Just finished the game. Quick thoughts:
Overall, very good B+ expansion. Good first game in a new series by mostly new team leads. Looking forward to where it goes. The direction for the next 10 years seems like the only logical conclusion that anyone could've guessed two years ago as the only remaining tale you can tell, which is to visit all the remaining shard worlds into a interdimensional adventure. Should be fun.
I felt like the first half of Dawntrail was so good. It was a bit rushed, but otherwise exploring Tural and all these new great tribes and great zones and doing it through a shounen contest arc with interesting participants and backstabbings and all the fun stuff that comes along with that type of One Piece/Naruto/HxH arc was something different for Final Fantasy and fantastic.
The only single negative I have about the first half of the story is that because they did like 7 mini-arcs in half a game it's a bit rushed. I would have been more than happy if this was just the entire story and more fleshed out.
The back half was ok, but kind of messy. I felt like 90-95 had zero slog MSQ bits and was paced well thanks to being short mini-arc after short mini-arc covering so many arcs in half a game. On the other hand since the back half was just a single arc story, it dragged at times. Noteably I thought the expansion had three "FF14 is known for these kinds of slog/drag MSQ bits": 1) The stuff after the city attack until you get to the dome 97 dungeon, they really stretched that out a lot (how many times are you going to go talk to residents?) and it dragged after the excitement of the attack on the city, 2) Solution Nine - Heritage Found already was not that interesting because it's mostly empty outside The Outskirts and then exploring around the tour on Solution Nine was pretty boring (Solution Nine is too big for its own good; makes me wish you could use mounts there), I'd say everything from Heritage Found through Solution Nine's tour was dull and then picked up again with Zoraal Ja's attack, 3) Zone 6 - At first I thought this was the most amazing best final zone in FF14 and was so excited to explore it. But the way the MSQ goes through it is really dull. I sort of made peace with it in that trial 2 vs Zoraal Ja was the final boss of Dawntrail and zone 6 was just the slow burn epilogue.
But yeah, so basically a lot of the back half dragged. The final boss was the least epic final boss of any FF14 expansion, which is fine for a first game in a new series, but just stating opinions. And unlike the first half where the only major plot hole was "Why was two headed guy not arrested and thrown in jail and taken out of the contest the second he unleashed Trial 1 boss", the second half's plot feels like it has...problems.
First of all turning off the servers in Zone 6 was stupid. They could have stopped Sphene and there'd be no danger to anyone outside the memory zone and the people would live a bit longer until they ran out of aether and things would gradually stop at some point. This would also let you beat the game while still keeping these areas and their NPCs active in post-game to interact with. I never felt like I was doing the right thing by shutting these servers down in Zone 6 and there was a disassociation I had with the main plot and MC doing this.
I still don't understand why 20 years ago the King and Galuf and everyone who found the gate, got the baby and the key, never went inside to see what was on the other side? Not only that but then when your party reaches the portal the king says "we can't open the portal right now because ummm...just trust me", but how would he know there is any problem with opening the portal since he never went inside? Someone in the non-spoiler thread said this would be explained but I'm after the credits now and there's still no explanation for this?
Zoraal Ja was so close to being a great character. He was like Zenos if Zenos wasn't shitty paper thin. All he needed was a single echo cutscene before he died to watch his past and develop him and his motivations more. I can't believe they didn't do this after Trial 2. He's one echo cutscene away from being a great villain you can understand. Because as is his whole "I had so much pressure to be a miracle, so I have to be a warmonger and kill everyone" just isn't enough. Still better than Zenos tho
The more I think about it the back half zones really don't compare much to the first half.
Zone 1 in the mountain is ok, Pelu side is dense and good, Giant side is mostly empty and kind of an ugly waste of 1/2 a map.
Zone 2 is amazing. Between all the Hanu stuff and all the awesome Moblin stuff it's a fantastically dense map full of content
Zone 3 is amazing. Like Zone 2 tons of content with the two tribes and the lower forest looks super cool
Zone 4 is wasted potential. Cool concept, but it's too empty and the only real story arc in it about the sheriff sucked.
Zone 5 is another mostly empty zone following zone 4.
Zone 6 is an amazing looking zone but not a ton to do and by the time you can fly around it the whole place is dead and empty whoops
Just feels like Zones 1-3 and the MSQ 90-95 are this great game packed with story, adventure, wonderful tribes, tons of characters, great looking zones. And then Zones 4-6 are these empty zones, serious characters, slow burn storyline and a weird afterthought finale. I really thought this was going to be the best FF14 expansion in the series while doing the first half MSQ, but the back half took me a while to get through. Hell Zone 6 took me like 3-4 days because of how slow it was or would've finished it last weekend and gotten my first raid drops before the reset.
I also think Dawntrail has the weakest soundtrack in the series. It's good music, but outside the jazzy main city, there's not a single track that blew me away like previous expansions. I think Shadowbringer probably had the best zone music. The forest track in Zone 3 feels like a pale imitation of the music in the forests of Shadowbringers or more recently Gongaga region in Rebirth.
Still good overall though. Put like 150+ hours into it as I was doing all the crafting/gathering/fishing and lots of sidequests and taking my time. I think mechanically Dawntrail has the best dungeon bosses in the series, the trials are great, the blue sidequests are great, the role quests are great, the upgrades to crafting and gathering and fishing are all great. From a gameplay-perspective I think the expansion is A quality fantastic. Just wasn't huge on the back half MSQ or Zones.
But I went into Dawntrail on the fence whether I would keep my sub for the next ten years and this game won me over to stay. It's even made me want to go back and finish up the old fishing logs from previous expansions thanks to the new fishing upgrades.
*edit* Also the Tural moblins are the MVP of this game. The Culinary/Alchemy role quest moblin is my favorite dude in the game.
