FFXIV Dawntrail reviews are out on Metacritic

[HighlanderClone]

10 - Come along rarely, define genres and are truly outstanding, usually spawn a myriad of copy cats. (Eldenring - Personally I don't enjoy these games but can recognise their impact and success, BG3)

I like how you picked the two worst examples (IMHO).

Those are the culmination of a decade of dev experience, sure. On that front they are at least 9/10 games.

But ambition creates bloat and genericness. Those two are ambitious games, but they shedded a lot of their identity for mass appeal charm.

Elden Ring is one of the most unenjoyable and bloated FS game I've ever played. It's a huge letdown after Sekiro and unironically feels much like a Ubisoft game. Copy-and-pasted assets everywhere, samey objectives, and an open world that is too bloated and spammed with uninteresting "points of interest". They did this because open world is in vogue and because of their ambition.

BG3 is not a bad game but Larian's charm is very much absent from it. DOS1 is one of their first forays into CRPG and despite it being not so polished you can very much see the charm in that game, with a lot of humor and the classic Larian style of not taking itself too seriously. Importantly DOS1 is also pretty focused and isn't bloated with too many sidequests. The sidequests that do exist all tie in to the main plot too. Unfortunately BG3, despite its polish, is extremely unfocused and feels more like a theme park where you wander around instead of having a gripping narrative. As a result the story is one of the most forgettable ones I've ever played through from Larian.

Also I'm really just tired of the MA2 formula. It's everywhere these days. It's like none of the RPG studios know how to develop characters without using the MA2 formula anymore. It's a very inelegant formula that worked well back in 2010 but not in effing 2024 lmao.

[Swordsman]

Metascore, User score, and Steam score updated.

That's actually really close to where I would rate it, citizen. A silly and forgettable story deserves such a score.

I'd say low 6's is even more appropriate, but yeah, your point still stands.

[Sekundessounet]

User scores nowadays are more and more difficult to take at face value imo. If a product generates controversy, a lot of people will go and tank the score because they want the agregate score to reflect their opinion, and won't give a fair grade to the product (other way around works too, but angry people tend to express themselves more, so the inverse trend is usually less prominent).

Like, Dawntrail is currently rated lower than ARR. Whatever your feelings about DT, I think it's hard to argue that it's worse than ARR in every aspect (especially writing, 2.0 has hardly any character writing aside from Cid). Yet that's what the score reflects. And looking at the written reviews, there's a lot of chuds going at 0 for kicks for example. So eh.

These platforms need to rethnk how they approach user score, because now not a lot of people express actual opinions, they usually try to influence the overall score. Which is dumb.

(For information, I'd give 7.0 a 7.5/10)

[Isala]

User scores nowadays are more and more difficult to take at face value imo. If a product generates controversy, a lot of people will go and tank the score because they want the agregate score to reflect their opinion, and won't give a fair grade to the product (other way around works too, but angry people tend to express themselves more, so the inverse trend is usually less prominent).

Like, Dawntrail is currently rated lower than ARR. Whatever your feelings about DT, I think it's hard to argue that it's worse than ARR in every aspect (especially writing, 2.0 has hardly any character writing aside from Cid). Yet that's what the score reflects. And looking at the written reviews, there's a lot of chuds going at 0 for kicks for example. So eh.

These platforms need to rethnk how they approach user score, because now not a lot of people express actual opinions, they usually try to influence the overall score. Which is dumb.

(For information, I'd give 7.0 a 7.5/10)

Dawntrail deserves to be rated lower than ARR. Dawntrail is the culmination of a decade of MMO experience, and still put out a worse experience with more knowledge, technology, and resources. The voice acting alone is somehow worse than ARR. The story, writing and pacing are worse than ARR. 2.0's world building, as lacking as it was, is miles above the feeble attempt 7.0 made.

We're not "chuds", or whatever slur you want to fling at us, for feeling that Dawntrail fully deserves its low rating. I would personally give it a 0 on my own scale, which I explained earlier. Any game that actually forces me to step away from playing it through how terrible it is, deserves a 0. And DT had three of those moments for me. I would have quit several times over, if it were not for the friends I promised I'd run Savage with. Sure, there are good parts to DT, but they are so grossly overshadowed by the main course of the expansion, the MSQ, that I cannot, and WILL not, give the game credit that the appetizers are somehow better than the main course.

I'll give you a great example of another game that I've played that deserves a 0. Superman 64. The multiplayer in that game is actually a fairly enjoyable, if not stupid, experience. I had more fun playing that than the actual game. But the core of the game is its absolutely miserable single player experience, that frustrates you with how terrible and broken it is to the point where you want to quit. It deserves a 0. And that is where DT sits for me. I would not have gotten to the points of the game that were remotely enjoyable, if I didn't force myself to for friends. The game actively chased me off multiple times. 0/10. Would not play again.

[Sekundessounet]

Dawntrail deserves to be rated lower than ARR. Dawntrail is the culmination of a decade of MMO experience, and still put out a worse experience with more knowledge, technology, and resources. The voice acting alone is somehow worse than ARR. The story, writing and pacing are worse than ARR. 2.0's world building, as lacking as it was, is miles above the feeble attempt 7.0 made.

We're not "chuds", or whatever slur you want to fling at us, for feeling that Dawntrail fully deserves its low rating. I would personally give it a 0 on my own scale, which I explained earlier. Any game that actually forces me to step away from playing it through how terrible it is, deserves a 0. And DT had three of those moments for me. I would have quit several times over, if it were not for the friends I promised I'd run Savage with. Sure, there are good parts to DT, but they are so grossly overshadowed by the main course of the expansion, the MSQ, that I cannot, and WILL not, give the game credit that the appetizers are somehow better than the main course.

I'll give you a great example of another game that I've played that deserves a 0. Superman 64. The multiplayer in that game is actually a fairly enjoyable, if not stupid, experience. I had more fun playing that than the actual game. But the core of the game is its absolutely miserable single player experience, that frustrates you with how terrible and broken it is to the point where you want to quit. It deserves a 0. And that is where DT sits for me. I would not have gotten to the points of the game that were remotely enjoyable, if I didn't force myself to for friends. The game actively chased me off multiple times. 0/10. Would not play again.

My man, it's kinda funny that you assumed that I was pointing at you as one of those chuds. I said there's a lot of chuds going at it, not that every one of the 0 were one. But okay.

You hate DT ? That's fine, I enjoyed it a lot personally.

Although I'd invite you to NG+ ARR, because pacing even after the rework is still miles and miles more horrible than anything we got since then, DT included. The same goes for voice acting, come on now. At launch, 2.0 even had voicelines that were badly cut off because the sound mix had to be rushed. Let's not be too reactionary.

[Isala]

My man, it's kinda funny that you assumed that I was pointing at you as one of those chuds. I said there's a lot of chuds going at it, not that every one of the 0 were one. But okay.

You hate DT ? That's fine, I enjoyed it a lot personally.

Although I'd invite you to NG+ ARR, because pacing even after the rework is still miles and miles more horrible than anything we got since then, DT included. The same goes for voice acting, come on now. At launch, 2.0 even had voicelines that were badly cut off because the sound mix had to be rushed. Let's not be too reactionary.

I'm currently playing through ARR on an alt. I'd rather have that slow burn than the train wreck of everything happening all at once that DT gave us.

[Sekundessounet]

I'm currently playing through ARR on an alt. I'd rather have that slow burn than the train wreck of everything happening all at once that DT gave us.

Sure, you do you. I'll keep disagreeing with that tho

[Oizen]

Its sitting around 78/6.4 right now and I think thats a fair score.

[CaptainLagbeard]

6.4 still feels a bit high for DT... But not by an excessive amount. But it most definitely notable that the game dropped from ShB and EW being a 9 to DT being a 6.

[Turtledeluxe]

Slipping from one of the worst rated xpacs to one of the worst FFs all time. Yikes.