FFXIV Expansion Review: Dawntrail

	It’s time for a cyberpunk adventure in Mexico 🌮 (⚠️Warning this review contains spoilers.)
	what if Estelle was a furry

The Dawntrail Story

Since I reviewed Endwalker (and I forgot that I did until now lol) I decided to go ahead and do the same for Dawntrail. This time Kanade will be throwing his piece in as well. Dawntrail has gotten a lot of hate and honestly I just want to add my piece to this discourse because honestly it really wasn’t ALL THAT BAD. As a disclaimer, Kanade and I have been playing FFXIV since Closed Beta 3. We’ve been playing the game for 11 years. Therefore our opinions are based on FFXIV as a whole and not going to be similar to anyone who entered FFXIV from Shadowbringers or Endwalker.

The most common complaint that I’ve seen about Dawntrail is that it’s “too slow”, which I think is unfair. It’s the absolute beginning of a completely new story. It’s got a lot of groundwork to lay out first. You know how people constantly complain about ARR takes too long to get going? Yeah and guess what, that’s also the beginning of the story!!!!!!!! You need to do basic building blocks of establishing the setting, characters, etc. first before you can eventually get to the raging climax. Then on top of that there’s the technical kludges. You know why you spend so long doing that “pointless” trading quest in Urqopacha? Because when they didn’t start out the expansion like that you ended up with Raubahn EX where people couldn’t progress past the first hour of the MSQ for days at a time.

I also blame a lot of this on people starting the game during Shadowbringers or Endwalker. Not necessarily in the “fuccin’ n00bz” sense (but you know what, “fuccin n00bz”) but in that it gave people a totally incorrect sense of what the game is actually like when you’re caught up on the releases and playing them as they come out. If you’re going through a decade of content continuously over the course of a year or two you’re not really going to notice how long it really took the story to get to the point that you’re at. I always rag on Heavensward (moar liek HeavensTURD) because the story played out so much worse on release than it did when you’re burning through the entire storyline in one long binge where you’re waiting for months (and in some cases years) for the game to continue with some of the expansion’s storylines or plot threads. So now they’re finally getting that kind of experience for the first time with Dawntrail.

The expansion premise is we just saved the world, we’re done with the Ascian bullshit and now we’re going on a vacation to Tural to help Wuk Lamat, our shounen protagonist, become the Lion King. She’s got her 3 rivals, her 2 step brothers Koana and Zarool Ja and the rando from the lizard village, Bakool JaJa who just so happens to have the same 2 heads as the current leader and Wuk Lamat’s adoptive dad, Galool JaJa. So that’s the basis for the story and WOL is just kinda there to be Wuk Lamat’s cheerleader because she’s a youngin newb and she needs to learn the ways of her people before she can become Hokage. Little does she know that the entire “contest” is basically a “training course” for her only because the other contenders all fail for their own reasons. Zarool Ja is a crazy war monger with daddy issues (because his only blood father basically ignored him for his 2 adopted children), Koana who is obsessed with Sharlayan technology and just wants to modernize everything without caring about anyone’s input, and finally Bakool JaJa who is just there because he is one of the few rare 2 headed lizards and his father pressured him to enter the contest so that the lizards of Mamook would finally have something to show for – after years and many dead lizard children attempting to create a 2 headed one. The only happy empty headed vessel here is Wuk Lamat who just wants to be friends with everyone and save everyone and put a smile on everyone’s face.

So of course you got the typical annoying Shounen Protagonist and that may not be everyone’s cup of tea which is why Wuk Lamat gets a lot of hate. Coincidentally she is also a woman, and as we know from previous expansions, Minfilia and Lyse got the same treatment from the fans. (Meanwhile I thought Lyse was funny and I cried over Minfilia’s final scene in Shadowbringers so you do you I guess.) When the guy the expac focuses on is a guy, nobody seems to bat an eye. Estinien? Aymeric? Everyone loves them. G’raha Tia? Emet Selch? Lemme get that body pillow of them off Etsy. So maybe it’s just a coincidence, maybe Square Enix is just bad at writing female characters – but they sure do get a lot of hate when they take the lead in the game.

That said, Wuk Lamat has 2 problems that are blatantly obvious even to me, who didn’t hate Minfilia or Lyse. First of all, Wuk Lamat’s voice acting in English is terrible. I played my first run in Japanese, but recently I had finished my 2nd time around by playing with all English voices. The beginning stems with there being a mass of transphobes who are mad that Wuk Lamat is voiced by a transwoman. However, my personal issue is the voice actress just cannot act. She sounds terrible compared to the Japanese and even the French and German. An example being the final battle here:

The English voice acting just has no emotion. In Japanese she is yelling in her shounen-esque way for Sphene to snap out of it. In English though, she sounds like she’s arguing at the dinner table with her dad about her grades. Any time there was a scene where Wuk was speaking calmly though, the voice acting was totally fine. However in any kind of yelling/emotional or passionate scenes, that passion was just not there in English. Even many of the side characters in Shaloni had better voice acting than Wuk Lamat did. I don’t know why they chose this person to voice act, but surely if they can get all those great voice actors for the randos in Shaloni, then why can’t they get one of them to voice Wuk Lamat? That’s why when I first played the expac I couldn’t understand the voice acting hate because I had played in Japanese and in Japanese it sounded like Naruto standard shounen hero.

Alright so Wuk Lamat. First off, yeah I am assuming that people might not be realizing that most of the FFXIV expansions are structured around some character who needs WOL’s help, whether that’s Minfilia in ARR, Lyse in Stormblood, G’Raha in Shadowbringers, and so on. It’s not unique for Wuk Lamat to be doing stuff while you’re being dragged along for the ride. I think a big part of the problem here is that there’s too many important storyline characters this time so this leads to Erenville and Kirile getting the short end of the stick most of the time. It’s not like how in ARR you’re thinking “enough with this ‘pray return to the Waking Sands’ shit already, it’s detracting from concluding Cid’s character arc”, but here this time it’s constantly like “alright this is Kirile’s homeworld, Erenville’s family, etc. let’s finally get into that rather than yet another SPEAK WITH WUK LAMAT.”

And yeah, sorry got I gotta admit it to but her acting is so bad that it really detracts from the role (also cough cough Erenville cough cough). It didn’t really come up when she was introduced in 6.5 because most of the roles were silly stuff like “uwu this curry is too spicy for me”. She never needs to channel her inner Naruto. I often scoff at English dubs because they’re that typical “anime style” and they always sound terrible but meanwhile the FFXIV English dubs are generally pretty good. But this is way beyond that, this is like fundamentally missing the whole point of your character. Like you can compare “SPHENE LISTEN TO ME” with “let expanse contract…aeon become instant!” for how two different (English) characters handle their BIG CLIMACTIC BOSS FIGHT scenes.

Now of course the 2nd issue with Wuk Lamat, voice aside, is she’s just IN TOO MANY SCENES. Seriously I wish I was kidding but every time I would pause the MSQ, come back the next day and be like “ok where was I again…” and 96% of the time the quest was “Speak with Wuk Lamat“. This meme here basically sums it up:

I wish this was a joke, but unfortunately the above is true lol. It was even more painfully obvious when I did the MSQ a second time and I would frequently stream it and take breaks after 2-3 hours. The next day I’d come back and surely enough, I’d have to ウクラマトと話す because I was playing in Japanese text to compare the localizations 🤣.

Now I get it, the entire purpose of our trip wasn’t just a summer vacation in Tural. We technically came to be Wuk Lamat’s cheerleader. But you know what that’s fine. Once she became Hokage, she should just STAYED AT THE CASTLE. But no, now she has to go kill her brother and tell Sphene to listen to her 10 times. So even though we started off as going to Erenville’s hometown and Wuk Lamat finally took a back seat, that short respite ended because once again Wuk Lamat was back in our party. Hell even in the FINAL MAP where it was finally the focus on both Erenville and Kururu’s parents, Wuk Lamat is still in there like “OMG I NEED TO DO SOMETHING, ISN’T THERE SOMETHING I CAN DO”. I know, how about you go back to Tulliyolal and BE A KING and stop leaving everything to Koana yea? (　´_ゝ｀) And of course the final salt on the wound was the video I posted earlier where finally , Warrior of Light is fighting the end game primal (similar to Endsinger) and it cannot end with Wuk Lamat bursting through the ceiling like the cool aid man with her signature line.

So that’s my real issue with the expansion. I wanted to see more about Erenville’s awesome mom, I wanted to see more about Kururu’s past with her parents and Galuf ojiichan – especially since I cried for like an hour after his death in FF5. I wanted to see more about other characters, but instead we get a bootleg FF9 with an angry AI and Wuk Lamat telling it to listen to her. I do admit I enjoyed the FF9 references in the final map and I do feel like if you didn’t play FF9 it may not have been as interesting to compare all the music/decor/character references (the blatant Otis = Steiner, Wuk Lamat = Zidane, Sphene = Garnet). There’s a video here you can check out that lists a bunch of them.

There’s still a lot of unanswered loose ends like What is up With Sphene’s Mask!? and What Will Erenville Do Next!? and How Did Cahciua Die Anyway?! and What Will Happen to Gulool Ja!? and the unfortunate of Will Wuk Lamat Crash Her Way into The Story Again!? Hopefully with feedback and reviews they will keep Wuk Lamat’s butt glued to her throne with Koana-niisan and leave the adventuring to WOL and crew. Some people predict that Erenville will change jobs into a Beastmaster since he quit his Gleaner job and since he’s the master of animals, it doesn’t sound too farfetched! Either way I’m looking forward to finally seeing more stuff with characters who deserve more screentime that aren’t a derpwife Lion King.

But also again, this is the very beginning of a completely new storyline. Plenty of time to address all those other (much more interesting) stories and characters. They just gotta follow up on them now in the following updates and expansions. I mean remember, they sent off people like Aymeric and Hien and Lyse and Raubahn to go do their leader stuff rather than continuing to have her tag along with you and take credit for all your work, go have Wuk Lamat go do some administration with Koana while we I dunno, go ship off some elecrope to Sharlayan.

The Dawntrail Changes

We almost posted this post but then I remembered that aside from speaking to Wuk Lamat, Dawntrail went through quite a few changes. The biggest change was of course, the graphical update. However, it was barely what I would call an update. They changed a lot of things with heads and faces by adding more hair and face bones so people can have wild expressions (like sticking tongues out more fluidly or having NPCs licking ice cream.) Unfortunately it ended up being a disappointment to me because:

• Vieras still don’t have hats (and Hrothgars too.) Female Hrothgars are poorly modeled where all their upper gear makes them look like someone from the 80s with the huge shoulder pads. Femhroths also only have 4 hair styles which are ONCE AGAIN tied to the face. They learned absolutely nothing.

• Many “updated textures” still look like shit and modders once again have come through to make them look HD. Many things like sandals for example still look like blocks and only certain models look like actual “feet”. Once again, modders released a “face defined” which upgrades all the face textures to 4k and makes them look less pixelated.

Of course a lot of things improved. In general, the modeling of most faces has gotten smoother and less blocky. This is especially prevalent on old races from 1.0 like Elezen and Lalafells. For newer races like Au Ra and Viera it’s really hit or miss. In my opionion, female Au Ra’s look worse but I don’t play them on any of my alts so I don’t really care. Vieras I think overall look smoother but I do have to say that male Viera face 1 looked so much better this time around I had Kanade fantasia from face 3 to face 1.

Anyway mods are working once again, and I thought I could finally go mod-free for Dawntrail but with the lack of proper HD texture scaling I’m once again forced to download textures just to make the game not look like it’s from the PS3 era. Things like lighting and grass of course is a nice improvement and those who don’t /gpose will probably not notice but when you are constantly noticing jaggedy lines on gear, hair etc. it becomes painfully obvious. I know they said the graphic update will be “ongoing” but I think ultimately now that mods work, most people have just gone back to improving their textures or just straight up modbeasting so their characters look like nothing out of the game anymore anyway and they can avoid the jaggedy mess all together. 😂

A positive thing this time around was that the launch, in a long time, was actually very smooth. First of all this time we had Data Center travel. This allowed us poor saps stuck on crowded ass Aether to fly over to Dynamis, the most empty NA DC and basically play smoothly with no lag, no crashing and no DCs. The downside of course no access to retainers. However, because they also disabled world visit, nobody on Aether could COME to Gilgamesh and AFK in Limsa which they loved doing in Endwalker. So basically Gilgamesh was sort of resigned to only its population and when it crashed and the queue was above 2k, we just flew over to Dynamis where the worst queue at peak time was 50. This allowed me for the first time in years to complete the story on my main without disconnects, or waiting in an endless queue or crying and having to go to bed. In fact the one time I did get a dc with a long queue I was just standing around in town and it wasn’t anything important. I immediately transferred over and continued on my way. So for that I have to give them a hearty thumbs up. Only took them like 7 years but we finally did it. Additionally they also opened access to Materia to be the sort of “international” DC where people can travel from any DC, including EU and JP. This allowed me to finally meet up with friends in EU and JP servers so they could finally add my main, and not my many alts, to their friends list.

The final thing I want to talk about is Dawntrail got harder for healing. For tanks and DPS it’s the same bullshit but they massively increased healer checks and the boss of the level 95 dungeon will basically yeet you off if you even as much as sneeze and look away for 10 seconds. It was almost equivalent of doing titan ex back in the day what the hell? I saw various Japanese matomes being like “If I got into a duty with a healer with a newb bonus I would just immediately leave”. And now as they added the savage raid, there’s a healer strike because healers refuse to heal with dumb monkey DPS and tanks who refuse to help with the raid wides by using their mitigations. I know some people wanted a healer challenge and that’s fine but when I’m just derping away doing my dailies or trying to level alt jobs…please just let me zone out lol. Grinding my trusts was especially painful because if you die as a healer, you have to start over. I had to seriously focus on mechanics in the 95 final boss or I’d get yeeted into oblivion. A lot of mechanics were new as well, so it took some learning curve to get a hang of them all. I don’t consider myself to be an amazing player, I’m old and average at best, but I have run into players who struggle on content before Dawntrail. I can’t really imagine how they are getting through it other than being carried and I honestly feel sorry for them. I kinda wish they left the “hard shit” for savage/extrial level content and leave the easy daily stuff to be brainless. Sometimes after work you don’t wanna think, you just wanna autopilot and be done with it.

Probably the most controversial gameplay change in Dawntrail is that they made dungeons “hard”. I put hard in quotes of course because they’re not actually hard, but to the baddies they’re hard. In general before any story dungeon was an utter faceroll. Bosses barely had any mechanics and you could almost ignore all of them anyway. You would need to be so lax in order to die previously to a story dungeon boss that you’d need to get hit by almost everything nonstop, in particular things like multiple layered AOEs. This time they made the bosses much more deadly. They often don’t have telegraph markers on the ground until after the attacks go off, so you need to learn them from other tells like the boss’s movements. Meanwhile this time the attacks hit HARD. They can often oneshot squishier classes and will almost always kill you if you managed to survive but picked up the vulnerability debuff. The final boss of the level 95 dungeon even has explicit oneshot attacks that will knock you off to your death AND chains these together. That’s the kind of sequence that you’d see in like an extreme primal in terms of difficulty.

Arcadion is probably the most fun 8 man raid they’ve done so far. The whole thing is straight up pro wrestling. Like, literally so, an NPC simply walks up to you and says “yo WOL wanna join my pro wrestling league?” There is of course an overarching story with it, but as a premise it’s definitely unique compared to the usual 8 mans. Much like the story dungeons, the story mode versions of these fights are also significantly harder than previously. Much to our dismay, we have occasionally had times where we had to vote abandon because everyone else in the party could not stop dying. Meanwhile we’ve seen reports online of raiders clearing some of the savage versions without even needing a healer, so somehow Squeenix has managed to come up with fights that are possibly easier than ever for the most skilled players and harder than ever for the less skilled players.

Arcadion is also a good segue to the next point: the music in this expansion was actually probably the worst since Heavensward. The only memorable songs from the entire expansion were from the Arcadion (again, another good reason why this was the best 8 man raid yet.) The sequence of Stormblood into Shadowbringers into Endwalker set a really high bar for the soundtrack, but Dawntrail has just completely flubbed it. Yeah yeah there’s more updates and all but this is one aspect of an expansion where the vast majority of it comes out in during the initial release.

We are still laboriously leveling up all of our jobs, so we don’t know what all of the changes are like just yet for them. For the most part, the older jobs have not really changed much. The devs understand at this point that they need to avoid complexity creep and button creep each update, so this time jobs generally gain new skills that replace an existing skill when you’re doing a combo or under a buff. Pretty cautious stuff. Usually this doesn’t change the flow of the jobs too much either. They learned their lesson back in Endwalker because of how thinking “let’s give paladin a cool new magic finisher combo” completely broke the flow of their rotation and you had to start doing galaxy brained stuff like not finishing your 1-2-3 combo. So this time it’s usually just like an extra OGCD that won’t change the entire job. Very boring and very cautious, but at this point you don’t want to keep reinventing the wheel with these jobs (like in Heavensturd with stuff like bow mage) because people choose their main jobs because of the way they play.

As for the new jobs, pictomancer is obviously the girl job and viper is obviously the boy job. Pictomancer is all about storing up lots of potent painting attacks and then bursting them at the right opportunity. It’s currently sitting at the top of the DPS rankings because the very best players can optimize the hell out of that. Meanwhile viper is easily my most behated job yet. I think this is mostly because the game is insanely terrible bad at explaining how the job actually works. You press a button and then suddenly 5 other buttons light up and it is extremely non-obvious which one to press next. I still don’t understand what the job gauge represents either.

I on the other hand, hate Viper as much as I hate all melee DPS – aka I will level it up half assedly to max level and then not touch it for 2 years. Like yea I hate it, but I don’t hate it any more or less than Ninja or Monk or Dragoon or Reaper. 🤷‍♀️ Just press the highlighted buttons and yolo my way to 100. 😂

Right now the DPS rankings are fairly skewed, but also they’re skewed differently at different skill levels. In general, jobs that are based around priority systems or building up charges top the DPS charts at the absolute best of the best since these reward hyperoptimization the most, while the jobs with the most strict rotations do better at lower skill levels. Not “low” necessarily, but rather that these jobs have higher floors and lower ceilings than the burst/priority jobs. Currently there’s a higher tier which consists of the melee jobs and pictomancer (black mage I guess goes here as well but is at the bottom) and then a lower tier which consists of the ranged DPS and red mage & summoner. They could definitely stand to buff the casters, but otherwise there’s not really that much difference in the spread between the DPS jobs.

So overall I’m a bit disappointed with the Dawntrail technical updates. Dungeons that require too much healing, graphics that are still pretty mediocre. At this point it almost feels like we need FFXIV: A Real Reborn AGAIN. Looking forward to the Viera hat mod from the person working on it so I can actually use a quarter of my glamour dresser once more.