FFXIV Dawntrail reviews are out on Metacritic

[Themarvin]

With how things are released and knowing this is a good cash machine for SE... then it is disappointing that there is no new content, other than for the extremes... and further more disappointed that there is no lvl100 open world content to do either, which should be an option for every single area in the game from ARR to DT... beast tribes is not cutting it either, limited jobs is a waste of development time that could had been spend making casual to mid/hardcore player base as well for the current jobs in game.

Resources is spend on other things than FFXIV, that does not mean that I wont let SE make money, of course there is a need for for that... but current content we are barely getting any content and it seem more like you need to wait 6 to 12 months now instead of 2-3months for stuff to do.

Top SE CEO's and Shareholders, allow your Developers more freedom and resources to develop this magnificent game further, you need a solid staff to do these things with, not just staff that develop the next expansion.

[Zarkovitch]

The gameplay is way more solid on this expansion. But rest is mediocrity at is best.

[Swordsman]

Score Update: Steam reviews in the last 30 days fell to 27% (Mostly Negative).

The gameplay is way more solid on this expansion. But rest is mediocrity at is best.

That's kinda how I see it too. Having a blast with the dungeons, raids, and pvp, but lots of other things have been subpar.

[Swordsman]

Score Update: Steam reviews in the last 30 days rose to 29% (Mostly Negative).

I was reading some of the reviews that were left on Steam, and unsurprisingly, some folks are upset with the latest balance changes. Review pasted below:

"My negative review specifically targets 7.1 and the combat changes to dragoon and gunbreaker.
Dragoon was already taking L's this expansion by having spineshatter dive and dragon sight removed. Despite the overhaul removing alot of the jobs interesting temporal complexity, drgs were still provided an interesting kit to work with, filled with double weaves OGCD's and plenty of moves that felt fun to spam like nastrond.
Aaand they removed most of that by reducing your castings of nastrond from 3 to 1.
As if that wasnt bad enough the took gunbreakers superbolide and made it so that your health now drops to 50% instead of 1 hp. An absolutely unnecessary change since there were so many tools that could be used to instantly recover that health (including an ability gnb already has) and stripped role flavor from the job.
Im greatful for the side content because the alliance raid was very well made and fun to do but i really wish the balance team wasnt so at the ready to oversimplify the kits of jobs so hard."

[GartredZW]

The gameplay is way more solid on this expansion. But rest is mediocrity at is best.

agreed. It's a shame that the "gameplay" is pretty much just six dungeons and three trials. all of which take about 10-20 minutes to do out of a roughly 30 hour main story.
and yeah, that's not all there is, but it's what they consider to be the main game. credits roll after you finish it, it's the only thing that's really required to do in order to say you've beaten the game, etc.

[Hyperia]

Im greatful for the side content because the alliance raid was very well made and fun to do but i really wish the balance team wasnt so at the ready to oversimplify the kits of jobs so hard."

The moment devs of any game start worrying about balance, the homogenization of the game begins and always ends in tears.

Every single game I have played has always seen it end the same way, all jobs are essentially the same.

[Swordsman]

Score Update: Steam reviews fell to 54% (Mixed), and reviews in the last 30 days rose to 31% (Mostly Negative).

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The moment devs of any game start worrying about balance, the homogenization of the game begins and always ends in tears.

Every single game I have played has always seen it end the same way, all jobs are essentially the same.

Yeah, agreed 100%.

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Here is another review that accurately sums up several grievances of many players.

Notable Steam Review:

"I've played this game religiously for years, and it breaks my heart to say that I can no longer recommend it to anyone looking for an MMO to play.

Creative Studio 3 has effectively entrusted the future of FFXIV to its junior staff. Where this largely matters is in the writing, which has taken a serious nose dive with Dawntrail and its subsequent patch. People will try to tell you it's all Wuk Lemat. People will try to tell you that it's all pacing problems.

It's not.

Considering the track record of the team, I passed off the original release of Dawntrail as a fluke. Surely they can do better, right? They were split between so many projects then, right? It's only uphill from here? Right?

Wrong.

7.1's MSQ writing is *abysmal*. It's, in my opinion, some of the worst writing in the game, period. They not only try to build upon Dawntrail's flawed premise and characters, they somehow make it *worse*. They explain a character's mysterious parentage via an anime style "notice me Senpai" story, and they have a character's decades of cultural grievances solved in an offscreen moment where he pets a buffalo.

I can hear people coming at me with a "But the content is so good!", though, and while it's fair that the encounter design has improved dramatically, actually engaging said content means doing the same old roulettes. What does this mean? The likelihood of you actually *seeing* that content is a fraction of a percent next to the chance that you'll get something of a much lower level, leaving you playing the same old stuff that has numbed our minds for years.

Meanwhile, they haven't improved core systems and functionality that the game sorely needs:
~Job identity? Have to wait until 2027 when we get the next expansion.
~Instanced housing? Likely never. (And don't get me started on the fact that the mobile game they're working on with Tencent has this)
~Better glamour system? Likely never.
~The feel of our kits at lower levels? I have no idea.
~Improving on their quest design so it isn't just a slew of cutscenes? Clearly, not happening either.

I could go on, but for the sake of brevity, I won't. Suffice it to say, i've never had such little hope in the future of the game. Creative Studio 3 has a *lot* of work to do to shore up their narrative team for sure, but the key pillars of the game itself are also starting to crumble at their foundation.

Time to listen to feedback, Square, and I don't mean by waving your hand at the start of your live letters, quietly saying "we've heard a lot of feedback regarding Dawntrail..." before moving on to your set-in-stone, rigid content release schedule. This is your cash cow, and if World of Warcraft's abysmal reception of Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands has taught us anything, people can and will go to greener pastures if they reach a breaking point.

7.1 was mine."

[Swordsman]

Score Update: Steam reviews in the past 30 days rose to 34% (Mostly Negative).

Here are two Steam reviews that stuck out to me and I've copied and pasted both of them below. I've actually added a positive review this time just so forum members can see what a person with a dissenting opinion may take into consideration when rating a game.

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Notable Negative Steam Review:

I am going to make some people mad and I really don't care.

This expansion is bad. My main complaint is that the FFXIV devs have been relying on the same patch cycle for years.

After drawn out fetch quest, upon fetch quest within the MSQ, followed by "Go here talk to this person, okay they moved go 50 feet and talk to them again." the patch cycles are the same every time:

All patches will include more generic fetch quest for the MSQ, ONE new dungeon, a tribal quest occasionally and every other patch will add a set of 4 new raids followed by a 24 man raid. This is the cycle, it will not change. If you are a high end raider the cycle is still the same. Crucify me for saying it but maybe we could use some of the patches after the big .0 launch to add content to play rather than story to watch. I know the story is a major draw, however this current content cycle is old and stale. One of the reasons it won't change is to appeal to the story simps who will roll in for their 2 hour of new story content every patch then leave for the majority of the patch cycle.

FFXIV has to adapt, the old excuse of "It is a JRPG with some MMO mechanics" no longer works on me. I want more MMO, more content to engage with the systems other than "Here's a patch after 3-5 months it has some story stuff, a single dungeon and either Normal/Alliance raids"

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Notable Positive Steam Review:

TL;DR: Dawntrail is Stormblood 2: very polarizing MSQ, but very good encounter design and raids. I personally really liked it, you may not.

Hot take: I actually really like this expansion and I would *personally* rate it as my third favorite expansion over-all even with all of its flaws.

The story is, as much as I hate to say it, probably the weakest part as of 7.1. It's really hit or miss at points, especially if you don't care for worldbuilding and just want to punch things, but as someone who does really enjoy learning about the game's world, I liked it! I did find the second half of the MSQ a lot more interesting and exciting, and I actually found it very emotional and touching near the end. The pacing unfortunately feels like it has similar issues that Endwalker had, but overall I found the story interesting enough and I am excited to see where it goes next. My one real complaint (that I feel I share with a lot of other people) is that the MSQ questing is much like every single past expansion since ARR: go to a place, talk to some people. Go to another place, click some things and maybe kill a single mob. Every so often there's a dungeon or trial at the same level breakpoint as every single other expansion. I would really like some more variety in the questing, but I do think it's unfair how much people will hard focus about this when the questing in FFXIV has been like this since the very beginning; it's an issue with the game over-all.
If you played through Stormblood or at the very least know how polarizing it was MSQ-wise, Dawntrail is that cranked up to 11--people either love it or hate it so much you'd think it killed their grandma. I'm in the camp of loving it despite its flaws, but of course that is very subjective and others clearly feel differently.

Content-wise, Dawntrail is a massive step up from Endwalker. The dungeons are fun and actually feel like they have mechanics and are much more engaging. The normal difficulty trials and raids are pleasantly fast-paced and the higher end content such as the extreme and savage difficulties are very fun and extremely satisfying to pull off, if you're looking to get into the game's difficult content, now is a very good time to do so. After playing the game for 100 levels (more accurately 100+ since I do grind all my classes to max every expansion), it finally feels like the casual content has gotten the memo and is more along the lines of what you'd expect late-game but not hardcore content to be. Older dungeons are also being refurbished, making some early game dungeons that used to be a bit of a snoozefest more interesting and actually introduce mechanics to new players that they will be seeing going forward, which is always a good thing.

There's other, smaller things, such as the music this expansion being stellar as always and the environments being very nice to look at and run around with the graphics update. There's also the voice acting, which this expansion has been rather weak in comparison to past expacs--many people solely complain about Wuk Lamat's VA but even the voice actors for many of the scions seem... off. Some lines have been redone as of patch 7.1 and sound leagues better, which leads me to believe it's more of an issue with the direction than the VAs themselves. I also feel that the devs messed up advertising this as a "vacation", leading to people having expectations for the expansion that weren't fulfilled.

Over all, it's far from perfect, but it's also far from how horrible many of the reviews are making it seem.

[Red-thunder]

The recent positive reviews are mostly like this lmao

[Exmo]

Currently there are more positive reviews than negative, meaning the majority who left a review enjoyed the game.