#does Wuk Lamat have a lot of weaknesses

[fheythfully]

"I liked Dawntrail a lot" I tell myself as I rewrite parts of the story for my own enjoyment and debate with my friend about the character growth of Wuk Lamat and Koana and realize that no, actually, I did not like Dawntrail's story decisions or Wuk Lamat all that much and I'm tired of pretending to myself that I did 🤡

[tritoch]

Have you got any thoughts to share about Sphene? I saw your post about how misrepresented FFXIV’s female characters are, and I’ve been hoping to see anything more than the typical “Evil AI colonizer etc.” or “Tragic woman who can never change ever” or “Wuk Lamat’s girlfriend”. Maybe our interpretations will differ but I’ll be happy if you can provide anything more complex than those.

Sure! Throwing all this under a read-more for anyone who hasn't finished 7.0 yet. I think I'll probably expand on this more later but wanted to get initial thoughts down. (Note after writing: I meant this to be brief but uhhhh brevity is not my strong suit sorry. This take just sort of ends abruptly because I realize I'm rambling.) Again, spoilers through the end of 7.0 MSQ.

I think Sphene is the sharpest work the game has done yet in casting the antagonist as the noble double of the protagonist (a well it returns to a lot with Emet, and Zenos, and Golbez, and...). But because the protagonist here is Wuk Lamat and not the Warrior of Light, that's also a much more defined and interesting role. To me, Wuk Lamat is, above all, the Righteous Queen, who rules thoughtfully, wisely, and justly, and whose claim to the throne is justified by her moral clarity. Sphene, in turn, is also a wise and good queen, one who undertakes all her actions with her people first in her hearts, a sense of compassion towards all, and a clear eye for the consequences and costs of her intended course of action. And it leads to utter disaster, for her, her people, and the people of Tural. That rocks!

The first half of 7.0 is about justifying the fact that Wuk Lamat's going to be Dawnservant. Wuk Lamat is compassionate, curious, wise, and open-minded. She wins over rebels and malcontents not by asserting her authority or by strength of force, but by taking her obligations to them (as her subjects) seriously. She knows many of her subjects personally and takes a great interest in their lives, and she respects even those who openly oppose her.

And everything Wuk Lamat does, Sphene does to 11. Wuk Lamat respects her subject peoples and is curious about their cultures? Sphene forcibly annexes Yyasulani, but goes out of her way and expends Alexandria's limited resources to enable the remaining Xak Turali to live in their accustomed way if desired (…to the extent allowed by the new permanent lightning storms and the internal conflicts caused by regulator adoption). Wuk Lamat cares about her people not just in the abstract but as individuals? Sphene visits sick kids, knows them by name! Wuk Lamat understands the burden of rulership is too great and cedes half her power to her brother? Sphene recognizes her own weaknesses and makes a deal with the devil to keep Alexandria's culture alive! Wuk Lamat is willing to die for her people? Sphene will forcibly traumatize herself into being a better queen, if that's what rulership demands.

For an expansion that spends the first half being like "wow isn't this perfect candidate for the crown so likable and humble? wouldn't it be nice to be ruled by a good king?," it sure is funny that the final boss is THE QUEEN ETERNAL and she hits you with attacks like LEGITIMATE FORCE and ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY and ROYAL DOMAIN. This, to me, is Sphene's role: she complicates and questions the themes we've developed in the first half. Most importantly to me, she makes us ask: what is devotion to a people or culture even worth?

There's a thing I kept thinking of constantly during Dawntrail, not because I think it directly influenced the game in any way but because the parallels were so stark and startling. It's Jonathan Hickman's New Avengers #18 (2014). Truthfully, I'm not a big comics guy; I only know this sequence because Ta-Nehisi Coates cited it as inspiration for his Black Panther run on Twitter once (I also didn't read TNC's run, I was following him for politics talk). Forgive me, comics people, if I get any details wrong. The parallels are almost comical, though. It goes like this:

A superhuman secret society formed of some of the smartest heroes (and villains) in the land re-forms to oppose an existential threat caused by incursions from other dimensions that threaten to cause literal collisions between Earth and its alternate dimension counterparts. Seeing no other alternatives, they undertake work on a weapon to destroy these other worlds. T'challa—king of a fictional hyperadvanced nation called Wakanda, and also the superhuman Black Panther—meets with his ghostly predecessors, the previous Black Panthers/kings, for he fears the moral stain on his soul and the souls of the people of Wakanda, if they survive explicitly by killing their alternate counterparts, will be too heavy to bear. His ancestors are not impressed.

To them, there is no question at all. A king's duty may be complex in the execution, but it is simple in its conception. Your people come before all others. Always. This is, must be, the fundamental ethic of a good king. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the social order on which this imagined good monarchy is built. In a situation like this, the only option is to do what you must to protect them. "Will there be a cost? Yes. Might the universe burn? Let it. . . . You will kill them all if it means Wakanda stands. The golden city must never fall."

"I will do what I must" is Sphene's guiding principle. It is so important to her that when she recognizes that her sentimental attachments are making her waver in her duty, she severs them entirely, sacrificing her whole identity to the throne. It is also implicitly Wuk Lamat's position: she has no choice but to fight Sphene because to do otherwise would be to fail to protect her people. In fact, it's briefly even sort of the Warrior of Light's position, as when you tell Sphene before her trial that you understand what you must do, which is shut her down to protect others.

(One quick thought about the Warrior of Light: one cool thing about the antagonist this time being a double in a more exact way than Emet or Zenos is that it means other characters get a chance to relate to her differently than Wuk Lamat. The Warrior of Light, for example, is pressed into her service immediately upon your first meeting as the Queen's Champion, there to defend her if need be against all evil. This role is further affirmed by both robot Otis and Endless Otis, who essentially hand off their role as her knight to you, and reinforced when you flash back to the "might I call upon your aid" moment right before the end. Except, of course, you are loyal not just to her, but to the principles she represents, which her own acts betray, and so your ultimate act of aid is to essentially pass judgment on her and execute her. In a sense, you become the internal safeguard that a political system is supposed to have to protect against this very issue, and which Alexandria explicitly lost when it cast out/forgot Otis. Very Voeburt/ShB tank quests, it owns.)

But really, it's Sphene who embodies this sort of grim logic best. Aside from her transformation into the Queen Eternal, it's also why she suggests you simply become Alexandrians. It's the only way for her to reconcile her values and worldview, which have backed her into a corner where preserving Alexandria has come to mean a maximalist declaration of war on all life outside its borders because the kind of absolutely pain-free life she envisions for her citizens is completely unsustainable.

In this reading, one of Sphene's main beats is to unsettle what has preceded her in MSQ. In nearly all respects, she shares your values. She prizes life, is curious about other cultures, believes in the greatest good for the greatest possible number. But she is also a queen, and therefore irrevocably (in her eyes) tied to her state. Gulool Ja Ja and Wuk Lamat (and Koana) are the mythical wise rulers, thank god--but what if Wuk had inherited a Turali state that wasn't desperately in need of cross-cultural understanding, but one in a state of war? What value would her deep love for the people of Tural have held then? Sphene says, it would have held no value. If the survival of your people means harming the innocent, you harm the innocent. Kingship allows for no alternatives.

But she also concedes, in the very next breath, that she is still kind of wrong. Because what happened here was not inevitable, despite her programming (a brief note: to me Sphene being programmed is exactly the same as Emet being maybe-tempered, it's a fantasy gloss on the idea of social and cultural education. "I was programmed for this" is really no different from "I was trained and educated for this"), because the truth is that this kind of thoughtful, principled devotion to the state and its people is also a form of sentimental attachment, in the end. One that is maintained not because it is natural, and necessary, but because the monarch, too, likes it, and gets something from it.

In so many ways, in so many senses, the monarch is the state. Kings and queens may fancy themselves merely a reflection of their people's needs and desires, but of course even a cursory glance at history will tell you that far more often, states reflect their rulers. Sphene and Wuk Lamat both suggest that their conflict was inevitable, but was it? Or is the truth, as Sphene glancingly acknowledges here, that she turned her own fears and desires into the same policy goals that led to this tragedy? And if so...what does that say of our Good Queen, Wuk Lamat? Perhaps this could be different if they met earlier, says Wuk Lamat. But when? When did Wuk Lamat ever not love her people so dearly that she would not have sacrificed herself for them, or caused mass death for the sake of their survival? When did Sphene not believe the Endless to be people, or the preservation of Alexandria to be the most important thing? Maybe she means "had we met before you met Zoraal Ja," but of course, we the player actually saw their meeting. And we know that Sphene even then was not the hapless naif she'd like to pretend. She always knew exactly what she was doing.

We know the price of this kind of thinking, this Hobbesian view that states are engaged in a struggle of all against all. Living Memory lets you walk through it. To preserve Tural, we exterminate the Endless. We befriend them, learn about their lives, promise to remember them, and then we destroy them and their homes, leaving nothing but a bleak blank landscape and the sound of wind. This is what Sphene would have done to Tural and Eorzea. Indeed, it's what she's already doing to the people of Yyasulani, because no amount of well-intentioned aid can make up for trapping people under the dome for 30 years and systematically eroding their culture through the resonators.

To me, this is what makes Sphene really work, that way she has of forcing Wuk Lamat and the player to commit the same kinds of sins she has. We'd like to think ourselves better than her, but of course, we've already reconciled with and integrated Mamook's brutal eugenicist regime back into Turali society well before we ever met Sphene. At the end of our long "wow isn't having a wise queen cool???" expansion, we are met with "Legitimate Force" and "Absolute Authority" and see them for what they truly are: nothing but tools of violence. No longer does the idea of the Warrior of Light hanging around Tural as Wuk Lamat's advisor have the same attraction, now that we have been reminded of the way the putatively unquestionable logic of kingship can ultimately lock even the wisest and kindest rulers into a path of war and exploitation and destruction.

I think Sphene is FFXIV's most interesting and nuanced depiction yet of a leader. She really, truly, wants nothing more than to save her people and protect them from pain. But even seemingly loving and compassionate goals like these can readily lead us down dark paths. She's a "hard men make hard choices"-type character, a noble but misguided opponent, but as a loving and elegant fairy queen instead of a grizzled knight or extremely sad man. She fucking rocks.

[anneapocalypse]

On the role of outsiders.

One thing I think makes the Scions' relationship with Wuk Lamat unique isn't that they're mentoring her--I don't really see it as a mentor relationship and for various reasons I think it's better for it not to be that--but that, as outsiders, she finds that she can show vulnerability with them that she's only rarely been able to show with anyone else.

When we meet Wuk Lamat in 6.55, it's pretty heavily telegraphed that she's posturing a lot to cover up some personal weaknesses or insecurities. This made me really curious about her, who she was and what that overconfident demeanor was covering for. And when I got into Dawntrail and started getting to know her, I wasn't disappointed.

(No Wuk Lamat hate on this post, please. Any responses clearly trying to pick a fight will be removed and blocked without reply.)

Wuk Lamat has a couple of foils in this story, but a big one is Sphene, and I love @unmovingtroika's description of Sphene as "unpersoned to an extreme degree." And as a distorted mirror of our main character, Sphene reminds us that any person in a position of authority or heroism is depersonalized to some degree, no matter how down-to-earth or benevolent.

Gulool Ja Ja is really presented to us as very much a people's ruler, the charismatic blessed siblings who united the peoples of Tural through curiosity and open-mindedness and understanding. And that may be largely true, but it's also made of him a myth, a legend inscribed in stone and memory. Meanwhile in the course of Dawntrail's story we also meet the real person Gulool Ja Ja... at least, the one who's left. The man who has spent three years grieving his brother, his ever-present companion, the Reason to his Resolve, a man who for the sake of political stability has had to hide his grief and loneliness from even his own children, as he does his best to carry out the work they had begun together, and complete the Rite of Succession in his brother's absence. And if there are places where Gulool Ja Ja failed to foresee the potential negative outcomes to the Rite, like Bakool Ja Ja's actions endangering his people, we might see there in hindsight the Head of Reason's absence in the final stages of the Rite's preparation. And we see, in some of Zoraal Ja's anger and resentment and insecurity, a glimpse of the ways in which the people's Dawnservant might have failed his own son.

One of Wuk Lamat's early growth moments is when the Scions convince her that she doesn't need to try and hide her obvious seasickness--an affliction she can't help, and which represents no failure of character on her part but which is, well, embarrassing. I love that she seems to particularly connect with Alisaie, who's had her own experiences of feeling inadequate next to her sibling, and feeling the need to prove herself on her own terms.

Could Wuk Lamat have been convinced to drop the act by her allies if they weren't outsiders? The problem is that everyone else in Tural, even her own siblings, are the people she'll have authority over if she wins. Erenville frequently rolls his eyes at his old friend's posturing, and fairly so, but Wuk Lamat doesn't behave that way just because she's insecure. In the same way that her father has had to conceal the death of his brother even from his own children, Wuk Lamat recognizes the danger of showing weakness before the people she will have to rule--especially when she's already aware of her reputation as being less qualified than her brothers. But these outsiders from Eorzea are different. They're allies who will never be her subjects. In private moments, she can be a person with them. She can be vulnerable. She can be Lamaty'í.

(Incidentally, I think this is also why I found Sphene calling her Lamaty'i so unsettling. Initially it seems like a simple misunderstanding, an outsider mistaking a very personal nickname for someone's "public" name. But in the hindsight of what we learn about Sphene, I think it feels a lot worse. Sphene is, consciously or unconsciously, pushing past the walls of formality and reticence that necessarily exist around a ruler when interacting with most people--nevermind a foreign head of state whose intentions are unknown. She's positioning herself as a friend when she is not.)

As the story progresses, we learn the Wuk Lamat and Koana have always been close. Now, in the Rite of Succession, they must treat one another as rivals and can no longer share confidences--at least, at first. Koana's love and protectiveness of his sister emerges with a vengeance when Wuk Lamat is in danger--and I'd venture a guess that he, too, feels safer showing this sudden vulnerability before his allies and those of his sister, because again, they will never be his subjects. While we get only briefer glimpses of Koana's journey with Thancred and Urianger, I'd guess that their friendship has affected him in similar ways.

One of the benefits of blessed siblings is that they are never alone. They bring two perspectives to any situation, but they also have one another to confide in, to understand, to commiserate over the burdens of leadership in a way they can't with anyone else, not even family. Wuk Lamat and Koana taking on the role of Dawnservant together brings the benefit of their very different strengths and perspectives to their people. But it also means that neither must take on those burdens alone. When their allies depart, they will still have one another. There will always be someone at their side with whom they can just be a person.

The tragedy of Zoraal Ja is that he's evidently never had that kind of relationship with anyone. The myth of his seemingly miraculous birth has depersonalized him from the very start. All his life, he has carried the burden of living up to the expectations of the Resilient Son, and has never enjoyed the close relationship his brother and sister have with one another. To the very last, he attempts to live up to the legend alone--and he fails.

One of the biggest themes throughout Final Fantasy XIV is standing together. There is strength in companionship and cooperation, but for that strength to flourish, there must also be trust and vulnerability. Wuk Lamat and Koana ultimately find that in one another, as siblings and co-rulers, but the Scions play the important role of offering them an outsider's friendship in their journeys when they are cut off from one another, and would otherwise be alone. As Ketenramm and Galuf Baldesion once were to Gulool Ja Ja, the Scions to Wuk Lamat and Koana are neither mentors nor subjects, but companions and friends.

[lilbittymonster]

holds up a very tired peace sign

Final roundup thoughts are that Dawntrail was a nice expansion. It wasn't amazing. It wasn't awful. I won't be up at night thinking about it. I won't be calling it the worst expansion ever. It was just....nice.

It told the story it wanted to tell very neatly. The writing has really bounced back from the nightmare of pacing issues that Endwalker had. The stakes were raised in a gradual and believable way. All it's loose threads were woven together neatly by the end. Wuk Lamat had a strong positive character arc without sacrificing her core personality. Koana had the necessary growth to realise that innovation and progress are not at odds with tradition. I think they compliment each other's weak points well.

Most of my nitpicking about the expansion lies in how the writers seemed to be trying to make a WoL x Wuk Lamat....thing happen, and I very much did not care for it At All. It's the same problem that I have with how the Exarch is written in ShB where we cannot say 'no' to him at any point. And frankly, being able to say 'no' is not something that would make the story come to a screeching halt. That's just lazy writing. I would have preferred if we were given dialogue options that gave us more agency in how we interacted with Wuk Lamat. Because the whole forced "we're family now :) you can call me Lamaty'i :)" was REALLY rubbing me the wrong way because, again, there was no way out! I could not at any point say "no, Wuk Lamat, I do not see you as family, you are assuming a level of relation here that just doesn't exist." Kitali wouold have flat out told her "no I'm not calling you that, we aren't family" and no amount of sad wet kitty eyes from Wuk Lamat could make her budge.

Kitali did not want to be here in the first place. She didn't sign on to be a participant in yet another political struggle. She was here with her husband on vacation and to keep an eye on the twins. That's it. And that's what she does for most of the early succession arc. She only gets called into the MSQ when the kidnapping happens, and she and Thancred are off doing their rogue shit together. She and Aymeric stick with the group until the end of the Valigarmanda trial, and after that she goes back to ignoring the political machinations.

It was Aymeric who dragged them along to Yak T'el, and Kitali wound up spending more time with the vipers than anything else. I haven't been bothered to actually level the job, but it's yet another dual wielding job to add to her repertoire, she'll be fine at viper day camp while the MSQ happens. And making sure Aymeric doesn't die of spice while they're there. He's gotten better but he is still very Ishgardian. Kitali would have been more interested in exploring the Ja Tiika forest and wallowing in her nostalgia for Rak'tika than anything else. They aren't there for the blessed siblings lore dump, but they tag along for the Skydeep Cenote dungeon as backup.

There is not nearly enough Estinien in this expansion for my tastes but at least I know what he's doing once he leaves Sunperch, so that makes my job easier.

I'm sure I'll waffle back and forth a bit on it by the time I actually get around to replaying it and writing out fic for it, and by the pace I'm going at it'll be several years from now, but it makes the most sense to me for Aymeric to remain behind in Tuliyollal following the attack. He isn't there for a lot of the Solution 9/Heritage Found stuff and they wouldn't see each other again til the final zone. He and Estinien would be sharing guard duty at the gate waiting for Kitali to come back through.

I kind of enjoyed not having Kitali be the main character of the expansion the same way she wasn't the main character in Stormblood. I really don't feel like it had to be the Warrior of Light with Wuk Lamat for the trials of succession arc. It just needed to be a strong adventurer. And even once the plot twists kicked up, we still weren't the main character, but being the WoL and our past experiences did end up being important enough to necessitate our presence. Compared to the previous two expansions, it was such a weight off Kitali's shoulders. Still, again with the "the whole world depends on me to save it" exhaustion, but lighter in comparison.

And Wuk Lamat ended up being the one to actually save it with the power of friendship. Love that for her. I'm glad that they kept her characterisation solid throughout the whole expansion.

I don't have any true investment in the expansion. I enjoyed it, but I'm more interested in the little bits and pieces about the future of interdimentional travel that they've been poking at since ShB ended. And if I'm being honest I think I'm starting to burn out on the game entirely. I've been meaning to replay some other games for a while now, and I think I need to take the time to do that and recharge.

I'll end this post with the best screenshot of the game.

He's gonna be a great dad some day.

[oddnub-eye]

Throwing my hat into the Dawntrail review ring now that I've had the time to sit on it.

Pacing is definitely Dawntrail's weakest point, but I think an...underrated feels like a weird word to use here, but its all I got, so underrated "weak point" of the expansion is that a lot of it feels like a lot of the set pieces can fall victim to a bit of player dissonance.

Like, the biggest victim of this is Valigarmanda, who gets a ton of hype in the build up to his trial, but as you settle in for the fight, they start hyping it because its a big bird that controls the weather and -

Oh hey final boss of 3 expansion ago, what are you doing here?

Its not totally unexpected from an expansion meant to set up a new story arc, but it feels like a fair few of Dawntrail's set pieces suffer from the sequel problem of "Member of the old cast is way too strong to scale to a challenge that would reasonably be a satisfying challenge for the new cast"...except they can't write around that problem because the overpowered question in character is you, the player character.

Like, the scenes where Koana reminds Wuk Lamat that she hasn't surpassed her father yet because Valigarmanda hadn't fully recharged its aether or when Allisae talks about how dreadful fighting the shade of Gulool Ja Ja would have been if Koana's team hadn't helped just like

Don't land.

Not 5 levels ago in the Endwalker Patch Quests we had a scene dedicated to our allies hyping us up about how we've overcome every challenge possible, right before we smack around what amounts to a voidsent primal made from fusing a dragon and the remnants of fucking Zodiark's aether. In Endwalker proper, we outright kill Zodiark, fight the Endsinger into becoming Metion again, beat Zenos, etc etc. There's nothing in Dawntrail that makes me go "yeah, this is a reasonably high stakes situation for the Warrior of Light" until Sphene and Alexandria come in. And that wouldn't be a problem, but it also feels like the expansion wants us to feel the same level of triumph we get from actually overcoming the challenge like it did in previous expansions - and while its fun on a gameplay level, when it tries to give that same feeling on a story level, it all falls apart.

One of the best set pieces in the expansion is the duty where you play as Wuk Lamat to fight against Bakool Ja Ja. The Warrior of Light is removed from the situation, complete with dialouge options to be a bit cheeky about it:

(say hi to Klar everyone)

You can be encouraging or warning or just outright trollish. Its the same as back when Wuk Lamat was kidnapped and the Warrior of Light captured Bakool Ja Ja's attention so well they were able to set up Thancred and Koana up to do the actual important parts of the rescue.

These are both set pieces that write around the Warrior of Light extremely well while letting the new characters take the spotlight - Wuk Lamat's duty allowing her to affirm her growth and show off her resolve by defeating Bakool Ja Ja in a one on one, and Koana showing his care for his sister by being the one to actually catch her.

Ultimately - in spite of going on about it for 6ish paragraphs, this is a relatively minor nitpick. It's something I only really felt for a moment before getting swept into the excitement of the next story beat, and only really bugs me further on deeper reflection. But it does contribute to a feeling that I think is the root of a lot of people's issues with Dawntrail (that being that the Warrior of Light feels really awkwardly implemented).

Most of the set piece issues do utterly vanish once we hit solution nine, however. Zoraal Ja going full Vergil in particular absolutely fucking rules.

That being said, outside of the pacing (which has been talked about enough) and the hit-or-miss nature of the set pieces, Dawntrail is a very good expansion. In particular, I think Dawntrail really shines in its characters.

Wuk Lamat is a very fun character to follow (and she better be, given how central she is and how much circles back to her). Her character arc is less about needing to grow or evolve her ideals, and more about needing to refine them and understand what they actually mean. Its not a particularly dramatic transformation, but it is nevertheless fun character growth to watch.

Bakool Ja Ja is Bakool Ja Ja. What else is there more to say.

Koana went in a character direction I really wasn't expecting. While his ideals and vision is thoroughly proven false, the background with his abandonment provided a background to those ideals that I didn't expect going in, rather than him being set up as someone purely enamored with progress for progress' sake. Staking his anti-tradition viewpoint in his birth parent's abandoning of him also set up a fun contrast where he is able to make the decision his birth parents weren't: he's able to change his ideals to accommodate for the people who matter for him, his birth parents weren't.

Zoraal Ja is fucking goofy. And I love him for it. There's a lot to read into his character - and he probably would have benefited from like...an echo flashback or a few more levels to let him stretch his muscles, but ultimately his themes of expectation and how they crushed him do come through. It is also the case that he spends most of the expansion doing Metal Gear Villian monologs, gets really close to becoming a cyborg, and goes full Vergil complete with summoned swords. He may not have been the most cooked antagonist, but he had insane amounts of sauce about it.

Sphene. Sphene Sphene Sphene. Admittedly, I did not have the best first impression of Sphene. I streamed a lot of the back half of dawntrail to the homies and so a lot of Sphene's screentime was eaten up by us going "i don't trust her." and fossil fuel jokes. However...Sphene gets stronger the longer you have time to sit and think on her. Sphene's in-built purpose to preserve Alexandria at all costs was always going to clash with the base of "Queen Sphene" that she was built on - and one was always going to break. Its very reminiscent of the tragedy of Elidibus, who was so dedicated to his purpose that he, ironically, forgot what his initial motivation even was. Elidibus lost his reason, and Sphene ultimately resolved to cast aside "herself". Bringing the "meta" aspect of the inevitability of tragedy to the literal text of Sphene's story only makes the overall tragic nature of her story that much stronger, in my opinion. Ironically, that "criticism" of how untrustworthy Sphene seemed that I referenced earlier ends up being retroactively heartbreaking: you watch as Sphene builds up sympathetic scene after sympathetic scene with the knowledge that you'll probably confront her eventually, just like she does.

Her trial does, however, suck shit. Which is a little disappointing since most of the dungeons, duties, and trials absolutely knocked it out of the park in the gameplay department.

That's another thing that's really good about Dawntrail. The combat and design of most of the encounters felt really good. It was challenging without being frustrating (except for Sphene), and everything felt learnable without sacrificing challenge. It makes me really want to actually do the raids for this expansion right away instead of putting them off like I have the rest of them (although I probably should do Bahamut and Pandaemonium first for story reasons).

Solid story, extremely solid gameplay, with one moderate flaw I didn't even bother to talk about and one nitpick I blew up into 6ish paragraphs. All in all, I'd say that's a damn solid - no, damn good, expansion.

[mentorcrown]

okay i have slept on it and now have somewhat coherent thoughts about the dawntrail msq... less mad than i was when i first finished the game lmao

tl;dr overall it was an okay expansion. not a great one but not bad either. im looking forward to seeing where the game takes us

in terms of where id rate it in my personal scale-- where my personal scale does not indicate i hate an expansion, just that i dont enjoy it as much as other ones-- its below stormblood but above heavensward.

personal scale now: shadowbringers > endwalker > stormblood while zenos is on screen > rest of stormblood > dawntrail > heavensward while ysayle is on screen > ARR > rest of heavensward)

rest is under a read more because it contains blatant spoilers for the MSQ

things i loved

i loved all the ff9 references. ff9 is my most beloved game

i love you wuk lamat. i love you koana. i love you erenville.

the dungeon/trial design is top notch. lots of fights in endwalker feel very flat and not at all challenging. not this time. everything was great. it was engaging. parts were difficult in a good way. loved how even it was basically the same mechanics we've seen before, it was presented in interesting ways

dragons?? in MY dawntrail??? more likely than you think aka mission status sick cutscene

gripes(??)

the pacing was off. some parts felt completely unnecessary. especially the weird cowboy bandit thing ill be honest i could not have cared less than i did. i think that entire map could have been better spent focusing on the nomadic cat tribe(s).

first half of the story was stellar i loved that. it was a bit too expositiony in parts but i still loved every part of the first half (desert story not included). (this was at least partly because by my wife is an anthropologist and was fangirling the entire time)

second half was weak as fuck. i dont know why they needed to rehash the same thing we've seen the past 2 expansions. we did not another emet-selch archetype. i feel like the entire S9 stuff could have been handled so much better than it was.

the theories that people had pre-release about how s9 was likely a hidden city that did trade with the rest of tural. and that one of the brothers were likely working with them to destabilize tural; that story would have been so much better. they still could have had it be a shard idc. they could have kept the azem stuff too. i just did not care one little bit to have emet-selch/amaurot 2.0.

hated the "we have to save the world but lets fuck around as much as possible while our friends hold open the gate" plot sooo much. i get why we did it but holy hell the pacing shift from 'this is world ending' to whatever the hell was going on in the golden city was like Why.

did find the krile parents and erenville mother thing soft though. even if i am still livid about how they dangled erenvilles mother in front of him several times. the poor guy

i dont care about the scions. i DONT CARE about the scions. STOP SHOWING ME the scions. why are these old people not retired yet. rehash the scions. give me a new main cast. the twins and graha can stay.

[ferrocyan]

2, 3, 17, 21 for the ask game Gotta get that Tart Lore

2. first thing to do in tuliyollal: go to the resplendent quarter, oh wait sorry that's what i do haha. man not to be lame but having something of my culture present in my favorite game feels so fucking good. but what tart does first thing is check out the adventurers hub, and that would be.. wherever the role quests are, i assume. otherwise he's sticking close by krile. he's rly excited to get to spend time w her for now!

3. initial impressions

wuk lamat: very ambitious. tart really likes that in a leader. he was intrigued enough to come all the way across the sea, but seeing her decide on how she wants to realize her vision of peace cements tart's belief in her completely. tbh he's naive enough to brush off gulool ja ja's concern for wuk lamat too www he's totally on board w her being the dawnservant. tart does look down on her combat abilities though. what kind of warrior has no defensive buffs (grumble grumble)

koana: pretty impressive. ...uhh so i wrote tart out of the part where wuk lamat got kidnapped, alisaie was the one doing all that stuff, so. tart never interacts w koana and has no opinion on him -.-)b

bakool ja ja: nothing. when erenville said at their first appearance that bakool ja ja has no vision for how he'd rule beyond winning the contest, tart completely discounts him. he does find the fight with wuk lamat interesting, though, and after everything's over he hangs out with bakool ja ja a lot. the mighty calls tart his lackey and he's cool w that www

zoraal ja: a mirror. tart recognizes a lot of himself in zoraal ja, in his fixation on warfare and his demeanor and lack of resolve. zoraal ja's ideology is so weak it's ridiculous. and tart definitely laughed on finding out that zoraal ja named himself the king of resolve to sphene's queen of reason. beyond the recognition tart also projects on zoraal ja a lot, in how he thinks that men like them are nothing but tools and zoraal ja was stupid for fooling himself into thinking he could become a king, when in reality he was just a tool for sphene's resolve. tart's just using him as a medium for self-loathing. he doesn't think much of zoraal ja otherwise.

17. family and legacy: i gotta admit i don't find the family theme resonant for tart at all, but legacy? oh fuck. sphene is someone made to preserve her people's legacy to the point of killing others. that really makes me think back on how tart has treated his parents' legacy up to now, and i realize that he's been ignoring it. he's resigned that it will keep being erased, he doesn't try to preserve it but instead focuses on making sure c'astarhte kasvert will be known and remembered by the world. his own legacy is all that matters. so seeing sphene fight so hard to preserve all her citizens, even those who had died, throws into sharp relief how little tart has done for his own family. he feels terrible about it! sphene inspires him so much to do better. tart really admires her as not just sphene the queen of alexandria, but sphene the endless who carries all her people's memories.

21. summary of the journey: witnessing the rise of a great ruler. wuk lamat has proven herself to all of her people, as well as the world outside tuliyollal. there is no greater honor than to take part in her journey.