This story is really underwhelming - it's opened to mixed reviews.

The story pacing is probably the worst to date considering things don't actually pick up until

the end of zone 4.

leaving an extremely minimal amount of time to make stuff actually happen and lacks the excuse of ARR needing to establish fundamental world-building/characters.

It's compounded by an overbearing MC and extremely mediocre villains. I never imagined they'd manage to make someone whose logic frustrated me more then Fandaniel/Hermes but boy howdy did they succeed.

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Originally Posted by Katt_Felista

It's a nintendo expansion.

Minor spoilers :

The 3 last dungeon are nintendo themed. (luigi's mansion, mariokart catcus road, Princess peach (alexandria)'s castle )

/ Minor spoilers
After 3 pretty grim / dark and adult themed expansions (Stormblood, shadowbringers, endwalker), i feel their plan is to catter more to younger generations.

They want to renew the userbase and the story has a very irritating naruto supergirl princess that want to be the hokage of her clan when she will be grown up and strong enough. She self insert at times when she's absolutely not of concern and off "topic" of a particular scene or area, she is said to leave us alone then reappears like a breach of the 4th wall to continuously give her immature / sometimes barely bearable 7 year old 2 cents about everything. We are just there to play chaperon for her and be on 2nd or third base while she just does and discover everything, we are just like an observer resolving the situation by proxy / procuration through her.

So it's clear that the expansion is 2fold strategy, to promoteFF9 remake, be a launchpad for whatever they planned with the anime with it and renewing possibly a playerbase from younger audience. Hence why the story is quite childish and insufferable for adults at most times.

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You're always funny but always based.

This is an xpac written for children.

Really shows that Ishikawa was holding up the game for the last five years. We'll not see her like again.

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Originally Posted by FlatLined

I just finished the MSQ...My expectations for the story was low going in but oh boy...I'm personally ranking this the worst story yet...I just did not care anymore, even when I hit the second half where everyone said it picks up. I was just waiting for it to be over.

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Little did we know, it didn't pick up at all. I was expecting the "Enigmatic girl" to bring some intrigue. Ha!

You know what they say about opinions...

I'm enjoying the MSQ. After the bleakness of the last two expansions, it's just what I needed. 'cause as a grown ass adult who's old enough to see people they love die, sometimes I need something that's just light-hearted.

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Originally Posted by Katt_Felista

It's a nintendo expansion.

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If it's "a Nintendo expansion", that means it's a genuinely great expansion. Since Nintendo still is a top tier developer who makes some of best games in the industry who are only disliked by adolescents (or adults who haven't grown out out that mindset) who think grit and grime are what make something mature. I thought in 2024 folks were smart enough to realize using Nintendo as a synonym for "childish" was... Well, childish.

If it was a Nintendo expansion the quests would have actual gameplay segments.

I just got to the point where I felt like the momentum was starting to pick up. I got past the first dungeon, first trial, a little duel and I was thinking - hey ok, it's starting to get better. Let's go! Then they completely killed all of that momentum with a confession from Wuk Lamat...

Possible spoilers ahead...

PEACE! You dragged my WoL out of her cabin after fight a "giant snakebird," and wasted my time as a player to act like you were about to make a super uncomfortable love confession about Erenville, drag me to some older lady to is also infected with the peace talk to scream an unskippable line.. about.. peace

my goodness.... I know saying something has bad writing can be just a hyperbolic comment to hide weak points in an argument, almost like calling someone a name b/c the person has no rebuttal - but geez, this is horrible. I KNOW WHAT PEACE IS!!!

I genuinely enjoyed Wuk Lamat's character. Her first impression was such a breath of fresh air. She was fun, insecure, childish, and honestly infectious, but this writing has singlehandedly made me hate this character. This writing has literally made her seem like a complete idiot. Wow... please give me Lyse, Zenos, anyone but this...

If you have your starbird, don't let her see this... we might have another Endsinger on our hands, one that my WoL might not disagree with.

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Originally Posted by DreadCrow

You know what they say about opinions...

I'm enjoying the MSQ. After the bleakness of the last two expansions, it's just what I needed. 'cause as a grown ass adult who's old enough to see people they love die, sometimes I need something that's just light-hearted.



If it's "a Nintendo expansion", that means it's a genuinely great expansion. Since Nintendo still is a top tier developer who makes some of best games in the industry who are only disliked by adolescents (or adults who haven't grown out out that mindset) who think grit and grime are what make something mature. I thought in 2024 folks were smart enough to realize using Nintendo as a synonym for "childish" was... Well, childish.

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They litterally make MOST, if not all of all their first party games. For childrens. sorry not sorry. But for them and their brand, is an obvious good and winning strategy. Not so sure about ffxiv tho.

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Originally Posted by Riastrad

Really shows that Ishikawa was holding up the game for the last five years. We'll not see her like again.

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wrong person my guy, ishikawa was amazing for the game she wrote the storyboard for dark knight quests which are widely praised as well as wrote most of the main shadowbringers one which is also widely praised if anything her absence is whats kinda hurting the general story vibe and emotions that come with it, but writting a light-hearted and gentle journey is not here expertise which is why they likely decided to not have her write in this Dawntrail story and also Yoshida had stated he wants Dawntrail to be a soft reset as well so expect it to be this way for at least 2 major patches in the point 3 patch we'll see some developments toward the next story arc

I can see why so many people suggest to approach it like a vacation episode, a casual story. Except when you do that, you realize that the msq is literally doing chores. It is reminiscent of Island Sacntuary where it's mostly about labor and hard work, not much of a getaway. The obvious solution to me is to create some kind of mini games to balance the chores. Tural also screams lore, but it's told in a dry and elongated way. This expansion could have been a good opportunity to maybe spread some of that exposition out into the maps and do some world building in the environments. I'm just not sure what they were thinking overall. I felt like this expansion was going to take some risks and instead it feels like beast tribes but bigger. I just went through a sequence where I had to follow someone about 4 times. Like...why???