Since its announcement last summer, Dawntrail promised a change of pace from the massive, decade-long story of Final Fantasy 14. It was advertised as a summer vacation release, right at the start of the real-life season for most of the world—a perfect way to get away, explore new lands, and have some fun.
Beyond that delightful promise, Dawntrail has a lot riding on it. No matter my feelings on this expansion, it’ll be easy to feel like any flaws at all are a disappointment given FFXIV’s precedent. After all, I previously, infamously, called Endwalker “a hell of a ride” with a 9.5 rating out of 10, while the previous reviewer gave Shadowbringers an 8.5. Even in its older, less jam-packed days, FFXIV has been touted as the new narrative standard for MMORPGs, bringing the Final Fantasy charm into the genre with fresh success.
But that said, there is a lot to be said about this expansion—and given its already-controversial status, including Stormblood comparisons, a lot of it is worth the discussion.
Is Tural worth crossing the Salt for, or is this worth waiting at port? Is this the change of pace we’ve been waiting for? Let’s get into it.
FULL DAWNTRAIL SPOILERS AHEAD.
This is your first, massive, and final warning.
World(building) peace
The pre-patch, end-of-Endwalker material stated outright that as much as we’ll be helping the contender, we’re also going to this fresh new land, with little other known conflict, that hasn’t had a need to turn to its allies for help in recent history, and so this will be a far lighter-hearted adventure. Metanarratively, that’s a really hard standard to set and meet, especially in the context of the Final Fantasy franchise and the imagination of the (J)RPG genre as a whole.
Truthfully, Dawntrail aims more for a 'classic shonen adventure' vibe than a JRPG vibe. You form a team with varying power levels behind a primary character who has a long way to go, then embark on an adventure with high stakes, learning about the power of kindness, friendship, and hard work along the way. The difference here is, you’re not the protagonist.
If you truly consider it a fresh reset on the FFXIV path, and you look instead through the lens of a “classic shonen adventure,” it meets the marks really well. The most recent anime I've watched with this sort of outlook is arguably Dungeon Meshi, and I found myself enjoying it most when I reframed it like a proper adventure.
Where I see the first frustration players may have is that FFXIV hasn’t really been that way—at least not for a while. A lot of frustration makes sense. After all, FFXIV is an MMORPG. We’re supposed to be fighting as our main source of “progression,” and if we’re not fighting, at least we should have a say in the decision-making. But FFXIV is a Final Fantasy game made by people who really wanted another FF MMORPG, and that’s really what Dawntrail amounts to, at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, contrary to that classic MMORPG expectation of settings, Dawntrail immediately rejects a lack of peace as an overarching need in its new setting of the Turali continents. In the past, FFXIV has expressed this optimism in far more abrupt ways, such as through the resolution of Eulmore (as I’ve previously discussed here).
This time, the team refuses to let kindness be a half-baked moral, bluntly telling you the more violent, or at least culturally insensitive, stakes of letting anyone but Wuk Lamat win.
By now, there’s been seventy years of peace and cooperation among most of the people in Tural thanks to Gulool Ja Ja’s firm but wise hand, and Wuk Lamat is, as the game repeatedly warns outright, the closest the land will get to maintaining that status quo, despite her starting naivete. One other candidate wants to let his people subjugate the greater masses, one would prefer to look over people’s needs in favor of technology, and one just wants to win because he likes winning, violently.
In a world where a pessimistic, magically-empathetic, autistic-coded bluebird drove away robots from their planet, who eventually attacked dragons, who then in turn moved to a planet and struck a deal with its protective demigod to look over that planet, why can’t basic peacekeeping negotiation skills be baked into a continent’s current affairs? Where do we need the conflict, the tension, the hatred, the fighting—unless you’ve just immersed yourself in these for so long that you don’t see another path to contentment? (And what does it say that Zenos, of all motherf’ers, called us out for this intent last expansion?)
It’s all very bluntly presented, and it’s fine to me, because I do believe in ham-fisted storytelling where need be and appropriate. Thanks to the “the curtains are blue” meme that’s been around for a decade or so, nowadays, people will not even take beat-for-beat analogies and lessons beyond the surface, even when pointed out by creators.
In that refreshing air of peace and many others, Tural feels like it has a history and values to fight for. It’s not without its odd affairs nor gruff, selfish characters, especially should you follow the side quests, but it’s not like it’s going to collapse under its own weight. No wonder we didn’t need to hear about it all this time from Eorzea.
And that half of the story is such a refreshing experience, after five consecutive storylines of sheer trauma. During Dawntrail, I found myself, at points, feeling the nostalgia of the original “adventurer’s journey” we were taken on in A Realm Reborn, glad to help resolve conflicts on varying scales, if sometimes through brute force or espionage. And I did, in fact, enjoy tagging along and watching a character that I liked grow and take on new challenges.
Further about Tural, while I’m not fully qualified to speak on accurate representation, Tural is vividly and delightfully thorough about the depth of the cultures introduced and explored, and it’s best experienced while leaning into the “adventure” vibes. It builds on the successes of Endwalker’s Thavnair, knowing that when you dig deeper than the surface of a culture, both the real-life counterparts and in the game itself, there are new chances for storytelling and intrigue. Riding through the new areas is a joy, and sidequesting adds interesting complexity. My only qualm is—why are all the tacos al pastor hard-shelled?
On the flip side, the passion for the land is lacking in the Alexandria half of MSQ. It’s an odd shift in pace, perhaps intentional because of the world-ending history, the hiding of the realities of the world, and, as I’ll discuss later, exposition that leans heavily on a single character’s literal explanation of the world.
In the end, it not only slows the light-heartedness of the act of discovery, but makes that process of exploration seem insincere and half-hearted (see: ludonarrative dissonance). I’m sure there’s plenty more to find, but I don’t feel as compelled to learn through sidequesting as I am in the first half of the game.
But on a better note, if you do opt to explore, both of the absolutely massive, major hubs of Tuliyollal and Solution Nine, and arguably most of Tural’s proper lands, have an impressive level of detail. One can walk around both hub cities for well over an hour and find delightful details that make each feel truly lived in, including literal living quarters and chatty non-targetable NPCs with amusing encounters. It makes me optimistic for future expansions’ travels.
In for Her Ride…?
In either half of the expansion, worldbuilding unfortunately doesn’t fill in the gaps that the actual, active narrative leaves. The strict storytelling factor is very uneven in a lot of places, leaving us with only two impressions of each character: our first, and what we take away from the eventual narrative climax.
Wuk Lamat is divisive as a character, but she’s important in more ways than one. Not only is she the contender for a continent’s crowning leadership spot, but she’s also the essence of FFXIV’s radiant values of hope and peace where and when possible. A lot of Dawntrail’s narrative assumes you’re okay being the high-powered shonen-manga companion and that you share the optimism of the expansion’s most important character.
Even beyond this, Wuk Lamat has elements worthy of critique that emerge more so if you have personal friction with her personality (which is a quality that also applies to this expansion as a whole). If you adore her, you’ll be tuned in to the subtleties of her character development, especially and including taking on her enemies in combat—something that her nay-sayers denied she was capable of early on (and isn’t that peak shonen plot?). But if you’re unattached, that emotional investment, and her pivotal moments may jump out as unearned.
Worse comes with the saying that “there can be too much of a good thing.” As much as I personally found Wuk Lamat’s story, character arc, and personality engaging, in the first half, I felt like our character’s role shone when we were pulled away for brief moments, whether to battle or even have discussions about the state of affairs—and Wuk Lamat herself. Elsewhere, Dawntrail felt like an NPC simulator.
And yet, oddly, Wuk Lamat’s most narratively uneven moments are ironically her best—specifically, when she finally takes her foes on head-on. In the narrative, this amounts to the realization that she needs to sometimes meet her problems at her opponents’ level instead of hers, violent and dire as it may be; except without that understanding, it comes off as a shonen-style power flex. This newfound determination carries over throughout the rest of the narrative, including when you wander into the late game’s higher stakes, where she has to deal with what’s essentially a mega-scaled trolley problem.
Wuk Lamat gets just enough well-supported exposition for this to work. It’s good and proper character development, undermined by exhaustion from her presence.
Cast Stronger Than its Story
Unfortunately, for all the actual supposed depth that has made FFXIV such an interesting series, other newly-introduced characters do not get such weighty development. That’s not to say any of the characters are bad, because they maintain FFXIV’s well-loved consistency, uniqueness, and complex intent, but I just wish it were laid out with more time and care—again, my key word here is still “uneven.”
The biggest victim of this unevenness is Zoraal Ja. When the story attempts to tidy up his arc through his final battle and death, despite that excellent sequence, he only writes like an FFXIV antagonist in eulogy. Until then, the only things we really get in text in a meaningful way are his slant towards disruption and his martial strength, that show of violent determination toward his goal of rule. I do appreciate the parental issues that come into play once presented, but it feels like a leap from A to B, especially given how well his father’s peacemaking techniques work, and how relatively accepted they are throughout the continent(s).
Zoraal Ja feels like the guy who disappears from everyone’s lives and then re-emerges with the worst, most frustrating takes because nobody bothered to check in on him—except Krile, who has a few throwaway lines about this exact issue that absolutely nobody acts on. Frankly, that’s the most realistic part about him: that there is someone at all who feels that being a shitlord is the way to fulfillment. And if you found yourself having a similar perspective—specifically, that the first half of this expansion was boring solely because it was peaceful— …well.
Sphene has the issue of uneven writing while also being forced to contribute to the majority of the back half’s similarly-uneven storytelling. The team perfects the way that charm and kindness towards others works in frustrating contradiction to her literally genocidal intent—a contrast to Zoraal Ja that makes them a perfect pair of awful people, both easy to disagree with once everything’s said and done. However, her storytelling is muddled where it should be clear, especially in regards to “how much is actually her versus the programming,” and it’s a little too clear in proving her kindness, in similar, dragged-out ways to my frustration with Wuk Lamat. Also similarly, it relies on you “tolerating” her. Personally, I did find her interesting, so it worked out, but mileage may vary.
Further, they lean on Sphene so much as a storyteller for Alexandria that, rounding back to the point of lackluster Alexandrian worldbuilding, the keen care for culture that existed in Tural seems to simply vanish in Alexandria without her presence. Once she’s gone, the intentions, knowledge, and presence of the Alexandrians are contextually left up in the air—almost as if everyone’s existence hinged on Sphene herself. It’s cult-like. I don’t know how to describe that post-game driftiness other than “bizarre vibes,” but I’m interested to see where it goes.
And while the conflict does drive the protagonist to action, I actually feel like the story is clumsier and more curt in this half. Sure, there’s conflict, but so many things feel like distractions from each other: Sphene from Zoraal Ja, Sphene from her world, Oblivion from Perseverance, Otis from Gulool Ja, and all these vice-versa. It’s not interplay so much as it is a back-and-forth one-sided dialogue of ideas, and I wish the game took its time in letting all these concepts build, because so many beats are so interesting, in what we’re given.
While there’s this pattern of slightly poorly-paced presentations, again, at least these aren’t bad characters, per se. Most of the characters, even Zoraal Ja to some degree, are at least interesting to delve into at the end of the day, or have their own charm or amusing detail, and that’s always where FFXIV has held its most widespread charm.
Most notably, the narrative tension between Erenville and his mother Cahciua is heart-wrenching, as the steel-hearted man contends with his mother’s preference towards joy and persistence—to the point where she hides her truth to not upset him. It’s the most well-written sequence of grief in the game, in a ten-year narrative that has a lot of grief.
On the flip side, Krile’s parents, like other characters, lack meaningful development that make their shared scenes fall flatter; even their journals or research entries, given their importance in the resistance, could have served their humanity better before we’re forced to let them go. As with other expansions, Dawntrail is at its strongest when it delves into both the characters and their settings in a balanced way, and falls flat when it’s not bold enough to get deep with it.
The end-game narrative risks are seen and appreciated, especially in Living Memory, but it’s a more difficult landing to make. I do appreciate the philosophical string between the Yok Huy and the Alexandrians, but even on a surface-level examination, without the memory of the dead being accessible to those still living—or even being uploaded to Living Memory at a sustainable rate—it falls short of the high-caliber questions that previous expansions asked and attempted to answer. It doesn’t mean I didn’t cry a few times, because some of those tried-and-true narrative beats are well-employed.
Personally, I’m a fan of the Living Memory “downgrades.” Even if it didn’t feel as narratively heavy as it could have, it’s still commendable to see the designers go all-in on a concept like this, where all their hard work is given up before players’ eyes for the narrative. The state it’s left in also has its own story implications, such as the weather being mild, and being told that people used to live here, too. It does concern me in regards to how it’ll last as a playable area in an MMORPG, though—and on that note, I do wonder where we’ll go from here, especially with questions such as Preservation’s influence left unanswered.
Excelling Beyond the Tales
The good news about the MSQ is that once you’re done with it, you’re free to do the best part of Dawntrail: Everything (else).
Without exaggeration, Dawntrail has the best of FFXIV’s gameplay, and it left me with a rare desire to return to the grind, despite my debilitating ADHD. (Dopamine from long-winded tasks? In this economy?)
If I remember right, the producers pointed out that Dawntrail wouldn’t allow players to sleep through mechanics anymore, and they were absolutely right. Every single duty, meaning solo MSQ duties, dungeons, trials, and even extreme ones, from what I’ve seen so far of those trying to study and “prog” them, are all absolute bangers.
The mechanics make sense, if you’re paying attention, but you will absolutely get punished if you slack off. And that’s fair! We’re five expansions in! Wake up! Learn the game! Frankly, my only note is that one more boring mechanic on the level 99 trial would have rounded it out well, but that’s such a high-level nitpick that it’s almost not even pointing out—it’s just to give you a scope of how serious I am about how good the combat is.
Solo duties serve the story well without being too easy, and they’re appropriately placed. They are, simply put, “hype.” Plus, I had a blast with the NPC bots in solo duties, dungeons, and especially trials. It seems like the team is closer to getting these Trusts right! I’d especially like to shout out the free revive if you get KO’d in a trial instead of resetting the fight, which was one of my biggest issues with the bots in the past.
The combat gameplay has kept a good trajectory from the stellar fights in the Endwalker patches. Simply, I hope this pattern keeps up as well in the upcoming Arcadion raid series and the Final Fantasy 11 alliance raids we’re getting.
The music team has again earned its praise for the quality of its work. Still led by Masayoshi Soken, the soundtrack brings a fun variety of music where the team clearly got to spread its wings. There’s only one proper “jumpscare”—the “Smile” vocal theme, which is great on its own, but feels jarring and sort of out of nowhere in its first use, despite its obvious light-hearted intentions. “Smile” and the final credit narration also wash each other out in a way that sort of makes it hard to appreciate both at once. Even with this consideration, the music is overall stellar.
I haven’t gotten to level 100 on the new jobs yet, but so far, leveling Black Mage to level 100 has been slightly better than expected, and getting Gunbreaker to 98 so far was fun, too, especially since FATEs give good XP with some more difficulty to them. Also, the Role Quests provide some levity to the grind, which is deeply refreshing.
I’ve started grinding some of my Hand/Land classes, which Dawntrail permits with ease through Levequests, and… oh man. Revisit is actually the most bonkers Trait, and it’s also hilariously satisfying. Revisit be upon ye. I’ve also heard Fishing is giving wild amounts of XP, so best of luck to those pursuing it.
Finally, and not least at all, the quality of life in this game is gradually improving, and the servers have held up extremely well. I got into this a bit more elsewhere as an early kudos to the game and team, but it’s worth mentioning the basics again.
Cross-world and cross-instance hunt trains are chugging along with little delay, and I’ve been able to see my friends around Crystal. The lighting, reflection, and texture changes are particularly stellar, bringing the game at least into the 2020s for its genre without having to, yet again, launch a meteor at the client (unless you’re an Xbox player who had to re-download it). Plus, most little (or not so little) addition or change to minor features feels constructive. I think this game might make it to the twenty-year mark.
Dawn of the Trail Ahead
In many ways, Dawntrail really is the start of a new era for Final Fantasy 14.
This expansion’s staying power lies in part in the change we see with the quality of life, and in part with the stellar gameplay. I think, for those who catch up to this game just before 8.0 (whenever that is), this is going to be an odd expansion. On one hand, they’ll see a weaker story than the past two and a major change in our role and vibes; on the other, there’s great gameplay, with memorable combat instances and beautiful zones to explore, plus a feeling of optimism and hope and joy, if Lamaty’i is agreeable.
Lost in history, though, will be the impact of the graphical update and other quality of life updates—the old things we left behind. And it feels like it’s sort of intended to be that way, in order to give future players a game worth logging in for.
But even if someone looks at this review in four years to compare it to the next expansion, the improvements are still worth throwing into the final tally. After all, while these foundations they’re building shouldn’t need to be felt to know they’re working, it’s important to know that FFXIV is building them at all.
Dawntrail is largely about working through flaws of all kinds, which it certainly has. But it has its highs, too, that I’d argue are worth fighting for—much like the lands of Tural, full of joy, full of better things. I enjoyed this new FFXIV journey thoroughly, but I know where it needs to build from, and any good adventurer knows to pick up that experience and forge ahead.
