This is the last part for certain this time. So upon heading back to Meso Terminal, the final dungeon becomes available, Alexandria.
The rest of this is entirely from within Meso Terminal, kind of like entering the Matrix and/or the Tower at Paradigm’s Breach from the NieR raid series. Alexandria is basically a dungeon through Sphene’s memories as she begins to delete them to remove all moral checks on her subsystems to become a killing machine. It’s a rather neat dungeon and way to show the history of Alexandria in a more literal fashion as opposed to a bunch of flashback cut scenes.
If one is familiar with Alexandria from Final Fantasy IX, the first part will be at trip down memory lane for certain. The boss mechanics are pretty good, with the first one being one that I keep tripping up due to the timing of certain maneuvers. The final boss has some combined mechanics that need to be wary of (look up a lot!!).
After that, Krile, Wuk Lamat, G’raha Tia, and us are plopped right onto the boss’ final arena. It kind of resembles/reminds me to a varying degree the one from Omega 12 Savage. After some words are tossed, our three friends are removed entirely from the arena in force field boxes for ‘containment.’ Sphene, in her new huge battle body, declares us too much of a threat to be left alone according to the final boss’ information from the Alexandria dungeon.
She summons the Key relic forth, as we use Azem’s crystal to call some friends up and then begins the final battle. One really interesting thing of note is when we used the crystal’s power, it resonated with the key to show Azem’s symbol right on top of it. This gives a lot of speculation as to where the thing came from to begin with, but heavily hints that it’s some sort of ancient’s technology.
Once friends are called upon, the final battle ensues. This is a good fight, with one mechanic that is just absolutely bonkers. I think everyone who went into this almost wiped on said mechanic and/or had to use Healer Limit Break 3 to survive until phase 2. During phase two Wuk Lamat breaks out of her containment and pleads with Sphene, which kind of get through to her. Phase 2 is similar to the Phase 2 from the Endsinger, so it’s more of a victory lap from here until the finish line.
After the fight, Sphene apologizes to us for all of the damage/deaths, and begins the final shutdown of Meso terminal, while we all head back out to our bodies that Erenville has been looking over. The key relic comes with us too and is entrusted to us at the very end to look after.
The credits begin to roll over a completely desolate Living Memory with the sun rising off the horizon and everything.
The scenes that follow while the credits are going are narrated by Erenville (who has narrated the entirety of Dawntrail) showing everyone heading back to Tuliyollal while also paying a visit to Solution Nine to inform everyone of what had happened to Sphene in the process. There’s a fun finale scene in Tuliyollal that kind of reflects the trailer cinematic with everyone in it.
From there the staff roll ensues, and then there’s a post-credit scene with Wuk Lamat and Erenville paying a visit to the cabin we stay at, while were looking over a map with the key, a compass, and a canteen on it. Rather fitting way to end it seeing as we’re in a Free Company named ‘Eorzea Cartographers.’ The screen goes black, a flash of Sphene’s crown goes up still emitting a glow, and then we’re back in Tuliyollal with a nice new Alpaca mount and a music scroll as a reward for finishing the Dawntrail Main Scenario Quest.
I know I kind of hampered onto the second half quite a bit, but for what it was, it was still a pretty enjoyable journey with a lot of really gorgeous and/or unique scenery along the way. I am very appreciative and thankful we got to experience it the same way we did Endwalker as well as just being able to experience it. It was fun overall, even with the oddities. Solution Nine really might just be my favorite end-game city to date now.
Bakool Ja Ja went from being a character I really disliked to liking quite a bit, and even emphasizing for once his whole background came to light. Wuk Evu, whom I didn’t really talk about, became a personal favorite of mine for being both comical and informative when he popped up throughout the story when needed. Otis, for just being in the last act of the story, I loved every aspect of him in both robot and Endless forms. He was just so friendly and charming, meaning well as much as he could muster.
I still don’t like how the whole Erenville/Cahciua mostly was handled (not entirely), and if Sphene does somehow come back, I’ll be interested to see what they do with her and hopefully give her a smidgen bit more breathing time.
Just wish that a lot of the other characters got a bit more time in the spotlight instead of just mostly it being Wuk Lamat. She’s a good and enjoyable character that grows along the way for certain, but there was a bit of things left unsaid too. What I’m assuming is that since this is the ‘prologue’ to a whole new long story line, that this sets it up for several routes it could branch off to or even come back around to branch of other parts of those story threads too.
The music for this entire expansion was phenomenal as always. Every place, every zone, and even the combat music was all just so perfect.
There’s a lot of potential here, and we’ll see where they decide to begin taking us when patch 7.1 comes out in a few months. As always, we’ll be looking forward to what’s on the horizon next! In the meantime, we have a lot of things to level, and post main scenario end-game goodies to attend to!
And… maybe spend some time in Shaaloani, probably Solution Nine too.
~Fin~