Late to the party - work, school, and D&D DMing are all slowing me down. But oh well.

Overall MSQ
A bit underwhelming, with all of the pacing issues I've come to expect with Daichi Hiroi's lead. The first half is a sluggish tournament arc that sees us learning about all the cultures and customs of Tural (not bad), but it takes a long while to reach an already apparent conclusion - our support meant Wuk Lamat had an almost insurmountable advantage thanks both to our martial prowess and practical wisdom we've picked up on our adventures. Combat trials or no, having most of the (ex-)Scions in her corner, including the famed hero who saved the star times over, made the Rite a foregone conclusion. (Not to mention her character, a melding of the best traits of Zidane and Garnet to go along with the IX references, made her obviously most suited to rule - sheltered upbringing notwithstanding.)

The back half - the conflict with Alexandria - was interesting enough, even if the pacing was again somewhat stilted. The reflection's sudden appearance and overwriting of Yyasulani to create Heritage Found was a good way to kick it off, along with Zoraal Ja's attack on Tuliyollal, but it drags considerably from your arrival in Heritage Found until the inevitable showdown with Zoraal Ja. Living Memory is again a bit draggy, but it's emotionally overwhelming enough to keep you invested.

As for the story itself... it's about what I've come to expect from Hiroi. Adapting a previous game's story to the XIV setting, melding various characters into ones appropriate for the new setting, and recasting the heroes of the original game as antagonists in some fashion. It's not bad, but it's gotten a little predictable, and while I do like IX thanks to being somewhat derivative of it Dawntrail suffers from one of its key problems - an overfocus on a few key characters to the detriment of the rest of the cast.

Oh, right, and a few too many story contrivances, like the entrance to the Golden City just so happening to be in the area we're already wandering around once we get the final Keystone. But I'm not mad about that.


Speak with Wuk Lamat
Apropos of which - overfocus on a key character, meet Wuk Lamat. I don't have a problem with her character, but Wuk Lamat gets a ton of character focus to the detriment of the rest of the cast. I can get behind the idea that Dawntrail is "her" story, but she has by far the largest amount of screentime of any character at the expense of everyone else. We've had other characters like this - Lyse in Stormblood, for instance - but she didn't eat up screentime the way Wuk Lamat did nor did she really steal our thunder, since we still had a narrative role in that story (our budding rivalry with Zenos). We're just here to be a mentor and guiding hand to Wuk Lamat, meaning we have less narrative agency that we did even in A Realm Reborn. Even our big narrative purpose - defeating seemingly insurmountable odds through moxie and summoned allies via Azem's crystal - got upstaged by Wuk Lamat at the very end.

Nobody else has anywhere near as much story relevance - Sphene tries, but she's hamstrung by only showing up in the last third-ish of the story. Erenville and Krile, the ostensible deuteragonist and tritagonist, respectively, have much, much smaller roles - and just when it seems like you've shaken Wuk Lamat by venturing into Xak Tural alone with Erenville, circumstances conspire to put Wuk Lamat in the spotlight once again.

Like I mentioned, this may be because she's a meld of Zidane and Garnet, and IX's story focused heavily on those two (along with Vivi) to the detriment of the rest of the cast, but... man.


Zoraal Ja is motivated!
He wanted to surpass Gulool Ja Ja by uniting the world under one banner like how his father united Tural, and saw war as the only means of achieving that end. Falls off the slope after he loses the Feats of Repast and the Brotherhood, but I found him pitiable enough. The burden of the expectations put on his shoulders as a "miracle" due to being the first trueborn child to a two-headed Mamool Ja was just too much, and his taciturn nature made him bottle it all up inside. Without anyone to lend him a steadying hand he never found his own purpose in life and devoted himself to simply surpassing his father however he could - and when it was clear he couldn't do so alone, he... did not take it well.


The Far Edge of the Gate
Sphene is basically a melding of Garnet and Garland from IX, with the former's kindness and the latter's grim purpose. The story spent a long while introducing her in Heritage Found, but I feel this worked to her advantage - although I figured she would be antagonistic in the end, spending time getting to know her made our mission in Living Memory more difficult than it should have been. Unlike with Garland in IX, I did feel kind of bad about having to kill her, even if she was just a hologram / AI.


Moving Forward
As per usual I expect 7.1 - 7.3 will deal with the political fallout of 7.0, though I couldn't venture a guess as to who the "true" final boss (Nidhogg, Tsukuyomi, Warrior of Light Elidibus) is or if they're going to go a different route. Interested to see what's in the Arcadion, and curious as to what the Trial series will be (more tural vidraal, probably). I imagine in 7.4+ we're going to figure out how to use the key to open portals to different worlds via the gate at the bottom of the Skydeep Cenote.

One last note - the Twelfth was the reflection rejoined in the Second Umbral Calamity of Lightning, meaning time dilation aside it was probably not Alexandria's reflection. Rather, we know from the First and Thirteenth that a Flood (and thus plausibly a Rejoining) tips the aetheric balance of another reflection towards the opposite element. The Third was rejoined to the Source in the Fourth Umbral Calamity of Earth, so my guess is that the reflection Living Memory is on (that was destroyed by the Storm Surge / "Flood of Lightning") would have been the Eleventh. Time dilation being a thing, that's just a guess though.


Speak with Wuk Lamat again.