RosaliesGameTv: I'll summarize my experience in the MSQ. At first, I thought the WoL would act as a mentor for Wuk Lamat, but this wasn't realized, which I found very disappointing. Another distracting factor was that something happens in a cutscene, the message is subtly understood, but three passages later, the event is brought up again and explained on an elementary school level. There's no room for personal interpretation, except for the plot holes and strange character twists that occur without comment in a very short time. For the brief experience with the new characters, they tried to evoke the same emotions as in Shadowbringer - Endwalker. Another annoying factor for me was the constantly repeating agenda: We can all become friends if we just get to know each other's cultures and customs. This line appears in every third cutscene.
jf4156: As I was playing through the MSQ I remember thinking to myself "what is up with the writing it feels so flat?" then after I looked up who the writer was and found out that the lead writer stepped down after endwalker. Its no wonder it felt so different
paulmd7747: Even if Wuk Lamat was well written and excellently voice acted (both were atrocious imo). . . that she was IN YOUR FACE so much was unforgivable. When the world threatening stuff happened, it needed to be Scion time. Wuk Lamat should have gone into her throne and been out of the story. FFS, she even shows up in a trial. Utterly overdone and tiring.

Also, where was the adventure? We were. . . bartering for a saddle, making tacos, building a parade float, and capturing an Alpaca? WTF? Literally NOTHING in the beginning of the MSQ was remotely close to adventurous. Such a bait and switch. Inane, slow-paced, and pointless was this MSQ. Huge fail. Square Enix should be ashamed of their failure and do a 180 for the patches.
scionoftheemperor1240: The whole Peace and Happiness shit it handled so childishly in my opinion.

There’s a respect for the difficulty and complexity of handling these topics throughout the entirety of the H/Z Saga,
The City-States & Beastmen in ARR,
The Dragons & Ishgard in HW, even within Ishgard itself in regards to adjusting to the Truth of their history,
The effects of long term Occupation by a Conquering Empire as seen in Doma & Particularly Ala Mhigo though Fordola,
By the end of ShB we finally have alliances with the Beastmen but it’s been a hard road and trust still isn’t complete but it’s a start towards a better future.

But in DT everything is solved so easily and simply with trying to understand each others cultures without confronting that some are just fundamentally incompatible.

It would have been interesting if Gulool Ja Ja had some skeletons in his closet about how he united Tural, but no, it’s all so easy and simple.
Again, Childish and Immature compared to how the subjects were handled throughout the entirety of the Last Saga.
gerohikaru2712: I have done and dusted Dawntrail MSQ and just now riding the sadness which was wasted potential. I honestly think that the writing was the one that wrecked Wuk Lamat as a character.

The reason being is that they just seem to not know what they're doing with the entire arc of Tural as we all would notice over the course of the 1st half is just that we all end up rushing instead of actually immersing in the world.

In my humble opinion, Dawntrail just felt so poorly written like how Wuk Lamat is basically Alphisae with how her story arc pans out being a naive person to becoming a leader but except both Alphinaud and Alisae had to face their demons. Wuk Lamat didn't. Nor did she ever had an L in her life that was her own doing.

She was a fundamentally cool and fun character but the way they wrote her essentially just made her insufferable to most. And just disappointed to some.
justins7933: I legitimately fell asleep during cutscenes on my very first day playing the new expansion. And wuk lamats va has the vocal range similar to sinatra. They just have no urgency in any of their lines. It all sounded so mono tone and was very hard to get into
amaretta_xiv: Wuk Lamat is the reason i couldnt deal w/the cutscenes. The acting is just cringe. Might put the game in a different language on my alt playthrough so we'll see if it helps. But they could've chosen a much better voice actor imo.
coloradostatesenatorsteven7443: Absolutely insufferable and predictable msq, very few praiseworthy parts. Lyse Lamat needs no debate, awfully written character with too much screen time.

realm reborn is better.
marcelolinhares2465: You are right on the yawntrail part. I even skipped some cutscenes and I never did it, even in ARR.
They added too many fillers between good narrative moments. ShB and EW (the original part) should be some example as a good story telling.
nickputney605: I was okay with being a mentor/side character and having Wuk Lamat take center stage. But this was supposed to be a vacation and competition against my friends. The time we spend competing is almost non-existent, and we spend more time working with our competition. Not having much of anything for gameplay in the MSQ and actively avoiding fights with so many stealth missions had me falling asleep. Certain cutscenes could have been cool solo duties. (Rescuing sailors and saving the ship in the intro scene comes to mind.)
SirStrikeFreedom: "They hated him because he told the truth"

DT's story was pure garbage. Everything else was a damn 10/10. Especially the damn dungeons
HandlesAreStupid2024: Day 1 player from ARR. This is the worst expansion (narrative wise). Absolutely banger for fights. I am not going to accuse, but if I learned SQEX was taking that ESG money it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

I was semi excited for Wuk Lamat towards end of EW, but they just rammed her down our throat for so many hours it was just old by 95. Not Texas was such a breath of fresh air for me.
hawgacrux: Good video but I disagree with one point in your video.
You said we shouldn't have been surprised with taking a backseat of the WoL and the scions. At least for our character I think it's fine to be disappointed.
Be it the Game trailer, the benchmark, the launch trailer or the cover. The WoL was always presented, not in the background, not at the side but in the middle.
Nothing of that ever suggested the level of plot-overshadowing Wuk Lamat would have had.

I thought we would just go back to the level of Heavensward or Stormblood where we were not the centerfocus but still an important part of the plot. ishgard became our home and we fought the dragons and knights, not just Estinien. We fought Susanoo and Zenos was OUR enemy, not Lyse or Hien. They were the Main characters but we still had our own importance.
But we were not even that.
there was no mentoring, no importance to us. in one cutscene Wuk Lamat's axe even blocks the view of our character.

All the live letters, inteviews and media tours of Yoshida also never implied this at all.

I think it should be not surprising with players being taken back by that.

If the future of ff14 is making my character just the cameraman then I don't know if I want to be part of that anymore and I'm subscribed since end of ARR early HW.
tropicalrubi2: I'm a day one player, and I've had these same thoughts for a while now. I played all of ARR, all of Heavensward, and most of Stormblood. I played the main story of Shadowbringers and Endwalker, but immideately quit afterwards each time. Everyone would get outraged when I brought up my greviences, but I truly think this game has no future if it continues down it's current path.

Every expansion on launch, without fail, will have EXACTLY the following:

1. Level cap increased by 10.
2. Six new zones.
3. 10 Aether Currents.
4. Two new jobs.
5. A dungeon every other level.
6. A trial around the 3rd level.
7. Another trial around the 7th level.
8. The final quest of the expansion will be the name of the expansion, followed by a trial.
9. Two extreme trials at endgame, one for accessories and one for weapons.
10. Two dungeons to run for that expansion's tomestones.

Then, there will be EXACTLY five content patches:

1. Every even patch will have a savage raid, which will be exactly 4 bosses in a bland square or circular arena.
2. Every odd patch will have a 24 man faceroll raid, which will provide catchup gear.
3. Every patch will have exactly 1 new faceroll dungeon.
4. They will add a new relic weapon to grind.
5. They will add a new ultimate raid.

I didn't even mention the extreme homogenizing and simplification of the jobs. There's nothing to get excited for anymore, because as you said, you already know what's coming. If they actually took a risk and did something crazy like overhauled gear, added talent trees, or added hard 4 man content, I would genuinely come back to the game. But as it stands, I can't waste my money on the same expansion for the 5th time. Great video by the way!
owlserah: Some of my worst gripes (as a die hard fan):

- I thought we'd be competing against the scions.
- I thought this expansion wouldn't have a world ending threat as a final boss.
- The Endless should've been patch content or a different expansion. We meet Sphene 2/3rd of the way through and I couldn't care less about her.
- If the scions weren't going to be used then keep them tf out of the expansion and let characters like Erenville and Krile have their growth.
- The Endless are stupid to me because we already went through a storyline about not keeping the memory of the dead alive by sacrificing the living/not being able to handle grief. That was ENDWALKER. And Shadowbringers (when we kill Emet and Elidibus.)
- Wuk Lamat leave me alone for 10 minutes so I can 1v1 with other characters please god.
- Don't put my WoL in cutscenes where someone dies and I just stand there and watch.
- The old fantasy South America/futuristic techno fusion of an expansion did not mesh well and had me feeling visually confused. People wearing headphones and Google Glass headsets talking to Wuk Lamat (who had to remind you every 10 minutes she had no idea what was going on...)
- I would've liked Solution 9 and Living Memory more if it wasn't tied to DT. Going from beautiful scenic deserts and blue underground forests to a techno shopping mall didn't sit well with me.

There are more but it'd take me all day. At least the trials and dungeons were the best they've ever been. Tender Valley is my favorite.
yakdeculture9761: SFEEEEEEENE LISTEN TO ME.
Ailuromage: I didn't really realize it until you pointed it out but I did enjoy LISTENING to characters other than Wuk Lamat in this expansion, far far more. I noticed that I focused closely when Galool Jaja would speak, or Koana, and even Bakool Jaja, but for Wuk Lamat that feeling went away as the expansion went on. It's amazing how much stage presence a character can have. When Y'shtola speaks, she takes the stage, when Thancred speaks, he demands the stage, when Wuk Lamat speaks, it's like the little sister everyone says "that's nice honey" to.
PieMasterX13: Things I didn’t like in dawntrail:

Those stupid parts of the msq that makes us look for npcs to help aid or randomly talk to who have no relevance after that one encounter (waste of time, I felt like in this expansion we did that more than any other)

Wuk Lamat voice actor falling short in certain scenes that should have been more impactful

Wuk Lamat clenching her fist every 5 seconds in a cutscene (in nearing the last few area of the game) and how she kept on going about “all we need to do is get to know each other” yeah I’m the beginning of the first part of the game sure but in the last area it was pointless.


Things I like the Galool Ja Ja fight

The wild west I love the American voice actors and however one was carrying a gun

The last area (if you played ff9 you would appreciate it more than others)

Solution 9
coryaustin7379: This expansion would've been...bearable if they cut Wuk Lamat's lines by half. She is without a doubt, one of the worst written characters in the game and the final nail in the coffin for me was the final trial and how in the final bit of it they find a bullshit way to thrust her back into the story for a literal Naruto meme. Also while others will tip toe around it, I will not. The voice actor was a terrible choice, there are clear moment when Wuk Lamat is yelling or there's a tense scene where you can hear his real voice start to come out over his Wuk Lamat voice which again, if Wuk Lamat didn't have as many lines this wouldn't be much of an issue, but here we are.
Tsuba_Nick: Been playing for 10 years.
Good lore, music and instances duties, cannot carry a poorly written story.
We as players need to have standards and you voice reasonable complaints. I hope they listen to feedback.
jamesyue1348: it is called " YAWN-TRAIL"
ronronrubio6437: You are not the only one on this. Not having Ishikawa in this expansion, it shows
thattallmexican6900: I finished the story a few days ago and pretty much have the same feeling regarding the MSQ. There's some pretty good parts in the last 2 zones but they definitely dont reinvent the wheel compared to the earlier parts of the MSQ. If the patch quests aren't great then I might just start story skipping for the first time because it left so much to be desired man.

I don't hate Wuk Lamat either but the amount of time that she's forced to be with you wore me down and made me never want to see her again in the MSQ.

The extremes have been a lot of fun. I also really like what they did with the level 100 dungeons. The combat design is definitely one of the better parts of the expac imo. Looking forward to savage to see what they come up with.

Jul 18 2024

Buy FFXIV GIL