Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail (2024)

So, finally got around to finishing the MSQ (Main Scenario Quests) for the base expansion of dawntrail. I haven't done either of the patched content yet, so this review is based of the 7.0 experience.

So. Did I like it? Yeah I did. It didn't top either Heavensward, Endwalker or the GOAT of Shadowbringers, but it was better than Stormblood or Realm Reborn. Dawntrail is very much the first expansion of a new saga, and I think it's important to keep that mindset when going into this. It won't have the huge buildup and payoff after years that the prior expansions did. What Dawntrail DID do was some solid groundwork for a lot of new cultures and the joys and struggles that come from when cultures clash.

I enjoyed the story, but it wasn't one that gripped me, as I took 2 extended breaks before finishing. The zones are nice, but again, not the greatest. Music is upbeat and catchy, and I must shout out the dungeons as highlights! They are really thrilling and exciting! Very dynamic for sure. Anywho, this is getting a bit long for my taste, but it's hard to summarize an MMO. I would give this a ... 7.5 / 10, leaning closer to 8 than 7.

I have taken an extensive hiatus from Final Fantasy XIV because my relationship with it had become strained after Endwalker - I already had lost touch with the story, only finding some parts of it entertaining while detesting the idea of the main villain of the story being a depressing detour from what we all anticipated.

Dawntrail is the 6th installment of the Final Fantasy XIV saga: highly anticipated as being "the vacation DLC" for the WoL, it was received with negative reviews and a lukewarm acceptance even from the biggest fan of the series. Its user Metascore averages at 5.3 and its Steam Review ratio is firmly set in the Mixed zone, only recently having raised from Mostly Negative.

I bought Dawntrail (the Digital Collector's Edition) at a discount for $12.40. I do not recommend it to anyone, neither for the content neither for the story - it as a doozy to get through all of it and, as it stands, I am experiencing the same unwillingness in doing the Extreme version of the Trials I experienced upon finishing Endwalker's main bosses (as it stands, I only cleared Barbariccia (EX)).

Let's start with the good: some of the story beats are fine, for example Cahciua revealed herself to be a rather interesting character and her relationship with Erenville culminates in a okay way - yet it was dealt with too soon in order to give more space to the apex of the main MSQ. Krile's exploration of her origins is an interesting beat as well, with a bittersweet ending - this, as well, was touched on rather quick, just a couple of MSQ steps rather than something more in-depth.

But that is pretty much it.

The story itself revolves around the character of Wuk Lamat, an affable, brash, hot-headed and loud Hrothgar and her struggle in being the Third Promise in the competition to one day inherit the throne from her adoptive father. She will single-handedly rule upon every little thing you do in the entirety of this expansion and there won't be a smidge of a second you will not have to deal with her.

The plot divides itself in two sections: the Rite of Succession plotline and the Alexandria plotline.

You spend 100% of the first one with no agency over your ideas (even contesting having to meddle with an unknown country's politics only nets you a less than sympathetic 'oh you're gonna love it' from G'raha without a particular reason as to why) or even what you end up doing: you are Wuk Lamat's babysitter, through and through. What a jump, thrice over world savior to babysitting someone from a kingdom you knew nothing about, of whom you know nothing about and of which you technically do not care about.

You're offered the theme of the first plotline on a silver platter: strenght and unity in diversity - on its own it's an heartwarming notion but it's explored in a childish and misguided way, to the point where the "diversity" only lies in surface-level ideas unless we talk about the Mamool Ja. Wuk Lamat will spend quite a lot of time in convincing you that she cares about her people and that she, as you can see, wants to be their best choice... but, as you soon find out (and it is never addressed throughout the story) she knows next to nothing about the people living in Tural.

And you too will know next to nothing about them save for surface level ideas such as: one culture is good at railroads - only one railroad that takes you to one minor settlement to another one and then into the unknown, which none of them seem to be none-the-wiser, one culture is inspired by Peruvian people and is good at trading and only trading (they also have alpacas) and another culture is more inspired by the bright colors of Southern America culture and their entire thing is a festival they hold.

The Hoobigo Mamool Ja, antique 'frenemy' of the Turali people, stands to have the most in-depth reason to why there is a need to explore their history, sadly it is vastly overshadowed by Bakool Ja Ja's entire childish sub-plot and the fact that the ddifference between the Xa'bral and the Hoobigo could be resolved by a cooking a dish with different spices.

Wuk Lamat, obviously, knows nothing of all of this but surface level details so it's your job as the Warrior of Light to help her... and do her own job. You are not a character with agency, you are Wuk Lamat's very own cheersquad. That's it.

The second part of the plotline is somehow even more muddied and quizzical, considering that traveling to the First costed our companions their soul in pretty little simulacrums and it took a tool on us - yet nobody seems to even so much bat an eye about what is happening or feel the brunt of that.

Its beats resemble the whole Emet-Selch/Ascians conundrum, without having the same two DLC long building up of the why and how's they behave as such and without a charismatic leader that isn't the nth puppet with her memories reprogrammed in a way or another and without likeable characters that you don't end up annihilating in the pursuit of challenging Sphene. The prettiest map of them all (Living Memory) is contained here but you won't get to witness it in its beauty for too long.

All in all, the end is a confused mess of the impostor or not? trope gone into the realm of a child's tale.

The content is lackluster, using only three trials and plenty of dungeons to boost up its playtime but forgetting to make any of them visually or mechanically interesting. All the mechanics can now be summed to have different markers to trick the player into double thinking an attack the enemy is making, only for it to strike them and kill them. At the same time, they thought their player-base casual enough to simplify old trials such as Good King Moogle Mog and Keeper of The Lake's final boss.

The only pro of this DLC is that it will end at some point in the patch cycle and there is a possibility Wuk Lamat will be given the Lyse treatment and never be seen again.

In a lot of ways, Dawntrail feels like the beginning of a new era for Final Fantasy XIV.

• It’s the first expansion whose story is not part of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga that began back in 1.0 and is instead touted as the beginning of a new story arc.
• It’s the first expansion to launch day-and-date on Xbox consoles after the systems finally got access to the game earlier this year, meaning that FFXIV is no longer a de facto PlayStation console exclusive.
• A big graphics update overhauling the lighting, improving the foliage rendering, adding new anti-aliasing methods in the form of TSCMAA & DLAA, as well as upgrading the dynamic resolution scaler to utilize DLSS or FSR (with the latter being used on consoles, Macs & non-RTX GPU sporting PCs and PCs with RTX GPUs having both available) for upscaling and more accompanied the expansion’s launch.

So… how did one of the biggest MMORPGs in the world kick off this new era? Pretty well, I’d say. Is it as epic, stellar & emotional story-wise as Shadowbringers & Endwalker? No, it’s not. But Dawntrail wasn’t trying to top them either. It’s ultimately an expansion that aims to reset the stakes of the story, lay down the building blocks for the next decade or so of the narrative & begin addressing the lacking difficulty & group content of the last 2 expansions.

Speaking of, let’s start by talking about probably the strongest part of Dawntrail: the content. As I just alluded to, while Shadowbringers & Endwalker were heavily praised for their incredible stories that surpassed the quality of many of the single-player mainline Final Fantasies… the group content was a bit more sparse than it was in Stormblood & what there was proved to be fairly lacking in difficulty and cookie-cutter in design outside of the Ultimate raids. It got to the point that, by the end of Endwalker’s content cycle, many voices in the community felt as though Yoshi-P & Creative Studio 3 had, in their efforts to avoid repeating the mistakes World of Warcraft made over the last 10-15 years in catering too much to hardcore players & keep people playing every day, gone too far in the opposite direction & given players little reason to log in at all once you reach endgame…

Fortunately, I can happily say that Dawntrail’s dungeons, Trials & Raids are (so far) much more creative & challenging than FFXIV’s been in these areas since Stormblood. So many new mechanics are introduced throughout the MSQ dungeons & Trials that throw you off balance and force you to adapt on the fly, making for a more fun experience. Are some of the endgame dungeons a bit too difficult? Yeah, I’d say so. But overall, this is a strong step in the right direction. If the currently available content is any indication, then Dawntrail could give Stormblood a run for its money in terms of having the best group content in FFXIV’s history by the time the 7.X patch cycle is over!

Speaking of Stormblood comparisons… that brings us to another area where Dawntrail mirrors Stormblood: its unexpectedly (unless you’re Yoshi-P) divisive story. As mentioned earlier, Dawntrail brings the stakes & narrative back down to earth (mostly) after the more cosmic, worlds-ending stakes of the last two expansions. One way the game does this without depowering or otherwise nerfing our Warriors of Light is by shifting the story away from being about us like the last two expansions were & instead taking another page out of Stormblood’s book by focusing on a different character. Specifically the new character Wuk Lamat. Now, personally, I liked the shift. It allowed CS3 to tell a lower-stakes story without invalidating the growth & power we’ve accrued over the years. Plus, seeing my Warrior of Light take on more of a mentor role in this expansion was a lot of fun after bearing the weight of the universe for the last two expansions. And all the other new characters are good, too. They’re all both well-written & mostly well acted (even if the English dub feels a bit more inconsistent in audio quality than previous expansions & overall a step down in the quality of acting). But, I’m not gonna act like this isn’t one of FFXIV’s weaker narratives.

Now, on to that graphics update. This, for me (as a bit of a graphics nerd who watches Digital Foundry on the regular), was probably the most exciting part of this expansion. And it sure did deliver. Just having better anti-aliasing in TSCMAA & DLSS (with DLAA being used if you’re above your desired frame rate; DLSS & DLAA are also only available on PCs with Nvidia RTX GPUs)) In my opinion, it does wonders about the game’s image quality. The Dynamic Resolution Scaler introduced in Endwalker has also been improved with the addition of FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 & DLSS. Not to mention the lighting & foliage improvements!

Conclusion: Overall, Dawntrail, while a good expansion in terms of gameplay & changes to the game as a whole, is a little rough from a story perspective. Dawntrail is a promising start to the new era of Final Fantasy XIV, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

Ratings:

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 9/10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 9/10

Business Practices score: 8/10

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 9/10