oonue: Wuk should of been the guide to the expansion filling in the party on the lore for the various tribes and regions, and answering questions, which would of put her on even footing with her brothers. Instead they take the opportunity each zone to remind the player that she only left the palace to get her axe repaired, or to get food.
TheAkashicTraveller: Basically it doesn't feel like an adventure, it feels like escort mission. For a character most don't even like.
luminaire69: Pretty much spot on. Also, I personally hate the excuse that "because this is the start of a new saga, the story is expected to be slow and bland like ARR", and that we have to "wait for the next expansion when the story gets good". I have heard this excuse from a bunch of people and I think it's plain BS. The battle content for DT is pretty good tho.
Varichan: I began dawntrail: Yea, this is alright

I ended dawntrail: I would rather replay og ARR than to ever touch this msq again
alchemi8085: I can forgive a lot of things, but what I have a hard time forgiving is the quest design.
1. Talk to four citizens about their needs.
2. Talk to Wuk Lumat.
3. Stand in these sparkles and look for clues.
4. Talk to Wuk Lumat.
5. Pick berries from 3 bushes.
6. Talk to Wuk Lumat.

I recently played through Path of Fire again on Guild Wars 2 after playing it years ago, and holy crap, the differences in quest design is staggering.
LunaEclipsum: I cried in shadowbringer,i stabbed my ear drums out in shittrail.
Kyneris: Damn, that gold Mercy Overwatch analogy is incredibly spot-on.
FieldMarshall3: DT has killed all my enthusiasm. I was one of those people who came to FF in ShB after 15 years of wow. It was so liberating to have a dev team that seemingly did everything right and that i could trust to make a cool expansion without having to worry. With DT im getting that same old Blizzard feeling of worrying about the future of the game and just hoping it will somehow turn out ok even though it just got worse and worse.
imapseudonym6198: I tried hard to give Wuk Lamat a fair shake, even defended her to a friend who initially disliked her in the post-Endwalker content with the rationalization that "she's basically still a kid, pre character development, and we've yet to see her in her element or what kind of person she's going to become."

Halfway through Dawntrail, my patience was gone and I just desperately wanted her to go away.

By 3/4ths of the way through, I was actively begging out loud in cutscenes for one of the OTHER scions to babysit her for a while.

And by the finale.... we all know the moment I'm talking about.... I basically broke down and was shouting in Angrish in party chat, about OH GOD WHY WON'T SHE GO AWAY FOR LIKE FIVE MINUTES!?!?
DieSerah: Dawntrail's MSQ is so Boring, it could have been a Sidequest in ARR. Literally nothing happens until lvl 97
bananagher7555: There were honestly so many cutscenes in this expansion that would have been phenomenal solo instances but that were just cutscenes. I would have loved to fight through Tuliyolal through the Alexandrian invasion, or the train into vanguard, and shit like but. It had too much "Talk to this NPC, talk to these 3 npcs, report back to first NPC" and not enough of us actually doing something.
Rodrigo_Apgaua: The problem with wuk is she is plain boring, her VA sucks ass (not because they are trans, but because they are so plain bad, Claire from cyberpunk is dubbed by a trans actress and they are 10/10, I love her) and the entire story is just a mount of nothing... And don't let me start with Kate's bad localization direction (I miss Koji fox). Ngl FFXVI was a palette cleanser for me, seeing YoshiP and his team still know how to do good stuff and dawntrail suffered because of it.
neh1234: The problem really were Wuk Lamat and the story. Whatever Wuk needs, the story gives on a silver platter. Nobody is allowed to voice their complaints over her more stupid decisions. Either she is magically right or we bail her out, and everyone who could actually challenge her fail for completely unrelated reasons (Zoraal Ja), get nerfed so she can shine (Bakool Ja Ja) or just bow out for no discernible reason (Koana).

And that would have just left a sour taste in my mouth had it ended with her coronation, but the second half is everything wrong with her amped up to 11. No consequences for running off to kill Zoraal Ja despite the people she apparently loves so much being at risk of a second invasion. Zoraal Ja's own kid just go "ah, okay", when she just tells him they came to Solution 9 to kill his dad, the way more experienced Scions for some stupid reason just defer to her for advice, and the most damnable thing of all, the queen who has sacrificed everything for centuries for her people somehow gets talked out of it by the brat who has barely been a week in the job and whose first big decision as ruler was dumping all the responsibility on her brother.

FF XIV is a story about heroes overcoming ordeals. All the shit we did, kicking out the Garleans of Eorzea, ending the Dragonsong War, liberating Ala Mhigo, saving the First and ending Meteion's threat came as a result of overcoming unsurmountable challenges. When people say "It's not your story, it's Wuk Lamat's" they somehow see it as a victory, not realizing that by putting her in the spotlight makes everyone expect the same degree of tenacity in the face of hardship. And saying she falls short is an understatement.

It felt like filler. The only relevant thing we got out of it was the key thing. Which makes all the time lost more infuriating.
TheAkashicTraveller: I liked Wuk Lamat in Endwalker but that didn't last long. I couldn't even get past the Llamas.
Peace141308: Dear lord do I have MANY ISSUES with DT's MSQ, you hit every nail on the head pretty much. The way I see it personally is that DT's major flaw was "good ideas, terrible execution" making what could've been a more grounded and simple story into a half snoozefest and other half cliche "world threat that only the scions and the WoL can stop" which by that point had already lost everyone.

Some of the marketing was just straight up lies with the whole "the scions will be at odds with each other" Koana helps us more than being an active competitor to the throne, Zoraal Ja is one of the lamest villains in existence, basically a shitty Varis or Zenos without any of the charisma, I will say that I liked Sphene tbh but that's in great part due to my immense FFIX bias and if anything she's less emet-selch and more like Golbez on post EW, ensuring the safety of her people by any means necessary.

And then there's the stupid cat a.k.a. Wuk Lamat.....she honest to god made apologize for being too harsh to Lyse in Stormblood, at every fucking moment I'd scratch my head and think "Bitch, how the fuck do you live like this?" not just the underwhelming voice acting but the entire character as a whole is just.....bad, uninteresting and downright frustrating to watch and listen, they took the Lyse problem from Stormblood and tuned it up to 100, usually i don't have problem playing a support or mentor role in the story, I do that in Hildibrand willingly, but when we take a backseat to give the spotlight to a sheltered child with zero understanding of her people and who has basically never suffered any problems like we did until the half point of this story, THEN we have a major issue, I hope to Hydaelyn and the twelve that after this expansion she gets side character'd harder than Lyse.

Also props to Estinien, at least he got his vacation arc unlike us having to babysit a cat with down syndrome.

I still wanna see the post MSQ patches because I love AR, Hildibrand and I wanna get the relic weapon. I have low expectations for the MSQ but we'll see what happens, so long as that dumb cat gets as little screen time as humanly possible (which we all know it won't happen but I can dream).
starbog1: Honestly fair opinion. I didn't find myself hating the story with a passion like many did it seems, but it could've been something much more memorable. For example, and ironically a lil, I wish there was more creativity like in the last zone. Hell, some side quests in thee made me feel more than the main plot.

I absolutely believe it'll get better and still wow me story wise, and I'm genuinely looking forward to patch content a lot more than in Endwalker, because the only daring feature in there were Islands and new type of dungeons.

People have every right to complain about DT core story as it's the main sell to buy it rn. In the future as overall package? We'll see. I'm hoping it'll be the Stormblood patch turn around.
MasterofEllipsis: Yeah Dawntrail was bad. G'raha told me if I wasn't having fun I could leave. I never got the option to leave. Why did he lie to me? I thought we were friends.
hofspades4412: I'm glad you called out the whole "you only hate wuk cuz the va is trans" thing. Like trans people can be shit at stuff too
zerothree9126: Dawntrail was the only time I skipped any cutscenes in the entire MSQ. That's how bad and boring it was. I consider it worse than ARR.
chelsthegameruiner8669: I'm more confused about why they chose to go with a world ending threat again. Like my original theory before Dawntrail was announced was that Golbez would be the next antagonist which I'd be fine with. Instead we got a lizard with daddy issues who was pissed off he lost.

I genuinely never thought such a sentence would escape my mouth, honestly-
Jannah_2k: Agreed with damn everything you said!
TheRedeemed1990: I agree with you 100% at least you are brave enough to give an honest review unlike other videos where all you hear is players liking any trash content square realeases and calling anyone who disagrees a "hater" <_< like if they are 4 years old throwing a tantrum that barney died and somehow its your fault cuz you never liked him. It is exactly like that. Ty for this. Glad to see i am not alone. I hated dawntrail
vincentbeton: Gotta say, the amount of things you said about Erenville aligned very well with how involved in the Story ABOUT HIS HOMELAND AND CHILDHOOD BFF he turned out to be
Pegasisbey: At the end of the day, Shadowbringers, Endwalker, Dawntrail.... We're all just gonna log in to goon.
liquidefreet: edit : Oh yeah spoilers in this comment.

Why are people dunking on ARR msq lol. The world is alive and thriving in ARR with all the interconnected npcs and quests, it's all in the details. Every time I replay the msq I like ARR more. I hated Dawntrail for the same reason I hated Stormblood MSQ. The kingmaker storyline type can only work if the king to be is worthy and at the time they didn't know what to do with Lyse and anytime she spoke you want to punch your screen. And with wuk Lamat it's worse because that WAS their plan and she is even more insufferable than poor Lyse (who deserved better).


Remove Wuk Lamat, focus on Koana and the Dawntrail MSQ go from very bad to pretty cool. That c**t stole screentime from everyone Krile, Erenville and all. Koana and Bakool JaJa get all the character developpement and maturing fitting for that "kingmaker" type of story in a tenth of Wuk's screentime. Meanwhile Wuk lamat is just doing nothing but yapping about childish worldview, is NEVER challenged upon them, people just accept it and love finds its way to make everything work. Wuk Lamat achieve in 10 minutes and 2 lines of dialogue what the WoL did in 10 years of tirelessly fighting against all odds. And the worst of it ? It's not over, we're not done with her. Also the voice acting argument ? I do not care I do not use the english voices she's atrocious regardless of who voices her. I felt nothing for Wuk lamat when 3 minutes of Erenville and her mother was enough to get me utterly devastated.

We can say nothing for now regarding the gameplay as both the Ally raid, the Eureka/Bozja type of content are not released yet. So far the new raid tier is pretty damn STELLAR, and the trials too.

edit : It's pretty clear where the story is going though. We litteraly get a new Azem trinket that allow space travel between shards.
gundamzphyr7185: I don't need to login to FFXIV because I can just goon to Lulu's vids.
crismera5075: Why does everyone get hung up on the "not the main character" thing? FFXIV is a game where you ARE the main character. For it to change now completely changes the way the game is experienced. Why are people expected to be ok with that?
GabeAtWork: This expansion was such a slog to get through. I swear we didn't have any combat quests at all for like the first 6 hours, and after that 1 quest, it's like another several hours of nothing until we can fight again; just a bunch of walking and talking. I was so starved for entertainment that I started wandering around killing random monsters littered throughout the region; anything to break up the monotony. Our WOL also stands around a lot just doing nothing or saying nothing, which has huge consequences.

-We honored the father/son 1v1 but then stood around and watched Robolizard casually rez himself, hulk out, and kill his own daddy instead of step in to do something when there was obviously some fuckery afoot and we had plenty of time to act instead of standing around watching in some fascinated stupor.

-Our WOL also sees Sphene present at the attack on the city, yet we say NOTHING about it when we meet Sphene face-to-face later. Wouldn't that information be vital to tell our friends? "Hey Wuk, this lady was actually there when your brother attacked the city...probably shouldn't be cozying up to her so much cause I think they're in cahoots." But no, we keep our mouths shut and just seem to forget it ever happened.

-When Robolizard has grown tired of waiting for us to make a move on him, he marches to Vanguard and gets ready to order a second attack on the city. We intercept him, he says some things, and then tells his lackey to order the attack. We then watch a cutscene of the ensuing battle for a few minutes before going back to see everyone still standing around exactly where we left off. The lizard lackey gets radio confirmation that the attack is being repelled and informs Lizard King which makes him jiggle with rage. So this entire battle took place over the course of how long exactly? Were we really just standing around this entire time staring at each other, even after hearing this dude call an extermination on the place we're trying to protect? We stood around just waiting to hear how that went for everyone? How kind of us to just let things play out rather than attack this guy immediately or attempt to communicate via Linkpearl with any of our allies still hanging around in the city. Would've been nice if we gave them a heads-up or at least checked on them, no?

-After we lay the smackdown on Super Lizard, Sphene slowly comes lumbering through the room making a beeline for the Continuum Transfunctioner on the floor. Knowing she was complicit in everything that has happened up until now, lying her ass off since the moment we met her, and not to mention the clearly bad intentions she harbors while slowly making her way to the macguffin...we just stand aside and LET HER HAVE IT.

Truly horrific storytelling that relies on our character being completely lobotomized in order to move the plot forward. Atrocious voice acting that made me switch to Japanese for the first time since I picked up the game during beta over 10 years ago. And people just attacking those who have valid criticisms of the expansion by throwing false accusations of bigotry and transphobia. I hate what this expansion has done to the community I used to enjoy so much.
billy65bob: I must be a natural at sniffing out stinkers. lol.
I found post-EW to be bad in that it set up nothing for the future until the very end where you get an introduction to Wuk, and it's basically:
"Hi I'm Wuk! Come to my country and solve our succession crisis or else there'll be war!"
And I just thought "Sod off, that sounds annoying, and I bet you're trying to manipulate me too, 'Princess'".

Honestly though, there was no way to continue the story after EW in a satisfactory manner.
Especially because post-EW went out of its way to terminate every single dangling story hook that still lingered, and put nothing in its place.
Contrast this with post-ARR where it resolves almost nothing yet sets up nearly all the hooks for HW, SB, and EW.
grygaming5519: I can sum up the feeling of Dawn Trail.

Its like listening to one of those "Tales from D&D reddit" stories. The ones that talk about certain players who act like self centered morons that make everyone at the table miserable. In this case what we have here is that the old DM (Ishkawa) got pulled away to do something else and now we are stuck with a "That guy" DM who has an OP character that they must push at the forefront, while the rest of the PCs get pushed to the sideline. In short we the player are being subjected to a "That guy" DM that needs to be taken off the writing team.
daedelous7094: Wuk is the single worst thing to happen to this game. But the engine really needs a major capability upgrade. Start with the horrendous dresser system
yamchayaku: I can't pronounce or remember half of the locations in Dawntrail. If someone tried to ask me where item x or mob y is, I'd have to open the map repeatedly and go back and forth to spell the name of Kazemseenarlrekglsaneggugera

Oct 22 2024

Buy FFXIV GIL