[Spoilers] My feelings about Dawntrail MSQ

Hello! First, I want to say that I did indeed finish the MSQ in 2 days by binging it. I took some notes that I would like to share, and perhaps I will come back to this post later down the road to see how my opinion has changed with the gift of hindsight.

Of course, I will be talking about spoilers throughout the post, as it will include my opinion on the ending as well.

*Note: I will not comment on jobs or job design just yet, as I have only had a chance to play around with Warrior so far.

The good:

At the very start, I knew exactly what we were heading into: the contest. I enjoyed how they presented to us the locals and the other contestants. Since there was no "pressure" attached to going fast, it felt very natural in the way Wuk Lamat expressed enthusiasm for her homeland, which was a very refreshing approach compared to the "Hurry, we need you!" approach the previous expansions had.

I considered Wuk Evu's character gag the funniest thing in the entire MSQ. I laughed every time except for the first one, which caught me off guard.

Maps are gigantic, and I love them.

The battle content was a highlight this expac for me, I really enjoyed all the dungeons, trials, and instanced battles.

Filler quests felt like they had a reason to exist, unlike what I felt during Endwalker and Shadowbringer filler, where I tought to myself in several ocassions "this is just to drag out the runtime I guess"

The twist after the roleplay duty with Wuk Lamat was very bittersweet, but I'm glad they didn't fall for the trope of "I have two dads!" Instead, they gently swept it under the rug with mutual understanding.

The transition after the second boss of the level 85 dungeon left me without words; it was very reminiscing of the first time you see the vault of glass in Destiny, absolutely gorgeous.

The final zone left me with more emotional trauma than Endwalker, and it was great. Im glad they didn't pull a "Oh, oh, they dead, but actually no!" like in EW, so the eerie and more definitive approach made the emotional beat really hit.

Krile

Finally but not least, I very much enjoyed that you weren't the main focus; you weren't there as the WoL but rather as a companion of Wuk Lamat, and as such, they treat you with respect, asking you not to go overboard or alluring to how strong you are with gentle nods.

The Bad:

I really, really didn't like that Bakool Ja Ja wasn't disqualified or reprehended for kidnapping Wuk Lamat, but I understood it could have been swept as "part of the contest,"* but then, with him releasing Valigarmanda, I was really expecting the Dawnservant to step up. Alas, the pay-off on the redemption arc the character got was a decent pay-off, I suppose, but I'm not sure if it was good enough to offset the sour taste Bakool Ja Ja's shenanigans left.

Another minor gripe with Bakool Ja Ja's redemption arc is that when we get to pick between two lines, both are negative towards him. I wish we had the option to stay silent.

The Really Bad:

Audio Mixing, I could go on a long rant with this, but I'm going to keep it brief. There are multiple times where it is implied that the characters are screaming or yelling, yet the voice actors sound like they are speaking loudly into a microphone. This could have been easily avoided by making the voices sound muffled as if they were far away. It gets very noticeable and is the single thing that brought down my enjoyment of the story.