Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail Patch 7.1 – Crossroads impressions — A messy restart

Final Fantasy XIV’s Dawntrail expansion has been contentious, to say the least. While I personally enjoyed it, the story was a bit messy and had pacing troubles. The dungeons, trials, and areas are some of the best in the game though. With the release of Patch 7.1, the game seems to be continuing its contentious streak, with a main quest that feels like it’s trying to tell three different stories all mashed together. This leads to a lot of tonal whiplash, even if the core gameplay and story is good.

After the death of Sphene at the Warrior of Light’s hands, the peoples of Alexandria and Tural are having trouble co-existing. Alexandrites are reckoning life without their guaranteed virtual afterlife, and those who move to Tural are finding difficulty in adapting to the new culture. After attending the royal funeral, the Warrior of Light and co. assist the young, newly appointed King in… learning about his mother. I get the connection – that Sphene was a mother figure to Gulool Ja and the revelations are very interesting – but this starts the patch’s trend of feeling like it’s just jumping around between plot ideas and never really sticking to one.

That search leads into this patch’s dungeon, Yuweyawata Field Station, which brings with it some dark revelations about Alexandria’s recent history. The bosses are also incredibly fun to fight, with the dungeon’s final boss presenting a unique, doughnut shaped arena which has you avoiding mechanics while also trying not to fall in the center pit. Whatever criticisms I have about the story, I’m glad the gameplay itself is still fantastic.

After learning about Gulool Ja’s mother, the gang splits up for a time, with you, Wuk Lamat, and Koana heading to Shaaloani to help fix up the train system we kinda blew up in the expansion. Once the train is fixed, it’s time to learn about the hhetso tribe and their connection to the rroneek to find a way to stop the animals from walking onto the train tracks. Again, a very weird shift in focus, but Koana does get some nice character development here even if the mystery of who his parents were and why they abandoned him are solved a bit too quickly and easily. I like these characters a lot, and it’s nice to spend more time with them regardless.

Once all that’s settled, the game circles back to the Alexandrites dealing with the loss of Sphene, and here’s where the patch seems to actually set up the plot for the rest of Dawntrail’s patch cycle. Individually, I like all of the stories told here, but I don’t think any of them get the time they need to be more interesting than a distraction. I like Gulool Ja and want to see him come into his own, but as soon as we get information about his mom it’s off to something completely different. I think the parallels between the hhetso and real life indigenous peoples in the Americas is fascinating, but everything we learn about them and Koana here is tied into a nice little bow far too quickly. I don’t want to spoil the third plotline here, as it’ll be explored in later patches. That said, while it’s interesting I’mafraid they’re going to move on from it before it can really get good. 7.1’s story feels like it’s throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, leaving several types of pasta on my walls for the next few months until they figure out which one they want to have.

Crossroads also introduces the next Alliance Raid series, Echoes of Vana’diel, which sees players entering a facsimile of various areas and fighting bosses from Final Fantasy XI. I unfortunately haven’t had much time to play 11 since my article on it earlier this year, but I enjoyed seeing the references and hearing the music I did recognize. While I’ve only done the raid myself once, I found it a bit too chaotic to really parse what was going on. I figured out a few mechanics, but a lot of that is because I was able to simply watch while waiting for a resurrection. Maybe I just need to “get good”, but I hope future raids give me some time to get acclimated before going full throttle. It’s still enjoyable, but is very overwhelming.

I really enjoyed a few things Echoes does outside of the raids, too. The story and characters are fun, with a great moment recreating an auction. It does feel like Prishe’s characterization relies a bit too much on already knowing who she was in FF11, but I can understand not wanting to bore players with a ton of exposition. Regardless, I like her a lot.

Finally, I want to talk about some job changes that occurred in minor Dawntrail patches between the expansion’s launch and now, namely the changes Viper received. One of these patches removed the debuff entirely in favor of a buff you don’t need to pay much attention to, making the job easier to play but significantly less fun. I feel like this homogenizes Viper, its dual swords and dual-bladed modes were already essentially cosmetic, and removing the need to mark your enemies invalidates its identity as a monster hunter class. I doubt Square Enix would reverse this change until the next expansion, but I think this alteration was a mistake; a shortsighted change to cater to people who didn’t really want to engage with the job’s mechanics.

Overall, I think 7.1 is a bit of a microcosm of Dawntrail as an expansion. It’s trying to do a lot of interesting things, but can often stumble or leave things feeling unfinished. Of course, this is just the start of the patch storyline, and I’m still excited to see what comes next.

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