Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

Shiba Lurker said:
God yes, those Indian/Hispanic accents in EW were so jarring, sounding like some doing a fake accent while slurring their words at times;
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I actually heard somewhere that many of the voice actors in EW were Indian; granted, I can't remember where I found that, but it certainly says something, I think.

Going back to the subject of Dawntrail; going to admit, judging from what everyone is saying, I'm genuinely disappointed. I mean, I wasn't exactly expecting high art at this point, but if what everyone is saying is true - and I don't have much of a reason to doubt at this point - then DT manages to officially hit a new low in FFXIV's story, which is frankly baffling. I had kinda hoped that, after the devs saw the backlash that the post-EW MSQ had (still need to sit down and complete that one day) that they'd try and focus on writing a better story now, but sadly not.

I already knew there'd be some issues when the previews were dropped; the Scions and co. are basically doing what the Garleans were doing, but it's somehow alright when we do it. That, and the entire country of Tural feels just wrong; like @Bankingway mentioned back on page 556, the entire backstory of the continent - what with the lizards and Hrothgar apparently just becoming besties after eating each other's food after centuries of conflict - comes across as outright tone-deaf, especially given how the previous expansions handled the politics and ideologies of the different countries. Granted, I haven't played Dawntrail myself, but nothing of what I've heard so far is good.

Makes me hesitant to even hop back into the game, honestly.
 
Scream Aim Fire said:
I actually heard somewhere that many of the voice actors in EW were Indian; granted, I can't remember where I found that, but it certainly says something, I think.

Going back to the subject of Dawntrail; going to admit, judging from what everyone is saying, I'm genuinely disappointed. I mean, I wasn't exactly expecting high art at this point, but if what everyone is saying is true - and I don't have much of a reason to doubt at this point - then DT manages to officially hit a new low in FFXIV's story, which is frankly baffling. I had kinda hoped that, after the devs saw the backlash that the post-EW MSQ had (still need to sit down and complete that one day) that they'd try and focus on writing a better story now, but sadly not.

I already knew there'd be some issues when the previews were dropped; the Scions and co. are basically doing what the Garleans were doing, but it's somehow alright when we do it. That, and the entire country of Tural feels just wrong; like @Bankingway mentioned back on page 556, the entire backstory of the continent - what with the lizards and Hrothgar apparently just becoming besties after eating each other's food after centuries of conflict - comes across as outright tone-deaf, especially given how the previous expansions handled the politics and ideologies of the different countries. Granted, I haven't played Dawntrail myself, but nothing of what I've heard so far is good.

Makes me hesitant to even hop back into the game, honestly.
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ARR is better than what has been shit out now, and that’s really saying something, because at least ARR was just a generic fantasy story.

And yeah, the whole thing about two cultures suddenly being best friends because they ate together is absolutely fucking ridiculous. In no way is that how it works in the real world. And yeah, someone could say “well it’s NOT the real world, it’s fantasy!” Well, even in a fantasy world I very much doubt conflict could be resolved by this. History will show that even when there’s a temporary peace everything will eventually go back into chaos, because history goes in cycles. But anyway heavensward was written far better with its conflict. After a thousand year lie gets exposed these two nations realize that they were wrong about each other. That’s written far better.
 
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Having finished the MSQ, my thoughts.

Gameplay: Mostly good. I enjoyed the dungeons and liked the mechanics of the bosses, though it did feel like once you understood what was happening in each one they're especially easy to manage and the fights become trivial. Red Mage is my main class and the changes are small but fine, no complaints there. There isn't nearly enough actual combat in the MSQ, it's leaned even harder into being a visual novel and if you don't do other stuff in between quests you can easily go hours without doing anything but talking.

Music: Hit and miss. Some tracks are bizarre and don't seem to fit the setting at all like the smooth jazz in the first major city, most of the zone tracks are utterly forgettable (compared to ShB which had some of the most memorable zone music), and the basic battle music is boring. The dungeons and trials typically have bangers, though this is to be expected. I was really looking forward to Solution 9 and the music there is just.. meh? I wanted something less subdued for my crafting hub, but it may as well not even be there.

Graphics: I honestly barely noticed the graphics update, and I play on maxed out settings. There are some cutscenes that look kinda nice, particularly ones where Thancred and Urianger are with Koana. These were noticeably better looking than other cutscenes - though I never really felt like the graphics were bad enough that they needed an update to begin with. The environments themselves look nice, though, particularly the new fog effect.

Story: This is Wuk Lamat's story and we barely need to be there. I don't hate her conceptually as much as some people here, but she's clearly some writers darling because she's always with you and always the focus and whenever she's not on screen everyone else is asking "where's Wuk Lamat??". She can do no wrong and is invariably correct in every situation and everyone loves her instantly. There were points in the MSQ where I forgot other NPCs were with us because the focus is only ever on Wuk Lamat. I actually did a double take at one point when the camera zoomed out to show Thancred and Urianger with us because I'd forgotten they were there - they hadn't been on camera in what felt likes hours.

I would have preferred the succession be stretched out to the whole expansion and we get to do other cool adventure stuff while it happens in the background. This was advertised as Krile's time in the spotlight and she barely had anything to do. I would have vastly preferred the bulk of the plot follow her discovering her past or something like that with the succession as a sort of framework.

Every "twist" is so obvious they may as well have not bothered. They make the one lizard comically evil to try and throw you of the fact that the brother is the actual villain - except on multiple occasions Krile literally looks at him and then looks scared and literally says "wow this guy sure has evil thoughts, i can't believe he wants to murder his siblings so bad, sure hope he doesn't become a bad guy". Sphene is just as bad, the moment she showed up and was being friendly to the party it was obvious she would somehow be the real final boss. Lizard brother isn't cool enough and doesn't have enough of a "final fantasy final boss" design to be the last trial, so it had to be her. Her motivations make no sense and fall into the tired JRPG trope of "the issue could probably be solved if she just stopped and talked to the party and tried to work out an alternative" but of course she instead just keeps saying "lol sorry i have no choice" and doesn't even try.

The last zone is egregiously bad. There's a time sensitive threat that could spell the end of all life on your planet, and Wuk Lamat wants to tour the whole zone and meet people in each section before deleting them. It's supposed to be sad, but it makes so little sense I was too annoyed to feel anything else.

They need to pivot HARD away from Wuk Lamat and start setting up a new plot that's actually interesting in the patches to salvage this. Fewer cutscenes, especially the ones that are literally you walking a few feet just to have them repeat something you've already heard a half dozen times already. Our character doesn't need to be the focus at all times, but there needs to be a reason for us to be there and we need to feel like we're doing SOMETHING. So many times during the story you just see Wuk Lamat doing all the fun shit, or in some cases literally walking off screen to do something interesting that you don't even get to see. You hang around and wait for her to get back while talking about how great she is. It's insane.

That's all. Thanks for reading my book report.
 
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EmpGulcasa said:
This was advertised as Krile's time in the spotlight and she barely had anything to do. I would have vastly preferred the bulk of the plot follow her discovering her past or something like that with the succession as a sort of framework.
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I truly believe the writing team hates Krile at this point. From Stormblood to Dawntrail, it feels like she's not allowed to be more than the divorced wine aunt
 
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Soycast Guy said:
I can’t help but roll my eyes every time the culture clusterfuck in dawntrail is shown to be full of peace, love, and happiness. I get it’s Japanese happy idealistic writing, but c’mon, I can’t take it seriously. Especially as an American with how cultures here literally cannot fucking mix. Except with East Asian cultures, which generally just mind their own business. Though if you look at Muslims, they want to kill anyone who isn’t Muslim, so that doesn’t mix well with anyone else here. So right from the get-go I couldn’t take this story seriously. It’s just too unbelievable.
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A United Federation of Planets Tural isn't farfetched in theory. However,

The big thing for me is that Gulool was able to create this utopia in EIGHTY YEARS.

80 years to bring together an entire fucking continent.

Japan took 300ish years to unify.
For contrast, it took Canada 400 years to become a full fledged country and we're still a bunch of bickering shits.
It took 800 years for Great Britain to become Great Britain.
China took centuries, depending on how you slice it.
 
How to fix the story at this point post expansion:

1. Wuk Lamont and 90% of the Sions gets food poisoning after a tragic taco eating contest gone wrong and Tatatru somehow becomes the new Dawn temporarily, where she automatically improves the kingdom leaps and bounds over the last rulers in a tiny short amount of time. Wuk Lamont discovers she truly is retarded after this and she leaves on a journey to obtain more knowledge of the world.

2. There is a surfing mini game where you rip sick waves.

3. The next “big evil” is not some anime princess or some homosexual Ascian but instead some charismatic Indy Jones motherfucker who is always trying to one up you in adventures and treasure collecting. The big showdown is a surfing contest where the WoL discovers he is a literal great white shark and unstoppable killing machine, but not good at much else after a humble defeat. The WoL actually goes on a quest for adventure and fun for self improvement and to learn more then just blowing up nonstop monsters.

4. The WoL finally explores new locations and zones without the scions being there and meeting new characters. These characters are not voiced by Indian troons. On his/her adventures, the WoL discovers Wuk Lamont’s skull and accidentally punts it into a volcano.
 
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That is crazy I read many of those forum posts and they were all very rational and thought out. This is giving me wow Shadowlands flashbacks in terms of blowback. StB is that point for many fans where it was an enduring point as was eW by the sounds of it but FF14 has not had so much criticism. You can tell it's bad too because the rabid fans are not defending either. I have looked at a few pages of the Steam reviews and they are mostly just shredding the game a new one.

We can expect nothing for .1 as I bet it is mostly complete but .2 needs to do some drastic shit. I have an ingling Yoshi was away a lot for this one.
 
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How fitting that even in what was a fun final trial, Wuk Lamat jumps in at the very end to steal the kill and make sure we don't get any ideas about this being anything but her story.
 
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Chaotic Pizzaparty said:
I have an ingling Yoshi was away a lot for this one.
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One theory that makes a bit of sense is that they had most of their good devs working on FF16 and Dawntrail is just what the B-team cobbled together.

It almost gives me fan mod vibes where you have a bunch of people working on different stuff and someone tries in vain to make it all semi coherent.
 
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std::string said:
One theory that makes a bit of sense is that they had most of their good devs working on FF16 and Dawntrail is just what the B-team cobbled together.

It almost gives me fan mod vibes where you have a bunch of people working on different stuff and someone tries in vain to make it all semi coherent.
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That was the actual case. A lot of the team was away working on FFXVI. It also affected Endwalker a bit but not to as big of a degree. It really shows in this expansion. Not to mention all their writers were away working on FFXVI or just not present. Yoshi P was focused on xvi, as was the heavensward writer. And then ishikawa is just absent or she’s working on an unannounced game.

Also wondering, do gra’ha tia or y’shtola ever appear in this expansion? They were shown in the trailer but haven’t shown up once. I’m 58 quests in. Estinien also laughably gets just two scenes. Because as we know, this is a Wuk lamat expansion.
 
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Since we've started sharing our actual thoughts out reviews I'll go ahead and add mine to the pile.

Worse than Stormblood. By far. Now don't get me wrong, the story has legs. Especially when the Alexandrian invasion starts. But the whole thing is hampered by the ridiculous decision to make this Wuk Lamat's Big Dumb Adventure. I don't give a shit about Wuk Lamat, I have no reason to. She is a stranger that shows up for five minutes at the end of EW. She gave me even fewer reasons to care about her during the Rite of Succession, because her desire to "learn about the culture" supersedes all other reasons and motivations and everyone just goes along with it with no explanation. I could let this slide in the first half of the story because you're pretty much just a glorified mercenary. But when the plot turns to saving the world, it also feels the need to continually injected Wuk Lamat into every goddamn facet, and people *still* continue to follow her demands without question. It's beyond ridiculous. I could have let her presence go if she wasn't the main character *the entire fucking story.* Instead I am just a gun to be pointed and fired at whatever she pleases. This is most egregious once you reach Heritage Found and Sphene shows up, and everything has to be about "understanding." In the final zone, you are told that the Meso Terminal needs to be shut down as soon as possible to prevent reality from getting turbofucked. So naturally we merrily skip along to the whims of Wuk Lamat to learn about a bunch of dead people and participate in recreational activities instead of saving reality. I really felt like Erenville basically the entire time, completely unamused with this stupid character.
That said, I did enjoy basically everything not involving her.

Honestly if she was removed from the plot to the point Koana is after the Rite, I would probably rate the story about where EW is below ShB. The entire Alexandrian plot is extremely interesting, but hampered by Wuk Lamat's bullshit. It ultimately means nothing too. Sphene's motivations and fate is basically unchanged regardless of her involvement. I sincerely hope she goes the way of Lyse and almost never shows up again.
Aside from the story, the dungeons and trials are all fantastic. There has clearly been a push to create new and interesting mechanics as well as make encounters more difficult along with new spins on existing mechanics. I'm legitimately sweating when thinking about the Extremes for the three trials, as they have fairly complex mechanics already in their normal versions. The first four zones aren't terribly impressive, but that's to be expected of field zones on a sort of jungle/plains continent. I do love the wild west aesthetic of Shalooani though, and hearing american english voices really threw me for a loop. I also love the environmental storytelling in Yak T'el, from the Cinderdrift to the Ja Tiika Heartland. The revelation in Mamook about the blessed siblings was a little obvious, imo, but still had a good deal of emotion behind it. Same thing in Heritage Found where you can see Alexandria torn to pieces. I am a little surprised at how sparse Solution Nine is though, but I suppose as an endgame hub that's not really important since most of your time is spent at the tomestone counters. I'm curious to see if anything will change with Living Memory in the future, since it's just dead stone and flora now like the ruins of Amaurot after defeating Emet-Selch.

All said and done, I rate Dawntrail Wuk Lamat/10 because apparently I need to ask her what I should think about it.
 
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