Patch 7.4 MSQ was Good. Bravo.

[Selsix]

I thought the story was incredibly mid. They only actually got my attention at the very end with the whole Withering thing they are setting up. Everything prior to that would have put me to sleep entirely if not for all the FF9 Easter eggs keeping me somewhat engaged.

[lievaordiea]

So i was doing a personal discord review as i went along so i can recall my first impressions of the MSQ. - i enjoyed it. more below. massive spoilers ofc

One thing i was surprised at was it was like an MSQ movie. i didnt mind it but whilst cutscenes are playing the player is doing nothing.
i found it both hilarious and surprising at the twins almost immediate yeet out of the story. though. sadly. and pathetically.. this made sense rather later on.
i was irritated at wuk lamat being even in this patch and how she spoke about erenville. it was a good send off even - if it included her. (no the sad cat eyes didnt make me feel bad)

Graha EN voice took me out of the msq immersion slightly. considering hes in it alot.

Shale. what can i say about this VA. her voice is perfection. such tones ♥
i thought so in 7.3. still think it. i could listen to this person speak all day and not be bored. shes like the noise of raindrops. soothing and relaxing.

the .. sudden oh wait we can go to the 9th and these people might exist was .. a little jarring. sudden reflection jump. the fact yshtola and graha were not more excited over this is confusing.

but as i said .. i was still puzzled about grahas voice so was distracted.

unexpected dungeon cave was surprising. but it was a good dungeon.
so joyful to see folks fighting and surviving in the background. not seen that since SB i think. even during the SHB -> EW dungeons folks were dying to mobs around us.

Every single scene Lumull was in was wonderful. Hope he is in furture msq as he is most assuredly a favourite NPC now. (an fc person said it reminded him of stewie and i totally agree)

but this is where i see why Alisae and Alphi got kicked off the MSQ. cant have two brother and sister. its like Koana and Graha all over again. every time Koana came with us, graha stayed behind and vice versa

I did not get Kriles stress. like .. it was out of the blue. i got it and i understood why she might feel like that but she did a 180 on personality here. she was fine one quest then had angst the next? should have been some mild build up.

The doom train history was unhinged! like... shades of Mhach? (spelling prolly)
didnt they use a demon in their ship. very similar. arcane entity .. would like to have known more about this. this was an awesome lore drop.

to do go into a duty calls directly afterwards was ... well.. thats good.. but wtf did we sit thru an entire msqmovie with doing zero then have a trial and duty back to back.
pacing again.

krile is apparently the new WOL and is utterly OP. srsly i doubt there was an easy mode for that duty. i would have concerns for folk who needed it.

ngl i seem to have gotten destracted as i literally only have a screenie of callyx after.

i do recall the ascian amused me. and i was annoyed at being jebaited at going into the town hall.

im gonna be looking at any stuffed toy in any msq location sus now XD

[MoofiaBossVal]

Main story patch 7.4

If Sphene is going to be queen of Alexandria then she really, really should be accompanied by at least one or two loyal Alexandrians to bodyguard her or act as her retainers. Hire some of those outskirts hunters or Arcadion fighters, I am sure some of them would be okay with being royal bodyguards. It is unreasonable for her to expect that the Scions would be at her beck and call to escort her everywhere, and she definitely can't go out into the world alone.

Sphene's diplomatic mission to the surviving towns on the Ninth means nothing for Alexandria because the stargate is located within Tural's territory in South America, not where Alexandria is now located in North America. Any trade from Treno through the stargate to Alexandria would have to first go through the stargate and emerge in Tural, and pass through hundreds or thousands of miles within Tural's domain before reaching Alexandria. Aside from specialized Electrope support, there is no way for Alexandria to beat Tural as a trade partner for the towns of the Ninth as the costs of overland travel and border tariffs would cause the prices of Alexandria goods to increase. So Sphene just enriched her neighboring country that she was just at war with rather than her own.

Despite us visiting a town inhabited by Lalafells, we haven't gotten any actual Lalafell lore or culture like when we went to the Azim Steppe and learned about Xaela, or Viera, or the Dwarves on the First. Disappointing.

The Doomtrain was a fun boss. Cool mode, and the first boss fight we have had in - how many years? - that has terrain on the field, with there being two floors and crates you can hide behind. It feels somewhat WoW-esque with how the fight moves from train platform to platform.

More repetitive longwinded goodbyes for people we had JUST met.

Calyx is back. I am starting to sense a pattern. Ever since Ishikawa started touching the main story during Stormblood, she has been trapped in this pattern where she writes a villain, the villain is not well received, so then she brings the villain back from the dead and tries to play him off more sympathetically to "redeem" him. She did this with Yostuyu, then Zenos, then Asahi/Fandaniel, then Sphene, and now Calyx. Calyx is a turbo mass murderer who dissolves people's souls into liquid aether so they can't even reincarnate via the Lifestream so he can achieve a parody of eternal life. Look forward to his sad goodbye scene in the next expansion and the historical revisionism about how he was such a misunderstood, tragic soul.

We get a new character introduced named Halmarut, who is a surviving sundered Ascian. In spite of Yoshida's promise that the Ascian story ended in 6.0. And now Halmarut is insinuating that because Hydaelyn is gone, the Reflections are going to collapse. What happened to the brand new storyline that was promised? Instead this is just a continuation/rehash of the first storyline.

Halmarut's faux ditzy bookworm girl mannerisms do not make her very intriguing as a villain. At least, not at the moment. I didn't find Emet interesting in the ShB patches either, but given what happened to the FF14 story after ShB I am not confident they will pull another rabbit out of their hat like him.

The main story continues to be bad and is why I keep dragging my feet to do it whenever a new patch comes out. The pacing continues to be abysmally slow. There is no tension as no one or places we care about are truly at risk, villains are not threatening.


Arcadion tier 3 story

The story overall ended as anticipated (ie the President was not evil, everything turns out alright) and was okay. There was nothing really wrong with it, but I am little jaded of the "actually, the villain did it all for you! He was the true hero all along sacrificing himself against the true threat!" I have seen over and over and over again. It presents a world in which there is all of this fighting and kidnappings and other foul things happening, but there are no perpetrators. Everybody was a good boy, and evil does not exist.

Arcadion story likewise wound up having a lackluster ending since the villainy and tension/consequences evaporated.

Doomtrain fight was a novel fight, though.

[Avenheit]

my only issue with the msq is that i am so damn sick of ascians

[Mouthbone]

7.4 was a breath of fresh air, I really enjoyed it
The pacing was great (apart from the slow start), the people of Treno are charming and I loved all the hype moments for Krile
The only thing I'm concerned is how cute they made Halmarut, I really hope she does not become the writer's pet or draw too much attention to her
I hope that we can have another Shadowbringers after we had a repeat of Stormblood

[Empyr]

It was ok. Halmarut seemed entertaining enough and it wasn't very bloated, but there could have been more set up for Krile's bench scene, since it kinda comes out of nowhere due to prior lack of screentime. It'll probably be looked on favourably next patch when they destroy Treno and fire off the Chekov's gun about the sister's broken leg to hype up 8.0.

[ViinaS]

my only issue with the msq is that i am so damn sick of ascians

Same... same...
But if deviating from "akshually it was dem darn ascians again!" means the end result is something like Dawntrail then.... I begrudingly accept the absolute non-threat, they play up, that are non-unsundered Ascians.

[EusisLandale]

I feel like its story will successfully help people appreciate what wrestling is supposed to be, because not many people do.

"Everything is fake, but sometimes real life writes the plot."
Some people might be annoyed that there's no real villain here, but it's honestly one of the few places where it makes sense. Just a couple tragic accidents, but the show must go on. I liked it.

[Router]

I'm just hoping, since the new plot seems to concern the shards, that we can finally break Ryne out of cold storage and interact with her again. She got done so dirty in Endwalker

[Chasingstars]

7.0 to 7.4: "with the key you can travel anywhere", maybe in 7.5 or 7.55 the key might actually be used by the WoL.