Catching this thread early before all the spoilers show up as I still have a little more left.
I just beat the second trial, and am presumably about to enter the 6th zone. While I don't have much of a complaint regarding the story itself, the pacing of it is absolutely atrocious. I understand that they were challenged by having the story take place on two different fronts, in a similar vein to Stormblood, however, this expansion makes me feel like Stormblood was a masterpiece by comparison.
Everything happens far too quickly, every problem is resolved immediately after it's presented and it really makes it feel like the "growth" of the involved characters is completely undeserved. On paper, the "main" character goes to all the villages, collects the gym leader badges, gets hard carried by the WoL, and is suddenly on par with fighters that were already implied (proven in one instance) to be able to wipe the floor with them. In comparison, Lyse, was already shown to be a capable fighter, but not a leader, who does end up going through a similar journey of visiting different peoples and learning of their cultures to see how they're led, while her role is significantly downplayed during that expansion it's at least somewhat possible to suspend our beliefs and accept that wacky ol' Lyse can lead by the time we finish everything.
And then we have Dawntrail.. we're introduced to this wacky character that loves eating and being cheerful, but she gets seasick easily oh noooo. The beginning establishes that this character is well appreciated by their countrymen, but not exactly respected on account of their lack of major status or accolades, unlike the miracle child, the scholarly contributor to society, or the blessed siblings. And yet somehow just by running around an island and learning about cultures, none of which are combative cultures like the Xaela tribes were in SB, this character goes from getting swatted like a fly to being able to fend off enemies that give the godslaying WoL a challenge, suuuuuure.
Now, despite that, I don't hate this character as much as others do, I didn't mind their inclusion at all, HOWEVER, I absolutely did not appreciate how much their inclusion affects the treatment of other characters. Krile has been a fan favourite since she was first introduced and has been teased at joining the party multiple times across the different expansions, she finally gets to officially do so with DT, and she gets sidelined for the basically the entire thing so far. Granted, I'm still not done so the game still has some time to expand on her before it ends. But up until this point everything in relation to her feels like an afterthought, the amount of times the entire group is together and she immediately gets put into a separate group from the WoL.
The second character is Erenville, his inclusion feels incredibly forced as soon as you start the second half. The first half is fine because as a gleaner, it makes sense that he is well-travelled and familiar with locales everyone else isn't with. However, making him a native of Tural feels like someone pulled it out of their ass. This becomes especially apparent when you arrive in the area he's supposedly most familiar with as it's close to his home, we have this extremely standout character with a unique accent and somehow we're supposed to believe he's from this area where no one sounds like, let alone looks like him. It's incredibly jarring, it makes it feel like they included him in this expansion just because we were fresh off the heels of EW and he was a surprise hit, so rather than making a new character (that could've still been a gleaner) and actually having them fit in with the story, we have Erenville being a black sheep of the continent and the story. This is all the more ironic because he's the narrator of the expansion.
I feel like I've ranted long enough, I should hopefully be done with MSQ before Sunday, we'll see if anything changes between now and then. But all in all, I feel like FFXIV is far too late in the game for the pacing to feel this amateurish, especially in comparison to the least favoured expansion according to most of the community. The voice acting was all over the place, like they focused more on finding actors for the sake of their nationalities or ethnicities rather than for the quality of their work, and even the good ones seem to have been directed poorly. Nothing about DT tips it into 'bad' territory, except for the pacing, but overall this expansion feels like a downgrade compared to everything that's come before it. We'll see what I think when I'm actually done.