dawntrail thoughts part 2ok i was hoping to write a more clearer thoughts abt DT once i finish my playthru on mizuki but i cannot contain myself (currently stopped before lvl99 dungeon) so i will lay it bare here:

i think this expansion had the most fun i have ever experienced as i have mentioned previously. i havent had this much fun since HW and EW and since this is my first time playing on launch, i was even more excited.

story wise i really love it while its nothing as groundbreaking as SHB or EW, it is still enjoyable in its own right. though i have to admit some parts of the story in the first half is very slowly paced (esp on kozama'uka segments after dungeon 1).

my only big gripe with the story is how the heritage found segments were very slowly paced. i also have big issues with how they lay out the setting of the zone and while im a sucker for scifi/cyberpunk zones i think things just dragged on longer than most parts of the story.

another big gripe of mine is how they wrote sphene and zoraal ja during the second half of the story.

as a disclaimer: i dont dislike sphene. its just that how she was written in the story feels like the writers want to force us to sympathize with her, and that just didnt do it for me. i dont really like how every time she wants to say something important, she gets held back by external factors beyond her control (e.g: the AI program that controls her human soul, etc). like i get it, she is more like a vtuber if the manager had more authority of what she can do to her personality. but how she is handled here just doesnt do it for me.

also the way she suddenly calls wuk lamat by her nickname really threw me off. its like when you met a new friend in college and they suddenly call you with your pet names even though you just met.

i kinda think she also needed more time to cook as a character, but given the scope of the base msq, i hope they would tell us more abt her in the patches or in a short story.

(side note: jp sphene really nails that cheery anime girl vibe befitting of the queen vtuber persona. also fun fact: lynn also voiced azura fire emblem.)

besides sphene, i personally feel that zoraal ja also felt a bit lacking in terms of how he was written in his post timeskip look. i was a bit eh abt him at first but i think on second playthru i kinda warmed up to him. partly bcos ono d voices him in japanese (shizuo durarara, jotaro jjba, kuroh k project).

i like how zoraal ja's story centers around being the first and only trueborn son of gulool ja ja, and the burden he had to carry as 'the resilient son' (the miracle son in JP). his whole life is being expected to trying to surpass his dad only to be overshadowed by koana and wuk lamat, so he had to take matters in his own hands after being defeated by a shade of his dad in his prime in front of everyone.

my issue with this is, i wish we get to peer into his head. i wanted to know what made him decided to go down the path of conquest. how did he conceive gulool ja, and what actually happened in between the time he acquired the key to alexandria and the moment vanguard encroached the source

(side note i hc that gulool ja was a test tube baby born out of IVF. there is no way ivf is not a thing in modern alexandria)

my last gripe is mostly abt the second half of kozama'uka section. zone 2 is already my least favourite in terms of story but i think the fact that they drag the story there with the subplot where wuk lamat gets kidnapped and gives us the fuckin spy mission frustrates me aaaaa

otherwise, everything else besides all i mentioned i really enjoyed every single of it.

i do not get the ridiculous hatred of wuk lamat and sphene. lamaty'i is not perfect but i love her sunshine girl energy and her character development; sphene despite my major gripes about her i like what we have about her so far, and the doomed yuri thing going on with her and wuk lamat.

sena bryer despite how her performance falters a bit in some points, still manages to deliver wuk lamat justice. i think its probably a voice direction problem instead of her bcos i heard she had a very solid voice reel. JP version just nailed out wuk lamat's personality even better. but both are good in their own right.

the dogshit takes on this expansion makes me roll my eyes so hard on the vocal minority (tm). i know a fair number of people who didnt like DT bcos some aspects of the expac and all were not their cuppa tea, and thats absolutely valid, but i think blatantly shitting on this expansion by the virtue of not having ishikawa as the writer or for some other stupid reason clearly shows how much you do not understand the intent of this expansion.

you cannot compare dawntrail to the likes of shadowbringers and endwalker. DT is the start of a new saga while SHB-EW is the climax and conclusion of the previous saga. its like comparing season 1 of legend of korra with the final season of ATLA. its a very unfair comparison.

overall, i still really had fun with this expac on my second run. i really need to finish the last stretches soon so that i can focus on catching up on art stuff irl. work was fun but it left me scarce of free time sobs.