It’s now been about a month (somehow) since Dawntrail launched, so I assume most of us have finished the MSQ, and I’m curious about your thoughts!
For me, I actually really enjoyed not being the center of attention the whole time. It was a nice palette cleanser from the last ten years. It was fun to tag along see this whole new continent. Of course, things do end up getting more serious than that, and I was impressed they were able to get me to care about all these new people so quickly.
The new dungeons and group content all felt good. I liked that none of it seemed to be pushovers, and myself and my friends died several times figuring out the various boss battles — which is a good thing!
I just finished the story last night so I’m now at the point where there are some new quests which I assume will open up some new content. So I have no opinion there yet.
But what about you all?
I agree with you that there are some pacing issues for sure. I won’t be too spoilery for your sake, but I did feel like a couple bits do resolve rather quickly.
However, I’m still digging the vibe and enjoying thinking about where the future of the story may go from here. I’m also really easy to please, ha.
Finished MSQ last night, entered the final zone Saturday evening and I genuinely feel like it single-handedly brought the expansion down to “officially worse than Stormblood.”
I progressively became more and more upset with it. It literally got to the point where I teleported to the Ondo Cups so I could retrace my steps down to Amaurot so I could remind myself what a good final zone felt like, and it was night and day, all the emotions and stakes when I was in that zone immediately came back to me. Meanwhile all this stuff going on in Disney Unlostworld had me feeling absolutely nothing. I could appreciate the usage of music and cutting it out to really sell how quiet everything is after shutting down each terminal, but the story there was so rushed and half-assed I could not find it in me to care. Krile deserved better, Erenville deserved better, we all deserved better. Alexandria the duty was pretty much exactly what I imagined the final zone itself was going to be, instead it’s just a crappy rehash of Amaurot and Doma Castle but worse and less memorable in every way. I was more excited to see Enki from FFXIII reused as enemies. The fights were at least pretty fun.
And then the game just immediately throws you into the final boss arena, no build up, no cutscene, nothing. Of course pretty much all of what we do get is emphasised on Wuk Lamat, because ANIME and literal Talk-No-Jutsu. The music was unexpected but cool, the fight was fun, the visuals were cool, the EX is going to be a great time I’m sure, but they really had to cram the anime protagonist into even that one more time, it was more funny than it was emotional, and then the cutscene at the end is more of everything that came before it, WoL thrown to the wayside, everything focused on the cat, and then it’s just kinda over, we wake up outside the Mess Terminal and the credits literally start rolling, and then they have the audacity to roll credits on the other Scions and characters like they did anything, we get the in-game version of the trailer basically and it’s officially over.
MSI Gaming wakes up after finding out the queen is dead and we have a normal raid that’s just gonna be a romp with no impact to the greater journey.
Yeah, I would’ve been happier with where I left off in my other comment, everything after that was a spiral into mediocrity. The pacing completely botched this entire expansion, it feels like they crammed 2 expansions worth of story into the second half of the MSQ. They didn’t give me enough time to care.
Everyone should apologise to Stormblood.