Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail review – "A slow, insubstantial start with promising gameplay"

GamesRadar+ VerdictFinal Fantasy 14 Dawntrail is a slow start to the next narrative arc of the critically acclaimed MMORPG. Despite having a set of gorgeous new zones to explore, and some exciting new dungeons and Trials, the middling narrative holds this expansion back from being truly great.Pros+Exciting final trial and engaging post-Main Scenario Quest dungeons+Well designed and vibrant new zones+New Trials and dungeons will force you to use your entire kitCons-MIddling narrative-English voice acting falls flat-Further Job Class homogenization does combat little favors GamesRadar+ Verdict GamesRadar+ Verdict Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail is a slow start to the next narrative arc of the critically acclaimed MMORPG. Despite having a set of gorgeous new zones to explore, and some exciting new dungeons and Trials, the middling narrative holds this expansion back from being truly great. Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail is a slow start to the next narrative arc of the critically acclaimed MMORPG. Despite having a set of gorgeous new zones to explore, and some exciting new dungeons and Trials, the middling narrative holds this expansion back from being truly great. Pros+Exciting final trial and engaging post-Main Scenario Quest dungeons+Well designed and vibrant new zones+New Trials and dungeons will force you to use your entire kit Exciting final trial and engaging post-Main Scenario Quest dungeons Well designed and vibrant new zones New Trials and dungeons will force you to use your entire kit Cons-MIddling narrative-English voice acting falls flat-Further Job Class homogenization does combat little favors MIddling narrative English voice acting falls flat Further Job Class homogenization does combat little favors Why you can trust GamesRadar+Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about our reviews policy. Why you can trust GamesRadar+Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about our reviews policy. With snow-capped mountains, lush jungles, sprawling cities, Final Fantasy 14 set the stage for its new expansion, whisking us away from Eorzea to the vibrant and culturally rich content of Tural. Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail offered a promise of new beginnings – a new narrative to explore, new characters to meet, and new Jobs to allow for even greater specialization. And while the new classes are both exciting additions that are sure to add flavor to upcoming Extreme and Savage content, the story is far from interesting, plagued with one-dimensional characters and narrative that feels, at best, like filler. Every Final Fantasy 14 expansion brings with it a new region to explore, and oftentimes new Job Classes or even races; Dawntrail is no exception. The long-awaited female Hrothgar are finally playable, though they do have some limitations much like their male counterparts when it comes to complete customization, and instead of a new country we are exploring a new continent. Combat flow (Image credit: Square Enix) Fast FactsRelease date: July 2, 2024Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series XDeveloper: In-housePublisher: Square Enix Fast Facts Release date: July 2, 2024Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series XDeveloper: In-housePublisher: Square Enix Release date: July 2, 2024Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series XDeveloper: In-housePublisher: Square Enix You have your standard AoE and single-target attacks, but those single-target attacks branch out into a couple of different combos that doll out debuffs or hasten your own abilities. This makes the Job a lot more engaging, since you will need to weave applying haste to your own attacks while keeping debuffs up on top of making sure to strike at enemies from specific angles to do the most amount of damage possible. There’s a lot to juggle there, especially if you’re a newcomer to Final Fantasy 14 (ir have played less complex classes like Summoner in the past) but overall it feels great once you get the hang of it. (Image credit: Square Enix) Homogenization has accompanied every new expansion, with the unique aspect of individual Jobs sanded away until they’ve just become skins for a Role for you to fill in the Duty Finder. Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is no exception in this regard, with changes to Viper already in the works to make adjustments to how complex its combos are. Seeing changes made to make a class less interesting or less mechanically challenging to play, especially one that has only been part of the game for less than a month, doesn’t leave me confident in the direction further adjustments will go. This is especially true since some of the best content in Dawntrail is in its Trials and dungeons – which require you to engage with your Job Class to its fullest extent. New exciting trials and dungeons await (Image credit: Square Enix) All of the new Trials in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail kept me on my toes as a White Mage, with the final run reminiscent of some of my favorite moments in the near decade I’ve spent in the MMORPG. Healing this encounter was exciting, forcing me to use all of the skills at my disposal, even ones that I had otherwise felt unnecessary for the Extreme Trials in previous expansions Shadowbringers and Endwalker. The new Dawntrail dungeons are also a blast with most boss fights equipped with their own gimmicks, like needing to keep an eye on where a boss tosses bombs into color coordinated pipes or swapping between a corporeal and incorporeal form through panels on the ground to break tethers to enemies. This makes the battles a lot more engaging, even if getting to those encounters is just burning down groups of enemies on the way there. (Image credit: Square Enix) “Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is a slow start to a new chapter” “Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is a slow start to a new chapter” Much like the dungeons, each new zone has its own distinct flair. Tural is meant to be massive in scale, and the variety between these zones helps illustrate this. You travel from the tops of mountains, through lush jungles lit with fluorescent blue flowers, to barren, lightning-plagued wastes, and various cities with a distinct sense of architecture – all meant to give Tural a broad sense of culture as it samples from more than a handful of Latin American and Southeast Asian nations instead of just one. As a result, Dawntrail fails to build a cohesive standard due to its mixed mishmash of inspirations, which feels like the path forward has immediately gotten off on the wrong foot. This also extends to the narrative in some respect, as a stronger focus on one region or even theme would have done the expansion some good in terms of general character development (especially with its new cast) and overall themes. The narrative drags (Image credit: Square Enix) Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is a simple, meandering story about the Warrior of Light traveling to the continent of Tural to support Wuk Lamat in her quest to become Dawnservant. Frankly, I’m still scratching my head at Square Enix’s deliberate marketing decision to paint our involvement in instating a new leader in a foreign country as a vacation. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn, your companions through previous expansions, are there as well but to little effect. They show up during key story moments, but do little else other than make appearances. The new cast of characters, including Wuk Lamat, feel underbaked and like cardboard cutouts of various archetypes – with Wuk Lamat being the naive, inexperienced leader that relies on us for support until she has her “power of friendship” moment which doesn’t feel particularly earned because she doesn’t undergo any sort of meaningful character development. One of my favorite characters of his expansion ended up being a Mamool Ja child, and another Mamool Ja character that has a heel-turn about halfway through the story. (Image credit: Square Enix) And when it comes to Final Fantasy 14 mashing up bits and pieces of other games into its DNA, I’ve always had an issue with this, but I find it most egregious in Dawntrail as Final Fantasy 14 moves further and further away from being its own thing and more and more into becoming a proverbial theme park of other, better Final Fantasy games. The antagonists have very simple motivations, which I wouldn’t take issue with if they were better written — but this can apply to most of the expansion’s narrative. It’s an underwhelming start to what should be something invigorating for the now decade-old MMORPG. Instead I’m seeing Dawntrail tread the same ground as Stormblood, and with the prospect of once again visiting another fragmented world, I’m not all that excited. With an MMORPG so singularly focused on its story, and having received such high praise for its previous expansions, Dawntrail is a slow, uninteresting start to the next chapter of Final Fantasy 14. While the content is certainly engaging, the narrative just isn’t up to par, which left me wanting for something more substantial. But if I do decide to keep playing Final Fantasy 14 once the new content patches roll out, I certainly won’t be doing it for the story. 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