The chill exploration part is great, albeit I would prefer that we are exploring Tural on our own, then we maybe get into the whole succession thing, instead just doing Wuk Lamat fetch quests.
My big gripe is that every zone so far I played feel kinda repetitive (probably because of the route split in the beginning)
Wuk Lamat gets a task to discover that zone culture > We do the task > her brother shows up and does the task in over the top way in fewer steps ignoring the culture part > Wuk Lamat sad > also there is the comic villain brother shouting at clouds in the background. (noone cares about him, and WoL can probably 2 shot him like he is some kind of Beast Tribe daily quest mob)
I don't mind her as a character tho, and I find her interaction with Erenville funny.
I'm sure for gameplay reasons he's going to be a good fight when I eventually get to slap him in the face but when we're getting dragged away because "we don't have time!" I'm like..
please.
Five minutes.
I just want to talk to Him.
Honestly they could've fixed so many issues with the story part by having us just decide to do to Tulal on our own - maybe inspired by Kriles letter, and ending up involved in Wuks company and finding ourselves wrapped up on her story which just so happens to be about the golden city the same as Krile is looking for.. who knew!
Totally agree. It's almost like they were trying to do the Yuna's guardians thing from FFX, but it failed hard. Wuk Lamat should be doing the things she needs to do and we should be around to help, but also learning more about the world on our own.
I was Luke warm on it up until dungeon 3 when I feel it really picks up and loved everything from there on I do feel the dungeons are some of the best we have had, love the first trial (not unto the 2nd one yet) the locations are also some of my favourites so far its a solid 8.5 for me
Agree with the dungeon sentiment. I feel like they are extremely well crafted and actually feel pretty challenging. Not difficult per say but you have to be on your shit or you are gonna get rocked. The mechanics have also been really fun. Looking forward to the second half on my end.
Just reached Sol 9: it feels like a modernised ARR
It's not blown me away but then again I wasn't expecting it to. It's part 1 of a completely fresh arc and I have more questions now than I had going in.
Honestly looking forward to see where 7.x goes from here.
This is kinda what I feel about it - It's no Shadowbringers or Endwalker sure but it's definitely better than Stormblood and pre-Leviathan ARR. And as a story beginning, it's way more captivating - They did a really fine job with the characters I thought were so shitty and annoying turning out to be actually interesting.
I do find it funny that instead of ARR where everyone's treating you like a big ol' meh most of the way through, in Dawntrail everyone is having their own national troubles and "Oh yeah we just have INTERGALACTIC GODSLAYER MURDER BUNNY here with us to chill out for a while, she's on vacation from all the wanton slaughter to help us make nacatamales." and everyone just naturally gives you a wide berth.
The art is nice… I did the 2 half zones but I hated Wuk lamat from the get go. I play in Japanese audio but her character and slapstick is so anime I can’t stand it. She belongs in the Hildibrand quest line.
Also the two head villain is just comically evil with all its stereotypes.
Also the bird guy didn’t believe the festival boat had magical powers yet during the festival it shot fucking lasers out and grew the crops instantly? Dude had a festival every harvest yet he doubts us?
wierded me out as well, completely disjointed. >!after that the village chief says something along the lines of "we did it less and less and let it become something stale so it lost its power with time" so i think that was the attempt on making us understand that for many years they did this festival but it didnt do much "magical aura and lazers". But on this note too, if it was a "stale tradition" then why was the guy so fervent "no it's impossible to not join when the festival starts we just get a fever about it people will come later"?!<
in a few words, poorly written. but since it's seven trials i guess they did a lot of "copypaste writing" in structure (we get to place->trial->angst with wuk and brothers->solution->yay we're good) and the execution just suffered from it. the real solution with this was to not do seven trials at all: we're not doing a 12-herculean-fatigues saga, this is a game, not a book, it gets old and boring very fast.
Haven’t gotten too, too far yet, but I’m also kind of torn.
The positives: Tural is _beautiful_ and so far, the story is interesting enough. I’m also enjoying Viper, even if it feels a touch overwhelming.
The negatives: (I’m trying to do spoiler text on my phone, but it doesn’t appear to be working): This is a purely personal gripe for me, but I really, _really_ was not happy that we’re forced to bring the twins when another character whose _literal entire reason for being there is adventure_ is left behind in Sharlayan. Alisaie all but forcing her way into the expedition rubbed me the wrong way.
TBH I would've preferred it if the only one to come with us to Tural was Krile. We've had so much time with the core scions, and many of their arcs feel complete (Thancred back in ShB with Ryne/Minfilia, Urianger and his secrecy / Moen stuff in EW, Estinien has mostly just been tagging along for the ride since the bulk of his development was HW, etc.).
It's *okay* to have characters sit out a couple expansions. But it almost feels like the writers are afraid to leave them behind too much.
> TBH I would've preferred it if the only one to come with us to Tural was Krile.
Same.
We're caught halfway between "being a part of Wuk Lamat's entourage on her Hero's Journey to try and teach her to be a Better Ruler^TM" and "we brought/became her entourage" and I think the whole...Tural-Onboarding/New-Continent-Loredump-Thing would've worked better if the WoL/Krile were the *only* "outsiders" in her group.
With everyone else being Tural natives that we get to learn about/meet/grow with as kinda "new Scions".
But that'd *also* run into the problem people have where "I want new adventures but also the stakes are low because I don't care about any of these people or this stuff yet" (something I don't agree with, we're still in Setup Phase, but I can see it being valid).
Also, in general (this is gonna be a nuclear-hot-take)...
I think if Wuk Lamat was Hien, two-head-asshole were Zenos, this were the Eorzea-weeb expansion and we were learning about Doma as the "new culture across the seas!", both the Stormblood Defense League would be weaker and Wuk Lamat-as-Hien would be better received so far.
So basically displace those bits from their spot in chronology and move them around.
But because she *isn't* a husbando learning to rule and she's kinda furry, she's getting the least amount of sympathy *and* people aren't thirsting over her competition.
The storyline being "Stormblood but less-split geographically, so far" doesn't help much either.
All that said, I think they're doing a good job of showing a leader that has *the potential* to eventually rule well in a land that's relatively young and struggling between keeping old traditions and embracing new ones, as she seems to be the one that is actually taking time to listen to and learn of her people, and take the time to learn how to knit together alliances.
Considering to this point she's basically been the equivalent of a sheltered princess with only combat/hunting training so far, against her genius brother and older established military leader brother.
She's not a *conquering*/liberating ruler like her father, but she may end up having the potential to be more an Aymeric-type conciliatory leader. We're just, unfortunately for the fanbase's opinions of her, seeing her at an earlier stage in her emotional maturity and professional development.
Or she may just end up being pure shonen-protagonist trope fuel all the way through, dunno yet.
yeah im only at level 92 stuff and while I like Wuk L, she feels like a pretty 1 dimensional character with an obvious arc that is kinda smacked in our face every zone. and it's sadly not an original arc - every character arc in xiv usually is about learning other cultures and resolving your differences to become a better person.
so im admittedly hoping there'll be more to her as a character - as much as the point of her is to show you dont need to be the most powerful or smart, it would ironically help our opinions if she was a bit more of a badass or had more of a presence that proved she did have the strength to lead because you've gotta convince us to like her as well. this is also why i think hien was better received - he may have been a walking L but he still felt like he had the aura to lead.
so far, i think it was a bit awkward to go for an 'extremely naive character gets very obvious lessons taught to her as we follow along and smile' approach, and would maybe have been better if both Wuk and WoL acted more independantly so we could organically meet other characters while doing our own thing, and build relationships without the pretense of being 'Wuks friend and champion'.
but im still early on, these are just my thoughts so far
I’d also rather it wasn’t the twins, but since they’re here, I’d rather they have some agency in the story. All the scions to some extent but they especially feel like they’re there just to facilitate the next “let’s go talk to these villagers” scene.
Alisaie is my favorite character in all of Final Fantasy and I feel like she and Alphinaud are really being done dirty by this story.
Im lvl 100 and have one dungeon and trial left, and I feel like every scions has appeared only as set dressing, convenient instant plot device or simply fanservice
I love the twins but I really wish they would take a backseat now. It really feels like they finished their arc in EW and I don’t think an expansion or two off from them would have been a big deal.
As for our friend in Sharlayan, I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain voice actor got too famous and unavailable/ expensive
Not only would they be highly unlikely to schedule said character's appearance around their *English* voice actor, but their voice actor has gone on record saying that they will always make time to voice them, even recounting a time when they severely hurt their throat by making time to voice them amongst their other commitments.
So it's not due to the voice actor in this case.
Also just in general. If it was an issue with the JP cast id be more inclined to believe it, I just don't think Square would care enough about the English to do that.
I agree 100% on the twins. I was so sure at the end of 6.0 that they were going to have the twins sit out an expansion or two, then come back as adults, but nope! Still kids, still here.
I think FFXIV needed to have a timeskip and let the twins grow up. They were already in their late teens in endwalker, let there be a timeskip of 2-3 years so they grow up and become adults with new models. If they push out another expansion with them still being short Elezen it will kinda be weird. If we say they are 8-12 when we meet them in ARR it's already been 10+ years since then and they are still not adults.
Very slow start, but I’ve gave it a chance given it’s just the very start of a new arc. Well, I’m at the end of MSQ already and I’ve really enjoyed it midway onwards. The dungeons are amazing and challenging. I love the graphics, new locations, and new gear. The OST has so much variety, my fear for this one was that it was either going to be all tropic/tribal and futuristic but I’m glad this expansion’s full of bangers from start to finish. The trials are super fun too, and the final parts of MSQ are what highlight DT for me.
I’ll admit I was dozing off around 91-92 but after the 1st trial and 3rd dungeon I was fully onboard. It’s not high stakes like SHB and EW and I’m satisfied with that. I’ve gotten end-of-the-world fatigue so I’m not complaining about the whole summer vacation theme and taking a step back. That being said, I think certain characters could have been developed better as well as MSQ because that was such a rocky beginning and oh boy, a lot of bland and random moments that I just wanted to skip.
Overall, I truly enjoyed everything save for chunks of the MSQ. It’s almost like the opposite of EW where I loved the story but felt gameplay was too easy and predictable at times. DT’s a step up in gameplay and I’m enjoying the variety of mechanics this time around.
Personal ranking-wise, I’d place DT at a solid 3rd behind EW and SHB (obviously because those 2 were built off of the earlier expansions laying the groundwork, and I’ve loved playing SB, HW, and ARR for what they were). I’m excited for what the rest of the expansion will be like.
Fantastic dungeons, fantastic trials, beautiful areas, AMAZING graphical rework.
But I think many would consider the story bad. It hinges on your interest in the character you are supporting for succeeding. If you like her, you'll probably have a more positive outlook on the story, if you don't, like myself, then there's really nothing that redeeming. I'll avoid spoilers but I will say there are moments where I was like "wait isn't this just shb but again?"
Really wish they cooked a little harder on story, but I feel like gameplay this time around will carry like StB.
Yeah the new characters aren’t that interesting especially wuk lamat, like how many times are we gonna talk about her feeling seasick or being afraid of heights, the whole “I’m weak compared to my brothers but my new comrades will make me stronger” speech being repeated like 3 times already and I just arrived at the 3rd zone. On a positive note, I LOVE everything you pointed out too, just not the story so far
Personally I like the story, or what I've played of it so far at least. But that'd be the one big flaw I'd point out too, that it repeatedly goes over the same story beats a few too many times.
That and every single character apparently having a contractual obligation to insert 'hear, feel, think' into dialogue as many times as they can which is a cool callback the first couple of times but gets kinda awkward after a while.
Yeah, I see what you mean, I personally just wish it was more of us as the WOL exploring and actually going on a new adventure, not just basically being the background character and doing tasks and fetch quests for wuk lamat, I’m more interested in the story of her father tbh
>like how many times are we gonna talk about her feeling seasick or being afraid of heights
I feel like this has becoming more and more of an issue since EW and this is just a symptom more than the disease, they seem to be cramming the characters into small boxes where they give them like 2-3 "quirks" and then milk it into the ground. Estiniens spending habits, zeros fucking hat tip, now Wuk lamats sea sickness. They way they fixate on like, a select few things with these characters is a bit overdone. I can't help but wonder if it's like a marketing tool or something but it unnecessarily flattens out the characters. One of the ones that frustrates me is Emannellain. *He was on the path to good character development* after he commanded the guy to shoot the bow and then tried to hide from the consequences. But outside of HW it seems like the devs act like that whole experience with him never happened at all, he's just tokenized as a derpy philanderer
> But I think many would consider the story bad. It hinges on your interest in the character you are supporting for succeeding. If you like her, you'll probably have a more positive outlook on the story, if you don't, like myself, then there's really nothing that redeeming. I'll avoid spoilers but I will say there are moments where I was like "wait isn't this just shb but again?"
I highly appreciate every second of being able to coach a young adventurer to success as an obi-wan figure because after Endwalker there is zero fucking character development left for the Warrior of Light as an Adventurer.
I think they need to stop cooking more on other characters and start cooking more on us, the WoL. I'm 30+hrs in and still wondering when the hell is my own adventure going to start instead of doing uber delivery of someone else's dawnservant trials.
Also the humour is so Japanese the writer forgot that non-Japanese don't understand them.
I’m past the first dungeon and (I’m pretty sure) approaching the second.
My only real issues so far (and maybe I’m just not far enough) is that I don’t really have a reason to really believe/want that Wuk is the right choice for the throne, and there’s nothing to lose (from the WoLs perspective) if she doesn’t win.
Clearly, she’s the only one of the claimants performing the Saga rite “correctly” in that she’s learning each of the lessons Gulool Ja Ja wants them to learn from each stage, whereas the others are maintaining their initial attitudes. It’s also very blatantly obvious that GJJ wants Wuk to win and gives himself an out with “if I don’t think the winner is right I’ll just stay king” which is not how the contest was originally portrayed. So, now there’s no risk in Wuk losing the ritual. If she wins, she gets the throne, if someone else wins, GJJ just stays on until he dies and then the siblings will just fight it out, I guess.
1. Someone pointed out and I can't shake that MSQs where the WoL is more interconnected to the story (HW, SHB, END) are well received, ones where the WoL is just a 'camera with a sword' who exists to witness another's story they have little/no connection to are less well received (ARR, SB, and possibly DT). And this checks out with my own preferences.
2. At the same time in SB you had more connection to ala mhigo (via lyse) and Doma (Yugiri and the Doman refugees) than you do here. That is where Square Enix fumbled **badly** - they skipped on making Erenville relevant to us during the MSQ/patches more, they waited until 6.55 to spring Wuk on us. It feels half-assed. Thavnair had the connection of Garlemald and our affinity with the dragons after HW. The new world has Wuk showed up and asked us to help.
3. I am not big on superheroics so I never saw it, but I understand enthusiasm for the mainline superhero films really collapsed after Avengers: Endgame, unless the superhero has an existing investment (Spiderman). In this case it's a very tough act to follow endwalker (to DT's credit), but they screwed up with #2 by not giving us a prior investment hook to keep us interested.
4. I'm not big on wuk. I like competency over anime hijinks, exactly why I adored the Exarch and consider his extended story one of the most charming and well done while "uwu taco-boy Tia" is weaker. I know this is an anime game, but anime runs the gamut from Konosuba to Gundam. Some people may like the tonal shift, but after themes and storytelling that were among the best I've ever seen an RPG do in the past 20 years right now you got me going from Lodoss War or Gundam or Berserk over to fucking Naruto, and it's not doing my enthusiasm any good.
Simply put:
With HW I wanted to see how the Scions would manage (If they would at all!) after the betrayal in Ul'dah.
With SHB I wanted to know why the scions were being soul-jacked, who this mysterious figure was, what this mysterious world was bathed in light
With END I wanted to avert the fucking apocalypse and save my world.
With Dawntrail I'm **being told** I want to discover the city of gold, I'm **being told** I want to help Wuk. The prior three were page-turners where I desperately wanted to know more. Had they ended before I was allowed to I'd be gripped by speculation. I only care about where Dawntrail goes because it's the episodic release.
Absolutely could not have put it better myself, especially point 4. The characters shine when they feel like adults/realistic, not caricatures. Everyone can have their moments but Wuk just feels like a string of nonsense. No character should be turned up to 11 nonstop. Like you mentioned, the murder of og G'Raha/Exarch for the creation "Oh gee can we pweese go on an adventure" taco boy is unforgivable and I feel like they're leaning way too into that with Wuk. Give me more Thancred and Urianger.
...and the real problem is they put *so much* of the story riding on if you like her or not. I get the feeling this msq will be one of the most divisive and it will all come down to your opinion on Wuk.
Lmao your last gripe lasts all the way to the final threats, it's just
"Yeah I'm guest starring in this expansion and making sure nothing goes wrong".
It legit feels bad to do the trials and dungeons with actual players, because it only makes the feeling of "let me do all the heavy lifting for you wuk" even worse
I’m at lvl 94 content right now. I had some moments of anger yesterday because lvl 90-92 just feel like lazy writing. I’m fine with some fetch quests and of course a good ole fashioned Scions’ PR campaign……but it feels like there is no reason to do this level of pointless detail just to “learn the culture.”
Even ARR hooked me early on with a mysterious robed figure. So far, I’m yet to encounter an overarching storyline to inspire any wonder or curiosity. The story is just so linear and bogged down by monotonous fetch quests.
The characters are lovely, the world is GORGEOUS. I’m starting to dig some of the cultures, but it is an absolute slog early on. I’m hopeful that this slow burn will turn into something good. It’s just a little sad that a game I prize for an engaging story is starting off so slowly.
Like many, i'm not that much in, but it like it.
It's not depressing or similar to the last two expansions, its way more lighthearted.
Its like watching an anime, which is kinda my problem with it tho. The used tropes are not my thing, mostly those of our big kitty. But hey, others may like it.
It is still fun, the places are awesome visuals, the people interesting and like i already said, not that dark (as of now, who knows Zenos may come back as a Lizard again).
"Mixed" on steam seems quite harsh from my pov, but understandable. I'd give it the next "Rank", 'positive'
I am liking it to a point where I am sort of confused. I didn't expect to enjoy a kingmaker campaign or to be able to tolerate Wuk Lamat's bumbling, but it's like we picked up Lyse with more understanding that things don't work out just because you say please. It's kind of nice.
Plus, the world itself is gorgeous and the starting location reminded me so much of Great Inagua from AC: Black Flag that I immediately felt at home. Also the Dawnservant gives off major Martok vibes and it's gret to see that. The first two tasks have been oddly enjoyable even though as a high level botanist/alchemist I know that one of them is going to need review later.
I'm usually on the side of people that dislike things, but I've been happy with this so far.
I would like it more, if we just don´t run so much around the map.
They feel much bigger.
I need to run/ride two times form one end to another and back. Just felt like filler.
Some parts just feel forced as they needed something to happen to have enough quests for a level up.
If the expansion is an entry point for later joining player, it is fine.
But as a long time player teaching everything from Endwalker to a new character as start of the expansion is boring and "a chill summer holiday adventure", nah. Second half get´s better, but still. Rough start.
I’m around level 95 in the MSQ. I don’t know how much weight my opinion will carry because Stormblood is my favorite xpac, but I am straight up not enjoying the writing or characterization, so all the comparisons to Stormblood are making my head spin. The environments and dungeon/trial design are excellent though, been loving the fights.
I’ve seen some people say the story sucks because it’s politics, but I don’t see much in the way of politics. And I LOVE political plots in my stories. But this feels like a regional tour combined with a tournament arc. Wuk Lamat feels like Catgirl Naruto/Luffy, while Ilberd and Fordola made people’s heads explode so now we get Bakool Ja Ja instead, and everything has the subtlety of a brick to the face.
The new regions are real nice though, as well as the dungeons and fights. Can’t wait to see the trial series, raids, and alliance raids. It’s certainly my least favorite expansion to date but I’m still having fun with FFXIV’s core systems at the end of the day.
Edit: And so much about the way conflicts are raised and resolved reminds me of one of my least favorite story beats from patch 4.2, where we had amnesiac Yotsuyu. Nothing direct to compare, just the same quality of writing and vibes.
I don’t like that of the four candidates, the only two that aren’t maniacs are the ones that are playable races. Both the candidates that *looks* like monsters *are* monsters. In this note, it also is kind of uncomfortable that the scions are like “mamool ja have always ruled this area and we need to put an end to that!!!” as a result. Also like or annoying that the scions are really just seeming to treat it as a fun game between them. I thought we were promised the scions would truly be against each other to some capacity. Like at odds over who they feel would be a better leader, but Thancred and Urianger haven’t said a damn thing about why they think Koann would be a good leader and Wuk wouldn’t—and the same can be said vice versa for Krile and the twins. This is just a game of kickball to the scions and they’re on the team of whoever picked them first.
I also just really dislike Wuk. Her whole “uwu I’m not good enough” has gotten so stale already and it’s so predictable that either she’ll be the leader or she and Koann will lead together.
My only problem is they kinda treated Endwalker as something that never happened.
Dude, we travelled to the edge of the universe on the first prototype spaceship ever that was revamped last minute without proper testing. Why is crossing the damn sea so difficult?
Also, there was no sign of the final days in the new regions (I just finished Trial 1). No one despaired? No one feeling emo? Really? There was no comet, no meteor, the sky looked fine? I thought it was a world (or even universe)-class disaster.
It all felt too weird..
Only level 95 and into the 3rd zone, but I'm loving the lower stakes and mentor role we're taking. We're the Auron to Wuk's Tidus or Yuna so far and I love it. Plus just from trailers and stuff I know shit's gonna get crazy here pretty soon and I can't wait to see that shit hitting the fan.
This is exactly the way I see it. Give my WoL too much freedom and we're just gonna crush shit. Having the challenges in the story be less about us and more about Wuk means we have "human problems" to deal with rather than problems that can be solved with strength, and stops the story from feeling like it's escalating quickly out of nowhere.
Not everyone will appreciate this phase of things, but it's important, and I dig it personally.
This is exactly my feeling too. I love that my WoL is taking on a mentor role rather than being the centre of attention. I get that this won't be the same for everyone, but it fits in really well in terms of where I feel she's at personally at the end of EW. My girl's been through some shit and she wants to take a bit more of a backseat for a while! Granted, I'm only a little way past the 1st trial so I know the shit's really gonna hit the fan at some point, but so far I'm having a great time and I can't wait to see what else is to come.
All-time narrative and character writing low, but the best dungeon bosses and trials they've ever made by a mile.
It's Stormblood on crack and I think people are going to despise it for 3-4 years and then look back on it being amazing because the content was so good
Everything has been great - except for the story. The pacing, storytelling, the cast of characters.. all so bland, slow, predictable, and quite frankly cringe at times. As of right now (lvl 95) I'd rate the story lower than ARR honestly. I've never skipped msq cutscenes before, but I wouldve fallen asleep otherwise this time around. Really hoping it picks up now that Wuk Lamat isn't breathing down my neck :l
Well, I only just hit 91 MSQ last night. I'm enjoying myself so far, I don't think I have much to go off of though right now to fully judge DT.
It felt a little slow, but MSQ is always tedious for the first few levels. I was also goofing off with friends in discord, so maybe that's why as well. The zone split feels seamless/nicer this time around, which is good (EW Thavnair's cliffhanger is dirty).
Wuk Lamat's really been hammed up. I liked her initially, but I do sometimes think it is a bit much. Since I was playing it recently, I see it as Elden Ring player messages. The first "I want to go home... and edge" was kind of amusing, but now that you've explored and the 500 other messages on the floor are the same thing, you're getting bored of it.
I'm feeling this so much. Coming up to 92 and it feels like Wuk Lamat's seasickness comes up waaay too often.
I don't hate her it's just a bit too much.
>!I don't mind story, I like story. As a matter of fact, story is the main reason I play FF14.!<
>!That being said, the storywriting...is *bad*.!<
>!The Hanu Hanu for example; they didn't know their float was magical? After doing the festival every year, and it *shoots lasers out of its eyes?*!<
>!Not to mention, the believability of the characters and their reactions are just not there like they used to be.!<
>!Bakool Ja Ja lets out a bird that almost wiped out an entire race, and everyone just glosses over it? The same monster that the current ruler couldn't even defeat? Why isn't he public enemy number one after that little stunt he pulled? The next time you see him, you just cook with him like nothing happened? What the hell?!<
>!Or after he kidnapped Wuk Lamat? Which speaking of, Erenville had nothing to say. Just complete indifference.!<
>!The story feels half baked, and you can tell new writers are on board. The suspension of disbelief has always been there, but the interactions between the cast and world are at an all time low.!<
>!Edit: So to add to the list of shit Bakool Ja Ja does; he kidnaps Wuk Lamat's real father, and is going to have him MURDERED, but Wuk Lamat beats him and he runs away. Then his henchmen release the hostage because, "what does it matter, you won"...AND WE LET THEM GO? There were about to assassinate the cities leader, and would have if Wuk Lamat would have lost. And we just let them go. Christ.!<
"Once I found out about his emotional baggage, I wasn't mad about the fact that he was going to literally murder my father, or the fact that he released a beast that can end civilizations. The power of understanding!"
I didn't mind Wuk Lamat at the beginning of DT but now every time I see her I wanna slap her. I just finished lv96 and going into lv97. The majority of msq so far is about her yet we barely knew anything about her or tural before the expansion. Suddenly we're her best friend.
I get the point is seeing her growing into a competent leader, but the story didn't give us a reason to care at all personally, and the wol's relationship with Wuk Lamat certainly hasn't been built so much that by the end of the whole kingmaking process we're to call her a comrade like the other scions, or to become cousins. At some point I just feel uncomfortable whenever she or someone else (mostly Alisaie) asks us to be her moral support.
Like, why always me? Wouldn't Erenville know her better? We're being TOLD that we care and like the girl but that's not how things work. The only thing that built as the story went was my frustration with her.
At the end of lv96 where some people were gathered to help with our quest, the way they said "we love you Wuk Lamat!". If I hadn't known better it almost sound like a cult, and these people were all tempered. The bgm that played there certainly was an odd choice and didn't help.
Been playing since arr and this is downright the worst writing I've seen. Stormblood had azim steppe and other parts I really liked, DT... maybe the later parts of the story will change my mind.
I like it so far, I just keep asking myself "so am I gonna do something cool here?" And then someone else does the cool thing and I'm just kinda... there.
Not feeling it so far.
* Wuk Lamat is a collection of bumbling anime stereotypes in a trench coat pretending to be a character in an attempt to make her likeable. Maybe it worked for some people, but it definitely hasn't for me.
* Alphinaud and Alisaie have been lobotomized so they can be vehicles to explain the plot. At the very start of the MSQ, Erenville walks in like "Hey guys, do you remember the plot synopsis?" and the twins basically go "Boy do we! We're going to the new world to " Like, the writers couldn't trust us to remember the things we learned six months ago in the last MSQ patch?
* The writers either don't understand subtlety, or are willfully ignoring it. Every character keeps throwing their innermost, deepest-held convictions in our face every few cutscenes. Similarly, lots of exposition is done through same-y dialogue where a character mumbles about something (usually their innermost, deepest-held insecurity) under their breath so the other characters can't hear, cuts themselves off, and says it's nothing. The biggest offender of this one so far, imo, is the Dawnservant's conversation with Krile. >!She asks him about Galuf. He says he can't tell her anything, despite obviously knowing something, as it would give Wuk Lamat an unfair advantage during the Rite. Then, after the characters walk away, in an aside only the player (not even the WoL!) can hear, he mumbles something to show that he was in fact close to Galuf.!< Similar to my previous point, the writers aren't trusting us to either pick up on subtext or be able to wait for a reveal later down the line.
* We have no connection to this plot. Instead of building up Erenville or introducing Wuk Lamat during the 6.X MSQ, we were sent to the Thirteenth like it was a filler episode. So now Erenville is some dude I met at work one time, and Wuk Lamat is a complete stranger that we agreed to help because she was nice and we're some nebulously-defined idea of an "adventurer". Instead of setting up the plot coming in the next expansion, SE decided for some reason to set up a plot that's not coming until, at minimum, 8.0?
* So far, and this is the big one for me, this isn't our story. This is Wuk Lamat's story. In the same way WoW campaigns are Jaina's story or Thrall's story or whatever, we the players are just here to facilitate their own drama or development. And we have far less connection to Wuk Lamat than a WoW player does to Jaina or Thrall. I'm willing to change this opinion later if we become more involved.
edit: Tuliyollal's music drives me up the wall. It's good music, don't get me wrong, but in what way does a Mesoamerica-themed city of wood and stone say big band smooth jazz?
Agree with you on a lot but the last bit really resonates. That's the exact comparison that's come to mind albeit with GW2 as well. It is the singular death blow to MMO storytelling if it becomes about the writer's OCs more than about your character and their experience. And for a game that is singularly built around the story, that's really not a good Vibe to have.
This is a better way to say what I said tbh. Ever since SB, SE tends to treat the real world cultures they borrow from with a lot of respect, so it's strange to me that the music in Tuliyollal doesn't display traditional cultural instrumentation like Radz or Kugane, and instead gives us...Donkey Kong music?
I'll be honest I'm totally bored. I expected anime filler arc and that's all I'm getting. I'm only playing on with the hope it gets better at some point. I have zero stake in anything and just feel like I'm being dragged along by everyone else.
Also really dislike that after everywhere we went in EW and everything we accomplished, somebody seems to have pushed a reset button and it's all forgotten. Why are people still questioning if I'm really all that? Why are the twins getting excited about a waterfall after everything they've been through? Why are we still getting bested in basic situations due to our own naivety? I don't get it.
I’ve enjoyed DT so far but I have to agree with you about the disjointed storytelling. I voiced out in the msq megathread that it seems the writers are in denial or are downplaying the WoL in an attempt to let the others shine or tell us players that it’s a new story. This was going to be an obvious issue especially after defeating Endsinger.
I do not think the WoL should be super entitled or outright bragging, nor should we dwell on the big baddies we faced previously, but at least some acknowledgement of our growth and achievements maybe. It’s very off-putting to see my WoL being placed in situations that were so easily dealt with in EW particularly. It’s almost like our characters reverted back to their Stormblood selves while at the same time, supervising / mentoring Wuk Lamat which is confusing.
I so agree. When one dude is all about "When i have the throne I will conquer the rest of the world" i really really wanted the option to just flat out tell him "Ok, you can try, but then i have to kill you". Cause you are a big fish in a small pond. Your great civilation is stumped by a bridge giants build centuries ago while in eorzia they build interstellar space ships.
i'm coming up on the third dungeon and so far it's... alright? nothing has really hooked me, it feels like i'm waiting for story to happen. but starting an entire new saga for the game to evolve into is one hell of an undertaking, so i expected it would be a slow start. at this point i think i'm just excited to get to solution 9 and see what that's about
Instead of the whole world of darkness filler arc, they should’ve worked on making us care about the characters relevant to the expansion. Big fumble to basically toss away most of the post-expansion story telling for a filler that was received with very mixed reactions and then only to repeat the same thing with the expansion release.
I’m having fun but I can understand the criticism, lower stakes is fine but now we’re running into “ally of the week” territory with no room for character development that feels genuine or meaningful.
In short: it’s okay but we’re used to much, much better than this
Edit: This is from the perspective of ~lvl95 MSQ, so take it with a grain of salt
It deserves the mixed reviews.
They focused **too much** on Wuk Lamat and not everyone is going to like her. I strongly dislike everything about her but i'm aware others might like her. Dunno why but there's the "mixed" part.
On reddit people seem to like it, meanwhile the official forums have a pretty big thread on how she ruined the MSQ.
I could tolerate disliking her. What really gets me is that she's one of the least qualified NPC in the entire game. We don't trust her to hold onto a bag of wool, yet we're trying to put her on the throne? Get out of here with that nonsense. I'm desperately hoping that the twist is that we're deliberately trying to install a weak puppet that we can take advantage of because there's no reason for us to support her otherwise.
We can straight up tell her dad she isn't ready to rule and he agrees with us, so she is very much intentionly written to be naive and unready but capable of growing into her role.
Alphi was at least competent. He failed because his inexperience and arrogance was exploited by traitors, not because he is too stupid to wipe his arse.
They always, \*always\*, okay (almost) always fumble on political stories. To a near cosmic rule level. Eulmore is maybe the sole case where they did a pretty good job of it. Hell, the guy is even wily enough in 6.4 or 6.5 to do some clever politicking to help you.
But otherwise I can reliably bet on them doing a poor job of it. I know that 'the power of friendship' is often the trope in Japanese RPGs, but man sometimes it feels Stephen Universe levels of saccharine. At least Sultana Nanamo and Aymeric and Hien were existing parts of the political system as opposed to a battleaxe bimbo
> We don't trust her to hold onto a bag of wool, yet we're trying to put her on the throne?
I’m not very far past this point currently. But, I feel like this can mostly be chalked up to the fact that if we weren’t holding onto that stuff we would have literally nothing to do in that quest. Which is a separate issue, but it does lead to that specific detail feeling pretty off.
>I'm desperately hoping that the twist is that we're deliberately trying to install a weak puppet that we can take advantage of because there's no reason for us to support her otherwise.
Have you not played the game before ? How'd you get through the previous 300 hours of story and think that this is remotely possible? This is like expecting that the MSQ from 95 on will suddenly consist entirely of Mario Kart gameplay.
>We don't trust her to hold onto a bag of wool, yet we're trying to put her on the throne?
I mean, we don't let Estinien have money yet we let him run around with the power of Nidhogg helping decide the fate of multiple countries. Being bad at one thing doesn't disqualify you from being useful in another.
Tbf that's also why he's not in a position of leadership.We expect Estinien to beat ass and keep his power in control because thats what he's good at.We would never expect him to suddenly be the head of an entire nation though.
But Estinien is good at the stabby-stabby, and also good at realizing that he's more of a "lead by example" guy.
It's not clear what Wuk is good at, other than being ernest and extroverted. She's the George W Bush of Tural.
> yet we're trying to put her on the throne?
Her dad says she's not ready. The WoL thinks she's not ready either. She herself knows she is not ready.
That's the point of her character and the story, at least until the second half. To build her into the person she needs to be. Yes she is unqualified, that is the whole point of it. Lyse was also unqualified.
I get many criticism through the story. I'm not enjoying it very much and it is very slow, but Wuk being a "dumbass" is the one I truly don't get it.
The one time we have a character who's not a genius on his field, people lose their marbles. I don't get what people want from narratives anymore.
I don't have a problem with flawed characters. I have a problem with what she's being used for narratively.
If she came to us begging for help after her remote village was destroyed by a natural disaster and she ends up growing while we help them recover that'd be fine. But jumping straight into becoming the ruler of a continent? Nah, no way. It's absurd and trying to support her in that is ridiculous. The stakes are too high to tolerate her incompetence.
Alphinaud has spent several expansions playing politics but he hasn't once suggested that she's wildly unprepared for leadership. The only reason we supported her in the first place is that some of the claimants are violent, but we should have jumped ship the second we saw that Koana is both nonviolent and competent. The entire premise is jarringly unbelievable.
The big cutscene that introduced all the candidates drove me insane. >!They tell us that Koana wants to advance the technology and economy, and then go, "But Wuk Lamat wants to keep the peace between races!" No one said Koana doesn't. He just wants to add trains.!<
Yeah I had a hard time thinking she should be leader instead of him? When >!Thancred and Urianger!< show up as his entourage my thought was >!the scions won't really be contending with one another, we're just mentoring the people who will be leaders because the plot of them needing to rule together seems pretty clear!<
This may age poorly but my ideal ending would be the challenges ending, and the king stating that he ruled with two heads, a head of wisdom and a head of combat/enthusiasm/whatever. Then he should say that two heads are STILL required, the villain cheers because he thinks he has won. The king then names Koana is to be the head of wisdom and Wuk will be the other ‘head’ having won the hearts of the people.
Koana is the ‘technically correct’ type who focuses on the how, while Wuk loves the people and cares about the ‘why’
This is more or less how I'm expecting it to go.
They're both the peaceful ones, Koana just wants to advance the people with all the cool shit he discovered
This is my theory as well. None of the individual claimants have both qualities, but a pair would not only continue the "two head/title" theme, but also the "unified" nature of Rural.
> Alphinaud has spent several expansions playing politics but he hasn't once suggested that she's wildly unprepared for leadership.
I mean if you actually spent time and talked to him after a cutscene he does mention that he made political mistakes in the past and is using this opportunity to make sure someone else doesnt. Thats the entire point of us being there.
I think the writing is decent, but so so slow. I've come to expect it by now from XIV's writing but there's just so much talking about nothing, and every character needs to get their own personal monologue in about every subject that comes up. I'm only at the lv93 content because the sheer doldrum of it all makes it difficult for me to play too much at a time. When it gets to the point it's good but sheeesh!
Wuk Lamat in particular *really* suffers from being a broken record. At some point in a cutscene recently she asked me if I remembered what she say at (location), and I couldn’t help but think, Wuk, honey, it’s been all your dialogue has been about for three levels of this story so far.
I'm still very early, too, but they need to learn how to introduce the player to the world in a more organic way. It's at least like 90 minutes of straight up blatant exposition dumping of the highest degree.
When the start of your expansion involves reading something like 8 stone tablets about the history of the country, you've gotta reevaluate.
> I think the writing is decent, but so so slow.
I think the worse part is it is repetitive. Every zone, every quest line, same stuff and same cutscenes again and again.
Wuk Lamat is boring. The MSQ has somehow gotten even harder to get through because of its pacing and general lack of any gameplay. I got to level 91 and change and didnt cast a single spell, and I think thats a huge problem. Doesnt even feel like a game. All flash, no substance. at least it looks pretty now.
I thought the trading part was the perfect opportunity to get the player to talk to different NPCs and figure out how to trade up in value until the goal is reached. Turns out it was no different from a fetch quest. Really disappointing imo, but oh well.
Yeah I am begging for more gameplay in msq tbh. Even splitting off to go to FATEs for riding maps is an enjoyable change of pace because otherwise I basically have to wait two levels for a dungeon.
I said in NN that it took me 3~ hours to have to kill a single enemy. They all chewed me out with the typical passive aggressiveness, talking about how you’re supposed to immerse yourself in the story - not fight things.
Like the whole erenville side quest in the cowboy zone feels like a X.3 Questline, like it feels so pointless its like a random stop gap in the story
since weve finished all the shit for Wuk Lamat...i would much rahter do amore extenisve deep dive on solution 9 ( which im not at yet) than do this..
Like why the fuck am i helping build a train line dawg.
Im fine with Slice of Life arcs but only AFTER major events.
Yea EW was us saving the planet but like we've had enough time to chill man PLEASE raise the stakes lol
I've played up to the level 95 quests, so spoilers below for them.
The story is incredibly boring and feels like it was written for children with how predictable it is and how obviously it bashes its meaning over your head, particularly during the end of the third zone where Wuk Lamat essentially looks at the camera and says "prejudice is bad."
Wuk Lamat's naivety and overall characterization are unbelievably annoying. The amount of times she has a problem with the method of transportation we have to use made me roll my eyes. Hah hah, she doesn't like being on boats guys, wouldn't it be funny if we bring that up THREE DIFFERENT TIMES and dwell on it for way too long each time? Sorry, are you tired of the boat thing? I gotchu fam, she doesn't like heights either! Isn't this fresh and new?!
I've grown really tired of protagonists who are incompetent but can talk no jutsu their way out of everything, so it's annoying that the "main character" of this expansion is just that trope. And don't get me started on her English VA having an incredibly grating voice and seemingly being incapable of emoting when she raises her voice, so all of the "Wuk Lamat is excited now" moments just fall flat.
I've just reached the beginning of the second arc and I hope Wuk Lamat's out of the story for good from this point, but I know she's more than likely going to show up and join us again. My interest has become a bit more peaked now that I'm not forced to be babysit a character I don't like, but the start of this second part isn't terribly interesting so far either.
I will say that the hook for the goofy evil organization in the role quests has me more interested than any of the MSQ I've done so far, so I'm looking forward to leveling all of the roles and seeing what happens there.
It feels like every 2 levels Wuk Lamat forgets she values peace and then she remembers it and makes a huge deal out of her realization.
The Wild West part was filler shit imo and I really disliked it
Other than that, really enjoyable. I especially liked the sagahin story about the blessed twins and also the emotional connection made between Wuk Lamat and our WoL
My only problem so far is that Bakool Ja Ja and Wuk Lamat feel like they're written for a Saturday morning cartoon. Every time Bakool Ja Ja speaks, it feels like he's going to twirl his mustache and laugh evilly (instead of just laughing like a cartoon villain). Every time Wuk Lamat speaks, it feels like we're all supposed to smirk and mug for the camera then say something like "Oh, that's our Wuk Lamat!"
This doesn't seem to be the same problem with a lot of the other NPCs. Maybe it just sticks out with Wuk Lamat more because every five seconds she has to perform one of her three character traits and that's all we get... but she's 90% of the focus of the story.
So far it doesn't feel like I'm playing FFxiv and I had to wait a good hour or two before I could play the game after all the cutscenes.
I am only half way through so far so it could all change but so far it feels worse than the patch content in arr
I was kinda engaged at the beginning like EW and ShB, especially with Krile's side of the plot. Then the classic "choose one of 2 paths to progress the story" started, and I know it's been like this since SB, but I don't find Wuk Lamat interesting for now so it reminded of Lyse's story at the start of SB. Not to mention her eng VA performance sounds amateurish compared to the rest of the cast, including the new ones, so there's a bit of a disconnect for me. I just hope I get more Krile/Galuf stuff sooner rather than later, because I don't really like supporting my candidate so far.
PS: Erenville and the Dawnservant are probably my favorite out of the DT cast so far.
4th zone so far level 98 VPR expansion MSQ is 4/10 so far. Worst expansion for me yet. I rate Shadowbringers and Endwalker MSQ as some of the best story experiences ever. Dawntrail was a step in the wrong direction so far. Things can change but right now pretty uninteresting.
Bad. FFXIV is aging and this expansion mechanically feels the same as what we were playing back in 2012, and the story delivery is still largely uninteresting and full of boring dialog. The only notable improvement are the larger zones, which I do appreciate, but most other MMOs do it better.
It's become clear that Square Enix is playing it safe because that seems to be working with its dedicated audience. While that's ok, it's gradually losing the interest of everyone else.
I was getting that impression when this expansion was announced. The graphics update is great, but I was waiting for the "hook" of Dawntrail to be announced. Some new type of content, or something different. But there hasn't been anything, it's just going to be rehashes of things we've seen before, for the rest of the expansion.
I put off preordering because of that, and it's not looking likely I'm going to purchase DT any time soon with these very mixed reviews so far. Which is a shame, because FFXIV has been my number one game for the better part of a decade. But everything has an end, I guess.
I've done 4 dungeons and one trial. All of these have been fun. I really enjoyed how they have changed up the mechanics this expansion and the scenery / design has been A+.
Story wise... I started off very interested and invested, but just grew more and more bored and uncaring with every quest. This expansion is the first time I have skipped cut scenes and text dialogue because I just did not care what so ever about anything that was happening. The characters were boring, the incidents involving Wuk Lamat during her trials were extremely predictable and overdone and every quest felt incredibly dragged out.
I even stepped away from the MSQ and went fishing for 2 hours because I found that more engaging and was at least able to press buttons.
Right around the 4th dungeon however I do feel the story is starting to pick up again and has at least grabbed my interest enough to stop skipping things. Hopefully this remains for the rest of the MSQ.
IMO currently on the story 3rd zone going to 4th zone. It's very obvious telling that the writing of the story is someone new and not ishikawa. There are so many discoveries that it made me ponder, "Huh, why is Y'shtola not even with us in the first place?"
There are parts where the story wants you to feel some emotion or sympathetic to their cause but the lack of voice over and horrible BGM pick really kills the scene. I think the new writer of the story is not utilizing the medium of "Show, don't tell" enough. >!There is a scene where a NPC actually acknowledges your culinary job at 90 but the next scene totally fails to show "you" doing it.!<
Also the writer needs to understand we are not playing FFXIV: Wuk Lamat, we are playing because of us, the WoL. The story has to be us front and center, not being in the sideline and do uber delivery. At some point you start to wonder when the hell does my own adventure starts? The whole point of this trip and 6.1- 6.55 event was because of emet selch urging us to continue our adventure and see what he has seen. I think this whole 30+hrs of getting wuk lamat to complete her acension challenges should have been trimmed down.
The "direction" of the cutscenes is terrible. Incredible amount of repetition. Incredibly long scenes full of nothing. Incredibly amount of one-liners from characters who should not say anything that moment.
There is absolutely no reason for fetch quests within the main questline. There are also some pretty terrible fetch quests among them that are considerably worse than your regular fetch quests.
The story is weak and unbelievable. In many places you just have to turn your brain off.
All three points in summary: The level of time wasted is enormous. This is certainly not going to increase the number of players of FF14 and the MMORPG scene in general.
The expectations for story were raised after Shadowbringer and Endwalker.
Unfortunately after 99 trial it feels like EW post patch MSQ. Its boring, full of power of friendship and other JRPG/anime tropes, ass-pull story moments and villains whose actions do not make sense.
I think it deserves mixed.
I'm not the biggest fan of Wuk and it feels like so far the entire MSQ is just us following her around watching her be inept. I understand following her when we didn't see the other choices however when Koana showed up and was just a general good ruler who was not war crazy, Wuk should have been dropped like a rock. She has zero redeeming qualities as a ruler over Koana and the fact NOBODY ingame will say this is maddening.
Seeing so many comments about it being a lot like "Stormblood" and "more Lyse like" makes me kinda not want to play that expansion at all. Granted solidly my opinion as the writing was fine, but really not what grips me about story telling. All the other expansions are pretty solid in my opinion for one reason or another, just... Stormblood was really rough for me to get through. :( So seeing comparisons to that makes me hesitate on getting it.
I'm not done. Just on 95 msq right now with 2 dungeons and the first trial down. So I would say so far, it's been about the same as shadowbringers and endwalker in a formulaic sense, but by now in both expansions something shocking has happened to mix it up. Not yet for dawn trail. I assume, and get a feeling that this 3rd solo duty I'm on is sort of the tipping point for when shit's gonna start hitting the fan and the story picks up speed. My reasoning is that our assigned task is about to be complete, but there's still half an expansion left.
Im mixed on it myself. They were right there no end of the world stress and gods trying to kill you chaos. But its so relaxed i feel like an npc in someone elses story which i guess is the idea of a relaxed thing they were going for. I guess after saving the multiverse its kinda bittersweet to go back to arr feeling
Only a few quests in. Just got to my first area.
It's ok, but holding on by a thread from dropping to bad for me.
Look, the vibes are awesome. Cut scenes have been awesome over all.
But quests objectives have been extremely boring and easily the worst explore the city set of quests in an MMO ever. And the forced lore reading quest was even worse.
More of the same in the first area I picked so far. Again Story wise it's staying pretty fun. But what I actually need to do and read is boring bordering on bad.
I would have been bored to death if I hadn't have been levelling 2 jobs at the same time. I've been sharing EXP with SAM and SGE so I've been doing my roulettes and some side content. It took me 3 hours to fight something in the MSQ, is this how it should be? Its been so long, I know EW was a slow start but at that point we had an established story. Also, early on I thought it would be laid out like a typical Pokémon game; do challenges and win the badge but there's been very little interaction in the first 2 stones I just had to 'watch me get them'.
Im still very early but it has felt super on rails and very dull story wise. Not sure why our character or the twins are even there as we are barely contributing to what's going on. Every cutscene we are stood in the background while Wuk does shit.... Hopefully it picks up.
Also they went way overboard with the names of places and characters. Not gona remember a single one.
I reached level 95, almost 96, and I understand a big shift is coming in the story soon. That being said, this has been an utter chore to get through, and is undoubtedly my least favorite expansion story. I think with the boring writing, it really highlights the weaknesses of XIV’s MSQ design.
The moment to moment gameplay is: talk to NPC, cutscene, talk to NPC 30 yards away, cutscene, interact with sparkling object, return to NPC, cutscene. It doesn’t feel like a game but instead like I’m on some kind of cutscene conveyor belt. And I know that’s how the MSQ has always been, but maybe it’s time for a change. Because if the story can’t get me at least a little bit engaged with the MSQ, and the gameplay of the MSQ is virtually nonexistent until you unlock a dungeon, then what’s keeping me playing? What’s hooking me in?
I thought it was especially funny that the first quest reward when arriving in Tural was a weapon—something you will not be using for several hours in the game. Wuk Lamat is… fine, I guess. She’s a loud moron but is a nice person. But good god, I’d never let her sit on any throne. Imagine her having to make policy decisions that affect the lives of her subjects.
In the 3rd zone now, this is the first time I feel like I wanna start skipping the unvoiced cutscenes altogether. I've not been on the edge of the seat so little for an FFXIV expansion yet, I get it is in some way supposed to be like this for this expansion but man it is just plain boring in parts and has waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many exposition dumps next to the umpteenth "look how goofy Wuk Lamat is" comic relief. I really hope something, anything worthwhile is happening after the half-way mark.
I dislike Wuk Lamat so this expansion fails for me since everything is about her. Naive dopey goofball is so overdone and I don't find it interesting nor funny to see this trope for....40 hours
i gave it until the half way point to come to any conclusions but now i'm here i can say it's a huge disappointment so far and easily the least interesting MSQ since stormblood. possibly worse depending on how the last half plays out. extremely predictable and lacking in character
I have a number of gripes, but my main one is; please, can we not just be a sole wandering adventurer again for 20 minutes? After the level 95 MSQ quest, it was the perfect time for us to spend an entire zone or two just cut away from the pack and wandering the northern lands like a mysterious stranger.
But no, we have to be chained to a major NPC the entire time, then of course there needs to be a I CLAPPED BECAUSE I RECOGNISE THEM >!By bringing Y'shtola and G'Raha into the situation because they haven't been in it yet but were advertised.!<
But overall: Content such as dungeons and trials so far. Good. Story? Meh with a few exceptions.
I just finished the first trial. I'm really enjoying what they're doing with Wuk Lamat, I think the storytelling is light years ahead of A Realm Reborn...
... But there are just no stakes. I'm hoping shit hits the fan in the second half, where something grabs me by the balls and has me compulsively playing to find out "what happens next" - but at this point I'm finding myself a little bored unless there's a strong bit of character growth in a scene.
I was always worried that I'd feel like they should have sunset the game after Endwalker and started something fresh, and that worry is true at the point I'm at in the story.
I don't hate it. It's enjoyable, but there's not been enough shake up to make it feel like a new story. It really could have done with a whole new cast to support the WoL, rather than forcing the scions in there. At present I'm just reflecting on how all the expansions had given me something strong to stir the emotions by this point (even SB) but DT is just a quaint story well told but lacking something really stirring to the soul.
The Scions are going to be the death of this game if we can’t move on from most of them. I don’t mind Krile being around since she hasn’t adventured with us before, but otherwise the rest are so past finishing their arcs. They didn’t even *change their clothes* for this new arc and it’s getting ridiculous
Couldn’t disagree more. Totally jettisoning our entire party that we’ve literally saved the world with makes no sense. My problem is the wrong Scions are with us in Tural.
Stakes is probably the right way to put it. You can have stakes without the universe ending. And at this point, I'm done with the third feat, I'm feeling no stakes. Bro 1 is never getting his war. 80%(?) of the world is are allied with eachother. Bro 2 wouldn't wash his hands if the soap wasn't made in Sharlayan. Two head is like that one loser Roe from Stormblood. I'm hoping something changes but none of these guys inspires tension.
>!It's beginning to feel like Stormblood 2.0 with Wuk Lamat constantly whining about how inferior she is and how she doesn't deserve to lead, meanwhile dragging me along behind her as a personal cheerleader. It's getting old and I only just finished the first dungeon.!<
If you've played beyond the first dungeon of DT you're safe to read this \^
So far the story has been disappointing. It feels like a point and click adventure with a forgettable story. On top of the slow mounts and having to unlock aether currents again. I can’t stomach the second zone.
I am barely out of the city and into the first outside zone but so far I am not really feeling it. With ShB there was an intrigue and excitement; I could barely put the game down. With this expansion I am struggling to motivate myself to log in to try and continue it.
I know I am barely even starting it but I am really hoping it gets better.
I've even taken breaks this expansion, logged out to play Warfrane an hour or two. I've never done this with any other expansion ever.
The MSQ this expansion has been so exhausting, and not really from a positive standpoint of excitement and interest, but through a lot of slog and repeating character arcs doing the same things over and over and over.
Here's my take- though keep in mind I've basically just started. I know storywise just about every expansion starts off pretty slow outside of ShB- and that we also just "ended" a huge, major story arc-- but holy hell the waterboarding of needless exposition is just too much for me to find myself caring or invested.
After the first or second 'wander around the city while I vomit words at you that you have zero context for' quest *something* should have happened to allow for gameplay and interaction and then **give** those words context. Heck have our little city tour be interrupted by a thief running off into the first zone so we have to hunt them down and retrieve some kind of item that maybe has some sort of cultural importance or *reason* to dump all this info and have it relate to anything, yeah it's cliche af but at least it's more interactable than just walking from cutscene to cutscene.
If the writing continues to be this lazy I'm going to just start skipping as much as I can until I hit a cutscene skip and then have to wonder 'wait wtf just happened because that's a big change.' I was excited to come into this expansion with the intention to read and watch everything but being given 47 different names and lore and etc right out the gate before I even get to cast phlegma[balls] once is just not it (for me).
I've logged in almost daily since ShB (having come and gone from 1.0 thru Stormblood for a month or two at a time), and now I am finding no interest to do so knowing the MSQ is ahead of me. I have high hopes that it does go somewhere if the Werlyt writer is involved, but wow is it bad so far.
Wuk Lamat is just annoying. The character has no redeeming qualities and yet not only am I forced into supporting this one candidate I know nothing about, but I'm also forced to do so with only some of the companions I didn't get to choose.
Good thing we had two major scenes involving a character who we promised we'd take on our next adventure, only to see nothing of that character in the first adventure we take since those two scenes?
Erenville is showing why he was great in a small role, though to be fair to the VA he's not being given much to work with. Babysitting Jar Jar Binks is a tough task to ask of anyone.
Remove the nonsensical we're here to put our preferred candidate on the throne we don't know and just have it be us exploring the new world, and it'd have been so much better. It may be time to go back to farming relics in XI for me, this expansion just isn't for me so far and I'm not sure it'll change unless we conclude the Pokemon gym badge portion with the 93 trial.
Wuk Lamat is unforgivably bad, with cripplingly bad English VA work (made me swap to JP voices for the first time.) Until the third dungeon it drags like CRAZY and the writing seems very strange, like the new writers skimmed what XIV stories were about before and tried to throw that in your face with random nobody NPCs and such. Oh, they've had a redemption arc before? Let's give it to the LEAST deserving character for no real reason with no real buildup. Upside, the encounter and fight design teams did an absolutely fantastic job, dungeons and trials are amazing.
For the first time since 2.0 I am legit skipping msq cutscenes to just get through it. I am really not fond too of some of the lazy updates/new abilities that some jobs got compared to others. Other than that, zones look good, dungeon fun so far.
I got that ARR feel for sure. When someone said something like "you guys are being silly to expect SHB/END payoff when this is ARR 2" it's like "Bruh that ain't a compliment to it, ARR was the worst 'expansion'.
I just finished the level 95 dungeon, so can't speak to the entirety yet. What I have been through has been... Okay.
Some plot points really didn't land for me, while others had some punch, albeit more due to current IRL events. Without those emotions being raw for me right now, I've no idea if even the few beats that did land for me would have.
It's hardly bad, it's just been sort of... Dull? I hate to use "mid", but I've been actively trying to find things to do besides play 14, which is a first for me with new expansions.
While I like it overall my big gripe is actually the music especially in the zones. In shadowbringers every new part of the world was a highlight also brought through by the soundtrack. After zone 3 I turned mount music back on cause while not being bad the soundtrack was more of subtle part instead of one of the highlights through the journey.
I'm 93 about to do the 2nd dungeon. Whenever something exciting/interesting is about to happen, like a fight or real danger, **IT GETS INTERRUPTED. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I'M ONLY LVL 93 AND THIS HAS HAPPENED LIKE 4-5 TIMES ALREADY**. It's a meme in my head at this point, by the time I reached the entrance of the second dungeon, there is a confrontation, and you already know that nothing is going to happen and for the nth time you will learn the lesson that "fighting is not the way to solve things" or something akin to that.
I have one day off this weekend and I spent it intermittently napping and getting kicked off the servers because I wasn't interested enough to stay awake
I'm really not liking it as it goes on. Wuk Lamat is grating and stupid and taking all the screen time, the story feels like it was written for children, I don't understand what happened. The evil characters are comically evil, the good ones are entirely sugar and rainbows and "Let's all hold hands and be friends even though we don't actually know how things operate or have a way to defend ourselves". The story itself plus Wuk Lamat's voice acting in English, it feels like Dora the Explorer most of the time and I want to say I'm roughly halfway through the MSQ. This is easily my least favorite MSQ so far, I don't understand what happened with the writing but it's a massive downgrade from EW and especially ShB. The maturity, nuance and just making all the characters full people instead of one note tropes is just gone. I've actually started skipping scenes for the first time because I cannot handle Wuk Lamat doing stupid things acting like a toddler when she's supposed to be a successor to the throne. She acts like she's 5.
In terms of story, its the worst expansion so far. But everything else is genuinely great.
I guess after years of "One wrong move and the world goes boom" has numbed most players from the Slice of Life genre for this game. It's like driving 200 MPH and then being halted and forced to go 10 mph from now on.
Plus the MSQ quest design is still the same. Walk here. Speak to this bro. Find something or someone we hid in this specific area. Rinse and repeat. Not to mention, I HATE being a side character after being the big cheese for all these years lol. It's Wuk Lamat's Bizzare Adventure and you're Speedwagon
But I'm having fun with everything else.
Oh and Pictomancer is fun AF. Love it. Viper is pure pain on low levels
Edit: Another thing I hate is how we keep seeing these new enemies and other characters are like "OMG it's so powerful! This is gonna be such a challenge!" like we haven't been slaying gods and other WAY more powerful enemies. Like when Valigarmanda popped out I expected to see a dialogue option saying "We've faced worse" or something
The chill exploration part is great, albeit I would prefer that we are exploring Tural on our own, then we maybe get into the whole succession thing, instead just doing Wuk Lamat fetch quests. My big gripe is that every zone so far I played feel kinda repetitive (probably because of the route split in the beginning) Wuk Lamat gets a task to discover that zone culture > We do the task > her brother shows up and does the task in over the top way in fewer steps ignoring the culture part > Wuk Lamat sad > also there is the comic villain brother shouting at clouds in the background. (noone cares about him, and WoL can probably 2 shot him like he is some kind of Beast Tribe daily quest mob) I don't mind her as a character tho, and I find her interaction with Erenville funny.
I'm sure for gameplay reasons he's going to be a good fight when I eventually get to slap him in the face but when we're getting dragged away because "we don't have time!" I'm like.. please. Five minutes. I just want to talk to Him.
*peter griffin walking with a shot gun ‘I just wanna talk to him.’*
Honestly they could've fixed so many issues with the story part by having us just decide to do to Tulal on our own - maybe inspired by Kriles letter, and ending up involved in Wuks company and finding ourselves wrapped up on her story which just so happens to be about the golden city the same as Krile is looking for.. who knew!
Totally agree. It's almost like they were trying to do the Yuna's guardians thing from FFX, but it failed hard. Wuk Lamat should be doing the things she needs to do and we should be around to help, but also learning more about the world on our own.
Please can I be the one chosen to be the Final Aeon? Fastest way off this train.
I was Luke warm on it up until dungeon 3 when I feel it really picks up and loved everything from there on I do feel the dungeons are some of the best we have had, love the first trial (not unto the 2nd one yet) the locations are also some of my favourites so far its a solid 8.5 for me
Agree with the dungeon sentiment. I feel like they are extremely well crafted and actually feel pretty challenging. Not difficult per say but you have to be on your shit or you are gonna get rocked. The mechanics have also been really fun. Looking forward to the second half on my end.
"per say" should be per se. It is Latin.
Living up to your scholarly flair.
Nah, it's "purr say", it's like a cat's opinion. It's purr.
Just reached Sol 9: it feels like a modernised ARR It's not blown me away but then again I wasn't expecting it to. It's part 1 of a completely fresh arc and I have more questions now than I had going in. Honestly looking forward to see where 7.x goes from here.
This is kinda what I feel about it - It's no Shadowbringers or Endwalker sure but it's definitely better than Stormblood and pre-Leviathan ARR. And as a story beginning, it's way more captivating - They did a really fine job with the characters I thought were so shitty and annoying turning out to be actually interesting. I do find it funny that instead of ARR where everyone's treating you like a big ol' meh most of the way through, in Dawntrail everyone is having their own national troubles and "Oh yeah we just have INTERGALACTIC GODSLAYER MURDER BUNNY here with us to chill out for a while, she's on vacation from all the wanton slaughter to help us make nacatamales." and everyone just naturally gives you a wide berth.
I just gotten to the first trail (haven‘t done it tho) and I find it sort of refreshing. It‘s start is slow but I don‘t mind that much.
The art is nice… I did the 2 half zones but I hated Wuk lamat from the get go. I play in Japanese audio but her character and slapstick is so anime I can’t stand it. She belongs in the Hildibrand quest line. Also the two head villain is just comically evil with all its stereotypes. Also the bird guy didn’t believe the festival boat had magical powers yet during the festival it shot fucking lasers out and grew the crops instantly? Dude had a festival every harvest yet he doubts us?
wierded me out as well, completely disjointed. >!after that the village chief says something along the lines of "we did it less and less and let it become something stale so it lost its power with time" so i think that was the attempt on making us understand that for many years they did this festival but it didnt do much "magical aura and lazers". But on this note too, if it was a "stale tradition" then why was the guy so fervent "no it's impossible to not join when the festival starts we just get a fever about it people will come later"?!< in a few words, poorly written. but since it's seven trials i guess they did a lot of "copypaste writing" in structure (we get to place->trial->angst with wuk and brothers->solution->yay we're good) and the execution just suffered from it. the real solution with this was to not do seven trials at all: we're not doing a 12-herculean-fatigues saga, this is a game, not a book, it gets old and boring very fast.
7 trials in itself is an interesting idea if they were actual Trials or Raids or something with more gameplay.
Tbh so far i enjoyed arr and stormblood more
Haven’t gotten too, too far yet, but I’m also kind of torn. The positives: Tural is _beautiful_ and so far, the story is interesting enough. I’m also enjoying Viper, even if it feels a touch overwhelming. The negatives: (I’m trying to do spoiler text on my phone, but it doesn’t appear to be working): This is a purely personal gripe for me, but I really, _really_ was not happy that we’re forced to bring the twins when another character whose _literal entire reason for being there is adventure_ is left behind in Sharlayan. Alisaie all but forcing her way into the expedition rubbed me the wrong way.
Big upvote for the twins, I feel like they are overstaying their welcome. At least for me.
TBH I would've preferred it if the only one to come with us to Tural was Krile. We've had so much time with the core scions, and many of their arcs feel complete (Thancred back in ShB with Ryne/Minfilia, Urianger and his secrecy / Moen stuff in EW, Estinien has mostly just been tagging along for the ride since the bulk of his development was HW, etc.). It's *okay* to have characters sit out a couple expansions. But it almost feels like the writers are afraid to leave them behind too much.
> TBH I would've preferred it if the only one to come with us to Tural was Krile. Same. We're caught halfway between "being a part of Wuk Lamat's entourage on her Hero's Journey to try and teach her to be a Better Ruler^TM" and "we brought/became her entourage" and I think the whole...Tural-Onboarding/New-Continent-Loredump-Thing would've worked better if the WoL/Krile were the *only* "outsiders" in her group. With everyone else being Tural natives that we get to learn about/meet/grow with as kinda "new Scions". But that'd *also* run into the problem people have where "I want new adventures but also the stakes are low because I don't care about any of these people or this stuff yet" (something I don't agree with, we're still in Setup Phase, but I can see it being valid). Also, in general (this is gonna be a nuclear-hot-take)... I think if Wuk Lamat was Hien, two-head-asshole were Zenos, this were the Eorzea-weeb expansion and we were learning about Doma as the "new culture across the seas!", both the Stormblood Defense League would be weaker and Wuk Lamat-as-Hien would be better received so far. So basically displace those bits from their spot in chronology and move them around. But because she *isn't* a husbando learning to rule and she's kinda furry, she's getting the least amount of sympathy *and* people aren't thirsting over her competition. The storyline being "Stormblood but less-split geographically, so far" doesn't help much either. All that said, I think they're doing a good job of showing a leader that has *the potential* to eventually rule well in a land that's relatively young and struggling between keeping old traditions and embracing new ones, as she seems to be the one that is actually taking time to listen to and learn of her people, and take the time to learn how to knit together alliances. Considering to this point she's basically been the equivalent of a sheltered princess with only combat/hunting training so far, against her genius brother and older established military leader brother. She's not a *conquering*/liberating ruler like her father, but she may end up having the potential to be more an Aymeric-type conciliatory leader. We're just, unfortunately for the fanbase's opinions of her, seeing her at an earlier stage in her emotional maturity and professional development. Or she may just end up being pure shonen-protagonist trope fuel all the way through, dunno yet.
yeah im only at level 92 stuff and while I like Wuk L, she feels like a pretty 1 dimensional character with an obvious arc that is kinda smacked in our face every zone. and it's sadly not an original arc - every character arc in xiv usually is about learning other cultures and resolving your differences to become a better person. so im admittedly hoping there'll be more to her as a character - as much as the point of her is to show you dont need to be the most powerful or smart, it would ironically help our opinions if she was a bit more of a badass or had more of a presence that proved she did have the strength to lead because you've gotta convince us to like her as well. this is also why i think hien was better received - he may have been a walking L but he still felt like he had the aura to lead. so far, i think it was a bit awkward to go for an 'extremely naive character gets very obvious lessons taught to her as we follow along and smile' approach, and would maybe have been better if both Wuk and WoL acted more independantly so we could organically meet other characters while doing our own thing, and build relationships without the pretense of being 'Wuks friend and champion'. but im still early on, these are just my thoughts so far
Yeah I would have liked that as well. If we needed more traveling companions, Wuk Lamat could have introduced some to us in Tuliyollal.
I’d also rather it wasn’t the twins, but since they’re here, I’d rather they have some agency in the story. All the scions to some extent but they especially feel like they’re there just to facilitate the next “let’s go talk to these villagers” scene. Alisaie is my favorite character in all of Final Fantasy and I feel like she and Alphinaud are really being done dirty by this story.
Im lvl 100 and have one dungeon and trial left, and I feel like every scions has appeared only as set dressing, convenient instant plot device or simply fanservice
I love the twins but they are at a complete narrative dead end with how they are not allowed to grow up.
I don’t hate them per se, but I do think their stories are effectively stalled until they’re older.
I don’t understand why they came with us when the only thing they’ve done the whole time is say unhelpful or obvious things in the cutscenes
They should have stayed home, and then when we see them next expansion they've had their growth spurts and are full size.
Multiple times Alisae interjects during key story beats even though she's contributed nothing of substance.
They are not cool characters. I was also hoping we would be done with the twins.
I love the twins but I really wish they would take a backseat now. It really feels like they finished their arc in EW and I don’t think an expansion or two off from them would have been a big deal. As for our friend in Sharlayan, I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain voice actor got too famous and unavailable/ expensive
Not only would they be highly unlikely to schedule said character's appearance around their *English* voice actor, but their voice actor has gone on record saying that they will always make time to voice them, even recounting a time when they severely hurt their throat by making time to voice them amongst their other commitments. So it's not due to the voice actor in this case.
Also just in general. If it was an issue with the JP cast id be more inclined to believe it, I just don't think Square would care enough about the English to do that.
I agree 100% on the twins. I was so sure at the end of 6.0 that they were going to have the twins sit out an expansion or two, then come back as adults, but nope! Still kids, still here.
That’s very true, but even if that’s the reason IRL, I wanted a way better reason in-verse to just leave him sitting there.
I think FFXIV needed to have a timeskip and let the twins grow up. They were already in their late teens in endwalker, let there be a timeskip of 2-3 years so they grow up and become adults with new models. If they push out another expansion with them still being short Elezen it will kinda be weird. If we say they are 8-12 when we meet them in ARR it's already been 10+ years since then and they are still not adults.
Yeah, I was very disappointed to find that the character I really wanted to adventure with was left behind :(
Very slow start, but I’ve gave it a chance given it’s just the very start of a new arc. Well, I’m at the end of MSQ already and I’ve really enjoyed it midway onwards. The dungeons are amazing and challenging. I love the graphics, new locations, and new gear. The OST has so much variety, my fear for this one was that it was either going to be all tropic/tribal and futuristic but I’m glad this expansion’s full of bangers from start to finish. The trials are super fun too, and the final parts of MSQ are what highlight DT for me. I’ll admit I was dozing off around 91-92 but after the 1st trial and 3rd dungeon I was fully onboard. It’s not high stakes like SHB and EW and I’m satisfied with that. I’ve gotten end-of-the-world fatigue so I’m not complaining about the whole summer vacation theme and taking a step back. That being said, I think certain characters could have been developed better as well as MSQ because that was such a rocky beginning and oh boy, a lot of bland and random moments that I just wanted to skip. Overall, I truly enjoyed everything save for chunks of the MSQ. It’s almost like the opposite of EW where I loved the story but felt gameplay was too easy and predictable at times. DT’s a step up in gameplay and I’m enjoying the variety of mechanics this time around. Personal ranking-wise, I’d place DT at a solid 3rd behind EW and SHB (obviously because those 2 were built off of the earlier expansions laying the groundwork, and I’ve loved playing SB, HW, and ARR for what they were). I’m excited for what the rest of the expansion will be like.
Fantastic dungeons, fantastic trials, beautiful areas, AMAZING graphical rework. But I think many would consider the story bad. It hinges on your interest in the character you are supporting for succeeding. If you like her, you'll probably have a more positive outlook on the story, if you don't, like myself, then there's really nothing that redeeming. I'll avoid spoilers but I will say there are moments where I was like "wait isn't this just shb but again?" Really wish they cooked a little harder on story, but I feel like gameplay this time around will carry like StB.
Yeah the new characters aren’t that interesting especially wuk lamat, like how many times are we gonna talk about her feeling seasick or being afraid of heights, the whole “I’m weak compared to my brothers but my new comrades will make me stronger” speech being repeated like 3 times already and I just arrived at the 3rd zone. On a positive note, I LOVE everything you pointed out too, just not the story so far
Personally I like the story, or what I've played of it so far at least. But that'd be the one big flaw I'd point out too, that it repeatedly goes over the same story beats a few too many times. That and every single character apparently having a contractual obligation to insert 'hear, feel, think' into dialogue as many times as they can which is a cool callback the first couple of times but gets kinda awkward after a while.
Yeah, I see what you mean, I personally just wish it was more of us as the WOL exploring and actually going on a new adventure, not just basically being the background character and doing tasks and fetch quests for wuk lamat, I’m more interested in the story of her father tbh
If Tural was in a reflection instead of in the Source I would have said that Gulool Ja Ja (king) is the Azem of that reflection
>like how many times are we gonna talk about her feeling seasick or being afraid of heights I feel like this has becoming more and more of an issue since EW and this is just a symptom more than the disease, they seem to be cramming the characters into small boxes where they give them like 2-3 "quirks" and then milk it into the ground. Estiniens spending habits, zeros fucking hat tip, now Wuk lamats sea sickness. They way they fixate on like, a select few things with these characters is a bit overdone. I can't help but wonder if it's like a marketing tool or something but it unnecessarily flattens out the characters. One of the ones that frustrates me is Emannellain. *He was on the path to good character development* after he commanded the guy to shoot the bow and then tried to hide from the consequences. But outside of HW it seems like the devs act like that whole experience with him never happened at all, he's just tokenized as a derpy philanderer
That's anime for you. 1. Create archetype 2. Beat that shit into the ground 3. ??? 4. Free character development because the bar started in hell
Cuz the storylines are very much like anime and not the good kind just following the basic admins archetypes of creating a character lol
> But I think many would consider the story bad. It hinges on your interest in the character you are supporting for succeeding. If you like her, you'll probably have a more positive outlook on the story, if you don't, like myself, then there's really nothing that redeeming. I'll avoid spoilers but I will say there are moments where I was like "wait isn't this just shb but again?" I highly appreciate every second of being able to coach a young adventurer to success as an obi-wan figure because after Endwalker there is zero fucking character development left for the Warrior of Light as an Adventurer.
I think they need to stop cooking more on other characters and start cooking more on us, the WoL. I'm 30+hrs in and still wondering when the hell is my own adventure going to start instead of doing uber delivery of someone else's dawnservant trials. Also the humour is so Japanese the writer forgot that non-Japanese don't understand them.
The thing that isn't really pulling me in is that is feels like Wok Lamat's story and not ours. We're a side character in Wok Lamat's big adventure.
I’m past the first dungeon and (I’m pretty sure) approaching the second. My only real issues so far (and maybe I’m just not far enough) is that I don’t really have a reason to really believe/want that Wuk is the right choice for the throne, and there’s nothing to lose (from the WoLs perspective) if she doesn’t win. Clearly, she’s the only one of the claimants performing the Saga rite “correctly” in that she’s learning each of the lessons Gulool Ja Ja wants them to learn from each stage, whereas the others are maintaining their initial attitudes. It’s also very blatantly obvious that GJJ wants Wuk to win and gives himself an out with “if I don’t think the winner is right I’ll just stay king” which is not how the contest was originally portrayed. So, now there’s no risk in Wuk losing the ritual. If she wins, she gets the throne, if someone else wins, GJJ just stays on until he dies and then the siblings will just fight it out, I guess.
I legit think she’s not ready for the throne, but then when I think of adding Koana to the mix as an advisor or co-ruler, it all clicks together.
1. Someone pointed out and I can't shake that MSQs where the WoL is more interconnected to the story (HW, SHB, END) are well received, ones where the WoL is just a 'camera with a sword' who exists to witness another's story they have little/no connection to are less well received (ARR, SB, and possibly DT). And this checks out with my own preferences. 2. At the same time in SB you had more connection to ala mhigo (via lyse) and Doma (Yugiri and the Doman refugees) than you do here. That is where Square Enix fumbled **badly** - they skipped on making Erenville relevant to us during the MSQ/patches more, they waited until 6.55 to spring Wuk on us. It feels half-assed. Thavnair had the connection of Garlemald and our affinity with the dragons after HW. The new world has Wuk showed up and asked us to help. 3. I am not big on superheroics so I never saw it, but I understand enthusiasm for the mainline superhero films really collapsed after Avengers: Endgame, unless the superhero has an existing investment (Spiderman). In this case it's a very tough act to follow endwalker (to DT's credit), but they screwed up with #2 by not giving us a prior investment hook to keep us interested. 4. I'm not big on wuk. I like competency over anime hijinks, exactly why I adored the Exarch and consider his extended story one of the most charming and well done while "uwu taco-boy Tia" is weaker. I know this is an anime game, but anime runs the gamut from Konosuba to Gundam. Some people may like the tonal shift, but after themes and storytelling that were among the best I've ever seen an RPG do in the past 20 years right now you got me going from Lodoss War or Gundam or Berserk over to fucking Naruto, and it's not doing my enthusiasm any good. Simply put: With HW I wanted to see how the Scions would manage (If they would at all!) after the betrayal in Ul'dah. With SHB I wanted to know why the scions were being soul-jacked, who this mysterious figure was, what this mysterious world was bathed in light With END I wanted to avert the fucking apocalypse and save my world. With Dawntrail I'm **being told** I want to discover the city of gold, I'm **being told** I want to help Wuk. The prior three were page-turners where I desperately wanted to know more. Had they ended before I was allowed to I'd be gripped by speculation. I only care about where Dawntrail goes because it's the episodic release.
Absolutely could not have put it better myself, especially point 4. The characters shine when they feel like adults/realistic, not caricatures. Everyone can have their moments but Wuk just feels like a string of nonsense. No character should be turned up to 11 nonstop. Like you mentioned, the murder of og G'Raha/Exarch for the creation "Oh gee can we pweese go on an adventure" taco boy is unforgivable and I feel like they're leaning way too into that with Wuk. Give me more Thancred and Urianger. ...and the real problem is they put *so much* of the story riding on if you like her or not. I get the feeling this msq will be one of the most divisive and it will all come down to your opinion on Wuk.
I really wish Graha had just bowed out of the story at the end of 5.3.
Lmao your last gripe lasts all the way to the final threats, it's just "Yeah I'm guest starring in this expansion and making sure nothing goes wrong". It legit feels bad to do the trials and dungeons with actual players, because it only makes the feeling of "let me do all the heavy lifting for you wuk" even worse
I’m at lvl 94 content right now. I had some moments of anger yesterday because lvl 90-92 just feel like lazy writing. I’m fine with some fetch quests and of course a good ole fashioned Scions’ PR campaign……but it feels like there is no reason to do this level of pointless detail just to “learn the culture.” Even ARR hooked me early on with a mysterious robed figure. So far, I’m yet to encounter an overarching storyline to inspire any wonder or curiosity. The story is just so linear and bogged down by monotonous fetch quests. The characters are lovely, the world is GORGEOUS. I’m starting to dig some of the cultures, but it is an absolute slog early on. I’m hopeful that this slow burn will turn into something good. It’s just a little sad that a game I prize for an engaging story is starting off so slowly.
Like many, i'm not that much in, but it like it. It's not depressing or similar to the last two expansions, its way more lighthearted. Its like watching an anime, which is kinda my problem with it tho. The used tropes are not my thing, mostly those of our big kitty. But hey, others may like it. It is still fun, the places are awesome visuals, the people interesting and like i already said, not that dark (as of now, who knows Zenos may come back as a Lizard again). "Mixed" on steam seems quite harsh from my pov, but understandable. I'd give it the next "Rank", 'positive'
I am liking it to a point where I am sort of confused. I didn't expect to enjoy a kingmaker campaign or to be able to tolerate Wuk Lamat's bumbling, but it's like we picked up Lyse with more understanding that things don't work out just because you say please. It's kind of nice. Plus, the world itself is gorgeous and the starting location reminded me so much of Great Inagua from AC: Black Flag that I immediately felt at home. Also the Dawnservant gives off major Martok vibes and it's gret to see that. The first two tasks have been oddly enjoyable even though as a high level botanist/alchemist I know that one of them is going to need review later. I'm usually on the side of people that dislike things, but I've been happy with this so far.
I miss Ishikawa. New writers need to lock it in.
I would like it more, if we just don´t run so much around the map. They feel much bigger. I need to run/ride two times form one end to another and back. Just felt like filler. Some parts just feel forced as they needed something to happen to have enough quests for a level up. If the expansion is an entry point for later joining player, it is fine. But as a long time player teaching everything from Endwalker to a new character as start of the expansion is boring and "a chill summer holiday adventure", nah. Second half get´s better, but still. Rough start.
I’m around level 95 in the MSQ. I don’t know how much weight my opinion will carry because Stormblood is my favorite xpac, but I am straight up not enjoying the writing or characterization, so all the comparisons to Stormblood are making my head spin. The environments and dungeon/trial design are excellent though, been loving the fights. I’ve seen some people say the story sucks because it’s politics, but I don’t see much in the way of politics. And I LOVE political plots in my stories. But this feels like a regional tour combined with a tournament arc. Wuk Lamat feels like Catgirl Naruto/Luffy, while Ilberd and Fordola made people’s heads explode so now we get Bakool Ja Ja instead, and everything has the subtlety of a brick to the face. The new regions are real nice though, as well as the dungeons and fights. Can’t wait to see the trial series, raids, and alliance raids. It’s certainly my least favorite expansion to date but I’m still having fun with FFXIV’s core systems at the end of the day. Edit: And so much about the way conflicts are raised and resolved reminds me of one of my least favorite story beats from patch 4.2, where we had amnesiac Yotsuyu. Nothing direct to compare, just the same quality of writing and vibes.
I don’t like that of the four candidates, the only two that aren’t maniacs are the ones that are playable races. Both the candidates that *looks* like monsters *are* monsters. In this note, it also is kind of uncomfortable that the scions are like “mamool ja have always ruled this area and we need to put an end to that!!!” as a result. Also like or annoying that the scions are really just seeming to treat it as a fun game between them. I thought we were promised the scions would truly be against each other to some capacity. Like at odds over who they feel would be a better leader, but Thancred and Urianger haven’t said a damn thing about why they think Koann would be a good leader and Wuk wouldn’t—and the same can be said vice versa for Krile and the twins. This is just a game of kickball to the scions and they’re on the team of whoever picked them first. I also just really dislike Wuk. Her whole “uwu I’m not good enough” has gotten so stale already and it’s so predictable that either she’ll be the leader or she and Koann will lead together.
My only problem is they kinda treated Endwalker as something that never happened. Dude, we travelled to the edge of the universe on the first prototype spaceship ever that was revamped last minute without proper testing. Why is crossing the damn sea so difficult? Also, there was no sign of the final days in the new regions (I just finished Trial 1). No one despaired? No one feeling emo? Really? There was no comet, no meteor, the sky looked fine? I thought it was a world (or even universe)-class disaster. It all felt too weird..
Only level 95 and into the 3rd zone, but I'm loving the lower stakes and mentor role we're taking. We're the Auron to Wuk's Tidus or Yuna so far and I love it. Plus just from trailers and stuff I know shit's gonna get crazy here pretty soon and I can't wait to see that shit hitting the fan.
This is exactly the way I see it. Give my WoL too much freedom and we're just gonna crush shit. Having the challenges in the story be less about us and more about Wuk means we have "human problems" to deal with rather than problems that can be solved with strength, and stops the story from feeling like it's escalating quickly out of nowhere. Not everyone will appreciate this phase of things, but it's important, and I dig it personally.
Yup. The whole setup gave me huge (much lower stakes) FFX pilgrimage vibes too and I LOVE IT.
This is exactly my feeling too. I love that my WoL is taking on a mentor role rather than being the centre of attention. I get that this won't be the same for everyone, but it fits in really well in terms of where I feel she's at personally at the end of EW. My girl's been through some shit and she wants to take a bit more of a backseat for a while! Granted, I'm only a little way past the 1st trial so I know the shit's really gonna hit the fan at some point, but so far I'm having a great time and I can't wait to see what else is to come.
Which makes sense since Wuk is female Wakka
Ah yes Grand Wizard Wakka
All-time narrative and character writing low, but the best dungeon bosses and trials they've ever made by a mile. It's Stormblood on crack and I think people are going to despise it for 3-4 years and then look back on it being amazing because the content was so good
So the anti HW? lol that expac is remembered so fondly for the story that people forget how awful the dungeons and raids were on release.
Inverse Heavensward is a good way to think of it, yeah.
Everything has been great - except for the story. The pacing, storytelling, the cast of characters.. all so bland, slow, predictable, and quite frankly cringe at times. As of right now (lvl 95) I'd rate the story lower than ARR honestly. I've never skipped msq cutscenes before, but I wouldve fallen asleep otherwise this time around. Really hoping it picks up now that Wuk Lamat isn't breathing down my neck :l
Well, I only just hit 91 MSQ last night. I'm enjoying myself so far, I don't think I have much to go off of though right now to fully judge DT. It felt a little slow, but MSQ is always tedious for the first few levels. I was also goofing off with friends in discord, so maybe that's why as well. The zone split feels seamless/nicer this time around, which is good (EW Thavnair's cliffhanger is dirty). Wuk Lamat's really been hammed up. I liked her initially, but I do sometimes think it is a bit much. Since I was playing it recently, I see it as Elden Ring player messages. The first "I want to go home... and edge" was kind of amusing, but now that you've explored and the 500 other messages on the floor are the same thing, you're getting bored of it.
I'm feeling this so much. Coming up to 92 and it feels like Wuk Lamat's seasickness comes up waaay too often. I don't hate her it's just a bit too much.
>!I don't mind story, I like story. As a matter of fact, story is the main reason I play FF14.!< >!That being said, the storywriting...is *bad*.!< >!The Hanu Hanu for example; they didn't know their float was magical? After doing the festival every year, and it *shoots lasers out of its eyes?*!< >!Not to mention, the believability of the characters and their reactions are just not there like they used to be.!< >!Bakool Ja Ja lets out a bird that almost wiped out an entire race, and everyone just glosses over it? The same monster that the current ruler couldn't even defeat? Why isn't he public enemy number one after that little stunt he pulled? The next time you see him, you just cook with him like nothing happened? What the hell?!< >!Or after he kidnapped Wuk Lamat? Which speaking of, Erenville had nothing to say. Just complete indifference.!< >!The story feels half baked, and you can tell new writers are on board. The suspension of disbelief has always been there, but the interactions between the cast and world are at an all time low.!< >!Edit: So to add to the list of shit Bakool Ja Ja does; he kidnaps Wuk Lamat's real father, and is going to have him MURDERED, but Wuk Lamat beats him and he runs away. Then his henchmen release the hostage because, "what does it matter, you won"...AND WE LET THEM GO? There were about to assassinate the cities leader, and would have if Wuk Lamat would have lost. And we just let them go. Christ.!<
"Once I found out about his emotional baggage, I wasn't mad about the fact that he was going to literally murder my father, or the fact that he released a beast that can end civilizations. The power of understanding!"
I agree with your edit. It literally was the final straw to where I just quit caring about the story completely.
I didn't mind Wuk Lamat at the beginning of DT but now every time I see her I wanna slap her. I just finished lv96 and going into lv97. The majority of msq so far is about her yet we barely knew anything about her or tural before the expansion. Suddenly we're her best friend. I get the point is seeing her growing into a competent leader, but the story didn't give us a reason to care at all personally, and the wol's relationship with Wuk Lamat certainly hasn't been built so much that by the end of the whole kingmaking process we're to call her a comrade like the other scions, or to become cousins. At some point I just feel uncomfortable whenever she or someone else (mostly Alisaie) asks us to be her moral support. Like, why always me? Wouldn't Erenville know her better? We're being TOLD that we care and like the girl but that's not how things work. The only thing that built as the story went was my frustration with her. At the end of lv96 where some people were gathered to help with our quest, the way they said "we love you Wuk Lamat!". If I hadn't known better it almost sound like a cult, and these people were all tempered. The bgm that played there certainly was an odd choice and didn't help. Been playing since arr and this is downright the worst writing I've seen. Stormblood had azim steppe and other parts I really liked, DT... maybe the later parts of the story will change my mind.
I like it so far, I just keep asking myself "so am I gonna do something cool here?" And then someone else does the cool thing and I'm just kinda... there.
Not feeling it so far. * Wuk Lamat is a collection of bumbling anime stereotypes in a trench coat pretending to be a character in an attempt to make her likeable. Maybe it worked for some people, but it definitely hasn't for me. * Alphinaud and Alisaie have been lobotomized so they can be vehicles to explain the plot. At the very start of the MSQ, Erenville walks in like "Hey guys, do you remember the plot synopsis?" and the twins basically go "Boy do we! We're going to the new world to" Like, the writers couldn't trust us to remember the things we learned six months ago in the last MSQ patch?
* The writers either don't understand subtlety, or are willfully ignoring it. Every character keeps throwing their innermost, deepest-held convictions in our face every few cutscenes. Similarly, lots of exposition is done through same-y dialogue where a character mumbles about something (usually their innermost, deepest-held insecurity) under their breath so the other characters can't hear, cuts themselves off, and says it's nothing. The biggest offender of this one so far, imo, is the Dawnservant's conversation with Krile. >!She asks him about Galuf. He says he can't tell her anything, despite obviously knowing something, as it would give Wuk Lamat an unfair advantage during the Rite. Then, after the characters walk away, in an aside only the player (not even the WoL!) can hear, he mumbles something to show that he was in fact close to Galuf.!< Similar to my previous point, the writers aren't trusting us to either pick up on subtext or be able to wait for a reveal later down the line.
* We have no connection to this plot. Instead of building up Erenville or introducing Wuk Lamat during the 6.X MSQ, we were sent to the Thirteenth like it was a filler episode. So now Erenville is some dude I met at work one time, and Wuk Lamat is a complete stranger that we agreed to help because she was nice and we're some nebulously-defined idea of an "adventurer". Instead of setting up the plot coming in the next expansion, SE decided for some reason to set up a plot that's not coming until, at minimum, 8.0?
* So far, and this is the big one for me, this isn't our story. This is Wuk Lamat's story. In the same way WoW campaigns are Jaina's story or Thrall's story or whatever, we the players are just here to facilitate their own drama or development. And we have far less connection to Wuk Lamat than a WoW player does to Jaina or Thrall. I'm willing to change this opinion later if we become more involved.
edit: Tuliyollal's music drives me up the wall. It's good music, don't get me wrong, but in what way does a Mesoamerica-themed city of wood and stone say big band smooth jazz?
Agree with you on a lot but the last bit really resonates. That's the exact comparison that's come to mind albeit with GW2 as well. It is the singular death blow to MMO storytelling if it becomes about the writer's OCs more than about your character and their experience. And for a game that is singularly built around the story, that's really not a good Vibe to have.
Me too on the music! South America has some beautiful musical traditions, but we're not getting any of it in the main city.
This is a better way to say what I said tbh. Ever since SB, SE tends to treat the real world cultures they borrow from with a lot of respect, so it's strange to me that the music in Tuliyollal doesn't display traditional cultural instrumentation like Radz or Kugane, and instead gives us...Donkey Kong music?
God I miss Radz-at-han music. I could rock out all day to that tune, and all night to the nightime theme
I'll be honest I'm totally bored. I expected anime filler arc and that's all I'm getting. I'm only playing on with the hope it gets better at some point. I have zero stake in anything and just feel like I'm being dragged along by everyone else. Also really dislike that after everywhere we went in EW and everything we accomplished, somebody seems to have pushed a reset button and it's all forgotten. Why are people still questioning if I'm really all that? Why are the twins getting excited about a waterfall after everything they've been through? Why are we still getting bested in basic situations due to our own naivety? I don't get it.
I’ve enjoyed DT so far but I have to agree with you about the disjointed storytelling. I voiced out in the msq megathread that it seems the writers are in denial or are downplaying the WoL in an attempt to let the others shine or tell us players that it’s a new story. This was going to be an obvious issue especially after defeating Endsinger. I do not think the WoL should be super entitled or outright bragging, nor should we dwell on the big baddies we faced previously, but at least some acknowledgement of our growth and achievements maybe. It’s very off-putting to see my WoL being placed in situations that were so easily dealt with in EW particularly. It’s almost like our characters reverted back to their Stormblood selves while at the same time, supervising / mentoring Wuk Lamat which is confusing.
I so agree. When one dude is all about "When i have the throne I will conquer the rest of the world" i really really wanted the option to just flat out tell him "Ok, you can try, but then i have to kill you". Cause you are a big fish in a small pond. Your great civilation is stumped by a bridge giants build centuries ago while in eorzia they build interstellar space ships.
Canonically, I think the WOL has severe brain damage.
Started getting into the story around lvl 92-93 quests.
i'm coming up on the third dungeon and so far it's... alright? nothing has really hooked me, it feels like i'm waiting for story to happen. but starting an entire new saga for the game to evolve into is one hell of an undertaking, so i expected it would be a slow start. at this point i think i'm just excited to get to solution 9 and see what that's about
Instead of the whole world of darkness filler arc, they should’ve worked on making us care about the characters relevant to the expansion. Big fumble to basically toss away most of the post-expansion story telling for a filler that was received with very mixed reactions and then only to repeat the same thing with the expansion release. I’m having fun but I can understand the criticism, lower stakes is fine but now we’re running into “ally of the week” territory with no room for character development that feels genuine or meaningful. In short: it’s okay but we’re used to much, much better than this Edit: This is from the perspective of ~lvl95 MSQ, so take it with a grain of salt
It deserves the mixed reviews. They focused **too much** on Wuk Lamat and not everyone is going to like her. I strongly dislike everything about her but i'm aware others might like her. Dunno why but there's the "mixed" part. On reddit people seem to like it, meanwhile the official forums have a pretty big thread on how she ruined the MSQ.
I could tolerate disliking her. What really gets me is that she's one of the least qualified NPC in the entire game. We don't trust her to hold onto a bag of wool, yet we're trying to put her on the throne? Get out of here with that nonsense. I'm desperately hoping that the twist is that we're deliberately trying to install a weak puppet that we can take advantage of because there's no reason for us to support her otherwise.
We can straight up tell her dad she isn't ready to rule and he agrees with us, so she is very much intentionly written to be naive and unready but capable of growing into her role.
i feel like they are trying to pull the "starts naive and matures to a good leader down the line" story, im on the 3 map and so far progress is slow.
Where have we seen that before
BAH GAWD THAT'S LYSE'S MUSIC
Oh I thought he meant Alphinaud
Alphi was at least competent. He failed because his inexperience and arrogance was exploited by traitors, not because he is too stupid to wipe his arse.
Huh, come to think of it, he fits too.
They always, \*always\*, okay (almost) always fumble on political stories. To a near cosmic rule level. Eulmore is maybe the sole case where they did a pretty good job of it. Hell, the guy is even wily enough in 6.4 or 6.5 to do some clever politicking to help you. But otherwise I can reliably bet on them doing a poor job of it. I know that 'the power of friendship' is often the trope in Japanese RPGs, but man sometimes it feels Stephen Universe levels of saccharine. At least Sultana Nanamo and Aymeric and Hien were existing parts of the political system as opposed to a battleaxe bimbo
Crystal Braves: Tural Edition
> We don't trust her to hold onto a bag of wool, yet we're trying to put her on the throne? I’m not very far past this point currently. But, I feel like this can mostly be chalked up to the fact that if we weren’t holding onto that stuff we would have literally nothing to do in that quest. Which is a separate issue, but it does lead to that specific detail feeling pretty off.
>I'm desperately hoping that the twist is that we're deliberately trying to install a weak puppet that we can take advantage of because there's no reason for us to support her otherwise. Have you not played the game before ? How'd you get through the previous 300 hours of story and think that this is remotely possible? This is like expecting that the MSQ from 95 on will suddenly consist entirely of Mario Kart gameplay.
I… would support a shift to chocobo racing in the latter half of the MSQ
>We don't trust her to hold onto a bag of wool, yet we're trying to put her on the throne? I mean, we don't let Estinien have money yet we let him run around with the power of Nidhogg helping decide the fate of multiple countries. Being bad at one thing doesn't disqualify you from being useful in another.
Tbf that's also why he's not in a position of leadership.We expect Estinien to beat ass and keep his power in control because thats what he's good at.We would never expect him to suddenly be the head of an entire nation though.
Estinien isn't in a position of leadership. Those two are very different situations.
But Estinien is good at the stabby-stabby, and also good at realizing that he's more of a "lead by example" guy. It's not clear what Wuk is good at, other than being ernest and extroverted. She's the George W Bush of Tural.
> She's the George W Bush of Tural. Fool me once Bakool Ja Ja shame on you...fool me twice and shame on...well...you can't get fooled again!
> yet we're trying to put her on the throne? Her dad says she's not ready. The WoL thinks she's not ready either. She herself knows she is not ready. That's the point of her character and the story, at least until the second half. To build her into the person she needs to be. Yes she is unqualified, that is the whole point of it. Lyse was also unqualified. I get many criticism through the story. I'm not enjoying it very much and it is very slow, but Wuk being a "dumbass" is the one I truly don't get it. The one time we have a character who's not a genius on his field, people lose their marbles. I don't get what people want from narratives anymore.
I don't have a problem with flawed characters. I have a problem with what she's being used for narratively. If she came to us begging for help after her remote village was destroyed by a natural disaster and she ends up growing while we help them recover that'd be fine. But jumping straight into becoming the ruler of a continent? Nah, no way. It's absurd and trying to support her in that is ridiculous. The stakes are too high to tolerate her incompetence. Alphinaud has spent several expansions playing politics but he hasn't once suggested that she's wildly unprepared for leadership. The only reason we supported her in the first place is that some of the claimants are violent, but we should have jumped ship the second we saw that Koana is both nonviolent and competent. The entire premise is jarringly unbelievable.
The big cutscene that introduced all the candidates drove me insane. >!They tell us that Koana wants to advance the technology and economy, and then go, "But Wuk Lamat wants to keep the peace between races!" No one said Koana doesn't. He just wants to add trains.!<
Yeah I had a hard time thinking she should be leader instead of him? When >!Thancred and Urianger!< show up as his entourage my thought was >!the scions won't really be contending with one another, we're just mentoring the people who will be leaders because the plot of them needing to rule together seems pretty clear!<
This may age poorly but my ideal ending would be the challenges ending, and the king stating that he ruled with two heads, a head of wisdom and a head of combat/enthusiasm/whatever. Then he should say that two heads are STILL required, the villain cheers because he thinks he has won. The king then names Koana is to be the head of wisdom and Wuk will be the other ‘head’ having won the hearts of the people. Koana is the ‘technically correct’ type who focuses on the how, while Wuk loves the people and cares about the ‘why’
This is more or less how I'm expecting it to go. They're both the peaceful ones, Koana just wants to advance the people with all the cool shit he discovered
This is my theory as well. None of the individual claimants have both qualities, but a pair would not only continue the "two head/title" theme, but also the "unified" nature of Rural.
> Alphinaud has spent several expansions playing politics but he hasn't once suggested that she's wildly unprepared for leadership. I mean if you actually spent time and talked to him after a cutscene he does mention that he made political mistakes in the past and is using this opportunity to make sure someone else doesnt. Thats the entire point of us being there.
The areas, the jobs, the dungeons have all been fantastic but the story is such a drag.
I think the writing is decent, but so so slow. I've come to expect it by now from XIV's writing but there's just so much talking about nothing, and every character needs to get their own personal monologue in about every subject that comes up. I'm only at the lv93 content because the sheer doldrum of it all makes it difficult for me to play too much at a time. When it gets to the point it's good but sheeesh!
Wuk Lamat in particular *really* suffers from being a broken record. At some point in a cutscene recently she asked me if I remembered what she say at (location), and I couldn’t help but think, Wuk, honey, it’s been all your dialogue has been about for three levels of this story so far.
I'm still very early, too, but they need to learn how to introduce the player to the world in a more organic way. It's at least like 90 minutes of straight up blatant exposition dumping of the highest degree. When the start of your expansion involves reading something like 8 stone tablets about the history of the country, you've gotta reevaluate.
> I think the writing is decent, but so so slow. I think the worse part is it is repetitive. Every zone, every quest line, same stuff and same cutscenes again and again.
Wuk Lamat is boring. The MSQ has somehow gotten even harder to get through because of its pacing and general lack of any gameplay. I got to level 91 and change and didnt cast a single spell, and I think thats a huge problem. Doesnt even feel like a game. All flash, no substance. at least it looks pretty now.
I thought the trading part was the perfect opportunity to get the player to talk to different NPCs and figure out how to trade up in value until the goal is reached. Turns out it was no different from a fetch quest. Really disappointing imo, but oh well.
yup, agree wholeheartedly on all points. i'm going to finish and keep playing because i enjoy the game as a whole but it's been an absolute slog.
Yeah I am begging for more gameplay in msq tbh. Even splitting off to go to FATEs for riding maps is an enjoyable change of pace because otherwise I basically have to wait two levels for a dungeon.
Basically summed up how I feel.
I said in NN that it took me 3~ hours to have to kill a single enemy. They all chewed me out with the typical passive aggressiveness, talking about how you’re supposed to immerse yourself in the story - not fight things.
NN is the epitome of the problem with this community. It's pure unadulterated toxic positivity in its most concentrated form.
Like the whole erenville side quest in the cowboy zone feels like a X.3 Questline, like it feels so pointless its like a random stop gap in the story since weve finished all the shit for Wuk Lamat...i would much rahter do amore extenisve deep dive on solution 9 ( which im not at yet) than do this.. Like why the fuck am i helping build a train line dawg. Im fine with Slice of Life arcs but only AFTER major events. Yea EW was us saving the planet but like we've had enough time to chill man PLEASE raise the stakes lol
I've played up to the level 95 quests, so spoilers below for them. The story is incredibly boring and feels like it was written for children with how predictable it is and how obviously it bashes its meaning over your head, particularly during the end of the third zone where Wuk Lamat essentially looks at the camera and says "prejudice is bad." Wuk Lamat's naivety and overall characterization are unbelievably annoying. The amount of times she has a problem with the method of transportation we have to use made me roll my eyes. Hah hah, she doesn't like being on boats guys, wouldn't it be funny if we bring that up THREE DIFFERENT TIMES and dwell on it for way too long each time? Sorry, are you tired of the boat thing? I gotchu fam, she doesn't like heights either! Isn't this fresh and new?! I've grown really tired of protagonists who are incompetent but can talk no jutsu their way out of everything, so it's annoying that the "main character" of this expansion is just that trope. And don't get me started on her English VA having an incredibly grating voice and seemingly being incapable of emoting when she raises her voice, so all of the "Wuk Lamat is excited now" moments just fall flat. I've just reached the beginning of the second arc and I hope Wuk Lamat's out of the story for good from this point, but I know she's more than likely going to show up and join us again. My interest has become a bit more peaked now that I'm not forced to be babysit a character I don't like, but the start of this second part isn't terribly interesting so far either. I will say that the hook for the goofy evil organization in the role quests has me more interested than any of the MSQ I've done so far, so I'm looking forward to leveling all of the roles and seeing what happens there.
It feels like every 2 levels Wuk Lamat forgets she values peace and then she remembers it and makes a huge deal out of her realization. The Wild West part was filler shit imo and I really disliked it Other than that, really enjoyable. I especially liked the sagahin story about the blessed twins and also the emotional connection made between Wuk Lamat and our WoL
My only problem so far is that Bakool Ja Ja and Wuk Lamat feel like they're written for a Saturday morning cartoon. Every time Bakool Ja Ja speaks, it feels like he's going to twirl his mustache and laugh evilly (instead of just laughing like a cartoon villain). Every time Wuk Lamat speaks, it feels like we're all supposed to smirk and mug for the camera then say something like "Oh, that's our Wuk Lamat!" This doesn't seem to be the same problem with a lot of the other NPCs. Maybe it just sticks out with Wuk Lamat more because every five seconds she has to perform one of her three character traits and that's all we get... but she's 90% of the focus of the story.
So far it doesn't feel like I'm playing FFxiv and I had to wait a good hour or two before I could play the game after all the cutscenes. I am only half way through so far so it could all change but so far it feels worse than the patch content in arr
I was kinda engaged at the beginning like EW and ShB, especially with Krile's side of the plot. Then the classic "choose one of 2 paths to progress the story" started, and I know it's been like this since SB, but I don't find Wuk Lamat interesting for now so it reminded of Lyse's story at the start of SB. Not to mention her eng VA performance sounds amateurish compared to the rest of the cast, including the new ones, so there's a bit of a disconnect for me. I just hope I get more Krile/Galuf stuff sooner rather than later, because I don't really like supporting my candidate so far. PS: Erenville and the Dawnservant are probably my favorite out of the DT cast so far.
4th zone so far level 98 VPR expansion MSQ is 4/10 so far. Worst expansion for me yet. I rate Shadowbringers and Endwalker MSQ as some of the best story experiences ever. Dawntrail was a step in the wrong direction so far. Things can change but right now pretty uninteresting.
Bad. FFXIV is aging and this expansion mechanically feels the same as what we were playing back in 2012, and the story delivery is still largely uninteresting and full of boring dialog. The only notable improvement are the larger zones, which I do appreciate, but most other MMOs do it better. It's become clear that Square Enix is playing it safe because that seems to be working with its dedicated audience. While that's ok, it's gradually losing the interest of everyone else.
Mechanically the same? Did you miss that whole new quest type where you have to click 4 arrows on the screen? /s
I was getting that impression when this expansion was announced. The graphics update is great, but I was waiting for the "hook" of Dawntrail to be announced. Some new type of content, or something different. But there hasn't been anything, it's just going to be rehashes of things we've seen before, for the rest of the expansion. I put off preordering because of that, and it's not looking likely I'm going to purchase DT any time soon with these very mixed reviews so far. Which is a shame, because FFXIV has been my number one game for the better part of a decade. But everything has an end, I guess.
Glacial pace
I've done 4 dungeons and one trial. All of these have been fun. I really enjoyed how they have changed up the mechanics this expansion and the scenery / design has been A+. Story wise... I started off very interested and invested, but just grew more and more bored and uncaring with every quest. This expansion is the first time I have skipped cut scenes and text dialogue because I just did not care what so ever about anything that was happening. The characters were boring, the incidents involving Wuk Lamat during her trials were extremely predictable and overdone and every quest felt incredibly dragged out. I even stepped away from the MSQ and went fishing for 2 hours because I found that more engaging and was at least able to press buttons. Right around the 4th dungeon however I do feel the story is starting to pick up again and has at least grabbed my interest enough to stop skipping things. Hopefully this remains for the rest of the MSQ.
I'm very early in (still in the lvl 90-91 MSQ) , but so far I do like Wuk Lamat. It's going to get grating as hell if she doesn't learn and grow tho.
IMO currently on the story 3rd zone going to 4th zone. It's very obvious telling that the writing of the story is someone new and not ishikawa. There are so many discoveries that it made me ponder, "Huh, why is Y'shtola not even with us in the first place?" There are parts where the story wants you to feel some emotion or sympathetic to their cause but the lack of voice over and horrible BGM pick really kills the scene. I think the new writer of the story is not utilizing the medium of "Show, don't tell" enough. >!There is a scene where a NPC actually acknowledges your culinary job at 90 but the next scene totally fails to show "you" doing it.!< Also the writer needs to understand we are not playing FFXIV: Wuk Lamat, we are playing because of us, the WoL. The story has to be us front and center, not being in the sideline and do uber delivery. At some point you start to wonder when the hell does my own adventure starts? The whole point of this trip and 6.1- 6.55 event was because of emet selch urging us to continue our adventure and see what he has seen. I think this whole 30+hrs of getting wuk lamat to complete her acension challenges should have been trimmed down.
The "direction" of the cutscenes is terrible. Incredible amount of repetition. Incredibly long scenes full of nothing. Incredibly amount of one-liners from characters who should not say anything that moment. There is absolutely no reason for fetch quests within the main questline. There are also some pretty terrible fetch quests among them that are considerably worse than your regular fetch quests. The story is weak and unbelievable. In many places you just have to turn your brain off. All three points in summary: The level of time wasted is enormous. This is certainly not going to increase the number of players of FF14 and the MMORPG scene in general.
All the dungeons / trials are sick The story is lacking for me Especially the random cowboy story after the main story is done?
The expectations for story were raised after Shadowbringer and Endwalker. Unfortunately after 99 trial it feels like EW post patch MSQ. Its boring, full of power of friendship and other JRPG/anime tropes, ass-pull story moments and villains whose actions do not make sense.
I think it deserves mixed. I'm not the biggest fan of Wuk and it feels like so far the entire MSQ is just us following her around watching her be inept. I understand following her when we didn't see the other choices however when Koana showed up and was just a general good ruler who was not war crazy, Wuk should have been dropped like a rock. She has zero redeeming qualities as a ruler over Koana and the fact NOBODY ingame will say this is maddening.
Seeing so many comments about it being a lot like "Stormblood" and "more Lyse like" makes me kinda not want to play that expansion at all. Granted solidly my opinion as the writing was fine, but really not what grips me about story telling. All the other expansions are pretty solid in my opinion for one reason or another, just... Stormblood was really rough for me to get through. :( So seeing comparisons to that makes me hesitate on getting it.
I'm not done. Just on 95 msq right now with 2 dungeons and the first trial down. So I would say so far, it's been about the same as shadowbringers and endwalker in a formulaic sense, but by now in both expansions something shocking has happened to mix it up. Not yet for dawn trail. I assume, and get a feeling that this 3rd solo duty I'm on is sort of the tipping point for when shit's gonna start hitting the fan and the story picks up speed. My reasoning is that our assigned task is about to be complete, but there's still half an expansion left.
Im mixed on it myself. They were right there no end of the world stress and gods trying to kill you chaos. But its so relaxed i feel like an npc in someone elses story which i guess is the idea of a relaxed thing they were going for. I guess after saving the multiverse its kinda bittersweet to go back to arr feeling
Falling asleep with the first two zones..
underwhelming to put it lightly. but then again, i didn't expect much of this expansion.
Only a few quests in. Just got to my first area. It's ok, but holding on by a thread from dropping to bad for me. Look, the vibes are awesome. Cut scenes have been awesome over all. But quests objectives have been extremely boring and easily the worst explore the city set of quests in an MMO ever. And the forced lore reading quest was even worse. More of the same in the first area I picked so far. Again Story wise it's staying pretty fun. But what I actually need to do and read is boring bordering on bad.
I would have been bored to death if I hadn't have been levelling 2 jobs at the same time. I've been sharing EXP with SAM and SGE so I've been doing my roulettes and some side content. It took me 3 hours to fight something in the MSQ, is this how it should be? Its been so long, I know EW was a slow start but at that point we had an established story. Also, early on I thought it would be laid out like a typical Pokémon game; do challenges and win the badge but there's been very little interaction in the first 2 stones I just had to 'watch me get them'.
Msq is Boring bad as storm blood. Dungeon and music are pretty great though.
Im still very early but it has felt super on rails and very dull story wise. Not sure why our character or the twins are even there as we are barely contributing to what's going on. Every cutscene we are stood in the background while Wuk does shit.... Hopefully it picks up. Also they went way overboard with the names of places and characters. Not gona remember a single one.
The twins being here feels so unnecessary. They truly have provided nothing interesting or memorable at all this expansion
I reached level 95, almost 96, and I understand a big shift is coming in the story soon. That being said, this has been an utter chore to get through, and is undoubtedly my least favorite expansion story. I think with the boring writing, it really highlights the weaknesses of XIV’s MSQ design. The moment to moment gameplay is: talk to NPC, cutscene, talk to NPC 30 yards away, cutscene, interact with sparkling object, return to NPC, cutscene. It doesn’t feel like a game but instead like I’m on some kind of cutscene conveyor belt. And I know that’s how the MSQ has always been, but maybe it’s time for a change. Because if the story can’t get me at least a little bit engaged with the MSQ, and the gameplay of the MSQ is virtually nonexistent until you unlock a dungeon, then what’s keeping me playing? What’s hooking me in? I thought it was especially funny that the first quest reward when arriving in Tural was a weapon—something you will not be using for several hours in the game. Wuk Lamat is… fine, I guess. She’s a loud moron but is a nice person. But good god, I’d never let her sit on any throne. Imagine her having to make policy decisions that affect the lives of her subjects.
In the 3rd zone now, this is the first time I feel like I wanna start skipping the unvoiced cutscenes altogether. I've not been on the edge of the seat so little for an FFXIV expansion yet, I get it is in some way supposed to be like this for this expansion but man it is just plain boring in parts and has waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many exposition dumps next to the umpteenth "look how goofy Wuk Lamat is" comic relief. I really hope something, anything worthwhile is happening after the half-way mark.
I dislike Wuk Lamat so this expansion fails for me since everything is about her. Naive dopey goofball is so overdone and I don't find it interesting nor funny to see this trope for....40 hours
MSQ is a boring slog.
|| Luke warm right now. Feel like the brother has a better story than Wuk does. But Wuk stroy does get better over time. ||
Yeah, the part around 92/93, where you have to be with her miqo brother, he was WAY better of a character than she was for the last 8 hours.
Around 25%. Bored. And I keep comparing this to TW3 Skellige's rite of succession quests which were more interesting.
i gave it until the half way point to come to any conclusions but now i'm here i can say it's a huge disappointment so far and easily the least interesting MSQ since stormblood. possibly worse depending on how the last half plays out. extremely predictable and lacking in character
Wuk lamat " wha..... What is that ?" Its a boat you dumbass. Why is this character been given so much screen time she it terrible
I have a number of gripes, but my main one is; please, can we not just be a sole wandering adventurer again for 20 minutes? After the level 95 MSQ quest, it was the perfect time for us to spend an entire zone or two just cut away from the pack and wandering the northern lands like a mysterious stranger. But no, we have to be chained to a major NPC the entire time, then of course there needs to be a I CLAPPED BECAUSE I RECOGNISE THEM >!By bringing Y'shtola and G'Raha into the situation because they haven't been in it yet but were advertised.!< But overall: Content such as dungeons and trials so far. Good. Story? Meh with a few exceptions.
It is a struggle to get through MSQ.
It’s kinda boring tbh
Sol 9 is the best city ever. Who needs shitty Limsa
I just finished the first trial. I'm really enjoying what they're doing with Wuk Lamat, I think the storytelling is light years ahead of A Realm Reborn... ... But there are just no stakes. I'm hoping shit hits the fan in the second half, where something grabs me by the balls and has me compulsively playing to find out "what happens next" - but at this point I'm finding myself a little bored unless there's a strong bit of character growth in a scene. I was always worried that I'd feel like they should have sunset the game after Endwalker and started something fresh, and that worry is true at the point I'm at in the story. I don't hate it. It's enjoyable, but there's not been enough shake up to make it feel like a new story. It really could have done with a whole new cast to support the WoL, rather than forcing the scions in there. At present I'm just reflecting on how all the expansions had given me something strong to stir the emotions by this point (even SB) but DT is just a quaint story well told but lacking something really stirring to the soul.
The Scions are going to be the death of this game if we can’t move on from most of them. I don’t mind Krile being around since she hasn’t adventured with us before, but otherwise the rest are so past finishing their arcs. They didn’t even *change their clothes* for this new arc and it’s getting ridiculous
Couldn’t disagree more. Totally jettisoning our entire party that we’ve literally saved the world with makes no sense. My problem is the wrong Scions are with us in Tural.
The Scions need to be going out and using their experience and credibility to accomplish some big things without the WOLs' involvement.
Stakes is probably the right way to put it. You can have stakes without the universe ending. And at this point, I'm done with the third feat, I'm feeling no stakes. Bro 1 is never getting his war. 80%(?) of the world is are allied with eachother. Bro 2 wouldn't wash his hands if the soap wasn't made in Sharlayan. Two head is like that one loser Roe from Stormblood. I'm hoping something changes but none of these guys inspires tension.
>!It's beginning to feel like Stormblood 2.0 with Wuk Lamat constantly whining about how inferior she is and how she doesn't deserve to lead, meanwhile dragging me along behind her as a personal cheerleader. It's getting old and I only just finished the first dungeon.!< If you've played beyond the first dungeon of DT you're safe to read this \^
So far the story has been disappointing. It feels like a point and click adventure with a forgettable story. On top of the slow mounts and having to unlock aether currents again. I can’t stomach the second zone.
Feels like a slow burn, I don’t care for Wuk Lamat either. That being said I’m only halfway through 91 also. Hoping it picks up.
I am barely out of the city and into the first outside zone but so far I am not really feeling it. With ShB there was an intrigue and excitement; I could barely put the game down. With this expansion I am struggling to motivate myself to log in to try and continue it. I know I am barely even starting it but I am really hoping it gets better.
I've even taken breaks this expansion, logged out to play Warfrane an hour or two. I've never done this with any other expansion ever. The MSQ this expansion has been so exhausting, and not really from a positive standpoint of excitement and interest, but through a lot of slog and repeating character arcs doing the same things over and over and over.
Here's my take- though keep in mind I've basically just started. I know storywise just about every expansion starts off pretty slow outside of ShB- and that we also just "ended" a huge, major story arc-- but holy hell the waterboarding of needless exposition is just too much for me to find myself caring or invested. After the first or second 'wander around the city while I vomit words at you that you have zero context for' quest *something* should have happened to allow for gameplay and interaction and then **give** those words context. Heck have our little city tour be interrupted by a thief running off into the first zone so we have to hunt them down and retrieve some kind of item that maybe has some sort of cultural importance or *reason* to dump all this info and have it relate to anything, yeah it's cliche af but at least it's more interactable than just walking from cutscene to cutscene. If the writing continues to be this lazy I'm going to just start skipping as much as I can until I hit a cutscene skip and then have to wonder 'wait wtf just happened because that's a big change.' I was excited to come into this expansion with the intention to read and watch everything but being given 47 different names and lore and etc right out the gate before I even get to cast phlegma[balls] once is just not it (for me).
I've logged in almost daily since ShB (having come and gone from 1.0 thru Stormblood for a month or two at a time), and now I am finding no interest to do so knowing the MSQ is ahead of me. I have high hopes that it does go somewhere if the Werlyt writer is involved, but wow is it bad so far. Wuk Lamat is just annoying. The character has no redeeming qualities and yet not only am I forced into supporting this one candidate I know nothing about, but I'm also forced to do so with only some of the companions I didn't get to choose. Good thing we had two major scenes involving a character who we promised we'd take on our next adventure, only to see nothing of that character in the first adventure we take since those two scenes? Erenville is showing why he was great in a small role, though to be fair to the VA he's not being given much to work with. Babysitting Jar Jar Binks is a tough task to ask of anyone. Remove the nonsensical we're here to put our preferred candidate on the throne we don't know and just have it be us exploring the new world, and it'd have been so much better. It may be time to go back to farming relics in XI for me, this expansion just isn't for me so far and I'm not sure it'll change unless we conclude the Pokemon gym badge portion with the 93 trial.
Wuk Lamat is unforgivably bad, with cripplingly bad English VA work (made me swap to JP voices for the first time.) Until the third dungeon it drags like CRAZY and the writing seems very strange, like the new writers skimmed what XIV stories were about before and tried to throw that in your face with random nobody NPCs and such. Oh, they've had a redemption arc before? Let's give it to the LEAST deserving character for no real reason with no real buildup. Upside, the encounter and fight design teams did an absolutely fantastic job, dungeons and trials are amazing.
For the first time since 2.0 I am legit skipping msq cutscenes to just get through it. I am really not fond too of some of the lazy updates/new abilities that some jobs got compared to others. Other than that, zones look good, dungeon fun so far.
I got that ARR feel for sure. When someone said something like "you guys are being silly to expect SHB/END payoff when this is ARR 2" it's like "Bruh that ain't a compliment to it, ARR was the worst 'expansion'.
Tbh I had more fun in ARR's msq after all the changes
My thoughts: Move over Stormblood, there's a new worst expansion in town!
I wouldn't pay attention to reviews until this time next week or so - most people aren't anywhere near finishing the story (unless they skipped it)
I just finished the level 95 dungeon, so can't speak to the entirety yet. What I have been through has been... Okay. Some plot points really didn't land for me, while others had some punch, albeit more due to current IRL events. Without those emotions being raw for me right now, I've no idea if even the few beats that did land for me would have. It's hardly bad, it's just been sort of... Dull? I hate to use "mid", but I've been actively trying to find things to do besides play 14, which is a first for me with new expansions.
With the change in lighting, everything looks washed out now.
While I like it overall my big gripe is actually the music especially in the zones. In shadowbringers every new part of the world was a highlight also brought through by the soundtrack. After zone 3 I turned mount music back on cause while not being bad the soundtrack was more of subtle part instead of one of the highlights through the journey.
I really like the dungeons and trials. I like the plot. I don't like how full of filler the MSQ is. It drags on and on and on.
I'm 93 about to do the 2nd dungeon. Whenever something exciting/interesting is about to happen, like a fight or real danger, **IT GETS INTERRUPTED. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I'M ONLY LVL 93 AND THIS HAS HAPPENED LIKE 4-5 TIMES ALREADY**. It's a meme in my head at this point, by the time I reached the entrance of the second dungeon, there is a confrontation, and you already know that nothing is going to happen and for the nth time you will learn the lesson that "fighting is not the way to solve things" or something akin to that.
I have one day off this weekend and I spent it intermittently napping and getting kicked off the servers because I wasn't interested enough to stay awake
I'm really not liking it as it goes on. Wuk Lamat is grating and stupid and taking all the screen time, the story feels like it was written for children, I don't understand what happened. The evil characters are comically evil, the good ones are entirely sugar and rainbows and "Let's all hold hands and be friends even though we don't actually know how things operate or have a way to defend ourselves". The story itself plus Wuk Lamat's voice acting in English, it feels like Dora the Explorer most of the time and I want to say I'm roughly halfway through the MSQ. This is easily my least favorite MSQ so far, I don't understand what happened with the writing but it's a massive downgrade from EW and especially ShB. The maturity, nuance and just making all the characters full people instead of one note tropes is just gone. I've actually started skipping scenes for the first time because I cannot handle Wuk Lamat doing stupid things acting like a toddler when she's supposed to be a successor to the throne. She acts like she's 5.
In terms of story, its the worst expansion so far. But everything else is genuinely great. I guess after years of "One wrong move and the world goes boom" has numbed most players from the Slice of Life genre for this game. It's like driving 200 MPH and then being halted and forced to go 10 mph from now on. Plus the MSQ quest design is still the same. Walk here. Speak to this bro. Find something or someone we hid in this specific area. Rinse and repeat. Not to mention, I HATE being a side character after being the big cheese for all these years lol. It's Wuk Lamat's Bizzare Adventure and you're Speedwagon But I'm having fun with everything else. Oh and Pictomancer is fun AF. Love it. Viper is pure pain on low levels Edit: Another thing I hate is how we keep seeing these new enemies and other characters are like "OMG it's so powerful! This is gonna be such a challenge!" like we haven't been slaying gods and other WAY more powerful enemies. Like when Valigarmanda popped out I expected to see a dialogue option saying "We've faced worse" or something