Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[Loggos]

Linkpearl are affected by a solar storm i guess, Final days?

This bothered me so much. You are inside this otherwise impenetrable dome made out of lightning aether but linkpearl transmissions go in and out just fine? Yeah that sounds reasonable...

And what's more, you are faced with a highly advanced civilisation that can

extract souls, alter people's memories and literally bring about the fusion of two shards (something even G'raha doesn't understand)

and you don't worry that your comparably crude and simple linkpearl technology could be intercepted and give your plans away?
Somehow that is not even a concern?

[Shaedhen]

Even the end of the first dungeon, a story point you want to be very compelling is immediately cheapened because the boat was immediately fixed at the end. Imagine how much better it would have been if the boat had not been fixed? Instead it felt like the story needed a reason to put us in a dungeon after a few hours so they fabricated one and THEN decided where to put it. If we didn't go through the dungeon, the boat would have gotten there just as fast. Nothing we did mattered. Nothing was discovered, no lesson was learned. There was no substance to it at all. Even the boat being damaged and needing repairs happened in the dungeon instead of in story.

I agree with everything you said and I also find the part about the first dungeon both funny and terribly sad because not only is it inserted only for the sole purpose of having a dungeon, they didn't even try to justify it properly : We get off the boat for absolutely NO REASON AT ALL since we just meet up with it by the end of the dungeon.
I thought we'd have to get off the boat to free a passage maybe, or to find some materials or something. It really wasn't hard to give a reason for it. But no. There is literally none.

I think it sums up the level of writing in this x-pac quite well.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I think an actually good example to illustrate how frustrating that is, would be to apply to everyone else. What if everytime you split up in the previous MSQ, it was ALWAYS with Alphinaud, or Urianger, or Y'Shtola, or anyone else. Sure, those characters are nice, but it'd get old QUICK, doubly so for a whole goddamn expansion.

The MSQ at least had a larger and varied cast and it rotated who we went with. And we did a ton alone. Here it’s almost always Wuk Lamat babysitting. It’s repetitive and suffocating.

I used to dislike the Twins and by EW I looked at them as my little siblings. I feel my relationships with others are now stagnant because only Wuk Lamat shines. I don’t even think I got to hang out with Alisaie at all and Alphinaud is not growing in any way either as a character.

[SwadTheFrog]

The MSQ at least had a larger and varied cast and it rotated who we went with. And we did a ton alone. Here it’s almost always Wuk Lamat babysitting. It’s repetitive and suffocating.

Precisely the point I made, yeah.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Precisely the point I made, yeah.

It was a good point. Adding to the chorus lol.

[Tehmon]

I wish we were able to be a '' mentor '' to Bakool Ja Ja instead. That would've made a much more interesting dynamic. Give Bakool Ja Ja some decent motivations but keep his bad moral compass and arrogant personality, and let WoL figure out how to reign this fool in, also giving WoL a little bit more of a bite instead of just being an overall good guy, but someone who might do some shady stuff once in a while (for the '' greater good '' of course). Zarool Ja could've also been a compelling choice.

Literally anyone except Wuk Lamat... It's a shame, because I liked many of the characters, but everybody I enjoyed gets sidelined or killed off in favor of more Wuk Lamat content.

Genuinely, the story of Dawntrail is not terrible to me, it mostly just has this one cancerous lump that needs to be cut out, because she is making everything and everyone worse.

[Connor]

I don’t mind Wuk Lamat as a scion-type ‘companion’ character.

As the sole focus of the entire storyline, the literal ruler of an entire kingdom, and somehow a Warrior equal to every scion and competitor she’ll ever face? I just can’t get how this character is supposed to give ‘ruler of the kingdom’ vibes in any way lol.

Not to go too into it but the whole ‘election’ wording is entirely misleading. We are not helping with an election and there is no elected officials in Tuliyollal. We are there to help with a royal succession ritual that the citizens have literally no say in whatsoever. We’re basically helping a princess prepare to take her father’s throne.

She relies on Koana to do the thinking, relies on us to do the fighting, then goes around proselytising to literally every single person she encounters about ‘family’ and ‘what the people of Tuliyollal want’. Then obviously everyone she talks to is so completely moved by her explaining what family is they completely forsake any misgiving they may have had and accept her as their rightful ruler.

When she does have to fight she somehow solo-no-difficulties literally anything dumb enough to challenge her plot armour. She is a Warrior though, so at least that fits with their gameplay lol.

[Isala]

I wish we were able to be a '' mentor '' to Bakool Ja Ja instead. That would've made a much more interesting dynamic. Give Bakool Ja Ja some decent motivations but keep his bad moral compass and arrogant personality, and let WoL figure out how to reign this fool in, also giving WoL a little bit more of a bite instead of just being an overall good guy, but someone who might do some shady stuff once in a while (for the '' greater good '' of course). Zarool Ja could've also been a compelling choice.

Literally anyone except Wuk Lamat... It's a shame, because I liked many of the characters, but everybody I enjoyed gets sidelined or killed off in favor of more Wuk Lamat content.

Genuinely, the story of Dawntrail is not terrible to me, it mostly just has this one cancerous lump that needs to be cut out, because she is making everything and everyone worse.

That one solo instance at 92 stands out as the perfect example of everything that is wrong with DT. I was enjoying the crap out of myself, and the NPC there, because for literally the first time, the story was about ME... And then suddenly "I kNeW iT! YoooU wEEErreE dueLiNG witHOuT mEEEE."

Shut up. Just... SHUT. UP. Stop talking. Stop existing. Go crawl under a building or something, you COMPLETELY useless house cat.

[Galvuu]

This is only slightly related, but if you put Alphinaud and Alisae in the same costume and hid their names in the dialogue box, I wouldn't be able to tell them apart in DT literally 95% of the time.
They keep blurting generic goody-scion dialogue completely devoid of any personality. Where have the twins from Shadowbringers gone? If you insist on bringing the twins along, at least keep their original personalities and give them some purpose. It's like they got mind-wiped and are being used as vessels by some hive mind entity.
Wuk Lamat is a symptom, and this horrid narrative is the sickness.

[Ryaduera]

Snip

Not to mention, could you imagine being in a nation where an unfit ruler leaves to another country and brings a foreign warrior of incomparable strength and might with planetary scale feats to their name and uses them to take the seat of the throne? Sounds to me like a coup.