my thoughts on patch 7.4 (SPOILERS)
Happy Embargo Lifting Day! 7.4 has had a lot of people being cautiously optimistic because on one hand, fantastic new QoL changes, like the very anticipated removal of glamour restrictions! On the other hand, a lot of us are understandably wary because we can't tell for sure if the stories that come with this patch is going to be fantastic... Or complete, utter dogshit.
For me, personally, I'm happy to say that 7.4 is fantastic. Not just plain fantastic, but genuinely the best post game patch I've ever experienced after 3.3, and I think that says a lot considering the previous patch MSQ had been lackluster at best for me (I hate 7.1, by the way).
The story of our MSQ this time takes us beyond the confines of Solution 9 and Living Memory, to enter the actual shard that it comes from - the storm-plagued Ninth, eternally shrouded by storms as far as the eye can see. What we thought was a world where nothing survived turned out to be untrue when running the dungeon takes us to the port city of Treno, a city inhabited completely by Milala - and fatefully, a city where Krile has roots in.
Throughout the story we learn about the Milala, how they had survived even after their oldest ally Alexandria disappeared off their radar completely one day, and we witnessed how Krile struggled with her identity and what she should be calling "home". We also saved them from certain Doom(train), had quite the tearful family moment, and (regrettably) must return to Solution 9, for the answers we thought we'd find about our key in Treno turned out to have all been brought safely to Alexandria by Krile's parents, for the purpose of preservation.
Krile's struggle is one that I think a lot of mixed kids/third culture kids could heavily relate, especially if you're indigenous/POC on one side of your family and you almost have no connection to that side of you. You know that feeling where you don't know where you belong, because something that is by default a part of you feels foreign because you just never had a chance to connect to it? Krile's struggle really reflected that - in fact at the time of this writing I've read several good posts from mutuals on Bluesky that talks about how Krile's story in this patch alone does a better job at depicting the indigenous experience than Dawntrail's story itself. In the spirit of "I want to write a general review than write a 'I like this because I can relate to it'", I'll save what I think about Krile's story in a different post, since that deserves to be written in a complete, freer space than this.
The story also shows us a surprising (affectionate) new character that I do believe will set the tone for 7.5 & the next expansion - Halmarut, who shows up as a customised face 2 Auri woman with a green dress and a lovely head of red hair, with her horns, tail and scales tinged green.
I thought this was brilliant in a few ways: first, according to the lore, Halmarut has jurisdiction over nature, particularly plant & fungal life. Secondly, this is our first proper glimpse of a member of the Convocation that hasn't been accounted for. We know for a fact that Gaius had "killed" some of them (with a note that those marked as members of the Convocation/Paragons can't be killed easily, so it's likely they might still be alive somewhere). Thirdly, I had secretly hoped that we'd get more Au Ra and we actually got one (wishful thinking).
This isn't the only reason why the patch was great to me - I think most of all, what made this patch genuinely the most fun I had that I want to go through the NG+ over again is the fights involved in this dungeon. Mistwake is a really exciting dungeon and I love how it takes us into three different terrains, providing a good challenge without being so egregiously "busy to make things difficult" for no reason (Yuweyawata & Meso Terminal my absolute fucking beloathed), and the fight against the Doomtrain is actually one of my favourite trials with how much the mechanics tickle my brain very much in a good way.
I feel like the fights in Dawntrail suffer a lot from "difficult = more busy, cluttered and flashy mechanics with hard-to-see visual cues" problem, so it's nice that the fights - whether it's the dungeon, trial or the 8-man raid - in the patch this time have been easier to follow. Speaking of 8-man raids...
First: I think they forgot about their "Arcadion fighters are often below the age of 20" lore with how they introduced two whole adult Elezen model NPCs into this tier, but it's whatever I guess. They're probably at the max age of 20, or maybe psychonekrosis doesn't really affect Eldite as swiftly as it does with the other races theoretically. Or - given that the Tyrant used to be a hunter (and unless stated otherwise I'm pretty sure they don't have underage hunters) they are, in fact, grown adults. I'm choosing to believe the third one because I think it makes sense (plus I want to do Terrible (affectionate) things to him.
Secondly, like I said, the fights are genuinely the most fun I have throughout this tier the same way Mistwake & Doomtrain are genuinely the best. It provides a challenge without the struggle of discerning through visual clutter, and to me M10 is the best instance of this, in my opinion. M12 is fine, though I thought a battle where the song is written and performed by a legendary rock singer should have had more pizzazz than what we were given.
M12 thus leads to my sole grief of this tier: the ending of this raid story is bad. It's not egregiously bad to my eyes as I'm not really a wrestling fan, and I have little context of what the entertainment wrestling industry is like - but even without that context I was expecting a much bigger payout than "you thought the president was the villain, but turns out he was a good man after all". I don't expect a context-rich raid like Eden or Pandaemonium where their stories are intricately tied into established lore, but I feel like I expected a little more, especially considering in the previous tier it was quite overtly implied that the cure for psychonekrosis was already developed & used by the military during Zoraal Ja's rule. That would have been a much more interesting course to explore than whatever they gave us, which is to me disappointing, because you have such a brilliant plot at hand, but the lackluster ending means Arcadion won't be as remarkable as the likes of Eden, Pandaemonium or Omega.
Also as much as I enjoyed the fight, the designs for this tier do leave me with a lot to be desired - I feel like Vamp Fatale is clearly a design made with a heavy male gaze in mind (in a bad way), and I WISH they had given more thought to the Tyrant instead of "big, bull-like man with a vaguely American Football look to him". The Extremes were the only best design of this tier.
All in all, I'm satisfied by this patch. It genuinely is the most fun I have since 3.3 MSQ, and it truly has made me excited for what's to come in the future, MSQ-wise.