JP Official Forums are also criticizing the Dawntrail MSQ.

[fioravictorine]

FF has always been cuturally tropey.

Fantasy France is about castles and catholocism, fantasy US is about cowboys, fantasy Mongolia is about horseback nomads, fantasy South America is about tacos.

The only difference this time was how poorly written it was. They introduced it to us slowly, in voiced cutscenes, like a Sesame Street episode exploring Peru, without abstracting it, adding fantasy elements, or giving it any narrative relevance. And you can thank the fanbase for at least some of that--remember how WILD everyone went about Raha eating a taco? That's signalling "Yep, that's enough, please give us more of that!"



If you get bored with the story, you're supposed to go play some KOF while the cutscene plays out.

Yeah that is true...but FF always had an engaging story so most fans just brushed it off

This time its the boring cringefest that is The Wuk Lamat Show so people are starting to notice all sorts of problems it has

[Hallarem]

Lack of depth, padded, horrible pacing. Good characters, a decent cast that were used horrendously and not given time to cook and develop, aside from QIBRUC PIBIL (even that was rushed, where was our Zoraal Ja & Bakool Ja Ja cook off?). It was rushed and slowed down at the same time, and while it had good moments they were too far apart to cover the bad parts. Glimpses of potential that just dulled down to mud because of said bad pacing. Felt like I was watching a shonen anime at some point, which irked me. Also why bother bringing the scions if you end up using them as emotionless puppets that barely react to things with emotion? Are they even characters anymore? Do they feel angry about anything? Or are they just exposition vendors? Hell, seeing Koana's outburst was super refreshing.

Zone music was decent, Tuliyollal music was an ODD CHOICE to say the least, and the "happy happy joy joy" off-tune sang disney song at the end? Whoever chose to okay that, should be fired.

After a while of thinking, all I could think of was. "Is this why Endwalker was just one expansion, is this what they rushed for? Is this why we couldnt get Garlemald but destroyed it offscreen? Only to rush again to deliver a mediocre at best story?"

TLDR:

- Good zones, a definite improvement (open more buildings up, why bother making a town if you can only enter one building, that's not how MMO's should work, its about exploration and freedom. Not limiting the player)
- Graphic update is decent
- Nice bossfights
- Mediocre music, bordering on bad in some examples
- Fire the writers, and hire new ones
- SAME OLD BORING QUEST DESIGN

5.8 / 10

[fulminating]

Did anyone else notice that cutscene where the pc and scions were flanking wl, but it was framed in such a way that the axe head almost completely obscured the view of our character? The craziest part is this has to be intentional because wl is the same height for everyone.

[SwadTheFrog]

I mean the writers are Japanese and a White Lady, what did you expect? Taco taco tacos, Tacos and buritos. https://youtu.be/bQKDlNTEl6w?si=smPfMGrraQE1gz-S

It's like a stereotype that white women are really racist for a reason. If they end using Latinx, then you know they don't give a damn about your culture.

Oh, no. I expected exactly that. From the white lady, mind - not the Japanese. Though Japan isn't all there with South America, It's a known fact that Japan and Brazil actually have oddly solid relationship due to historical reasons, yet for all that, there was not a proper lick of Brazillan related stuff there either, other than a brief reference to Mate, I guess? Which isn't t necessarely purely brazilliian, but certainly popular in the southern part of Brazil.

[Gilihere]

Man, someone mentioned the lack of depth that is unusual considering the other expansions and it actually "dawned" on me, the characthers aside from the scions that have already been flushed out, are just veneers of what they are supposed to represent that's what sucked for me.

[ReynTime]

Something that dawned on me during Dawntrail is how sick I am of seeing the same models being recycled down to the same animations they come with.

The Pelupelu are just a bunch of copy-paste standard Elezen child models disguised in colorful garment and hats. The Yok Huy are recycled from Mor Dhona enemies. Both are even animated exactly like the characters they're recycled from.
Every single monster and boss aside from the trials are recycled from monsters that have been recycled in the game for multiple expansions, same animation and everything. Recycling models isn't new or exclusive to XIV, but it gets so blatant with some of the enemies and bosses that I really wonder where all that extra budget is going towards. Don't forget the game since the beginning was already recycling enemy models from XI.

[Estarriol]

Just created a forum account after 10 years of playing FFXIV to add one more voice to the criticism of Dawntrail's story, particularly its pacing.

Endwalker's story was very cutscene heavy for me, but as the culmination of the FFXIV story so far I was down for it. Additionally, each zone had a very different vibe and aesthetic, so there was lost of tonal variety throughout the expansion.

Dawntrail's story had the same amount of cutscenes, but it was all for low stakes stuff that I didn't have a reason to care about. The first half was like a show on the National Geographic channel - individual details might be interesting, but there was no stakes. I appreciated Bakool Ja Ja's arc in the blue forest, but that was really the most intriguing part of the story in the first half.

Cowboy land put me to sleep, so not much to say there.

I feel the invasion was done particularly dirty. We see all of these cool spaceships in the sky, and then we don't get to interact with them at all - we watch a dragon do it. We are attacked on a moving train and half to defend ourselves, but I have to watch my character do it. It was cool to see Vrtra lay waste, don't get me wrong, but it felt like we hardly did anything to stop the invasion ourselves. And yes, I understand it's good to have these other NPCs do things for us... but to me it felt like I was robbed of interesting gameplay. The train scene in particular was begging for a mini-game, and we didn't get one.

As for the finale, I felt the pacing was all wrong. We entered the final zone racing to stop the Big Bad from eating worlds, and we then spend 2-3 hours ruminating on moral issues. I'm not opposed to that rumination - I've played this game for 2000+ hours, I know it's story heavy. But it absolutely interrupted the flow of the narrative. I think it would have been a much more impactful question if we visited Living Memory earlier, fell in love with the zone, and *then* learned we had to delete it. But that's just me.

Gameplay wise, I've loved the dungeons, trials, and class changes so far so I'm happy to keep playing (as that's the main thing I spend my time doing in the game). I just wanted to add one more voice to the chorus that this was a big step down narratively from the heights of Shadowbringers and Endwalker.

[DreadCrow]

Why would you crop out the rest of my comment where the entire substance was? My complaint wasn't about the name change in a vacuum, in fact I couldn't care less what they call or do not call the beast tribes. My complaint was about the shallow treatment of said societies in combination with the name change.

Besides, we've stopped considering people of the beast tribes to be beasts all the way back in what... Shadowbringers at most, maybe even earlier? The naming has been nonsensical for many years now. What is funny to me is that the expansion when they finally get renamed, is also the expansion where we get societies more shallow than anything from ARR. That's it. But I think my initial comment made that quite clear, seeing as it was about the shallow writing of Tural's culture and the beast tribe thing was a short footnote.

I mean, that's the how the tribal races have always been really. Barely anything about them, until we learn more about their culture later when there's the tribal quests. Shadowbringers was really the only one that expanded on them before in my opinion.

[Zolvolt]

there is a weird fetishization of the thoughts and opinions of JP. Just because JP likes/dislikes something doesn't mean anything beyond they liked or disliked it. And there are JP people who like it just as much as they dislike it. This thread is dumb.

[HighlanderClone]

there is a weird fetishization of the thoughts and opinions of JP. Just because JP likes/dislikes something doesn't mean anything beyond they liked or disliked it. And there are JP people who like it just as much as they dislike it. This thread is dumb.

Not when the dominant narrative has always been "JP loves it so please shut up your opinion doesn't matter!"