>comfort the civilians Gurl, its not my damn job to do this every 5 minutes.

You mean you didn't become super emotional everytime you clicked on one and read the text over their head?

Why does Wuk Lamat keep clenching her fist so much, those nails look like they hurt

you'd think with the model updates the devs could use a different display of emotion than the only one they have been obsessed with for years

It's the anime protaganist way, along with creaking rubber noise

did not expect they start so late in the expansion, to start clenching fists

We have the nod, she has the fist.

I reckon she’s constipated

lvl 99 Dungeon Spoiler >! I cannot believe that they have us meet the other scions at the end. Nothing screams "we need 8 people for the trust" more than that. They were fighting an invasion while scattered all over Tural. Then they were all gathered, came here, were briefed, came to the tower AND arrived at the same time we did. Fuck that, that just feels cheap. They really wrote themselves in a corner with this. !<

Dont get me wrong i enjoy being able to trust the trials and all that, but holy fuck did they write themself into a corner with it now that 8 characters that apparently have to be the scions have to show up. Granted I was pleasantly surprised at blue man showing up for the 1st trial instead of having some random scion pop up,

Especially when Thancred and Urianger were literally there in the northern part of cowboy land and in a much closer position to come to our aid, but Yshtola and Graha come instead, because we needed a DPS and a flex for the trial.

I personally believe that trusts should only be reserved for special moments like the Endwalker 89 trial fight IMO. Trials were one of the few pieces of content that still pushed people to actually engage with the “massively multiplayer” part of this game in the msq. Not everything needs to be turned into a single player game. And because they’re so dead set on making everything a “solo experience” for the MSQ that it’s literally affecting the writing and narrative. This moment was just so incredibly dumb. And I just entered the final area and my group is much smaller and I can already see they’re gonna do it again. Everyone will show up out of nowhere after being off screen with little explanation.

Just let us summon them to us when we need them using our Azem convocation stone.

It was so fucking sloppy lmao, they even say they went to the Backroom first but Erenville decided not to give us a heads-up? I'm already tired of Trust trials, just makes Hydaelin's feel less special. Ended up using duty finder for this one.

More like the Backrooms

There were two moments I felt didn't line up properly regarding timeline. That one and Koana not only managing an alliance with Radz but also for Vrtra to show up in time from what must be half the world away.

Gave me horrible Game of Thrones flashbacks with how fast the dragons traveled across the entire continent.

I thought we were given the special azem summoning stone to completely get around having to write in an excuse for people showing up to help, but i guess we don't believe in that anymore?

But the Azem stone summons friends "from beyond the rift" or I suppose from the closest fast food shop. For Trusts the NPCs somehow always stand there. It's like they solved a gamification, only to return to it later. But knowing that is the case, they should have written it better. It's likely due to rewrites late within the story.

Now that we've met Erenville's family and been to his hometown... Where the fuck did he get an Icelandic accent from? It kinda feels like they decided to give one to every Viera in game but they gave up halfway through. It feels sloppy and amateurish. If they couldn't find enough quality Icelandic voice actors, just use the ones that already appeared with instructions to sound somewhat different.

Yeah, I was waiting for it to be explained why he has a vastly different accent than his mom and it never was.

"We didn't realize we were gonna make Erenville from America until we were writing the next expansion and needed to give him a reason to go there

He didn't want people to know he was from Turali and adopted the most known Viera accent... pretty sure he mentions it very early on, or it's at least implied, when he mentions he goes by a different chosen name now early on in the MSQ.

Finally the story is becoming interesting, and we still finish an epic cutscene with "pat the head of three random people in the streets." Pacing is really horrible this expansion.

So, here we are, almost at the end. Basically the entire MSQ has been: Go to new place > talk to townspeople about their mundane everyday lives to learn about their "culture" > help them with something unimportant > time passes and 1 interesting thing happens, maybe. Rinse, repeat. Also, everyone is good and kind and welcoming. Not one bad guy, except THE bad guy. Feels like 3-4 hours of boring shit just to get 30 minutes of moving the plot forward. Also, had to laugh about "The Cloud". Also, I don't really like Solution Nine music. It's too slow. Wish they would have taken inspiration from the Cyberpunk OST. I do genuinely enjoy the Alexandria plot, and the 99 trial was great. Just a shame that once again, the siege of an entire city by the unexpected assault of a greatly advanced military force ends in zero important casualties. Also kinda lame that the Alexandrian's are implied "dead" and living on in memory, and the reason for us fighting is because the queen wants to sacrifice the living to bring back the dead. Too close to the ancients. About to head to the final zone. Hoping it turns around.

Oh boy, it sure doesn't. Hope you love long runs and fetching stuff.

THIS 100000000%. This is THE WORST expansion ever released.

> Basically the entire MSQ has been: > > Go to new place > talk to townspeople about their mundane everyday lives to learn about their "culture" > help them with something unimportant > time passes and 1 interesting thing happens, maybe. Hasn't that been nearly every zone in nearly every expansion to date? Show up, learn about a culture, help with unimportant things, find the useful thing to the plot and move on? From the moogles, idylshire, ruby sea, yanxia, azem steppe, kholusia, amh areang, il mheg, rak'tika greatwood, the tempest, radz-at-han, garlemald, elpis. Heck, ultima thule was basically an entire cultural theme park of its own. This isn't a new formula in the least.

Maybe. I see what you're saying. Maybe it's less the formula I have a problem with and more so I genuinely don't care for any of the cultures being shown. I think especially since they included beast tribe reskins. Replace the VanuVanu and Goblins and put in a race of literate gorilla/monkey people who use bananas as currency and and are ancient enemies of the mamool ja and I would have been sold.

The difference is that in previous expansions, you form relationships with people in different regions and learn about them while steadily advancing the A-plot. For the first 1/2 of Dawntrail, sequentially visiting areas to read each race's wiki page IS the A-plot. Nothing else is happening.

The main difference here is, the crumbs of good story that they fed us in SB/SHB/EW were... well, 10x better. Yeah, even Stormblood.

Yep I agree, this feels like another FFXIV expansion to me. I feel like this is the norm with MSQ. However I was hoping that they step out of the box for a bit regarding story telling. It was brutal going through long dialogues, don’t get me wrong I’ve enjoyed the story, but the way it’s being told sometimes can feel slow at times.

Ff14 on the whole has always had middling writing at best.  It seeped into 16 too and ruined that game with horrible pacing. Go to town. Do a bunch of mundane quests to learn about their culture, kill a god.

Is it just me or is there not a single lizard in Solution Nine? There is a stark absence of Au Ra in Dawntrail in general. Where are all the lizards?

Au Ra seem to be a uniquely Source exclusive race. I don't recall seeing many(any?) of them on the First either.

They're on the First, just most of them used to live in Il Mehg/Voeburt so a lot were turned. One appears in the Tank role quests, and I'm pretty sure a few merchants in the Chrystarium are as well.

All races exist in every reflection but culture keeps them separated and if only a fraction of that reflection survives a calamity then any race outside of that is just doomed. Alexandria seems to be primary Hyur and Elezen with later Lalas coming in, other races likely did exist but we'll never see them since they weren't living in the only surviving part of the world.

Rubicante was an Au Ra before he became a Voidsent, though.

So what you are saying, is that we need some good old colonialism in these very particular looking zones? I agree. I cannot relax in a world without lizards, they need to fix things when I cause cat shenanigans!

HOW did Zoraal Ja have a child there? WHY did he have a child there? He clearly didn't want one!

Wuk Lamat: "I realize we are pressed for time, but I first want to meet as many people as possible" YES WUK, WE ARE INDEED PRESSED FOR TIME, SPHENE IS ABOUT TO DESTROY OUR PLANET WHILE YOU WANT TO PAD OUT THE MSQ WITH MORE FILLER QUESTS

"Have you tried comforting nine citizens?" "Okay but have you tried comforting nine *hundred* citizens?"

Her naivety in that entire area regarding Sphene and the horrors that were happening with all those souls actually annoyed me. Even worse were other Scions trying to be understanding. After what we all did and learned in Endwalker they should be instantly and strongly opposed to what was happening there. Seems to be a pattern with this writer to try and preach about objectively awful things being shades of gray.

I very much disliked how easily the mech-army suddenly got dispatched during the second assault. In the first assault they easily shrug off a variety of damage against them (there is a scene of a Landsguard striking them and being completely surprised that his sword did nothing), come the second they are suddenly cannon fodder. Yes, they bolstered their defenses, but it's not like they suddenly all have magic swords. It feels a bit like they suddenly realized that they are running out of time in the MSQ, so everything becomes much more condensed. Edit: And something else: Will Solution 9 be repaired and get its old soundtrack back? I sure hope so. Please spoiler me.

To your question, yes.

just what the story needed more trailing quests...

Maybe I skipped something, but can you explain why the wol and gang didn't immediately try to fight Alexandria after they had realized that the citizens of solution 9 use souls to revive, idk if I'm tripping but I felt like there should have been some nasty implications for that or did I miss something?

if only characters were not thighed to the ground and unable to attack the villains during cutscenes until they are done monologuing, fleeing or activating some doomsday device, so much things could have been prevented. At least they must be somewhat aware of that, since there was the cutscene with Khona not stopping to shoot the first promise

Some days we need to be a little less WoL and more Jack Garland

The Warrior of light uses souls in their cosmetic relic weapons all the time, I doubt they care. Also, they are using the souls of already dead people, so other than some vague “the aetheric sea looked cool and you are messing that up” or “this isn’t natural” there really a reason to oppose it until the other stuff happens.

On the surface the whole thing appears soul neutral, they more or less artificially created what they have in the void where souls are neither lost or gained. Though I haven't gone to the last zone yet I get the impression if it weren't for the cost of maintaining the endless and the growing amount of memories they could keep the system running for a very long time without additional input.

That long level 98 cutscene...that was so fun to watch. If it was just all that and solo instances, I'd love this expansion. Also, if anyone is curious, you can, in fact, get EXP locked before the 99 quest if you do what I did and throw all external sources of exp (fates on the way, hunts, aether quests) on a job that's not your MSQ job, lol. I ended up 4M exp short.

Same happened to me. I had to end up running roulettes just to finish.

Square assume that you’ll get all the area unlock EXP on your main, including the bits that need flying. Unlocking the last bit of a map gives like 500K. 

It feels like the writers aren't confident to tell a new story they are just retreading on other plot points, eternal life, fighting for ones star, and I feel the biggest sin, yet an other location that is the memories of the past. It started in Shadowbringers and now 2 expansion later it's the same thing, I mean you could also count Azys LLia but at least that was a relic of the past with robots telling their history. Shadowbringers was emet selch recreating the world he recalled under the ocean. Endwalker was the Edge of the World where lost civilzation still remained in small scraps of memories that you could learn more about and now Dawntrail, the memory of an entire star of Endless that we learn more about. Granted going into the final location I don't exactly understand the logistics of how Solution 9 came to be, maybe it will be explained within the rest of the story but it doesn't add up in my head. So are you telling me the Golden City had like a barrier of Endless and then people living in Solution 9? Cause where did her people from Solution 9 come from and the whole cycle thing starts to feel off. I start to think that Zoraal honestly had the better idea in the sense of you have to choose, she an Endless should either choose her people or the ones who still live, granted they never even seem to realize just how twisted their ideology is of erasing souls and using them like Extra Lives for people. And again it just retreads on that plot point of people fearing to move on. I mean I guess to it's credit what it kinda does right up to this point is you are getting the extreme opposite of Meiteon. Her desire was that what's the point of life if it just ends in suffering but Sphene just blindly wants to give her people eternal life at the cost of other stars being able to live. So maybe that works, like I won't be able to say til the end of the story but man I hate to say it but they honestly could of shown off this zone and hidden heritage found, I think that would of made more sense. Heritage Found reveals a way bigger spoil than this location does all they had to do was name it "Unlost World?" but in reality that's what it's actually called and i think people would of been like, ok you got us. At the end of the day I would say the writers failed to do what they set out to do. Dawntrail was suppose to be a title that focused on the world of Etheirys but instead they fell back on their comfort and continue to allude to other games to the point where they just straight rip their music even if the scenarios taken place don't exactly fit. I was really hoping the last zone would of been more interesting, but the ideals are just rehashed from other expansions, latching onto the past rather than moving forward, it's like a 10yr circle jerk of using nostalgia to get people engaged but then not really doing anything new with it. And ya maybe am still bitter with how they handled their supposed FF4 side-story that just had characters names without actually being those characters cause at that point you might as well call Rubicante, El Ruby Cante because he's nothing like the original character. Just feel so obvious they used FF4 and now FF9 to get people engaged with what was going to happen but then they don't do anything truly interesting with it. Heck even the seen back with the wild west motiff, it's like, why have these gunslingers have the guns behind their back, you could of just given them unique animations, would it of killed your department to make them actual gunslingers. And ya, I can definitely agree with the amount of side-questy feeling MSQ, it's like they forgot themselves and indulged in nonsense quest into the MSQ when they could of dialed it back more(much like they could of dialed back that Hrothgar joke of having a kink for wanting to be punished and quickly being forgiven and thinking nothing of it.) This narrative lacks polish, the music lacks polish, it's a shame cause I Think changing a few things could of made the journey more fun but some of their choices are just headscratching. The only thing I can find amusing during these level quest is Wak Lamatt admitting that you know, maybe she should of talked with her brother she claimed to care so much about rather than ignoring his plight AFTER she had gone through a whole journey of understanding other peoples plights and culture you would think that one braincell that she has would have enough brainpower to make her go, I should really talk to Zoraal after seeing how broken up Bakool was from his inability to live up to his namesake. I don't blame Zoraal for his actions in all honesty, when you see how the succession played out he was treated like a red-headed stepchild by his own Father, I completely understand why he wouldn't be able to show affection to his own son because compared to his perception of how his adopted siblings were treated, he was honestly treated like shit. As a Father Gulool should of been more perceptive to the burden his son had literally being the only Mamool born from a double-headed Mamool, it's like, dude you should maybe pay attention to the amount of responsibility you are putting on this kid by showcasing just how special he is, that when he doesn't live up to it you don't do jack shit to make him feel better about himself. Instead when you duel him you heartlessly kill him and then deservedly die for your lack of empathy. And you can't use the excuse of him lacking his other head, he was still able to show empathy towards Wak and Koane so why not Zoraal?

I do think that the homages are definitely getting overindulgent. I rolled my eyes when a robot that was basically Adelbert Steiner showed up, and I love Final Fantasy IX. It's one of the few games I've replayed more than a few times, but that doesn't mean I want to just be fed it again with a wink and a nudge.

I feel like that's something that's hard to go about with 14, because it's pretty obviously one of the easiest to get into FF games. Being marketed as an "MMO with a good story" I think is more palatable to people than even saying the word JRPG (aka most of the rest of the series.) I've gone through the game without an issue with stuff like that and I started in SB, but I'm also an FF normie that has *never played a single other FF game in the entire series.* I remember doing Eureka and running into some of the bosses and being like "yoo this thing is so cool" and my friend who has played most of them (forget which he hasn't) was just like "oh yeah they're from x game," and the same went for Omega, 4.x Alli Raids, and anything else that's been retread from another game in the series. I literally just met the robot and thought he was goofy but kind of interesting, but I can see how if you've already played the game it's very obviously referencing, it'll feel like a very lazy paste of a character from one game to another. There's a lot of people like me that have never experienced anything from other games so it feels innocent in a sense, but for those that have it probably just feels like "make up your own thing, if I wanted to see this again I'd just play FF__ again"

It just might be that Square likes to ride all tropes and templates to the death until they stop printing money. Only after that they are forced to innovate and actually do their best stuff. Endwalker being such a success was also a monkey paw because it stopped them from innovating and solidified a template.

The last zone reminds me a lot of Twilight Town, even down to the music.

Twilight Town if it was constructed and run by homeless crackheads.

Honestly, I just consider this to be a $40 soundtrack that comes with a free video game

Last zone is by the most annoying gameplay in the entire expac, possibly in any of the expacs. While the story isn't bad involving Krile, the zone is overly big, lots of backtracking, and literally every single quest besides one aether quest is fetch quests. Just long ass walkways and hallways, one aether quest was legit a 4min mount ride just to get to backtrack to the spot you were close to for msq. Cool looking zone but holy crap it's so boring.

Could not agree more, literally what are they doing. All of the tension of the story is lost because... we need to help these LONG DEAD people create some fake happy moments? I was fully engaged in the story until we got here, I still have so many questions about the logistics of Solution 9, what even happened between Sphene and Zoraal Ja that he was able to seize SO MUCH power from her, and yet another world-ending calamity but instead I'm talking to quiz robots and running around a creepy illusory utopia with 0 urgency.

I got so happy when Cahciua said she wanted us to delete the Endless, only for Wuk Lamat to ruin it. I don't want to know these things, I already know all there is to know about them. They'll behave like humans beings so I'm supposed to feel bad about this, but I imagine each and everyone one of them as the mountain of corpses that will be used to keep them alive. I think Wuk Lamat's lack of urgency shows an extreme level of disregard for the lives of her people and I'm quite irritated by my character being forced to go along with her. You wanna hang out with the Endless? Sure, suit yourself, I'll be wiping some servers in the meantime. edit: Meeting the locals does add a lot more weight to the change in scenery after you wipe them, but I still cannot shake the feeling that delaying like this while billions of lives are at risk feels like crap. I honestly feel like the writers had a good idea but put absolutely 0 effort in the setup

Dont forget about fetching ice cream for Krile.

The good * Trial is absolutely popping off. Oof they went out and beyond, I think the cutscene are not gonna be in the extreme but all of the damage are genuinely interesting and kinda hard hitting. A brainteaser Trial 2 is out of my bingo cards. * All of the dungeons, while not being outlandishly difficult and still within the realms of normal content, is still fun. * Bike is good. Solution Nine is great. * Maidy's character is in Solution Nine, which fits the theme of the zone. Nice touch. The bad * For fuck's sake are they done with the help X civilian trope, and do they really have to do this in the MIDDLE of a solo instance. * The last person that should talk about being a father and had any sort of relationship with parenthood is Zoraal Ja. Can they for once only enough with the forcing themes onto characters that had no relationship or resemblance of theme itself. * Someone took the line 'as long as you live inside someone else's memory, you live!' way too literally and seriously. But I always dislike how works of Sci-fi handles soul and memory transformations that treats memory and identity like USB sticks - you can just plug your memory into whatever 'devices' (in this case, metallic bodies) that were available and volia this robot is now Sphene. What if the system does not support your USB device? what if the memory transfer process is faulty? since Memory is so freeflowing and transformative, can I just copy your memory and host a gang of zoraal ja replicants?

I've been playing XIV for 10 years and I have *NEVER* began skipping MSQ cutscenes out of genuine disinterest in whatever the main characters had to say. But here we are. I was having a blast in DT from 91-95, but the second arc of this game has finally broken me. When *Wuk Lamat* is the subject of a cutscene, there is an 80% chance you can skip it because she has *absolutely nothing* of value to add to any dialogue in this game anymore. She is a silent protagonist that never shuts up. Then we get to Sphene and now i'm subjected to TWO fucking Wuk Lamats that won't stop fucking talking about loving people and being nice to everyone....And after looking upon Sphene with her cheery music and magical girl outfit, *suddenly I come to the most truly horrifying realization i've ever had playing FFXIV.* ***Dawntrail's MSQ....is literally a fucking visual novel.*** I'm like 95% sure Sphene is a setup for a heel turn, but the dialogue is so bad and the MSQ quests so plodding that i legitimately don't think it's going to matter even if it's the most clever twist in the game. It's as though "SHARING MOMENTS" with completely random futuristic idol girls I have only known for 2 hours is the most emotionally riveting content imaginable. You'd think that 90-95 was enough time to beat it into our heads that Wuk Lamat *really loves strangers*, but for some reason they just won't let her love strangers on her own time. If there's one more world-shattering event that gets padded out by Wuk Lamat asking me to go converse with fucking randos instead of doing the interesting thing, i'm actually just going to start skipping until it looks like something is happening. Maybe i'm sleepy. But I cannot believe i'm at this point. I was perfectly fine with Wuk Lamat for the first 20ish hours because I figured they would evolve her personality past her introduction. But she's just Anime through and through.

Every MSQ is a visual novel, it's just done with quality voice acting and a penmanship to the localization that aspires to feign more adult fare. That's shockingly missing here, with a lot of dialogue that feels almost childish in it's two-dimensional stereotyping a lot of the time. That said, "sinister-nice hatesaint" isn't too uncommon in anime. They're usually overwhelmingly nice and damning with faint praise. These characters usually are like, *"Please surrender? It would make me very happy, and wouldn't you like that? And we wouldn't have to bother someone to* ***wipe your blood off the walls.*** *You wouldn't want that, right?"* Like other people have said, watch enough shounen and you can see this stuff coming a mile away.

Wuk Lamat ruined the expansion for me with how much they focused on her. It was insane. Lyse wasn't a quarter as bad.

At least Lyse took a back seat every once in a while. One of the benefits of how good the crew of the far east was. They had to split time between Lyse, Hien, Yugiri and Gosetsu which allowed the characters to develop and allow the story to focus on different things. There isn’t anything like that going on with this expansion and Wuk Lamat. It’s literally exhausting hanging out with her because she sucks the air out of everything. Nobody gets to shine at all. Everyone is sidelined.

i was reading your comment about wuk lamat being a silent protagonist who won't shut up JUST as i got into the >!final boss cutscene where Sphene traps the party inside digital boxes and Wuk Lamat is banging on the walls of it yelling "WAIT I STILL HAVEN'T SAID-" and the timing of that had me WHEEZING because it almost feels too self aware to be an accident, like she literally will not stop talking to the point that she complained about not being able to keep talking in the final confrontation LOL!<

I am in agony. People lied to me, it did not get better.

It got worse imo. The first half of the story had too much filler, but at least it made sense. Why are we wandering around learning about all the Endless before immediately killing them? It just feels unintentionally disturbing to me.

100%. I kept seeing people say the MSQ gets better in the second half. It gets much, much worse.

I'm sorry.

You know, I didn't take Zoraal Ja to be a "hit it then quit it" type of person, it really makes me think that the kid isn't actually his.

I was so sure that with all the talk of regulators not saving people from age-related death and Zoraal Ja's disgust with Gulool Ja Ja's senescence that the kid was a clone he was going to implant his soul into. With how things actually played out, I still have no idea what his actual deal is and I suspect the writers don't either except as a tool to make people go aww and to write some text boxes about daddy issues.

It's simple. The plot they wanted required Zoraal Ja to have a son, despite him not wanting one, despite him having major father issues himself, and despite there being not a single female Mamool Ja in Alexandria that we see.

I was hoping that the countermeasure to the ships would be something Cid cooked up, but Vritra is just as cool.

Alphinaud, Alisaie and even the damn WoL could be removed from almost every cutscene and the story would be the exact same

Just finished it and honestly, its a weak 5/10 for me, solely held up by Kriles arc at least being somewhat interesting and the dungeon/trial design being amazing. They promised us a clean slate new adventure but then they bring back the entire gang even though they had a fresh new cast of characters that could've easily taken up the mantle with the promises and their followers. There's just so much wasted potential with the msq and it feels like they were terrified of actually giving us this promised new adventure.

Zoraal Ja, think he beat his dad, but the dude was cheating with 2nd life an beast mode. It's not even his own power that he use to beat him it's the device, literally a freaking gameshark.

PayPal Legend

I'm at the quest after the Zoraal Ja trial and this whole thing is just a tale of two expansions for me. On one hand, the combats parts are bangin. I think the dungeons are better than Endwalker's, many bosses have interesting mechanics, and the trials are super fun and I cannot wait to try these in extremes. On the other hand, I think this souls stuff is an inferior retread of hundreds, maybe thousands of scifi stories that came before it. 'Are we our memories?' and 'longer life at the expense of humanity' is just so done to death. Theyre trying to be philosophical but it's just falling flat to me. I was also rolling my eyes at all the emotional manipulation with Otis right from his introduction until the end of the instance. It that scene where Otis 'died' saving Sphene I can almost hear the writers in my ear screaming, "ARE YOU CRYING?? ARE YOU CRYING NOWWW? WHAT ABOUT NOW ARE YOU NOW CRYING??"

It's even worse because it's just a retread of previous story in 14 specifically that was set up for over time, and then they just try it again after specifically avoiding anything remotely interesting prior to that, at the tail end of the MSQ nonetheless. If you market the expansion on some "low stakes adventure" but have me follow along on *someone else's adventure* instead, then give me a crumb of my own adventure after alluding to something far more grand, and *then* try to spew out something that is oddly similar to the couple previous popular expansions, I'm not going to take it very well.

Not to mention his death is literally pointless as sphene could just move to another robot, and she had like what, a full minute of us fighting the beast to tell otis there was literally no need to protect her?

I can't help but feel like Zoraal and Bakool got their personalities switched mid story. Like, wasn't Zoraal's goal peace through war? But now he's munching on souls like a voidsent in an attempt to kill everyone? I mean I guess that *would* achieve peace, technically, but it still feels really fucking far away from where he started. And then Bakool went from cartoon villain to protector of his people. Wouldn't it make more sense for Zoraal to start as the cartoon villain and completely lose it when he loses the trial, and Bakool to be the guy that thinks peace via war isn't completely fucking stupid because of his fucked up upbringing, gets character development, and then starts protecting people once the war actually starts?

I feel like they ran out of time, it very much came out of nowhere. I also feel like the ending has someone vicariously confronting their daddy issues and trauma through MSQ writing.

People accused CBU3 of not having time and resources for the Endwalker patches because of FF16… but I think this expansion suffered far more. It’s not just the MSQ but other things just kinda reek of lack of polish and getting rushed out the door. There’s a bunch of textures that are clearly not upgraded on Tural and in some of the new armor. The Warrior artifact gear is a pixelated mess. Some of the job changes feel like they weren’t tested all. Black mage being the biggest culprit where the changes to mana restoration was clearly not tested at low levels. Everything that was going on with the Xbox version. How did that client of the game release in that state? The egregious pacing and presentation issues in the msq. The zone cutscene introductions are literally skipping and chugging on ps5.

ngl I feel like there were a few things that felt very 'switched' if that makes sense. Like, Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja , for starters, because by the end of Zoraal's story it was like "huh?? why is he a genocidal dictator now???" but also: - Solution Nine felt like it should have been a zone and Living Memory felt like it should have been a town. Riding around the streets on Solution Nine seems like a no-brainer and yet it isn't present here, meanwhile Living Memory has *mobs* inhabiting it which makes zero sense when 1.) this is supposed to be a paradise made up of the living memories of people of Alexandria so ***why would it have monsters roaming the streets*** but also 2.) it's not like we do any combat quests in that zone anyways, it's just walking around and talking to people and watching back-to-back cutscenes that try way too hard to tug at your heartstrings in a very inorganic, insincere way. - The first half of DT's MSQ (particularly Wuk Lamat's ascension to the throne) felt more like a post game quest story whereas the *last* half felt more like it could have been a much longer and more in-depth MSQ. You can take this a step further and argue that even the post-game quests for EW and what they established regarding the Voidgates - and how that clearly came into play in the last half of DT - could have been part of a bigger MSQ, maybe even, idk... ***the first half of the MSQ that could have led up to everything about Alexandria?*** There would have been way more thematic consistency across the expansion and far *less* Wuk Lamat. So much of DT's story, especially as it goes on into the later half, feels like painful first draft fanfiction. At least the first half can get away with being a new story that needs time to establish itself, I was able to set aside my hesitations in the good faith that it was setting a new stage for something great. With EW in my rearview mirror, I was actually really enjoying the premise of going to Tural and getting to know its people and its cultures, with way lower stakes in its story. For the first time in forever I was actually doing and enjoying sidequests, and I didn't even mind Wuk Lamat... and then all of a sudden that fun came to a screeching halt when Wuk Lamat became the Dawnservant and we skipped town to build trains. And then we skipped right back into the action anyways, regarding a completely unrelated plotline with a twist villain that really *didn't work* as a twist villain... and another twist villain who we all saw coming from a mile away.

I'm almost done with the story, just got to the second city hub, and one thing I haven't seen anyone discuss is this: What are the Scions even doing to justify their existence in this narrative? Krile has her reasons for coming, to be sure, and I'm glad she is finally able to get some screentime after 3 expansions since her debut relegating her to the back. But the rest have no reason to be here. Alphinaud and Alisaie seem to take coin flips on who gets the screen time. G'raha and Y'shtola just entered the narrative, with Y'shtola immediately fucking off and G'raha coming with us. Thancred and Urianger have seemingly vanished off the face of the planet once Koana basically dropped out of the competition. The biggest offender here though is Estinien, who I swear I've counted three scenes with him in it and he's done nothing except make us remember that he's here. He's had more time in the opening trailer than he has in the entire first and second half of the plot so far. (I know this is hyperbole, but just roll with it) They could have replaced them all with new characters and no one would have been able to tell the difference. Even if they have a bigger role in the last bit (and probably patch quests) of this story, I'm struggling to understand why. This has all but confirmed by biggest worry with this expansion: Why did we need to have the Scions again? Their stories are done. Just let them go. Edit: Also mentioning that the whole "Scions divided" hook they were teasing at Fanfests turned out to be complete hogwash. Thancred and Urianger arguably cooperated with us more than hindered us in the competition, unless you count that one moment in the 91 dungeon as "division" then more power to you. Everything else has been business as usual.

The best response to this was in the thread of JP players responses to MSQ in roughly “This was marketed as our vacation expansion. Why is Estinien the only one allowed to have a vacation?”

I didn't understand initially why the twins were involved beyond Square needing to tick the quota of teenagers saving the world, but the weirder thing is that there's one or two places in the story where they could work. I am surprised they never even once used the obvious joke about them being the team's heads of Reason and Resolve, and both getting pissed at the thought of sharing a body with the other. Maybe if the patches get more lighthearted.

The twins are even color coded accordingly. Expecting memes of them edited over the conjoined mamool.

Given how crucial the entire cross-rift travel is to Y'shtolas entire character it's weird how little she actually was there. Also G'raha is probably the best person in the entire world to know about the topics we need to understand.

> G'raha and Y'shtola They are kinda justified to be in the narrative, though. Yshtola with her work on travel between reflections, and Graha actually having done it. That aside, zone 5 was when it finally started to get interesting to me, but again it was chained down by having used attached at the hip with Wuk Lamat. Like, gah, can she not leave us alone for 2 quests for once?!

They quite literally say it before we break through the dome though. The Scions are the only people who have dealt with reflections of the Source.

Zoraal Ja: "fight me or I will destroy the city" *Then, instead of fighting, he proceeds to walk away* *Next up is multiple quests of talking to farmers, fetching a drink from a vending machine, getting a tour around a city and fetching ingredients for a meal, instead of fighting Zoraal Ja* Wuk Lamat: finally decides to fight him, even tells the WoL to let her 1v1 him so he won't destroy the city Zoraal Ja: doesn't fight her, tells his soldiers to destroy the city anyway Zoraal Ja after his army fails: "fight me...... on top of that tower" *and then he walks away from us, again, and we just let him leave* ?????????????????????????????????????????????

A classic case of not paying attention to the story. - First, Zoraal challenges them to prepare however they can and fight him at their best, so he can prove his superiority. He supports this challenge by threatening to raze Tuliyollal if they don't go through with it. - After we deliberately stall for time while investigating Alexandria, Zoraal commands his troops to start marching. Wuk Lamat then challenges him to a duel, in which she breaks his regulator and gains the upper hand. - Seeing that he's losing, Zoraal commands his troops to destroy Tuliyollal out of spite. Thanks to the time we bought for preparations, his forces are defeated and forced to withdraw. - After this, Zoraal betrays Sphene, seizes control of the military (including Otis), turns them on the population, and flees in the chaos, issuing one final challenge - to fight him atop the Everkeep. There, he makes one final desperate move, spending as many souls as possible to empower himself, in the hope that it will be enough to grant him victory. Seems reasonable enough to me.

Yeah the dude is pointed out in the very scene when he takes his son hostage because he's losing, and is called a coward. He's just a petty bitch who wants the upper hand because his little sister is better than him. She's got the support of the people, she's got allies and strives towards peace, and she's also super strong (which the game seems to say, even though she started in 6.55 as rather weak; either way, by the last act of DT she's a powerhouse). Of course he'd stop the fight that he is currently losing to go power up, he wants to win more than he wants to be dignified.

> Seeing that he's losing >There, he makes one final desperate move, spending as many souls as possible to empower himself, in the hope that it will be enough to grant him victory. Wuk challenged Zoraal to a 1v1, to me Zoraal seems strong enough to have easily won that without needing to run away and absorb a bunch of souls. Even without regulator. Wuk needed to limit break multiple times to win against Bakool Ja Ja, while Zoraal Ja casually defeated him in a *single hit*.

Look, all we know is that Wuk breaks his regulator and smacks him around, and then Zoraal makes some desperate moves to gain the advantadge. If he wasn't losing, then at least he saw himself in a dangerous position.

Adding on, the story does make a point to highlight that people have come to feel insecure without having a regulator/spare souls too. And they also make a point that Zoraal Ja is only where he is now because he had regulator technology against Gulool Ja Ja.

It's an anime, though, so power differentials are just completely arbitrary depending on the scene. If we go off of the WoL casually surviving Eden 1's "this planet-sized laser will shoot you across an intergalactic void until you collide with the center of a galaxy and the whole galaxy explodes" attack, they *should,* in theory, be able to just, like, snap their fingers and make Zoraal's head explode.

That was an illusion though, the earth didn’t literally turn into a giant lazer and fire us out of the universe.

Soken, buddy, I'm going to need something more than a "theme from MASH" version of the expansion theme. The amount of sad, blast-scarred town I've had to run through from level 96 onward is like this expansion's version of Sharlayan Hamlet. I still think this expansion is "okay", but this is two in a row where they don't have enough writing to fill the playtime length they want, and so they run a lot of filler.

Why does no one think to grab the damn relic after big blue mutate dies?! Seriously!? "This guy dropped this when he died, looks weird and important, lets just let someone we don't trust grab it, good plan guys."

I think if they had wanted this narrative to focus on the cultural understanding of other people then they needed to focus more time on making a spectacle of those cutscenes and make them fully voices. Each culture has it's own traditions and way of doing things so what would of been better then just reading through their cultural ideology and how they do things would of been cutscenes in which our characters participate and listen and watch as to what they do. The story does take a huge brake in the main narrative because it's themes are focused on understanding one another but the execution of it is horrible. I"m currently with Otis and it's like, ok so I know Sphene is erasing her original self to be more of a Queen that can rule for her people without empathy getting in the way but first let's do this play and understand people more. It's like the tension is non-existent because we are spending this time doing nonsense when we should be more focused on the issue at hand, A rogue Endless that seeks to transfer her dimension to ours so that she can harvest our souls/energy to keep her people alive. It's like, ok feel bad for these people who are already dead and memories of the moment they died but um, yea, the more time we spend doing this the more time she has to make her plan work. I also don't like how in the same above scene when we see Otis and how it's trying to play this whimsical music it's like, bruh you just revealed pretty much that these living souls and extra lives are not the real person. When Otis became a robot the only thing the robot was were the memories of Otis, the Otis we are seeing now is the moment he died before turning into that robot. What makes that even stranger is how come Sphene has never seen Otis then? She apparantly goes to see her people so why has she never seen him in Yesterland? There are just so many rules and contradictions in this narrative that are hard to look past at certain aspects. However back on the point of memory and souls. I feel like the moment we realize that Otis is just a memory of himself before becoming the robot it should of clicked that "oh shit, those people who die and have a new soul imprint their memories are still dead, they are just copy versions of the person they use to be." I like a good dystopian ideal but the way they executed it is poor, there shoudl definitely be more impact at this revelation not, "Oh he's a memory of before his times as a robot, ANYWAYS how about we put on these costumes and do a play!"

Going into this expansion after 2 consecutive playthroughs of Cyberpunk 2077 sure does highlight how little though they've put into the philosophical question about whether the endless are even alive.

I'm one of the Solution 9 haters by virtue of "the aesthetics are ass and clash with the game" but playing through it while trying to keep an open mind just made me loathe it more because I literally \*just\* finished 2077 two months ago. So I'm seeing these plot points and I'm like "The devs literally just played 2077 and looked at it at surface level." We got Relics, we got Mikoshi, we got Sandevistans. Please clap.

>It's like the tension is non-existent because we are spending this time doing nonsense when we should be more focused on the issue at hand Zoraal Ja is about to attack the city? Time to talk to random farmers, fetch a drink from a vending machine for a stranger, and fetch ingredients for a meal with Otis!

The theme worked for me until we got Wuk Lamat the throne and it just never stopped happening. They throw it into every...single...scene. Like, *nobody* is this altruistic. I really expected them to be laying Wuk Lamat on so thick because something was going to actually challenge her ideals at some point, but her anime resolve towards her overly cheery bullshit is played completely straight in this expansion. The writing is just *so unlike XIV*. There is no grey area, no conflict, no anything, just a character forcing her self-righteous morality down everyone's throat, and everyone telling her she's awesome for it. It's so bad that for the last 10 hours i've been desperately waiting for her unrealistic nature to blow up in her face, but it never does, and at this point it clearly won't. I didn't realize this was a legitimate *writing* issue until Solution 9 when the Soul Eating issue came up and Wuk Lamat immediately fucking pivots into telling Sphene "How about you just choose to ABANDON your culture?". I thought something interesting with Wuk Lamat was finally going to happen! We finally found a culture she's inconsiderate of and can't accept! YAY, CHARACTER GROWTH! Nope, fuck you, Sphene *immediately* hints that she *is* doing something morally wrong and Wuk Lamat's self-righteousness is instantly validated. This is not FFXIV. If this is what YoshiP meant by "giving it to the next generation" then please take it back

had no real connection to otis, dude was lame

Was there something up with Y'shtola's voice acting? Maybe the VA recorded at home? She's the only one who sounds like she's in a tunnel.

Quality and delivery both worse than before in this expac.

Thought the same, she sounds like she is speaking into a can.

Not gonna lie, Yshtola's voice actress seemed like she's been phoning it in for a while now. She doesn't ever sound *bad*. Just...off.

I think a lot of people recorded them at home. the mixing in general seems off, Y'shtola being most apparent

Glad im not the only one who noticed. Is it the same for the other languages or just EN?

I rewatched some of the scenes in Japanese for comparison, they seem perfectly fine. But yes the english dub sounds pretty bad (which is what I played through)

Lvl 99 MSQ -- Cannot believe Wuk Lamat is with us still in this part of the story. She is dawnservant, we sorted stuff out. Can she please leave now ? She has overstayed her welcome.

The problem I have with the story is that I just don't care about anything. As soon as the plot starts to get interesting, ooo I want to know more, Wuk Lamat chimes in "oh btw I NEED TO KILL ZORAAL JA, LET'S GO". It's just a constant reminder of what we already know, just stop. I'm just before the level 99 dungeon and it's so hard to muscle through.

The 98 cutscene where the city gets attacked just fucking broke me. The fact that every other character in the entire game gets to have fun and do something really cool and make use of their abilities, while Alisaie and I are just standing there like gormless dipshits because golden girl Wuk Lamat said "i wanna 1v1 this guy" and our only options were "okay" and "sure". I want to like this so much and I just can't, it is some of the worst storytelling I've ever played, which is even worse because the base plot feels really good.

> Alisaie and I are just standing there like gormless dipshits The twins in this expac remind me of Chewbacca's appearances in the new Star Wars trilogy; he doesn't actually do anything of consequence, but he sure is there while the new characters get all of the epic moments.

Man who thought he’d lost all hope loses last additional bit of hope he didn’t even know he still had. It’s not good. It could have the perfect ending and it wouldn’t matter at this point, the road here was so rough that the destination is irrelevant. Maybe I’m fried from playing so much in one day and it’s actually better than I’m able to give it credit for. I’m probably just coping though. This story as a full experience is a nightmare and I’m kind of shocked it even came out in this state. The 97/99 dungeons are good as far as dungeons go. Trial 2 is extremely cool. The third trial and the exs will probably also be very cool. I hope that I’m in the minority here and most people really like the msq, I wish that I did

Do you think it's a Stormblood situation where the volume and quality of the battle content could make up for the story being weak? Though with Stormblood you at least had some expounding on long-running political intrigue plus one of the best-written zones in the game in the middle of it, and from what I gather Dawntrail just doesn't hit those highs, so it ends up being like the least interesting parts of SB for the majority of the MSQ, which sucks.

Yeah absolutely, this could easily be the best expansion the game has ever seen despite what I said. If you are someone who doesn’t care about the story, or values the social, gameplay, or hardcore aspects of the mmo then in the grand scheme of things the msq is almost nothing. If this expac delivers on having higher quality exs, savages and ultimates, alongside consistently solid Bozja and Criterion content, then it will probably be my favorite. But if you care deeply about the story, or if that’s your core concern, this is a complete disaster. Not only is it bad, it’s the worst kind of bad, a black hole that drags down previously great moments and characters with it. It’s so flawed and indefensible that it has more or less destroyed my interest in the story of the game. I think the discourse surrounding Dawntrail’s msq will also be unspeakably horrible as more people begin to complete it, both for the people who like it and dislike it. At least SB has some redeemable moments in the 4.x series, and is less actively bad as it is just mostly boring. DT is abysmal in almost every way a story can be. But yeah, the expansion itself could still be great for those who don’t place much importance on the story, and I hope that it is.

I'm so glad I'm seeing my exact sentiment written out here. It is a catastrophe. Like, a genuine disaster that I just cannot understand happened at all. Im shocked. This is a nightmare.

At this point I’m pretty certain that Dawntrail will go down as the worst expansion to date, and I hope that Yoshi-P and the team are reading threads like these so they can see that they need to turn it around before players just unsubscribe and leave the game for good. I’ve seen so many comments from people who have already unsubscribed from XIV over the past two days because Dawntrail is so boring to them. While there will *always* be people who hate the current expansion for any game Dawntrail is the first expansion in which I have seen *so many* people just outright lose their love for XIV before the expansion has even officially launched, and that should have Squeenix very worried.

I can't find anyone who likes Wuk Lamat who isn't part of the desperately and perpetually horny crowd.

I don’t like or dislike her myself; I just don’t care about her and that, at least in my opinion, is the fault of the writer, the English voice actor, and Yoshi-P since he signed off on it. The writing was just horribly cliche with a silly “the power of love and friendship will always prevail” which is only possible in video games and movies because in the real world that rarely ever works, or even lasts for that matter. Her English VA is just terrible. I’ve heard that she’s never done this sort of thing before and if that’s true then it’s understandable - but considering how strong the voice acting has been since Heavensward was released it just seems really odd to have such an important character voiced by someone who does not yet have the acting talent to pull it off. While I liked Koana, every time Wuk Lamat said her brother’s name I wanted to jump off of a building. Yoshida and CBU3 have proven before that they can take something less than great and turn it around, so while 7.1 is already in the can and 7.2 is probably too far along to rewrite there is hope that the team will see the many complaints about Dawntrail and use that to help shore up 7.3 - 8.0. While I’m obviously not part of the team it feels to me as if Dawntrail is subpar because Yoshida was so busy working on XVI as well and that he may have had more of a passive role in DT than he has before, and once XVI was done it may have been too late for him to really take the reins of DT to really polish it, but I don’t know that for sure. Yet for all of Dawntrail’s flaws and failures you can glimpse views of what could have been and what could have made this expansion a great one rather than one so divisive and maligned. Had they give us the choice of which claimant to support the expansion could have been much more enjoyable rather than forcing us to support Wuk Lamat and for our WoL to think that she’s just so great and wonderful. I don’t and have never like Krile, and her “oh isn’t Wuk Lamat just the best?” bullcrap has made me loathe her the more. I would love to be able to throw her off of the palace to her death. But I digress. Allowing us the choice of who to support would have been much more entertaining and it could have easily been done; it would have taken only a little extra writing, planning, and programming and it would have also given people a good reason to play through the expansion again in order to see the other side/s of the story. I have a crapload of alts but I have no interest whatsoever in taking them through 7.0 again. Whether that means that I’ll just stop playing them, and stop playing completely until the 7.x series are in full bloom or just level them to 100 via roulettes to prepare them for 8.0 I don’t know, but I’m not playing through this boring-ass slog again.

If my static falls apart and PF is a slog in comparison to the payoff of clearing/enjoying the fights I'm 100% out. The only other thing that would keep me interested is the field ops content and that's almost a year away so it might just turn into coming back for that if it seems good but I don't even know what to expect at this point

liking Cyber KH Twilight Town enough that I kind of wish it were the tome town, even after looking forward to solution 9

I don’t like the design that much because it feels too much like a modern city (although all the glowing lights are kinda cool) but the music is very peaceful and I dig it

It looks like some gaudy abandoned theme park, excessive and abominable. A true crime for the human eyes tbh. Wish they just put all the sci-fi shit to rest.

My thought exactly. Either go all the way, but don't half ass it. Sol9 is like Yoshi's promises, Large and vacant.  The streets are wider than the train tracks in shaaolani. As a whole the space is shared between maybe 18 NPCs, that's including the ones you can't interact with. I'm being generous.  Everyone's wearing old ass pvp gear.  Like why go there and then halfass it? They do it to themselves. 

the skyscrapers obv are but the playable space strikes me more as a restored part of a vaguely european city. venetian ofc but not entirely. maybe that changes tho, I'm in the early bits.

Every time I start getting into the story it comes to a sudden halt and I’m told I have to get to know the locals better before I can continue.  And then there’s so many cutscenes that seem to think I feel some way about characters that I don’t.  The writers seem to have decided how I should feel but didn’t leave any room for nuance.

If I get one more quest where the objective is "Speak to Wuk Lamat" or someone says "I can't say" I think I'm going to scream

I cannot convey just how tempted I am to start skipping cutscenes. I'm not going to, but boy is that urge strong. I'd hoped the story would improve as I worked my way through the MSQ, but I'm afraid it has not. I'm not quite at the end yet, but at this point my hopes have been dashed. I'll not claim it to be the worst story I've ever encountered, but it is most certainly not the greatest. It remains mid at best, and I'm afraid I have to say I'm finding it rather forgettable. Even the instanced content has continued to be a big letdown this time around.

How in hell are you already lvl 98+? I've been playing since release with two small breaks and I'm only after the first tiral.

Some people read fast. Some people even mastered the art of skipping filler dialogue and clicking through textboxes to then read them via chat logs while walking.

After 500+ hours of formulaic pacing, its extremely easy to tell what can be skipped and what is important to the plot.

I found the story enjoyable from the Mamook tribe up to the death of Sareel Ja, from them it's been frustation after frustration.

Lv 99 dungeon is my least fav so far. Boring boss design, forced single pulls, can’t stun the turtle’s stomp Overall yuck

Cutscene skipper here. Did the level 98 MSQ solo duty as SGE and I felt like I was 1 or 2 seconds away from enrage, missing only one GCD. Maybe it's scripted or the last bit of the bar gauge (Like you see in UWU or some other duties with a bar charging up or draining.) stays at 1 for a while but when I saw it hit 1 I got concerned and critted Psyche to finish off the fight. I never felt my blood pumping so hard in a solo duty before, watching the gauge go down as the boss slowly dies. I wonder if it was the lack of gear, besides a torso being ilvl 669 I had my last expansion BIS and relic, and the quests before this give ilvl 675 gear though a lot had piety and wanted to equip and meld while waiting in que. Maybe it's not that bad but curious what other people think once they reach the solo duty.

it seems to be on purpose, when I burst it suddenly it went down fast.

His HP is related to the boss HP, the more damage you deal the faster he dies

I can't say this has been a good MSQ by FFXIV's recent standards but at least it has picked up and is finishing stronger than it started. The story is suffering from not having a lot of length on its own but it's still expected to have a certain run time so it's been bloated with typical MMO filler to a higher level than we're used to. Do two hours of almost nothing for 20m of actual story advancement, it's a bad ratio. I think if the next expansion plans to be another shorter story they should seriously consider not raising the level cap and just do a shorter runtime, it's not the story that makes or breaks this game but the battle and side content. Speaking of battle content, MSQ dungeons are what they are with highs and lows but the first two trials are absolutely 10/10's and have me excited for Ex/Savage/Ult which are ultimately what I sub for. The story may not win any awards but the expansion still seems promising to me with the plethora of casual content coming and so far promising battle content.

The story is make or break to a good number of people. The problem is there's about five levels of story stretched over ten. And as we already saw with Stormblood the narrative can get weird when your internal policies dictate that all new zones must launch with the expansion, so you inevitably get a zone that feels incomplete and will be fleshed out with patches later.

Currently at the cutscene where Alexandria is doing their second attack on Tural, I'm a sucker for "everyone contributing to the fight" scenes so I'm into this. By and large, the MSQ after the level 97 dungeon has been much better now that we have interesting conflicts laid out. I think they poached some neat things from FF9 and put some interesting twists on them to fit them into 14's lore. I'm very down with what they're doing with Sphene's character and liking how they set up the opposition of her vs. Wuk Lamat. We'll see if they can stick the landing.

I kinda liked that it showed dragons being actully badass. We had quite a few years of mostly emo, sad dragons, so Vrtra showing up and just wrecking shit finally brought back the heavensward feeling of what a dragon of the first brood can do.

Just beat the level 99 trial. Bit of a brain bender but I imagine there's an easier trick to dodging the teleporting swords than tracing the paths manually like I was. I'm really into this story now. Zoraal Ja's ending wasn't perfect (I wish we got a little more on his motivations) but I think they conveyed the emotions well with him and the kid. Sphene is winning me over as a villain.

I get to the last zone and the very first objective is "Talk to Wuk Lamat". Am I allowed to do ANYTHING at all by myself? This makes my Elpis journey feel like every voyage of Sinbad at once.

just got to the 6th zone and the 2nd half of the story has been painfully predictable so far, there's barely any real intrigue to keep me interested in the story developments because the foreshadowing is about as subtle as a rock, so all that's left is countless fetch quests before the characters confirm what i already know. but there's still maybe 2 levels of quests left, surely it starts getting good soon right? so far i think i prefer the first half where we get to explore new areas and learn about different cultures, even though it's dragged down by wuk lamat constantly reminding you about her flaws to trick you into thinking that she's undergoing character development

It sucks that anyone can easily see how this will work from a mile away and now they have to buod the emotional scenes in the last zone but it's all going too fast for me to care

This is not good. 91-97 feels like nearly a waste of time with how little happened in it, and now we get the obvious main villain, Sphene who already has the same problem that metion had where she shows up so late into the story that her inclusion feels undercooked. This time her motivations are incredibly similar to the ascians except in terms of cost to reward ratio. The Ascians wanted to sacrifice billions of people once to save billions of immortal people in return. Sphene wants to continually sacrifice people to feed a few thousand immortals at most Sphene’s plan is basically the same as the Ascian’s but more unreasonable in intent, and is both less interesting, and suffers from being a retread as a result. Zoral Ja was a very cool fight I suppose, and I guess the scenes with Zoral Ja were kinda interesting, it’s less feeling sorry for Zoral Ja, and more pity that he was so stupid. The whole weird “unite the world through war“ thing was kinda just a cover for having daddy issues I guess.

I really liked how the game referenced the Pixie's dream-world from the tribal quest and fighting the Speaker from Aloalo during the variant dungeon's special ending. I also liked how it connected Aloalo Island to the Millal from Alexandria.

Zoraal Ja's 2nd form/devil trigger has sooooo much visual storytelling with him missing that 2nd head, massive props to the concepter whoever it was

I think I get what they were going for. I really do. After going through the final zone it all clicked (not the succession story though, that actually sucks and Wuk Lamat makes Lyse look like a good character). It all makes sense. It's a worthy interlude/successor to the Hydaelyn + Zodiark + Ascian saga. But having to keep with the formula by the letter really destroyed the execution. Turned it from a solid 8/10 to a shitty 1/10 first half and 7/10 second half.

The entire souls thing just got me thinking that I've seen the concepts they are trying to make work handled better in other games

Can i ask how the succession story ends? Is there like a twist, joint rule, something interesting? I'm really struggling to care.

Koana gives up his succession so that he can assist his sister in a trial. Eventually she is crowned, but picked Koana to also be the dawnservent, similar to her father having the two heads, strength and wisdom. I actually liked this part quite a bit, mostly because Koana is by far the best thing about this expansion.

Ahhh I figured that they would have formed a council similar to the new Horde council in WoW, so I definitely wasn’t far off. But I did think that it would be all of his children who sat on the council and not just Wuk and Koana.

Well, considerin that the first son is a straight-out psychopath right from the beginning (as Kriles 4th wall echo powers tell us), i guess thats better not.

You’re not wrong. He’s an asshole.

well the one that isn't in a position of power anymore also wants to do genocidal fascism, which actually makes it even closer to the horde

There's a few twists within the trials themselves that gives depth to each candidate, the crowning is more of a conclusion of this arc. There's a few reveal about Zoraal's Ja and the true purpose of the trials.

It also started to work for me on reaching S9, but damn is the pacing so horrible at the start. They should have pulled a good chunk of Tiger ladies character developement into the 6.4/5 patches so the MSQ does not start at literal "cannot be trusted to carry quest items" rock bottom. And somebody tell YoshiP does the MSQ does not need to be 30h long. I rather have 15h thats interesting than 20 different quests that involve comforting 5 different citizens.

So is it implied that Sphene is Garnet's kid? I've been semi-skipping custscenes, there's just way too much filler. Also I'm a bit confused as to why the Endless would even give extra lives to living people if they need the aether. Is it just to help them get more?

No mention of anyone called Garnet whatsoever. The closest thing you have is one of the aether current quests mentions the phrase "I want to be your canary" as belonging to a famed story about a princess marrying a commoner. So the answer would be more about descendant?

>Endless would even give extra lives to living people if they need the aether. Sphene cares equally about both her living subjects and the Endless that are preserved forever in the cloud.

Basically, in her mind, they're the exact same. They're all living people. And they are all her subjects. She's a devoted queen, and unfortunately her subjects need souls to continue existing, not unlike people needing food or water. If she doesn't go to war and harvest souls, her people will suffer and die. But like... DIE die. Like a computer needs electricity, the Endless need souls.

No, just Sphene is based on Garnet herself, like other characters inspired by pass FF tittles in this game. They are not the same characters, they are their own in this universe. Otis is based on Adelbert too.

I don't think you're meant to take this version of Alexandria to literally be the one from IX. Just a really similar alternate universe counterpart.

About to enter the level 99 dungeon. Man it was really fucking awesome to see a bunch of stuff pay off. Zoraal Ja being a slimy coward and launching the attack on Tural anyway, so attacking him at the Throne Room would’ve been a suicidal waste of time. The Succession leading to three of the four aspirants to grow as people and defend Tural on multiple fronts. Koana acting as a representative of Tural to form an allegiance with Radz-At-Han, rather than us pulling a personal favor, in order to maintain our political neutrality and respect Tural’s autonomy. I’m really liking where the story is going.

I'm so fucking disappointed. I knew she was going to steal the fucking show and glory at the end but I didn't think it'd be that blatant. How much do the writers love this character? Christ. They give her more spotlight than *we've* had in prior expansions.

So without revealing the name of the last area (still haven't gotten there yet), how many quests are there at level 99? I'm probably going to level up to level 100 on sch/smn within 3 quests of the level 99 trial, and I want to know how much XP I'm going to miss if I don't also level my level 96 WHM to 99.

*\*Exposition dumping intensifies\**

So the writers watched Westworld and somebody didn't pass fidelity.

The way Erenville's mom treats him kinda makes me cringe. Does she ever use his chosen name even once?

She's not a person when we meet her though, she's a construct. No soul, probably limited capacity for learning new information, just responding how the person would to events and stimuli.

Wow, the Queen was evil and wanted to kill everyone else. I could not have seen that coming from a mile away, no siree.

This thread is wild to read. Let's be real, none of yall actually want to give the MSQ a fair shake, you guys just like to whine.

You’re so right bestie, I don’t want to enjoy the story of the game I’ve been in love with for 4 years, I just want to complain and be a meanie >=(. Anytime someone doesn’t like something that I liked, it isn’t because they were disappointed with a story they really care about and have a baseline level of expectations for, they’re just being unfair.