Wuk Lamat's solo fight, when we say "don't worry, the scary adventurer won't interfere" or something like that. I had hoped that Y'shtola would have more to say, honestly, considering how hard she's working to find a way to travel between the reflections. It didn't really feel like her to want to stay behind. It also lacked some commentary from Alphinaud about the political aspect of this new world, since he's there, I mean. I was kinda expecting him to want to figure out how shit worked on that side of the world. Overall, it felt refreshing with the low stakes after saving the entire world in the last expansion, and several wars before that. We got to be adventurers this time, and explore this new continent, and their people, while trailing after Wuk Lamat for a bit too long.
43:47 Between how rushed this feels and stuff like Y'shtola being here and then gone. It makes me wonder if the story got changed massively half way through development. It's not like they had way less time this time. Maybe SquareEnix brought in consultants to change stuff or just had some over-active executive make a bunch of demands. Not that we'll ever know regardless..
That's my theory. The character development was extremely lacking in DT compared to other expansions, even Stormblood. English voice acting among the usually good established characters (the Scions) was incredibly lackluster. I honestly thought Thancred got a new voice actor after hearing his first line of dialogue. A last minute change in the story direction and dialogue would explain so many of my complaints with the MSQ.
These video's are amazing mate keep it up, I understand not everything could be covered since the video is all ready so long just following the events of the MSQ but I really hope you'll do more videos that cover the raid storylines and maybe even some dungeons/ trials that have story quests of their own and the job quests for each expansion.
I think taking damage off of tank gap closers is 100% a good change, though I think Dark Knight should have had a new oGCD added to fill the missing spot.
Ughhhh that edgy dash dark knights do... is cringe I'd rather have plunge back
It should be taken off all tanks then.
Warriors left in the dust 😢
The reason damage was removed from the gap closets of DRK and GNB is because their burst windows are already very busy. So having the fact they had damage made their bust windows even busier. The burst windows for PLD and WAR are not nearly as busy, which is why their gap closers kept their potencies.
For me, taking the damaging gap closer off of both Dark Knight and Gunbreaker. Kinda ruined a big fun factor for me. Though this is coming from someone that rule of cooled it like a combo in a action game instead of optimizing it in raiding content.
Like using Plunge to create combo animations in between Bloodspiller, and Salted Earth specifically. Where the effect of the spinning blade traces into the animations of both super well. Or how the damage gap closer of Gunbreaker fills in the animation between Burst Strike and Hypervelocity really well. I loved doing things like that with the Gap Closers that ultimately added to what I enjoyed playing those two jobs for.
Which don't get me wrong. I understand why from a mechanical standpoint they had taken it off especially with how busy both Classes burst windows were getting.
Great video ! I'm here since the first one and it's always a pleasure to watch them !
You talk about it in the video but I think FF14 have a big problem with marketing : Dawntrail is NOT the expansion we were sold ! If from the start they were clear what the expansion is about, we could have less false hope (with the Scion, Erenville or Krille). But it's not the first time they "failed" their marketing : Zordiark/Hydealyn spoiler for Shadowbringer and Sharlayan's plan which were spoil at 90% before the launch...
Hope they will get better at this for the futur !
People who were around for Stormblood's launch: "First time?"
But seriously, they absolutely need to rethink how they advertise and hype expansions up. Thankfully my hopes for the gameplay content in the patch cycle remain high because of the excellent encounter design so far, but the MSQ felt like such a letdown to me.
I agree with the title already, can't wait to hear your detailed thoughts.
It seems my opinions line up with a lot of the community's tbh. The raids, though... *chefs kiss*
I have been a big fan of aspects of the story. but there was definitely fatigue with wuk lamat. I think the lore of Tural is fascinating and the lore of alexandria was also interesting. THE BEST THING IN DAWNTRAIL are the dungeons and the music though. Any kind of combat is fantastic feeling.
I think they need to overhaul dark knight as a next job getting a rework. The tank just lacks any kind of sustain in dungeons and dungeons are much more punishing now.
DRK definitely needs something, I agree. I think WAR needs toning down a bit, as well, because it barely needs a healer 😂
I'm calling it now. "You're Not Alone" is used during one of the 7.x trials, either MSQ or trial series.
I love that the healer role quest revolves around Esuna, since so many healers don’t use it. Even if a removable debuff on me is my fault, no comm for the healer if they leave it on.
The head of reason being dead already is actually a pretty lowkey good part that could have been used to really shit on Zoraal Ja.
“You have two souls to fight with. So i’ll do the same!” After already having lost.
Zoraal Ja didn’t know the head of Reason passed. So basically, broski got mopped by a heavily nerfed Gulool Ja Ja AND cheated to win 💀💀💀 bro is ASS and I’d have LOVED to reveal that to him before he died 😭😭
Genuinely shocked they didn't pull something like that. All we get is "oh he died 3 years ago" and that's it, then when it matters, WHOOPS WE FORGOT ABOUT IT! 😂
I've gotta say this about the healer role quest: i have encountered more than my share of healers who don't bother using esuna. Like healers who die in dun scaith because they never esuna themselves.
That's pretty much how I felt. The first bit dragged soooo much, the second had actual interesting developments and by the end of the last zone I was crying like a baby, it was very beautiful and tactful(I hope that's the word)how they handled that. Deeply emotional. People hate the last zone, I think it was the best part of the story, in concept and emotionally.
Also, I was laughing every time wuk evu did the thing. Idk, I think I'm easy to please.😂
Also, since you are obviously a big FF-fan in general, do you plan to recap the other final fantasy titles? Or even other series you like. I'd be here for it at least 😅
Absolutely! I've just started FF11, mostly so I can experience the story and world before the alliance raids, but I plan on putting a handful of videos out for it. It's one of two mainline FF games I've not played (the other is 16, and I'm waiting for the PC port), and there's a couple I've played but not finished (12 and 15), so those are pretty high on my backlog. I'll probably cover FF7 Rebirth when it comes to PC, as well.
As for the rest... I haven't thought that far ahead 😅
8:55 viper sidequest summed up my feelings about DT in general. They promised big and under delivered.
Unfortunately, yeah :(
40:30 I was expecting it to lead up to his mother finally using his preferred name in the end, but nope! I was so disappointed lmao
58:30 I believe it's elaborated that they're from the source and that's why Krile's aetheric density is close enough to someone else native to the source that Y'Shtola couldn't see the difference.
The two optional dungeons and Arcadion saved the expansion for me. Once I hit levelcap I had a great time. Which is ridiculous cause I spent dozens of hours in the MSQ and much much less in the end game.
Sorry for how spaced out these were. I was watching the video while working lol
I dislike every scene Ketenramm is in. The dude has some kind of curse on him that completely distorts all diegetic causality.
Why was he completely fine despite being lost at sea? Letters or other forms of communication were available to him. "I'm fine, I'm going to live out my life in Tural, bye."
I have zero reason to assume this will be expanded on, even in the bermuda triangle stuff that will inevitably feature hin.
He was living out in the woods, by himseld, just so he could show up out of the blue to remind the mamool ja guy to do his job. The plot needed someone there so they arbitrarily chose him. I know he was there to "watch over the gate" or whatever, but that's just a convenient excuse.
He also just happened to be carrying an extra set of macguffins for Zoraal Ja to steal becaude the plot needed Zoraal Ja to fail the rite but still open the gate.
I really hope I do not need to state how utterly stupid it is to leave such important macguffins in the hands of a weak old man living by himself in the woods.
How did he survive the ambush despite it being established that Zoraal Ja will kill anyone who gets in his way. The reason is obvious: The plot needs him alive. Just like the plot _didn't_ need Sareel Ja alive, despite the fact that he was loyal.
If he survived the ambush, why did he not immediately alert his friend Gulool Ja Ja? Why did he wait all the way until Zoraal Ja's attack?
Like I said, the diegetic causality just warps around him.
Yeah he just exists as a plot device, more or less.
Funny how you found the first half dragging around so much, for me that was the second half but I’m a bit of world-building nut. Msq in general was a slog, encounters in general were great. Wish other characters than Wuk Lamat got more of the spotlight. I’d rate this expansion around Stormblood.
I think the recurring joke of Wuk Evu is the only thing that really got me every time. I have never seen that character trope before, so it was completely unknown to me, which is probably why I laughed at it. The seasickness joke only landed once and the rest of the humor was meh to me.
Yoooo. I was just finishing your endwalker recap and was wondering when you would put out a dawntrail video. The timing is perfect!
I have my moments 😉
I'll be doing something more in-depth for Dawntrail when the next expansion comes along, which will probably end up being something like 3 hours long 😂
Personally was one of my favorite expansions when given it the credit of "this is a fresh start, don't expect massive overarching plot hype yet like ShB and EW." That being said, do agree with a ton of the critiques (not the blind hate towards say difficulty or casting however), and have had many a night talking to a close friend who hated most of the expac to bounce ideas on.
The Scions (lack of) involvement I think could be managed in a way that keeps them around but not largely overly relevant while also fixing another glaring issue: the role quests which have been in decline since we helped Ardbert's crew.
Have each Scion(s) represent the various roles, maybe Alisae taking up the reins as an 8.0 phys ranged or tank, and let the role quests be us learning from and having a moment with our good friends without shoehorning them into places they don't quite fit.
That was in my head too. Like who wouldnt want to go on a journey with Estinien learning something more bout dragons as any melee really? Or just solving some mystery,whatever, just please dont have my dragoon be forced to go solve some random thief in Kugane... where the other main char was actually a hunter (bard) from some Tural tribe.... (A RANGED)
Actually finished the MSQ now! General feelings, spoilers:
Wuk Lamat grew on me. The 96 quests felt completely pointless and irritating. Did not expect Bakool Ja Ja to become a favourite. Electrope is going to be an ongoing problem for Eitherys I can tell. The people of old Alexandria were assholes and Sphene never stood a chance. The music is still awesome. The new boss difficulty is REALLY MEAN for console/controller/legacy camera players. The graphical update was a delight, load times on PS4 are slightly longer but the game looks ridiculously pretty. ERENVILLE T_T. Pictomancer is great fun, you gotta really time your motif refreshes though. Viper is a bit like a melee Dancer with more reliable procs and I had a lot of fun playing it. Solution 9 gave me MASSIVE PSO VIBES and I have very mixed feelings about that.
Been really enjoying your retrospectives on the previous expansions and looking forward to this!
My ultimate thoughts on this expansion are very mixed. Loved some things; hated others. I think my biggest issue is wasted character potential. Take Sareel Ja. I remember being dead certain he was possessed by one of the remaining Ascians, or otherwise had some secret connection to the golden city we didn't know about yet. But no. Wasted character is wasted. Sareel Ja dies without any comment or elaboration. With how much he pushed and enabled Zoraal Ja to be the person he became, I was genuinely expecting something.
There are others, of course. Krile is egregious. I was fully expecting an arc and a secondary protagonist role for her like how Urianger was handled in Endwalker or Alphinaud in Heavensward. Maybe not quite as fleshed out as Thancred in Shadowbringers, but way more than we got.
Krile was one of the biggest disappointments for me. Finally joining us in battle only for her whole reason to come along taking a back seat until the last minute sucked. And even then it's not enough.
Come to think of it, I did expect more from Sareel Ja as well. Weird how he goes from the mastermind behind a lot of Zoraal Ja's rise to power to just... disposable.
@@DynaChrisI wanted to add one thing after watching your whole video: it's funny. My feelings on Wuk Lamat saying her goodbye to Namika and Erenville to Cahcua were inverted. The fact was, for me, Wuk got to say goodbye. Erenville had spent an entire zone talking up his mother. Slowly opening up and revealing just how much of an impact she had on his life. He seems excited and trepidatious to introduce us. She meets him and is the opposite of Erenville in many ways, but both clearly share an unslakable curiosity. Her calling him her fussy little bun bun really also added to it for me. You can see how much he admired her, even when he was quiet or awkward about it. He spent the last zone brooding. He didn't want to let go. Even though this is her final wish, I felt his pain about this. It was another time for me that I knew the dialog only had one correct choice: Erenville had to be the one to release her. Otherwise he wouldn't never get over it.
I did like what they did to him this expansion. I think he has the best arc that's not overdone like Wuk Lamat's or undercooked like Krile. He actually had meat to his story, as he grappled with the possibility of losing his mom got some relief by finding her, only to learn that no, she is gone, and finally, he does learn to let her go.
I'm a bit bitter towards the role quest, that the bad guys are uninspired is one thing, we had a few of them over the story, no big deal. That we have rather bland side kicks, we had these over the years too. But seeing these have replaced the job quest of old, it just makes me miss even more the many characters I met in those. Although it does show us to many more cultures of the continent, I miss the characters I already know.
Dawntrail is certainly an interesting MSQ. There's a lot of cool events going on and I love Tural in general. However, you were right about the pacing and screen time distribution: The 1st half suffers from being too slow, the 2nd half goes a bit too fast to the point where there isn't enough time for explain everything, and Wuk Lamat, though not the worst character, takes up too much screentime.
I still don't think this is worst than ARR/Stormblood, though. The former has too many stupid plots like the Titan/Garuda arc and Bloody Banquet is still the game's low point IMO. The latter features Ala Mhigo, which causes the game's writing to drop anytime it plays a role in the plot. I'd rather sit through the slow pace of DT than deal with these annoying plot threads ever again. I'd put this at about equal/slightly better than HW.
This is the first time I heard anyone hating on the bloody banquet.
I found similar issues with this that I had with Stormblood, its like 2 separate stories that didnt feel like either had enough weight given to them. I especially think that them basically shafting Krile and Erenville screentime really hurt that last zone for me. Their emotional moments didnt hit as hard as the scenes seemed to want it to feel. All in all I still enjoyed the major plot points, just the story beats in between and the storytelling just not quite what I'd like. I rank it above Stormblood still since this one had the decency to keep its deaths permanent.
I'll have to say the tank role quest is very sweet - i regret skipping through half of it, some dialogue hooked me and i payed attention till the end LOL
As far as the pixelated clothes in the graphics update they did say from the beginning that it was going to be a work in progress.
I am largely indifferent about a good chunk of the MSQ, which is unfortunate but oh well. However I am terrified of the implications for the Azem Key as well as Living Memory. That we will indeed deep dive into futher time travelling and multiverse worldbuilding. Which might seem ideal for a game that wants to continue for another decade from a content perspective. But I am yet to see it being done in a satisfying way in FF14, so I am highly prejudiced against this prospect. Louisoix's little trick between 1.23 and 2.0, Alexander in 3.X, AU-Ironworks in 4.X and 5.X, Warrior of Light and Sharlayan in 6.0 all have their fair share of problems that are not fun to think about.
MY best way to describe DT MSQ is that...I gave it a 7/10, and I think it should've gone back to the writers room a couple more times. I see it, its in there, but it was not delivered how it was intended I believe.
Pretty much. It feels closer to a first draft than the final version.
All the Role Quests did for me was want to fight the individual Tural Vidraals referenced
Maybe the future EX trials. Who knows.
The amount of healers ive come across with things not on their hotbars, like role abilities are a foreign concept... but lucid dreaming sure is there.
Told a healer the other day they could repose the mecha adamantoise. After they decided to pull it themselves, thus making it annoying to kill the prior 2 adds and aoe on 3 mobs not being a gain for a lot of jobs. Funny times
Honestly so interesting to see all the criticism and different takes with this one, I feel I liked it more than most seem to have and would put it on the same tier as HW and SB, but I really felt Endwalker missed for me and liked this better. But its been interesting to see, some people love the first half and hate the second, or vice versa, some just hated the whole thing. I understand the criticism and I do hope this is a one off, there are defiantly places the writing is weak and needed refinement, and the cutscenes needed trimming by a good 4 hours minimum. But looking forward to the patch content regardless, I think the criticism could help them to look at making the narrative tighter and I do think there is a lot of directions they could go in to pick the story back up and make it more satisfying. The content though is S tier, leveling 90-100 is fun cause the dungeons are all a delight, and the EX trials and the raids the best .0 content the game has had.
I've seen a fair few people saying how much they liked it, but I can't agree because the pacing and the quality of the writing dragged it down. Really wish they focused more on characters like Erenville, Krile, and Zoraal Ja.
The fact that the rite of succession was supposed to "divide the Scions" and it didn't even come close to doing so was kinda disappointing too.
But yeah the dungeons, raids, and trials were great and I wanna see more like it!
@@DynaChrisi just don't get this. The quality of the writing was top notch. Dawntrail is literally my second favourite mmo expansion ever.
I'm at Level 97 quests so I won't watch this until I finish the MSQ, but I'm positive it's your usual high quality analysis!
I've probably already asked this but in case I haven't, have you considered doing videos on the various raid series? I'd love to see your reactions to the Crystal Tower and Omega raids in particular...
You're at the good bit, at least!
It's not as in-depth as my other content, but I'll be doing a full story analysis video when the patch quests are out.
Regarding the raids, I did go over the Crystal Tower raids in the ARR video, and I do have some plans involving the others, but the next raid-related video will be on the upcoming Echoes of Vana'diel ones. I WILL get round to covering the older ones, though - don't worry!
The video I wanted to make but never had the time to do. Well done!
"Every healer thus far should know how esuna works"... my friend, I present you the PARTY FINDER, where healers have no GCD single target heals nor Esuna in their hotbars because, and I quote "Why bother, it's not useful anyway?"
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought the same. While its dungeons and trials feel phenomenal and engaging, and its music is some of the best so far, it is arguably the worst-told MSQ to date. I'd consider it being worse than Stormblood which I feel can be attributing to them focusing too much on Wuk Lamat. The same thing was done in Stormblood with Lyse, but at least they kept the WoL as the centerpiece, but here they don't even do that. With all the character backstories being only briefly touched on, it feels like they intended to create a completely different (and more involved) story that they axed partway through because it complicated some aspects they wanted to fit in and had to come up with something to give the players something.
They definitely needed more time to work on the story. I wish Erenville and his relationship with his mother was more fleshed out, and that we actually got to learn about Zoraal Ja. Then there's Krile and how much of a back seat she took.
I could go on for hours tbh, but I didn't want the video to be 90% negativity 😅
@@DynaChris I wonder if them limiting themselves to only 6 zones per expansion greatly hindered their ability to tell the story (they completely wasted the potential in that Wild West area). I wouldn't have minded another year or two waiting for a better and more fleshed-out tale. Both Krile and Elen- *Erenville* got completely screwed-over from their stories. Did Gulool Ja just bud off of Zoraal Ja? What happened to his mother??
Stormblood also had other interesting characters that it focused on. Sure, Lyse got a lot of screen time, but so did Hien and Gosetsu and others. They all had a far bigger role in Stormblood than any of the non-Wuk Lamat characters in Dawntrail.
@@Forsakei I think we'll learn about Gulool Ja's mother in the patch quests. It'd be a bit of a wasted opportunity otherwise IMO.
@@DynaChrisI mean with all the opportunities they already wasted, what's one more?
Yessss! Been waiting to hear this from ya!
Hope you enjoy it! Bit nervous about this one cos it's a lot more negative than my previous videos 😅
Great video dude. I am at level 98 MSQ and I've just made it to Solution 9. The story is just painful to play. I legitimately started skipping cutscenes in the cowboy area because i just didnt give a shit about these guys. Glad to know nothing in substance was missed
This expansion so far seems to me to have the exact same reception as Stormblood. Cool interesting new jobs, story that won't really do it for people who are really into Heavensward, amazing gameplay content.
Basically, I'm finally home.
i hope that's the case. stormblood patches were crazy good for the most part
I bought the expansion but due to IRL things popping up I have not had a chance to finish Endwalker but it seems like I should have waited to see if this expansion would be worth playing. I did not have much fun in Endwalker and was hoping Dawntrail would rekindle the love I had but it seems like it will be another online game that I abandon once played through. I said a few weeks ago in the FC discord that I am amazed how I am thinking chess is easier than this video game at this point.
Wuk Evu's repetitive joke is really annoying after a while. It would have been OK if he only did it once to Wuk Lamat and once to Koana at most.
And the tonal back and forth is extremely annoying as well. Its fun if its done sparingly, but throughout the whole MSQ it shifts back and forth between comedy and serious events that just brings everything down together.
Regarding the characters, Wuk Lamat's writing is terribly executed. She has great potential, someone who has great ambitions for the best of intentions but is way out of her league, learns to grow into her own right and becomes a leader of a nation. The main story points are great but the way its executed leaves a lot to be desired, the way they intentionally wrote her to be extremely stupid everytime the opportunities presents itself, and that her growth is told to you instead of being shown to you.
The writing did subtly try to show some of her leadership growth towards the 2nd half of the arc in how she handles the initial relationship and information gathering from Sphene, but the bulk of the writing ends up with "SPHENE LISTEN TO ME" basically smashes her growth with a sledgehammer. Wuk Lamat was done real dirty by the writers.
Also, they threw away the chance they had with Bakool Ja Ja. They tried to write a redemption story which actually works, but his initial characterisation and subsequent role in the story post reveal leaves a lot to be desired. He is driven by desperation to resort to underhanded motives, but he practically did nothing to show that in the first part of the story until towards his big reveal. The feat where they make tacos? They could have paired Wuk Lamat with Bakool Ja Ja and start dropping hints of his desperation at this point to slowly transition into the 2nd half of the story in this zone.
Subsequently he suddenly just becomes a character that has next to zero relevance to the whole plot. He had so much more potential and was again wasted by the writers. Why not have him become a supporting character towards the 2nd half, having being won over by Wuk Lamat, starts to lets his wall down and show more of his other sides in the exploration of Alexandria. He could have been one of the trust members for Zoraal Ja fight and it would have wrap up his arc very nicely too, having initially lost to Zoraal Ja and subsequently after putting his burden down and trusting in Wuk, then subsequently growing while travelling through Alexandria with Wuk and eventually being part of the party that brings down Zoraal Ja.
Overall, story beats have so much more potential but just writing is very poorly executed.
Pretty much. There is a good story in there, but it needed more time to cook. And I 100% agree about the pairing during the cooking contest. They had an opportunity to make it really fun and interesting, and instead made the most boring decision they could have.
hey just wanted to say I love your videos unfortunately cant watch this one just yet as I have not played it yet, is there any plans on covering the other ff games as I really like your style of video and i would love to see what you can do with other games
Thanks, and no worries :)
Other FF games - absolutely! I'm currently playing FF11 so I know what's going on in 14's upcoming alliance raids, so there'll be videos on that next.
FF16 and FF7 Rebirth videos will likely happen when they come to PC, and I'll be revisiting some of the older games soon too :)
37:30 "Any healer who's gone through the game should know what Esuna is" LOL. Tell that to the countless times in Endwalker that I died because the healer didn't Esuna something.
And at 42:37. I get the WoL standing back so the Dawnservant can retain his honor by defeating Zarool Ja, but once the dude resurrects and then outright empowers himself, is where I'd have jumped in, because then he's just straight cheating, so aiding won't impact the Dawnservant's honor at all.
They should still know, and it's 100% on them if they don't keep you alive (when they're able to - not much can be done about people who like to farm vuln stacks).
And yeah I don't get why nobody jumped in when Zoraal Ja got back up either. I wanna give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was supposed to be one of those "it happened so fast we couldn't stop him" things, but how long it takes for him to get up and kill Gulool Ja Ja is kinda ridiculous.
Long one, sorry...
Dawntrail was the first segment of the MSQ that I genuinely wanted to end. The game had some good ideas and added some nice world building but... The pacing, character writing, voice direction, and over all "intelligence" of the story were absolutely terrible. It's like they forgot that the people playing this just came through the philosophical gauntlet of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. They stopped every few quests to look right into the camera and flatly explain what you just saw. The presentation of a lot of aspects, for lack of a better word, felt childish. Example: There appears to be a moratorium on the Warrior of Light killing suddenly and out of nowhere. Any fate where you fight a sentient species, the enemy kneels down and then says some cheesy line while running away. The "cowboys" (Rroneekboys?) dual with rubber bullets, Erenville telling us not to kill the bandits, etc. It's a pretty disturbing shift within CBU3 when placed next to the other issues and has me worried.
Character wise, Wuk Lamat was written like a "modern western" (if you catch my meaning) Mary Sue. She experienced no challenges. She succeeded at literally everything she tried. She never once experienced failure and had to grow and adapt in a way that would alter how she approached things all along. We spoke to Gulool Ja Ja about how she was "not ready to rule" but the reality is, the Wuk Lamat at the end is the exact same one from the beginning. A well written story might have had her do the absolutely ridiculous "We're just enemies because we haven't gotten to know each other" allowing an enemy to walk away which results directly in someone she cares about being hurt or killed. Thus teaching her that there is a time and a place and a leader has to make the hard choices sometimes and "peace and love" aren't everything. She was endearing in 6.55 and I was interested. Then she became amusing. Then she was annoying. Then I hated her. Not because of the character but because of the brain dead writing. For the record, I thought her VA was perfectly fine, it was the dialogue and voice direction that were the issue.
Zoraal Ja was an empty shell. None of the garbage he spouted about motivations made any sense from beginning to end. He was functionally a cardboard cut out with "Bad Guy" written on it. He was nonsensical and none of the babbling at the end of his trial made sense.
As for Alexandria... The idea was fine but they didn't take the proper time to really flesh out the mechanics of the partial "rejoining" and the nature of where they came from. For a story this far into the realm of multiple worlds and reflections, we really needed that to happen. I didn't hate it over all though Sphene felt a little thin and her motivations were transparent. Regarding the soul consumption in Solution 9, that has to stop. The entire idea is an abomination. I understand if you're trying to sustain a population in a pocket dimension with no access to an aetherial sea, but no more. They have one now and it can't continue. If the writers don't address that, It's going to kill a lot of my love for the world.
Living Memory didn't land with me. I looked at the entire thing from a mechanical perspective. Someone outside died, they ripped the memories off of their soul and plugged them into an AI running with their memories all while burning their soul as fuel for the grisly machine. I was uncomfortable the entire time because I looked at it like one would a puppet show being put on with the corpses of people you know. While the Caciua and Erenville goodbye did land with me as someone who has lost a parent, I didn't feel much more than relief turning off the machines.
I really hope they can pivot on the writing style, presentation and technique going forward.
ALSO! The Millala fled the source from the criterion dungeon of AloAlo Island. You even get to see the speaker's chamber there. From the looks of things they had the "artifact" which they used to escape the source to escape the 5th calamity then traveled to the 12th reflection but thousands of years into the past by the source's reckoning where they then died in that world's rejoining. So, they left the source in the 5th calamity and went back to die on the world rejoined in the 2nd calamity. Not at all confusing.
glad I'm not the only one that felt that way about living memory, at the very least they went about it in the worst way possible and Im just hopeful that they can clean this dumpster fire of an expansion and get some quality control with the writing, we are too late into this mmo's story to become juvenile
Please don't ask them to add another Raubahn (Savage) solo duty (solo duty in early zones). You don't know how bad it is waiting 8 hours to get into the solo duty.
The server architecture was way different and weaker back then.
Even in Endwalker there were never any instance issues with the bajillion people queueing up for roulettes. And the servers were absolutely _packed_ back then.
They gave it far too much time to the boring first half and far too little time to the interesting second half it just didnt achieve much by the end, hopefully the patch MSQ improves upon it.
>"Dawntrail has a rough start"
>looks inside
>full plot summary
I suppose if “Dawntrail” means the entirety of Dawntrail including patches, then yes Dawntrail did get off to a rough start. Which is to say if anybody perceives anything good about it by 8.0 it will certainly be the patches save Base Dawntrail Vipers and Pictomancers in general.
"A good story poorly told" was exactly my thoughts on the whole MSQ. And its why it made ne so mad. Such good ideas, and cool concepts. Let down by truly atrocious writing.
My problem is that, on a second playthrough starting from ARR, I'm going to speed run DT since I can't stand Wuk Lamat.
She came up as likeable character at the end of 6.55 but in 7.0 her presence was completely oppressive and infantile. The only relief moment from her is the 4th zone where nothing relevant to the story happens, except more setting up for when Wuk Lamat's comes back again.
Then there's that last fight where she pulls a Zeno's shattering reality move out of nowhere and by herself holds the boss in place... I felt like an NPC.
I'm not really sure this character is salvageable with more screen time in future patches. I have more attachment to the characters of the new gatherer's quest line than to Wuk.
You talking about how insulting the Healer quests are and I know WAY TOO MANY Healers who actually had to put Esuna on their bars for them cause they spent so much time going "fuck Esuna I'll never Esuna" makes me giggle -- the devs literally went for those sorts THROATS.
Big red text boxes!? What frame are these in the HUD? I went through the entire expansion in oh sh*t mode and only now found out about red text boxes. Suggesting to me, that I have them shut off.
There isn't an option to turn them off, as far as I can tell. If you're using some kinda addon that changes HUD elements, it could be that, but otherwise you should be seeing them pretty often.
@@DynaChris maybe I just looked past them. I'll be looking for them now though!
Truthfully, I found the healer role quest boss fight to be somewhat challenging.
Buuuuut, that may be because I really haven't practiced with the class that much. I got my brother's help to level sage.
Chances are if I practiced more as a healer, the boss fight would be a lot more disappointing
Yeah, that's the problem - I'm a healer main, so naturally I found the whole thing far too easy.
@@DynaChris Fair enough. Unsurprisingly, cleared the DPS and Tank boss fights on my first try
I have lots of issues with the msq but overall I enjoyed it. Tbh I know a lot of people hated the first half but I'm into lore and I loved the world building. The second half suffered in interest for me, even though the story picked up, but thats more because the storybuilding and character stories kind of fell to the wayside. Erenville and Krile's story was basically stepped over and wuk lamat, though a good character, felt like she only had good character development in the first half. Sphene was too wishy washy (even for an AI) and I couldn't connect with her as a tragic character at all. Regardless of my issues with characters and the latter half of the msq, I still did like DT. The music and combat honestly saved it for me but I do hope the patches clear up some of the missed opportunities the msq had. Fingers crossed!!!!
Like the only part I felt connected to sphene was when you defeat her. Because there she showed a bit of the humanity of the original Sphene. But as you said, even when she first revealed herself to the party I knew she was not to be trusted.
Are we the Warrior of Light or is Wuk Lamat? Also, I'll never not laugh at Smile. What a joke compared to Endwalker.
"We were promised a situation which would divide the Scions"
This is why I watch almost nothing about upcoming content. I went and blind and honestly enjoyed the little competition factor as it came and went not expecting anything more.
Great video, agree with almost everything.
Just FYI, Pictomancer might be a bit odd in lower level content, but you often end up being 50-60% of the damage of your Light Party in the first 50 dungeon levels.
Don’t ask me how I know. It’s illegal.
I actually liked the expansion, yeah it has things that could have been handled better, but I say let them cook, this is the first phase of the next arc. A lot of people hated the first part I actually liked it. Again is just my opinion.
Are you gona cover the PATCHs to 7.1 to 7.5 ?
When they're out, sure!
On the healer role quests, you underestimate the amount of people who don't know what Esuna is or what it does lol
That second boss of Lapis Manalis is a good example....
this is something that i note but i think wuk lamat is indirected inspire by Aru of Blue Archive, she had a lot of things in common with Aru, but is not the best execution and as an Aru lookalike is not close, and thats sad because Aru is one of my favorites but is more than obvious that Lamaty is not close to Aru in the slightest
1:08:50
The feral soul stays on during [censored]
I never want to see Wuk Lamat again. I recently picked up triple triad and the reward for beating 123 NPCs is a wuk lamat card. What a spit in the face.
I think alot can be forgiven if we idk get to play. Even realm reborn puts you in spots to fight people throughout the story. I think some more traditional mmo stuff can come back into the fomrula, like yes please let me fight a group of 4-5 maybe 10 enemies. Stop putting it all in a cutscene.
I think a lot of it stems from Stormblood's launch issues, where players struggled to get into the first big solo instance. I'd take that over sitting through about 4 hours of cutscenes before something interesting happens, though.
@@DynaChris 100% agree, and there are some content creators doing tests on the xpac showing 50-120min before even having to push a keybind that is insane to not get to play for that long. But one of the big saving graces atm is the group content kicks alot of ass for me at least. Really great encounter design but i hope in post patch or next xpac we get more gameplay in there.
I agree with the title but not the thumbnail; I do not think DT is a good story that was poorly told, but instead was a bad story that squandered the potential of some interesting ideas. Characters that should have gotten development remained static, plot points that should have been center stage were sidelined (Krile, Solution 9's soul consumption), and what we did get was low-hanging fruit meant to use emotional appeal to cover up a lack of a coherent narrative.
As a result, I think the second half is worse than the first. The first half was kind of boring and did have moments of nonsense, but it did not disappoint me the way the second half did. The second half pays off the first half in the most basic, vapid ways and finishes off with a premise that borders on fanfiction.
There's a lot of good in there that is bogged down by the slow pacing and repetitive dialogue. That doesn't automatically make it a bad story - it just needed more time to be refined into something that could have (and *should* have, given Creative Studio 3's track record) been great.
There's some powerful moments of loss and the characters coming to terms with things, but because those characters aren't given enough screen time to flesh these stories out, it lacks the proper emotional impact on the player.
To put it simply, they needed more time to cook.
@@DynaChris So I will be completely honest, I did not find those moments of loss to really be all that powerful, and it is not like I cannot relate, it is just not really handled with a lot of grace or care from the story itself. The Krile moments literally had no real effect on me, and the Erenville moments did, but that was mainly because I cared about him as a character; the story itself did a really poor job of making Cachuia relevant until the very end (a revolution we learn almost nothing about, a sudden appearance in the final zone). DT chose to make us run pointless errands and do trivial crap for Wuk instead of devoting time to perhaps getting to know her while she was still alive. It was a good Erenville character moment, but afterwards we get back to the main plot that lacked moral ambiguity (and they had their chance here if they did not sideline the Solution 9 soul usage dilemma) or logic.
It felt like a last minute emotional asspull that vaguely relates to the content of the first half of the story, but not in a way that really feels gratifying. It is difficult to take a message of loss seriously from a franchise that does not share this feeling with the player in any meaningful way; all we lost in the overall narrative were characters we barely knew and it counts on us importing our own personal context to try to derive meaning, which is poor writing to me.
Ironically, the raid series is getting to the actual issues I wanted to see explored in the MSQ.
I feel like we forget God Trail is a new Around Reborn not a new Shadow Bringers not a new end Walker it's a reset
I do agree, some details are excusable by the fact that Dawntrail is a start to a second major story. However, there is surprisingly little that can be excused by it. By which I mean only the initial laid-back attitude and the touring of cultures is excused because only those are directly related to the fact that base Dawntrail is the relaxation and vacation arc and was advertised as such. Repeating Endwalker’s scenario is not that even if I presume the point is that the Warrior of Light is so powerful something akin to Endsinger is no issue now.
My entire issue with the Xpac in general. Is there is SO MUCH faffing about all the time. I know word building is important but they did it so well in the first half. But all the alexandria WB is stuffed into thr last 99 an 100 quests at the last second to a degree. Plus the random faffing about during each section in living memory got exhausting. Could've been way better if it was just RELENTLESS isntead of having that awkward wander moment in the beginning.
I honestly feel the opposite about the story. The first half was dull, but I liked the vibes of being just some adventurer again while the second half perplexed me, made no sense (imo), and felt like tonal whiplash. Though I 100% agree that the fights and raids have been absolute highlights and have me wanting to get into extreme/savage. I hit lvl 100 on my second ever job tonight, Warrior, to hopefully use in a static.
I'd also love to see videos on FFXI, I have neither the time to beat it myself nor the energy to navigate the jank.
FFIX nostalgia definitely helps with that second half, and apparently there's a bunch of FFXI references, so maybe once I'm done with that I might find a new appreciation for Dawntrail.
And regarding the raids, I can't wait for savage to drop in a few days, especially for the first 2. I think M3 and M4 are the weakest, mechanically, but let's hope they get a bit more interesting.
Honestly I wouldn’t have minded a break from the scions so it would feel better when they come back next expansion and loved Wuk as a character concept but she could have used some more variety with her dialogue in the second part and the execution felt a bit weak in general with how she seemed to backtrack on showing weakness even if it’s understandable and wasn’t in big moments so it mostly felt endearing. The main problem was just how underused Krile and Erenville were and being stuck with the twins again, they’re my least favourite scions even if in small doses I like the little sibling dynamic. Still considering *that* was the worst written one with how everyone immediately decide Endless aren’t alive which is insane because suddenly we’re supposed to be fine with what we’re doing while we got blamed to hell for Amaurot it was definitely good just not great. And Zoraal Ja being boring. I don’t care how deep he is he’s just lame.
I'm always a little stumped when I see the complaint about Dawntrail stretching out the story too much. It's a fair complaint, but having replayed the entire story with a smooth transition into Dawntrail I can confidently say that I literally didn't notice any difference to previous expansions. If Dawntrail's pacing is horrendous, so is that of the entire game.
Yeah, I cannot agree that part 2 was good either. It felt like something that should have happened at the end of dawntrail as an expansion. Not to mention the resemblance to shadowbringers ending is too similar with sphene essentially being emet selch trying to save his people for the cost of everyone on all the shards. Now its Alexandria's survival for everyone else life. Even Alexandria is so similar to endwalkers dungeon dead end in its presentation. Also another world ending, not even just world ending, but a universe/other shards ending threat RIGHT after we just ended one is dumb and uninspired. While I do think the premise of dawntrail initially could work it would be like boiling water with salt the majority of everything would be gone, and your just left with the premise (the salt) they originally started with, cause the rest of the story is filled with so many holes you can't distinguish it as a cohesive story.
The lvl 100 trial also has similar cutscene to shiva. Not old shiva, but eden's shiva.
@@lokifrostpaw2976 Very good point out, right it was the same shit with gaia coming to help. Yeah it felt ripped strait out from other expansions, really sad.
@@lokifrostpaw2976 At least he was smart enough to not steal something from a story that could get them sued. lmfao
Personally, its my favourite expansion so far, adored the diverse cultures of tural and getting to know them, i also just straight up really like Wuk Lamat, she's very Luffy to me and that just makes my day every time. Coming from one of the cultures Tural was inspired by also helps so much here, and probably why i was just so happy with the first half of this msq, like, so many moments in there that you can feel how much the team cared about these cultures. And then the second half really speaks to me in ways previous expansions didn't.
With Dawntrail I had the bar set low as because it is fresh start to a new storyline and with how Shadowbringers & Endwalker had set that bar high I felt dawntrail will have a up hill battle. my enjoyment of the story is mix at most but it was do to things outside the game I had no control of I was just glad I could even just get on at all due to login queue times.
After finishing the MSQ, I've come to the realization that: One, Wuk Lamat needs to be louder, happier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Wuk Lamat's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Wuk Lamat"?
I can only hope that the journey back to her home planet is a safe one ;)
Dawntrail did something i never expected from the game: made me somewhat cringe at the Train-Bomb scene. The music did not fit at all man, felt so alienating.
Shit can't believe someone as positive as you still had so much negative to say about DT, it's just that poorly handled I guess, the pacing just kills it no matter how much you like it or have an open mind for it. Also yeah as others said, the marketing felt so dishonest this time, ShB and EW were really faithful and IMO so was Stormblood which promised this Eastern and Ala Mhigan adventure and while the Eastern side was favored heavily we still got the finale all in Ala Mhigo. This though? Oh it's the new world with all your friends and you go on an adventure and finally have a low stakes vacation right? No you're a hired mercenary for this person for a politically motivated journey so it turns into chores BUT also here's some out of nowhere post Ascian reflection plot with world ending and moral stakes, like what????
Also aren't Sage and Reaper all original? Reaper's not only a scythe job but it has a unique gimmick tied to it with a demon/ghost thing that you have a symbiotic relationship with and Sage is this sci fi healer type focused on damage negation, it's not really the mastery of White and Black magic that you see in FF3, the name is borrowed sure but that's all it shares.
For what it's worth, I'm quite skeptical of a lot of things, it's just I try to focus on the more positive side of things because there's far too much toxicity and negativity these days.
Regarding the jobs, Reaper took a lot from older Dark Knights (FFXI's was a scythe-wielder using dark magic, for example) and Sage is an original spin on a classic job. At least, that's the way I look at it.
Wuk Evu I think is a bit like Puddingway, in that you either love him or groan internally on sight.
Personally the second half didn't have much emotional impact, so this expansion's MSQ very much fell into the "would have dropped, if I wasn't otherwise invested" category.
The tone throughout was painfully simple and childish, often boiling cultures and complex issues down to several bullet-points, and 'fixing' them just as easily.
Still working through the job-quests, mostly liked them (though that melee one, forcing us to fall for an obvious trap is insulting).
The crafting/gathering quests were pretty great however, far more emotionally investing.
Damn, I knew I should've done the melee one before recording the video 😂
I'm inclined to disagree, a "good story poorly told" is not a good story, it's still a poor story. Potential unused remains potential, which makes it irrelevant to the quality of the product we actually got. And unlike with gameplay content, you can't simply patch up a story and retell it; the most you can do in an MMO is reduce the filler quests like ARR did, and much later than release (or else you admit to the original product sucking).
I see a lot of people making the argument that the second half of the story is better, but I'm in the camp where I think it's Dawntrails weaker narrative half.
Why?
While the pacing of the first half is indeed bad, it largely succeeds in telling the story it set out to tell. You learn about the cultures of Tural, they are all mostly interesting, and there's some genuinely good character moments.
The second half, though, cannot say the same thing. It's rushed, and doesn't have the time to establish its characters due to the truncated run time. You just don't have the ability to form a bond to the main villain, either because they weren't introduced early enough, or because the writer didn't know how to make use of the time he was given to make it work. This can be said for all the world building of this half as well, which is painful in how quickly it's glossed over, especially with how complex and interesting the themes are. It's like sitting down to a banquet meal after being starved, and only getting to taste each course.
Yes it's more exciting, and in many cases it's better paced, but the latter half needed more screen time to really land what it wanted to do. I just didn't ... care, and that's a shame.
Pacing is only one piece of the narrative pie. Yes, it matters, but if something is better paced yet fails in actually landing the narrative it sets out to tell, its a bigger misstep than how plodding the cutscenes can be in the first half.
Otherwise, I'm in agreement about everything else. An incredibly thorough review, well scripted and recorded. Well done.
Bakool Ja Ja for pres, F dat housecat!
The only point that near enough enraged me, was at level 96, when we stood around and did nothing, as Zoraal Ja cheated in his duel and then casually strolled away. This could have been made so much better by just having him drop a line, that if anyone interferes, or tries to stop him, his fleet will lay waste to Tuliyollal. Just one sentence would have sufficed.
And then the most dramatic and sad moment of the MSQ so far, is followed up by goofing off with the train, in a montage to the Smile song... Hey, Wuk Lamat, you father was just killed by your brother, and a whole lot of innocent civilians were slaughtered. This is the perfect time to have some fun, right? ... I'll take slow pacing over this emotional whiplash any day.
On a more nitpicky level, I would have liked if Tiamat had come along with her brother Vitra to help us out. It's been since late shadowbringers, that we've seen her. I also wouldn't mind if Midgardsormr might waken from his slumber some time soon.
A little less nitpicky is, how the new writers seem to have forgotten (or not known) about proxies. That child, that's paralyzed due to having too much lightning aether, is a parade example of what the porxies were created to cure. This condition was described the exact same way as tempering. The child is essentially tempered, without a master, much like Ga Bu, who we cured.
I hope this is something they'll remember (or someone tells them) in the patch content.
It might also help a certain lighting user with a damaged soul, but that's a lot less certain.
The only mechanic, that I can't cope with, is in the second normal raid trial, against the bee girl, when you have to dodge the aoes. To me it looks entirely random and luck-based, whether you have an actual path to dodge, or are stuck between so many aoes, it's impossible not to get the third heart, after which it's again random luck, whether you can survive the stun, or are hit by so many aoes you die. If there is a pattern I've just not figured out yet, please do tell.
The Honey M. Bee touhou move is just a case of not having tunnel vision on the boss and actually focus on dodging the mechanic really.
Have you considered deliberately taking a third heart before the Touhou mechanic? From what I've seen, it only charms you and does a bit of damage, so you'll be entering the phase with a completely empty bar, and thus able to soak an extra heart or two if needs be.
Also, being close to the boss is a death sentence on Touhou mechanics, less time to react.
I dislike Wuk Lamat as a character. Too much of the spotlight was focused on her, her broken record creed, the consistent inconsistencies of her voiced scenes, the tonal whiplash, the constant idiot ball moments, and the underutilization of so many characters leaving them hollow.
Bakool Ja Ja, he was comically evil and then reaching Yak Tural with the cultural dish and being matched with Zoraal Ja, why, and then coming out of left field, his people's plight and the expectations of the Blessed. The Reeds, the first trial, was also just so very out of place with how the celebration empowers the growth of the harvests, when they'd just suffered a disaster and losses and gave an air of it not being the time for celebration. Koana quickly garnered interest with just how real he felt at first, but became a bumpy road further, it was great seeing his interactions with Thancred and Urianger. The lack of growth of Wuk Lamat and repeating the same things over and over; peace, friendship, harmony. Alphinaud, Alisaie, Krile being sidelined when they have experiences that could have brought substance to Wuk Lamat to be tolerable, and showing the same care of input that Koana showed with Thancred and Urianger. Then the lie Erenville told in 6.55 of being able to checkout quietly, and then being forced into becoming close to Wuk Lamat. Still like Erenville, but why did they have him lie like that. The final scenes with Gulool Ja Ja, his end made me upset, but then seeing how underaffected Wuk Lamat is with her tonal landslides as the story progressed, just made me dismiss her existence.
Your criticism is really on point. As well I wished the invasion itself would be a dungeon in tuliyolal as we fend off the unknown invaders, than solo instances as other scions, example being Estinien again and showing his full power which is needed to drive this superior force, but instead we are told all that happens off screen and in the end the invaders are a joke for everyone...
Kinda hoped Alexandrians would stay for longer as a threat, Sphene could go on without the early parts, being semi hostile/dismissive towards us from getgo cuz she has no choice, but letting us get rid of Zoraal Ja cuz it kinda serves her point as the deal makes it hard for Alexandrians themselves, and aside from her wanting to suck all the aether as some sort of superweapon, we shud have be witness to a invasion fleet or army or technologies that would vastly outnumber competency of our world, and us stopping her turning it all off, while still keeping her good side in it all, well, mostly intact
In fact, the worst part is, that the moment an alien fleet came to invade the Source, Wuk shud have been told "this is no longer your fight, this is threat to everyone, not just Tural, stand aside" and maybe show her what threats lie in the world and let her come along cuz she begs and learns that way about what a real struggle looks like, learn all the things we already did for the star, meanwhile some reinforcments coming from Eorzea to show how we are all already unified so she wud be even more motivated to do same in Tural and with us
Content wise: I m happy, tho it feels like weird hybrid of Stormblood and EW, the EW simplicity and predictability still stinks, but the quality of each dungeon went up by a million, each DT part of content I did enjoy, but some jobs feel like they were forgotten, like Dark Knight or Red Mage and black mage. I just hope they ll give us something that isnt following their super streamlined style, and we wont know about all content just from watching LL
This expansion had so flippen much recycled gear, models, mechanics and soundtracks... ontop of the story that feels like an anime filler arc.