Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[Malganis_L]

I agree with most of the stuff OP wrote
...
except that Zoraal Ja was a 3 Dimensional Villain
the characterization in the Bossfight and bossdesign is pretty good, but waaaaaaaaaaay to late for me to really give a damn about what he is about.

On a conceptual level he could be very interresting

suffering from (his own) expectations,
blind to his own accomplishments,
trapped in his own negativity and seeing his fathers attempts to help him only as acts of distrust and disappointment,
desperatly figuring out his own purpose in life.
all very human and understandable struggles.

but non of that gets deeply explored in my opinion
based on purely what the Msq delivered to me, he was just a one dimensional: "I am a brooding loner" which evolves later into "I am an angry loner and i have daddy issues"
which is just boring, unsatisfying and such a waste of a character.

the most frustrating part is that there could have been an amazing and memorable tragedy to him, with great moments of characterizations.

team him up with Wuk in the Taco standoff competition, let both ther idiology clash hard against each other and expose what lies beneath the surface,
as both win the cooking challenge we now have more urgency when ever in the story as Zuraal has 6 keystones now,
instead of the complete deflation of urgency that we have in the current msq,
give him a glimps of betterment of maybe leaving his paths of negativity only for him to get unfairly disqualified by the mamoo ja chief
(also for the love of god show the fight... let him attack the summon pot which the chief takes personally)
which throws him right back into the darkness of his mind, and somewhat gives more reason with his obsession for the throne
make him stealthkill the chief instead of Kettenramm.

and in the 30 years in Alexandria:

let him cooldown a bit
he finds a wife,
he actually finds a place and purpose in his life through this relationship
his wife got pregnant
his wife dies during delivery
soulsystem deletes all the good memories and happyness in his life
congratulations, he revert back to his negative self, more empty and angry than ever before with a child he has 0 connection with

have his wife appear in the Living Memory instead of that cheap "be sad moment" with Namikka, explaining stuff that was only hinted in the previous Msq

[Allegor]

snip

Something that really annoyed me not only about Zoraal ja's (lack of) development but mostly every character is that there's "show, don't tell" but it felt more like "meh, you've seen this trope before/fill in the gaps yourself" as if to save time to keep telling the story without needing to focus on the characters.