Does anyone play dragoon anymore? Aesthetically it's always been my favorite class. It seems like they get rid of a lot of annoying gauge nonsense, but still seems like a lot of disconnected abilities.
I usually do, but leveling it second this time since husband was already playing it and I went DNC. The couple of times I have played as it this expac, I can't seem to lose the muscle memory for spineshatter dive...makes me sad.
I agree with these criticisms. I still think the complete lack of interactivity in the MSQ set off a chain reaction. It's cutscene after cutscene of Wuk talking and being stupid and naive then miraculously everything works out and you move on with no gameplay. It made it even more frustrating.
Wuk Lamat basically Forest Gumps her way through the xpac.
Like the zone with the bird people - you're all trying to figure out how to fix the crop problem and Wuk is like "they're all sad, let's have the festival and make them happy!" and it ends up accidentally being the solution.
Wuk Lamat basically Forest Gumps her way through the xpac.
Like the zone with the bird people - you're all trying to figure out how to fix the crop problem and Wuk is like "they're all sad, let's have the festival and make them happy!" and it ends up accidentally being the solution.
This whole section reminded me of the Rick and Morty episode where the guy wants to die in combat to go to the afterlife and Morty asks if the dude if he has evidence that happens and sure enough when the guy gets run over he gets visibly dragged to hell. Pretty obvious evidence. We take the bird float to the reeds and we watch it suck the life force out of everyone present and magically insta-grow the plants. That's a shitload of evidence. How the fuck did these people not realize that the float did this shit?
Started skipping a lot of the early quest cut scenes, etc. I don't give a fuck about helping some witless people dig better crops or whatever. And especially don't want to read their endless discussions about it. The first portion of the story is so boring that I took a break from it to level up my tanks.
Don't really have a issue with the actor/actress who plays Wuk. It's the story itself, it's just bleh. Hoping that it gets better in the later portion. ARR was also rough to get through in the beginning.
Wuk's VA isn't good. She's prolly bad, but we've had other bad VAs and stuff before. What we haven't had is a bad VA who speaks more than twice any other VA and is the sole focus of the entire MSQ. Even conversations between other characters, she butts in and is sucking all the air out of the story so that no one else can even get any growth. Add in no fights or mechanics for long long stretches... yeah. I think its worse than ARR. ARR might be objectively worse, but I didn't have the expectations to ruin back then either.
Wuk's VA isn't good. She's prolly bad, but we've had other bad VAs and stuff before. What we haven't had is a bad VA who speaks more than twice any other VA and is the sole focus of the entire MSQ. Even conversations between other characters, she butts in and is sucking all the air out of the story so that no one else can even get any growth. Add in no fights or mechanics for long long stretches... yeah. I think its worse than ARR. ARR might be objectively worse, but I didn't have the expectations to ruin back then either.
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).
I agree with your points on the heavy handed telegraphing - it was like a kids show where they think nuance will go over a kid’s head, so nuance goes out the window
*character mumbles something suspicious*
Wuk Lamat: huh???
Character who mumbled: lol nevermind, I’m going to change the topic
One nice thing is Shadowbringers and Endwalker at least kept some things close to the chest
Every time there was a “we just need to understand what influences would cause them to make such terrible choices”, I wanted the dialogue choices - 1) room temperature IQ, 2) no internal dialogue, 3) poor impulse control or 4) all of the above.
While not a bad concept, the execution was pretty bad and it was too repetitive in many instances. Although I laughed at one moment in the final fight of the xpac
Wuk Lamat is like “ I want to tell Sphene something!” and mecha-Sphene is like “gtfo” and boots her out of the arena.
Then they had to ruin it by doing the “Gaia breaking through reality to save Ryne scene”, then she talks to Sphene and Sphene is still like “I’m still doing this” and the Wuk Lamat is “ok time to die I guess”. It just felt so fucking shoed in and out of place
While not a bad concept, the execution was pretty bad and it was too repetitive in many instances. Although I laughed at one moment in the final fight of the xpac
Wuk Lamat is like “ I want to tell Sphene something!” and mecha-Sphene is like “gtfo” and boots her out of the arena.
Then they had to ruin it by doing the “Gaia breaking through reality to save Ryne scene”, then she talks to Sphene and Sphene is still like “I’m still doing this” and the Wuk Lamat is “ok time to die I guess”. It just felt so fucking shoed in and out of place
While not a bad concept, the execution was pretty bad and it was too repetitive in many instances. Although I laughed at one moment in the final fight of the xpac
Wuk Lamat is like “ I want to tell Sphene something!” and mecha-Sphene is like “gtfo” and boots her out of the arena.
Then they had to ruin it by doing the “Gaia breaking through reality to save Ryne scene”, then she talks to Sphene and Sphene is still like “I’m still doing this” and the Wuk Lamat is “ok time to die I guess”. It just felt so fucking shoed in and out of place
She (Kate) has been localization lead since at least Shadowbringers I think. Koji Fox was promoted to another role outside the team and he had worked with her prior.
That being said, Wuk Lamat could still be a character insert for one of the writers. Ishikawa stepped away from main writing duties after Endwalker to let the junior writers have a go at it. I think she is still supposed to oversee their writing - it could potentially be one of those “Peter Principle” situations or maybe she didn’t want to stifle the other writers.
Whatever the reason, I can almost 100% guarantee you post patch stuff will get adjusted after YoshiP sees all the reactions. People had a negative reaction to Lyse in Stormblood and she got effectively written out in the post MSQ patches. I suspect Wuk Lamat will get the same treatment.
It helped Lyse a bit - she was less annoying when she appeared later
She (Kate) has been localization lead since at least Shadowbringers I think. Koji Fox was promoted to another role outside the team and he had worked with her prior.
Wuk's VA isn't good. She's prolly bad, but we've had other bad VAs and stuff before. What we haven't had is a bad VA who speaks more than twice any other VA and is the sole focus of the entire MSQ. Even conversations between other characters, she butts in and is sucking all the air out of the story so that no one else can even get any growth. Add in no fights or mechanics for long long stretches... yeah. I think its worse than ARR. ARR might be objectively worse, but I didn't have the expectations to ruin back then either.
"Pray return to The Waking Sands" and "We have no Aetherite because Uldah doesn't want to help a neutral faction, so ride your chocobo through the tunnel and swamp again" is objectively worse.
There was also the horror of NPC chain paperwork where a city NPC sent you to a town NPC sent you to a countryside NPC sent you to kill your 2 mobs or click on 3 things, then you had to go backwards through the chain to let everyone know you did it then Pray Return to Waking Sands WHEN WE HAVE A LINKPEARL BITCH, I SKIPPED THE SCENE WHERE YOU DIED BY THE WAY.
I dunno though, they seemed to have some of thst NPC paperwork again and Wut Lamat is like Minfilia is fucking following you around.
Chysamere was saying it's a Japanese character archetype?
We can't blame the SJW voice actress or SJW localisation lead. There's too much fucking text for it to be somehow good and they are not even using the good FF9 music.
I am really struggling to make it through this expac. As someone stated, having to do all this babysitting quest turns is a real big turn off. Personally, it feels like I'm a baby-sitter/grunt worker doing all this drudgery after I saved the goddamn universe.
