FFXIV: Dawntrail - First Impressions

This past week has been an extremely important one for the Final Fantasy XIV community. Coming fresh off the heels of Shadowbringers and Endwalker– what I would consider the best two MMO campaigns I've ever played– the game's newest expansion, Dawntrail, has some pretty big shoes to fill. Over the course of the past few days since the start of early access, I've been playing through its offerings and I'd like to put the proverbial pen to paper to talk about my first impressions.

Lots of new things were added or changed in this update, ranging from the usual new content (6 zones, 2 classes, etc.) to female hrothgar being added as a character creator race, and the graphics update overhauling a lot of the game's visuals. There's a lot to cover here, so let's just dive into it!

The Good

Easily, the largest change made in this update was the highly anticipated graphics update that's been teased for nearly a year now. One of the largest complaints that I've heard from friends who tried the game and then stopped before finishing ARR was that the game didn't look that good, which was a fair criticism. A Realm Reborn launched over a decade ago with initial support for Windows and the PS3. A few years later PS4 and MacOS support was added, but the limiting factor for the game in terms of what it could do graphically was the PS3. That restraint existed right up until Stormblood's launch in 2017, when support for it was dropped and the game's visuals took a step up significantly. (I'm looking at you, Shinryu trial.)

Now, seven years later, the developers sought to give the game another visual refinement while this time making it retroactive, affecting all character models and most environments from previous expansions. And oh boy, is it night and day.

Player models look much more lifelike with more accurate skin tones and the new lighting system to compliment it. Environments are much more detailed and look great. And all of this came with (at least for me) negligible performance difference thanks to new support for frame upscaling solutions like DLSS and FSR. I am a huge fan of the changes and thoroughly believe that they make the game look so much better.

On that note, the new regions are some of the most detailed and beautiful ones yet, ranging from the lush environments of Yok Tural to the shimmering districts of Solution Nine. Visually, Dawntrail's additions are some of my favorites yet.

When it comes to instanced content, I honestly think that this is some of CSIII's best. Dungeons were challenging, occasionally reaching into the previous expansion's raids to pull out tricky mechanics and turning them up to 11. Some personal highlights were... honestly pretty much every boss from Skydeep Cenote onwards. During my first Duty Support run for each dungeon, I would be put on my ass at least once for most encounters. I really appreciated the challenge and want more.

Same deal with the trials, every one of them was exceptional in both visuals and mechanics. I'm particularly fond of the last two simply because I'm a sucker for futuristic art styles. And the reward mounts being wings is just kickass. This honestly might be the first update where I seriously consider dipping into EX trials.

This expansion also introduced two new jobs to the game: the melee DPS Viper and caster DPS Pictomancer. For my first playthough of Dawntrail, I decided that I wanted to complete it on one of the new classes, and considering my current affinity for melee classes, I chose to pick up Viper.

I love this class. It's so fast paced and a ton of fun for people who just want to push buttons. Rather than having a traditional 1-2-3 combo like most classes, VPR uses a tree of action pairs that replace themselves on your hotbar as you attack. Pressing either action within each pair will progress the combo, but depending on the sequence you input, you'll get various buffs or inflict your target with a debuff. This results in a class that feels very different from the rest in terms of basic GCD combat, which I really enjoyed.

Each of the final skills in the combo grants you a buff which enhances a different final skill, which results in you having four paths down your combo tree that you cycle through, and doing so refreshes your other buffs while you're at it. Open each combo with E if your target debuff is under 20 seconds, otherwise Q. Then just press the yellow boxes as they light up. It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

It has absolutely zero defensive skills and is purely focused on offensive oGCD double weaving. As such, I expect it'll join its brother Dragoon as a floor tank type of class, but when it's executed well... Oh man. I can't wait for IINACT to be updated so I can see the kinds of numbers this job puts out.

I haven't gotten the chance to play with Pictomancer yet– leveling Viper to 90 in a single day took a bit of my soul with it and I need a break for a while– but from what I hear, the class is extremely strong and somewhat over-tuned at lower levels. So much so that in some dungeons Picto deals enough damage to pull aggro off of tanks with stance on! Not to mention, it's the first caster to also have a party buff! I think it's a great addition to the game and I'm excited to see how the community warms up to it.

New blacklist changes are great and long overdue. 2 channel glamour dying is also wonderful, minus the few pieces that use the second channel for minuscule things like the threads that hold buttons onto a shirt. The music for the two new hubs and all of the major story beats are fantastic. Overall, systems and content-wise, I think Dawntrail brings with it a lot of strong additions to the game, and I'm super stoked to see how they keep this momentum going in the post-patch content.

The Bad

I'll say it. I don't think that the narrative this expansion lived up to the quality standards that Square Enix set after releasing Shadowbringers and Endwalker.

Of course, everyone's allowed to have their own opinions and I know several people who thought this expansion was peak; there's nothing wrong with that. However, I just felt like I had to exercise willing suspension of disbelief a lot more than I have in previous expansions, and that seriously affected how I experienced the story.

I understand that MSQ commentary is a bit of a hot topic in the community right now so I'll try to tread lightly. That said, I also can't stand fans who immediately dismiss any slight criticisms by calling their authors "cutscene skippers" or idiots who don't know how to read so I'm also going to try to qualify everything I say just to prevent this kind of behavior. I love this game just as much as they do, and that's why I think criticism is a good thing. I always want the game to be better.

First off, I think that the visual novelization of the MSQ went a little too far this expansion. There were several parts of the MSQ where I realized that I had been sitting there for several hours just watching cutscenes and was asking myself when I would next be able to fight something or when the next activity was. For some people, hours of exposition is something they enjoy, but I personally would've appreciated this story was a little more interactive.

As for the actual story, Dawntrail can be broken down into three main parts: Act I (The Succession), the intermission (Shaaloani), and Act II (Alexandria). I'll go over each in sequence.

I didn't really have any major problems with the premise of Act I. I disagree with the sentiment that the keystone competition was just Gulool Ja Ja making the competitors do a bunch of chores; there's obviously more nuance to the tasks than that. I appreciated meeting the various cultures (especially since I'm part Peruvian and immediately had an affinity towards Urqopacha) and I also enjoyed gleaning the insights that arose as a result of completing these initially mundane jobs. It was all kind of campy, but that's honestly part of its appeal.

I also think that it's okay that we're deuteragonist once again this expansion, and agree with the sentiment that our WoL is due for a bit of a break after the events of the last two expansions. Our characters are mostly developed making it hard to write good stories for them, so I understand why they made us a mentor this go around.

Our mentee, Wuk Lamat, was a great addition to the cast but whether you like her or not I think mostly comes down to if you enjoy how kitsch or trope-y she can be from time to time. I think Sena Bryer's a wonderful person and portrays the character well, no issue there, but I did find Wuk Lamat's writing a bit underwhelming. It's not that I didn't enjoy her upbeat personality or her occasional gags. (Ha, get it?) Rather, I just expected someone competing to become the leader of a nation to have a bit more depth, especially considering we've already seen many leaders grow into their positions in past stories.

Aymeric had to learn to deal with and live alongside religious loyalists who wanted him killed. Hien went from being a defeated nihilist in self imposed exile to becoming the head of the eastern resistance, leading an assault on and subsequently destroying his childhood home just to deal a damning blow to the empire. Young G'raha Tia matured into the Crystal Exarch and was willing to turn himself into a ticking time bomb and jettison himself into the rift in order to save the people of The First. Wuk Lamat's character arc consisted consisted of a naive and hotheaded hrothgal growing into... a slightly less naive version of herself. Putting her side by side with all the other influential characters of this game, her progression just felt a little... superficial, I guess.

I think the writers tried to make the attack on Tuliyollal her main turning point, but for me this fell flat because it felt like a weaker rehash of the attack on the Crystarium during Shadowbringers. Putting the two events by side, I felt Lyna's response was way more heartrending, with her line deliveries there still being some of my favorites from the entire game. Wuk Lamat cried for about twenty seconds on screen, blew some steam off on the dock, then after hearing like six words from us, screwed her head back on and became dead set down her revenge path.

For most of the story, it felt like she had one note: "I have to ensure the happiness of my/all peoples." (Later "I have to stop Zoraal Ja/Sphene" enters the mix but they also fall under the first note's umbrella.) Very one dimensional to me. For someone who has experienced has as much trauma as she has, I feel there should have been more nuance to her decisions and motivations. I honestly think that Koana, a supporting character, had a more meaningful pivot than she did. She deserved better.

I'm not upset with how Act I ended. It was around the Many Fires campfire cutscene that I started thinking that Wuk Lamat and Koana being joint leaders would be the best solution if they could work that situation out. That exact situation ended up playing out the next day I logged on, so I was kind of pleased that I was able to predict it beforehand and felt that the act ended with the best possible outcome.

After Act I came the Shaaolani intermission which I think was the area I enjoyed the most throughout the entire MSQ. This was surprising to me considering that western cowboy themes aren't my vibe at all, but I genuinely enjoyed this chapter. We went from what felt like an extremely long (albeit rewarding) escort mission to casually adventuring again, which more aligned with what I was expecting from our "vacation." It was the first time since A Realm Reborn that I felt the whimsy of aimlessly exploring an area with no pressure, and I really appreciated that.

I will say though that I thought it was a bit weird that we didn't immediately go and explore the gate to the City of Gold, as that seemed like a pretty major story beat to leave untouched for the time being. Later in the story, it was even revealed that the late Gulool Ja Ja told his successors about the gate after the inauguration. I feel twofold about this. First, considering the kind of adventurer that our character is (or maybe just my WoL is) the gate probably should have been a bigger focus than Xak Tural. Second, I feel like it's hard for Gulool Ja Ja to talk about the gate without mentioning the key that came with it, at which point he might've noticed that it was missing and then sent us off on a search for it instead? But whatever, I digress.

Most of my gripes with this campaign come from Act II.

I felt that, for as grand of a reunion as the Scions getting back together was, they really didn't do much here. Estinien just did his own thing in cowboy land till it was time for the big fight. Urianger and Thancred were basically just cheer squad for Koana the whole time. Y'shtola did fuck all and only had like 10 lines throughout the entire story. Why were they here? It almost felt as if they were tossed in for fan service or mascot reasons. I would have been much more happy if the roles the Scions played throughout this story were instead filled by new characters– or maybe older unexplored ones, similar to Krile– who would have become our merry band for the next few expansions. Alas, that didn't happen.

It honestly felt like the writers for Act II didn't feel like introducing something too new out of either A.) a temporary lapse in confidence or creativity, or B.) a fear of increasing narrative scope beyond feasibility. Instead they just grabbed a lot of interesting concepts from past stories and tried to make them work together, and this would have been fine if they had built upon them in any substantive way, but most of the time it just felt like we were retreading old story beats. Every time G'raha turned to me and said "This reminds me of Ancient Allag or The First!" I didn't feel surprised or amazed. Mainly just "Oh, so this concept's making a reappearance. Cool, I guess."

It's hard to put into words exactly why I feel this way. Maybe it's because this expac's main story beat revolves around souls, a concept that that has already been thoroughly explored in the stories from updates 5.1 through 6.5. When souls were reintroduced in Alexandria, this time as a comoddified means of resurrection, I was honestly a little disappointed that we would be forced to talk about them for like, the fourth time. Deep down I wanted something new, and that just didn't happen.

Time de-synchronization between shards was neat back in Shadowbringers because it allowed the scions to develop without us for a while, and then when we finally followed them we were able to see how they grew without us. On the other hand, I felt Zoraal Ja's 30 year timeskip didn't really do much. His older self still came off as the arrogant and jealous warmonger that he went in as, and they didn't really touch on how those 30 years affected his character at all beyond making him more powerful. You know how good authors say "Show, don't tell?" This time skip felt like it had lots more telling than showing.

Dimensional fusion would have been a lot more interesting to me, but given the context of the past few expansions, I find it very hard to believe that a device that posed this much of a threat wouldn't have been mentioned or alluded to earlier. I mean, for the entire story up to this point– hundreds of hours of storytelling– we've made a huge deal about how the only way to rejoin worlds was through calamities and unprecedented amounts of destruction. Now all of a sudden this goblet-key is introduced with the power to fuse shards... with a fraction of the effort? And it has Azem's symbol on it? This feels like the kind of tool the Ascians would commit unspeakable acts to get their hands on, so why are we only hearing of it now? It's supposedly just been gathering dust in some stone vault this whole time? Also, the key now makes shard hopping trivial after we made a huge deal of how hard it is over the past two expansions' patch quests? The item feels like it's missing a lot of backstory to justify its introduction and certainly needs more fleshing out in the months/years to come.

I also wasn't a fan of Living Memory for the same reason I wasn't particularly impressed with the focus on souls: it kind of just felt like a retread of a previous story beat, namely Shadowbringers's Amaurot. Both Emet-Selch and Sphene strove to preserve their people's legacy at any cost and were willing to sacrifice countless lives to be able to do so, either via calamities or new age soul imperialism. The main difference between these two was that Emet's psychosis was much more established and built upon. Sphene's entire arc happens within the span of three levels worth of quests, whereas Emet-Selch was introduced two major patches before his expansion even launched. This gave him way more time to express himself and give us glimpses into his motivation, and made Amaurot's revelations feel much more significant than Living Memory's.

The pacing in this zone was particularly bad in my opinion. I get that it's been a Final Fantasy XIV staple since Shadowbringers to reserve the final zone to be the wildcard we have to explore before fighting the final boss, but it's growing old. Even though the narrative was written to allow us time to do so, I felt that being forced to act in a play and take a casual ride in a gondola while the threat of fusion loomed overhead... It was just too out of place for me. I found it really hard to care about the emotional beats they were trying to hit home here as I was laser-focused on stopping the big bad. The only storylines here that were actually somewhat interesting to me were the backstory of the Milalla, Krile's reunion with her parents, and Erenville's goodbye to his mother. That's about it.

I also really don't like that Living Memory becomes drab grey brick once you're done with the MSQ, which takes it from being the most visually stunning zones in the expac to the most boring. This is made even more baffling when you consider they had to remodel most if not all of that zone to make it look that way which... I guess it makes sense for the sake of story but it's just a lot of human capital that could be better used elsewhere, I think.

There are plenty of other questions and issues that I could mention here but if I went into detail for all of them we'd be here forever. We're bordering on 4600 words already, so I'll try to keep these somewhat brief:

• Why didn't we see any ramifications from the final days and the blasphemies in Tural? Were they not subject to the events from Endwalker? If so, why?
• The Mamool Ja retcon of "actually we weren't uncivilized this whole time, we just act that way when we're abroad" rubbed me the wrong way.
• I didn't like how Bakool Ja Ja went from this utterly vile and despicable antagonist to pitiable baby boy over the course of, like, 2 cutscenes. He kidnapped Wuk Lamat. He set Valigarmanda free and put the lives of countless people at risk. Thanks for helping defend Tuliyollal, but you've still got shit to pay up for.
• I really didn't like how our character just stood by and watched as Zoraal Ja revived himself. I feel like that sort of event is unprecedented and surely should have warranted the party's intervention. A case of me desperately wanting my WoL do to something, and just not being allowed to by the writers.

• Why not tell Sphene that we can use porxies to cure aetherial sicknesses, for instance with the one kid that had levin sickness in Solution Nine?
• If Sphene can just swap host sentries at will, then why did Otis have to die like that?
• I hated seeing the key appear after the Everkeep trial and being forced– once again– to watch as my WoL stood still as stone while Sphene marched right past us and used it to do Bad Things™️. Just seconds before, it dropped from the corpse of one of the main antagonists right after he just turned into a god to try and kill us! It's clearly an important item. I cannot explain how badly I wanted my WoL to rush and pick it up. Alas, we couldn't. (Sidenote: The void gate in the sky didn't render for me here so I thought the blank skybox was intentional until I saw other people play this bit lol.)
• Why did Yoshi-P tell us to study up on our convocation members in prep for this? For most of the story I was assuming that Deudalaphon was behind the goblet but he never showed up. I was stoked when I saw the mask room in Asyle Volcane, but they didn't elaborate on them at all. Maybe these are seeds planted for patch quests or a side quest I haven't done yet, but I was kinda disappointed in the lack of immediate payout.

I see a lot of people on Twitter saying stuff like "People don't like Dawntrail because they can't handle a more casual story" or "Final Fantasy players don't like the Dawntrail because they don't like being happy." And as upset as these facetious remarks make me, they also clearly show that the authors haven't played through Act II yet. Or at least didn't experience it the same way I did. This entire act almost felt out of place, like the writers were concerned that players wouldn't be invested if there wasn't a global threat at the end, so they put something together just to warrant a feeling of urgency. It worked to a certain extent, but it wasn't nearly as satisfying as I wanted it to be.

I don't know, I was just disappointed in this section. It wasn't as creative as I was hoping for and felt at times like things were happening for the sake of progressing a plot rather telling a convincing story. It's not that this act was bad, it's just that it's not as good as it could have been, and that's why I'm upset.

Ultimately, I just think that Dawntrail suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. If it was solely a more detailed and interactive version of the succession arc, I think it would have given Wuk Lamat and Koana time to become exponentially better characters. On the other hand, if the story was more focused on Alexandria and its ethical/psychological dilemmas, then it would have granted Sphene and Zoraal Ja the same boon and made Living Memory much more influential. Instead screen time is split between the two, which gave neither act the time it needed to truly shine.

I also feel like it's worth mentioning that I haven't played FF9 or FF11, so a lot of the references didn't mean much to me.

Once again, this is just how I feel and anyone's allowed to disagree. I'd like to reiterate that I still love this game, and I don't say anything here in bad faith or with the intent of hating on the game. This post has a comment section if you'd like to discuss anything or point out any discrepancies. Maybe my opinions on this story will change after a second play through but for now, it is what it is.

The Conclusion

Even with what I would consider a lackluster campaign, I still think that the Dawntrail expansion has a lot of promise. Content difficulty and satisfaction is at an all-time peak. The two new jobs have been met with lots of acclaim. We're also poised to get a new raid series, an alliance raid series, another treasure hunt, more lifestyle content with Cosmic Exploration, a new limited job in Beastmaster, and a new field operation– which we haven't seen since Bozja and Zadnor in Shadowbringers. If CSIII is able to deliver on these promises and meet player expectations, then we're all in for a treat these next two years!

All of that is to say that I think that Dawntrail's standing ends up as follows:

In my opinion, Stormblood also had a lackluster story but brought with it great content offerings, so I think it's it's only right that I pair the two together. It's still a very good expansion. This opinion might change for the better as the post-patch content is introduced, but we'll have to wait and see.

I hope you all are enjoying the content as much as I am! I'm hype for the raid tier coming out in a week or so and I'm definitely going to be spending a lot of my time leveling until then. I hope you all have a good one, and I'll see you all in Tural!