Last bitch for a while, but I swear the DT trailer is just a troll. You’re sitting there dreaming of all the cool fun stuff you could be doing in the new world, food and drink, game hunting, treasure maps, old ruins to study, etc. And then fucking Erenville wakes us up to remind us why we’re going on the trip: to chaperone a toddler with an axe.
If you are going to reference a Final Fantasy game, you need to either stick very close to it (Ivalice raids) or only take an aesthetic/sound (FF4 dungeons, FF8 raids).
What they did here was reference FF9 too closely while being inferior to it, and they referenced the first hour of FF9 and not any of the interesting lost continent stuff. Then they crammed it all in one zone, I barely count Living Memory as an actual proper zone or story.
There are a number of unforgivable things:
1) 3 zones of succession nonsense and 1 zone of nothing before the plot starts. Last zone is barely anything.
2) Showing the soul infusion animal transformation and you only ever fight 2 people using it, rather than being some sort of antagonist general faction.
3) Having the time flow differential again, but only two NPCs are hit by it, one of which you've never met (Erenville mother) and one of which you met in the previous shit zone and probably skipped. They could have aged up Alphinaud/Alisae and even Graha Tia, they could have killed one of the extra scions this way like Urianger since Krile can fight now.
4) Enemy faction is reskinned stuff but neon, the soldiers have 1 variation. This is despite the Otis model looking better and The Eliminator boss looking SIGNIFICANTLY better.
I feel like it's a reskinned story, reskinned NPCs and way less voice acting and characters than normal.
The dungeons and raids are GREAT though.
For story:
ARR 5/10
Heavensward 8/10
Stormblood 6.5/10 (Doma is a 7, Ala Migho is a 6)
Shadowbringers 9/10
Endwalker 9.5/10 (Lose half a point for Labyrinthos)
Dawntrail 4/10
If you are going to reference a Final Fantasy game, you need to either stick very close to it (Ivalice raids) or only take an aesthetic/sound (FF4 dungeons, FF8 raids).
What they did here was reference FF9 too closely while being inferior to it, and they referenced the first hour of FF9 and not any of the interesting lost continent stuff. Then they crammed it all in one zone, I barely count Living Memory as an actual proper zone or story.
There are a number of unforgivable things:
1) 3 zones of succession nonsense and 1 zone of nothing before the plot starts. Last zone is barely anything.
2) Showing the soul infusion animal transformation and you only ever fight 2 people using it, rather than being some sort of antagonist general faction.
3) Having the time flow differential again, but only two NPCs are hit by it, one of which you've never met (Erenville mother) and one of which you met in the previous shit zone and probably skipped. They could have aged up Alphinaud/Alisae and even Graha Tia, they could have killed one of the extra scions this way like Urianger since Krile can fight now.
4) Enemy faction is reskinned stuff but neon, the soldiers have 1 variation. This is despite the Otis model looking better and The Eliminator boss looking SIGNIFICANTLY better.
I feel like it's a reskinned story, reskinned NPCs and way less voice acting and characters than normal.
The dungeons and raids are GREAT though.
For story:
ARR 5/10
Heavensward 8/10
Stormblood 6.5/10 (Doma is a 7, Ala Migho is a 6)
Shadowbringers 9/10
Endwalker 9.5/10 (Lose half a point for Labyrinthos)
Dawntrail 4/10
lmao I guess half way through the story. Pretty much every dialogue choice I was like 'is there really no other option? I don't agree with any of this shit'.
There was a way to present this story as either like B plot comedy or foreign novelty. Instead they tried to play it straight and it was bad.
Also I noticed a bunch of bad word choices, such as at one point they use penultimate when they mean ultimate, another they use enormity to mean big, use phrases like "right side of history", the translation is really mediocre at best and done by leftists without a dictionary I guess.
Comparing Wuk Lamat to ARR Alphie is interesting. ARR Alphi was annoying as shit, but at least had competence to back him up. His comeuppance though was like honey.
The reason the voice acting bugs me, and perhaps this is a me thing, is it keeps ruining the suspension of disbelief. Every step of the way I kept finding myself questioning why am I helping this person? This petulant child would be the downfall of her country if she becomes leader. Nothing about her inspires any belief she should be allowed anywhere near rulership. So every time she opened her mouth in a cutscene I just wanted to nope out. Only reason to put her in place is if I wanted a puppet and running the damn thing myself. This is especially worsened by the examples of leaders we've had before. Hell, I'm not a fan of Lyse but she stood head and shoulders above what Wuk is present as in the English.
JP comes off as earnest, yet unsure and growing. It makes the trip around the nation to learn and grow feel much more on the mark.
Again this may be just a me thing but it was extremely jarring and immersion breaking in the EN.
She has Hispanic SJW voice acting, where this person is the avatar of all hispanic people so can do no wrong and always must be 100% friendly. Thankfully she's not dropping in random spanish words, but she does have the taco obsession the trope normally has.
Imagine if Doma had Japanese accents and everyone liked sushi, or if Thavnir had Indian accented elphant people eating curry... oh wait...
Having global accents is fine, but you can't start half way through so the Arab and Japanese people already have English accents.
Now someone tell me why Erenvillie has a Spanish accent and his villiage is USA American.
As expected, first half of story nothing more than world building and setting up characters for latter half which was the real story. A lot of people wondered which direction next couple of expansions would go after Endwalker balancing exploring more closer to home stuff on the Source (New World, Meracydia, etc) or go with more fantastical sci fi stuff visiting more reflections (still 4 out there I believe that we either haven't visited/haven't been rejoined). Guess they went for a mix of both, but went pretty deep into the sci fi realm with a LOT of questions still unanswered going forward.
Without getting too deep in the muck yet, sketchy to show the Queen's crown in the end credit scene when people in the Sphere noted it's a special kind of regulator that's more powerful than normal ones. Also obviously the Key the WoL gets at the end going to have a massive influence on stuff going forward. Pretty telling it reacted to the magic of Azem's stone.
All the lore about Krile's people potentially being refugee's from the Source during the aftermath of the 5th Umbral Calamity was interesting as fuck. Some lore nerds correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the calamity caused by lightning the 2nd Umbral Calamity? If all that is true that would mean when they jumped ship originally to avoid the aftermath of Ice Calamity they ended up going back in time before the LIghtning calamity happened on the reflection they fled to. Very odd when they had the small room with the planetarium in the 3rd area of last zone it had a planet with 3 moons around it.
Since rating base game and expansion stories are popular, might as well list mine as I see them now:
ARR - 5.5
HW - 8.0
SB - 6.5
ShB - 10
EW - 9 (would be slighlty higher, but patch content brought it down)
DT - 7.5 but with chance to go up to an 8, depending on where they go with patches
I never worry too much about references to other FF games when XIV does it. It's all fan service anyways, and frankly I've never been a big IX guy anyways. It's good, but game gets slower and less fun the further away from Mist Continent you get (other than Vivi's story bits, which are all fantastic). Was neat to hear references in this, with some musical bits as well.
Could have used a few less tribes to get to know in the early part of the MSQ, just trim it from like 7 to 4 or 5 tops. Thought most of the main characters they did a pretty good job with. Wuk Lamat is just the somewhat whiney/sappy type, but at least felt like she earned a bit of the journey it took her on. Although I'm quite all right if they just leave her a cameo character beyond this expansion anytime they get everyone together for the power of friendship scenes.
I don't know if this somehow kicks off the next 10 year saga in XIV, but they've definitely opened up a lot of potential lore and questions to still answer. I'm sure there will be some minor local troubles in patch content, but I hope they start delving into some of the bigger stuff, too.
As always, music was stellar. Going to spend way too much time in some zones. Dungeons/trials were pretty damn great. I hope the raid series delivers on a similar level.
So, just got to the 5th zone. Enjoying the story so far, but I enjoy seeing the different cultures and locations, plus I'm always down for character driven stories. Definitely more of a Stormblood expansion where its more about the other characters than the WoL but I've been ok with that. Just had back-to-back WoL character deep dive expansions, so its nice to just let my character breathe and play more mentor. But I can fully understand if that rubs some people the wrong way or if its not the kind of story they like or want.
Spoilers for the story to this point:
Zoraal Ja, you will always be a punk ass bitch; 30 years of extra training and cyberization and your half-dead old man still beat you like a ragdoll so hard you had to kick in the cheat codes and sneak attack to win. I do dearly hope I get to finally throw down with you just so I can kick your ass myself.
That said, the 5th zone went in a whole different direction than I was expecting and I just met the queen lady so we will see how this goes.
Oof feel like holding off from what I’m hearing. I was such a huge fan of shadowbringers that even endwalker was a bit of a letdown (tho ultima Thule really made up for it). It sounds like it’s a long way down for this xpac.
stupid jp, why don’t they just keep having the sb writer do all the stories? Swear it’s some rigid structure they have in place that they just won’t adjust
Oof feel like holding off from what I’m hearing. I was such a huge fan of shadowbringers that even endwalker was a bit of a letdown (tho ultima Thule really made up for it). It sounds like it’s a long way down for this xpac.
stupid jp, why don’t they just keep having the sb writer do all the stories? Swear it’s some rigid structure they have in place that they just won’t adjust
Stick with it. Just swap voices or whatever. Mechanically, the game is extremely enjoyable. I am just going to pop this one up to mid story doldrums. It really feels like the whole first part is super forced just to move us into a position for the rest of the story. I am not a fan of it, and it worries me going forward if they are going to be able to maintain previous quality, but at this point I'll give one freebie, but it really does feel like when your DM is trying to make up an excuse to move you all to a new plot hook and you just accept it in order to let the rest of the story happen.
But so far, finally getting into the fights and all has been rewarding and I've found myself rerunning those a bit whenever the story makes me want to brain myself.
It was literally already fucking established that if you tried to fight or harm an elector, you're immediately disqualified, there's plans already in place to get the message out, etc. And yet, here we are fucking again with Bakuul Ja Ja being a dumbass and going to kill an elector. STOP CONTRADICTING YOURSELF GAME JESUS CHRIST. This giant ass fucking sloppy plot holes are killing me. It's so poorly fucking done.
It was literally already fucking established that if you tried to fight or harm an elector, you're immediately disqualified, there's plans already in place to get the message out, etc. And yet, here we are fucking again with Bakuul Ja Ja being a dumbass and going to kill an elector. STOP CONTRADICTING YOURSELF GAME JESUS CHRIST. This giant ass fucking sloppy plot holes are killing me. It's so poorly fucking done.
Skip everything until you get to the third aetheryte in the 4th zone.
Don't torture yourself trying to understand these people, there is no deeper meaning or payoff.
Transfurry Wakka wants to be Hokage.
Latino Graha Tia wants to outsource everything to Sharlayan, destroying the local economy.
Lizardmen have daddy issues.
Some interchangable Scions are here for fanservice, they really didn't need to be here.
That's it for the fucking stupid succession arc.
The boss mechanics and difficulty in the dungeons/raids are the best I've ever seen, it's just a slog to unlock them.
Dawntrail should have been called Down the Drain. Sooner or later all the games/IP's that people love are gonna fuck you in the ass. And if you don't like it, then you're a bigot
Finished, overall I'd say it was alright, not great but not that bad. I felt the story suffers from poor pacing, too many parts take way too long for what they're doing.
I didn't mind the succession arc or Wuk Lamat in general. Not my favorite character but as far as noble/royalty templates, she's pretty standard in what's done with anime/light novels in japan(the other archetype is the rich sheltered young lady/lord kind of thing). I do think it dragged on too long probably, I think cutting it to 2 zones would have been better(like half zone 1 half zone 2 then zone 3, like how they usually do it). I don't really get the complaints I'm seeing here about it being too "political" or too much about "friendship" or whatever, it feels exactly the same as usual? This is Final Fantasy in general, and especially XIV, all the themes are pretty much this? Unit the countries into one big alliance, befriend the dragons to end the war(and kill the evil religion people while at it), free the brown and asian people from the white imperialists, save a random world that probably didn't even matter because a dear friend called and then finally use the power of hope to defeat despair(in space).
The second arc was more interesting for sure, but a lot of it is bungled by weird storytelling stuff. I think one of the things they do especially wrong is trying to make the viewer(or well players but not much playing) feel smart by guessing stuff ahead of time with subtle hints. Only that the hints are anything but subtle, it's very hamfisted and happens a ton, and then there's a reveal that surprises no one but the characters(who apparently lost parts of their brains at some point). It ends up feeling like it also drags on because you already know the stuff and you're just waiting for the characters to catch on. Also the Shadowbringers "the last dungeon is cool story with the character doing the voice over" is starting to get stale. It was a nice dungeon but hope they don't pull that shit again next expansion. Also a lot of parallels with Meteion and Sphene roles.
If I was to rate it I'd say 5 or 6 or so, roughly the same as Stormblood. Has good bits but too much stuff that I felt could be cut without much issue.
Art is still great, the new engine stuff makes every zone look a lot better, the dungeons and zones in general have awesome vistas, the music is still top tier stuff(don't really get the complaints about that other than night time theme for a few zones which is the meh slow tempo piano only theme take). Pictomancer is great, Viper I find just as boring as I thought it'd be(while still forcing you to look at your bar or gauge a lot to figure out what's next button instead of having a reliable rotation).
Finished, overall I'd say it was alright, not great but not that bad. I felt the story suffers from poor pacing, too many parts take way too long for what they're doing.
I didn't mind the succession arc or Wuk Lamat in general. Not my favorite character but as far as noble/royalty templates, she's pretty standard in what's done with anime/light novels in japan(the other archetype is the rich sheltered young lady/lord kind of thing). I do think it dragged on too long probably, I think cutting it to 2 zones would have been better(like half zone 1 half zone 2 then zone 3, like how they usually do it). I don't really get the complaints I'm seeing here about it being too "political" or too much about "friendship" or whatever, it feels exactly the same as usual? This is Final Fantasy in general, and especially XIV, all the themes are pretty much this? Unit the countries into one big alliance, befriend the dragons to end the war(and kill the evil religion people while at it), free the brown and asian people from the white imperialists, save a random world that probably didn't even matter because a dear friend called and then finally use the power of hope to defeat despair(in space).
The second arc was more interesting for sure, but a lot of it is bungled by weird storytelling stuff. I think one of the things they do especially wrong is trying to make the viewer(or well players but not much playing) feel smart by guessing stuff ahead of time with subtle hints. Only that the hints are anything but subtle, it's very hamfisted and happens a ton, and then there's a reveal that surprises no one but the characters(who apparently lost parts of their brains at some point). It ends up feeling like it also drags on because you already know the stuff and you're just waiting for the characters to catch on. Also the Shadowbringers "the last dungeon is cool story with the character doing the voice over" is starting to get stale. It was a nice dungeon but hope they don't pull that shit again next expansion. Also a lot of parallels with Meteion and Sphene roles.
If I was to rate it I'd say 5 or 6 or so, roughly the same as Stormblood. Has good bits but too much stuff that I felt could be cut without much issue.
Art is still great, the new engine stuff makes every zone look a lot better, the dungeons and zones in general have awesome vistas, the music is still top tier stuff(don't really get the complaints about that other than night time theme for a few zones which is the meh slow tempo piano only theme take). Pictomancer is great, Viper I find just as boring as I thought it'd be(while still forcing you to look at your bar or gauge a lot to figure out what's next button instead of having a reliable rotation).
In Heavensward everyone hates each other, so it feels earned when you quest to build trust/depose leaders and get everyone working together at the end.
In Endwalker you never quite get the Garleans on side, killing yourself to avoid being helped happens TWICE. So it's an interesting dynamic and still is since it's not fully resolved.
In ARR the city states don't really have conflicts, so wheh they do the big "now we are united" speeches it's shit.
In Dawntrail everyone is already working together, so you don't do anything.
So here's what I'm talking about story wise though:
After you go through the entire opening story arc and all the nonsense that is, there's an event
attack on the city
and then one of the characters says "oh we hate to involve you in our affairs" or something like that. Bitch, what the fuck have you been doing the entire time until now???
It is just sentimentality and there's nothing earned story wise. Everyone is always friends or enemies. There's apparently no strangers or intrigue or nuance, and any of that is basically just surface deep like "hmmm mysterious man in black robes wonder what he's up to!" then 5 minutes later he is either your best friend or the new bad guy.
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