This post is a April 2026 transcription of this video. The text has been edited for readability while preserving my original sentiment.

Non-Spoiler Portion

Welcome to my Day 1 Adventurer’s Journal, as I kind of go through my experience playing through Dawntrail. Day 1, I did over 12 hours of streams across three different streams. It was a ton of fun. So the first thing you see is that title screen, and I freaking love how ear drummingly explosive the opening title screen is. So to have for the first time a very bright, a very like happy title screen, it’s just really great. I freaking love it.

Let’s talk about my general feelings on the cities. I’ve only been to one major city with a bunch of different villages, and I’ll kind of rope this in as well with like the new environments, but I’m just insanely impressed at how good this game is. Going through the first city that you get to visit in the game, it’s unlike anything we have seen ever. And I think what the developers have done such a fantastic job with is that they are truly caring about the different cultures that they are borrowing these ideas, these architectures to create this new world that does not feel anything like Eorzea. You visit it, whether you are talking to different NPCs, whether you’re looking at the architecture of the cities and the villages, whatever it is that you are doing in this game, even looking at the foliage and looking at the enemies, everything feels so unique. And I think also maybe part of that is the new texture updates, the foliage looking better, the lighting looking incredible. That really lends itself to this world feeling so much better than what we have been to before. And that’s something that I truly love.

Honestly, the major city that you get to visit for the first time has some of the best music in the game. The soundtrack you’re actually hearing right now behind this discussion video is actually the night theme, which is just such a vibe. And the day theme is just even better. It is really close to surpassing the Sharlayan theme. I still may have to give it some moments and maybe have to listen to the Sharlayan theme again, but absolutely incredible.

The environments throughout my playthrough, I was constantly shocked about how beautiful this game is. Looking at the foliage, seeing like this is the crazy thing about this game. This game has vistas, right? This game has vistas. You are walking through something and the game is like, yo, let me show you the world that you are in. And then you’re looking around and you’re seeing these gorgeous vistas, these environments, these cliffs, these waterfalls, these rivers, these mud banks, these swamps, all these different environments you’re seeing that you have not seen in this way before. And so it just this exploration, the feeling of exploration, this feeling that you are looking at this incredibly beautiful world is it’s so good. And they they do such a great job with it as well. You know, they build these environments to get these moments. It’s it’s gorgeous. And the music on top of that just makes it even better.

The new characters that you get introduced, they’re freaking fantastic. Each of them kind of all relating to the major theme of Dawntrail, which I don’t know if it’s probably a spoiler to talk about the overall theme of Dawntrail. So I’ll kind of avoid that for the spoilers section. But yeah, the overall and keep in mind, I’m also doing level 92 quests, so I have yet to even get scratch the surface of Dawntrail. Some of the characters are even super goofy and funny. It’s just such a treat. And you are in this is a very unique story. I mean, if you’ve watched some of the trailers, you’ll kind of understand this. But the whole point is for the character that who you are with. She wants to be a dawn servant, and they have recruited you to help her in her right of succession to become the next Dawntrail servant. And you are also competing against three other competitors. So it’s a different way to handle a Final Fantasy 14 story that we haven’t seen before, but they handle it so perfectly that it doesn’t feel weird. It doesn’t feel like filler content. It just it feels perfect for Final Fantasy 14.

And then also I won’t go into detail about the dungeon, but the dungeon was absolutely incredible for for your first dungeon. It was a lot of fun. They they tried something completely unique in that first dungeon, and it paid off. It freaking paid off. So I love that. And so far, the overall feelings I have about the story is I’m happy. I’m always smiling in the story, whether it be a laughter or whether it be just like I love where this direction is going. We are still even getting those sentimental moments that we’ve seen in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. They’re still able to capture the beauty of creating these characters, creating these cultures and nations inside Tural. And absolutely, I was I’m I’m so happy that I’ve been so positive during my day one experience playing through over 12 hours of Final Fantasy 14.

SPoiler TALK

First, let’s just start off with Gurool Ja Ja and the Tuliyollal saga. This is kind of the premise, the setup for the entirety of this journey that we are experiencing. Gurool Ja Ja, is the current Dawn Servant. He is serving the throne and he has something called the Tuliyollal saga. This saga is a representation of the kindness, the caring nature, the even the powerful status that Gurool Ja Ja had. He traveled across all of Tural to seek peace among every single nation, whether and each of these are considered feats in the saga. The saga tells this amazing story of how he was able to unite each of the nations all across Tural to come together to build Tuliyollal and to have peace. And that is why you see every single culture besides the giants in Tuliyollal all together in Harmony, in peace.

And the point of the next Dawn Servant is because he is getting old. He wants to look for a successor. And so he has set up this contest for three of his children and one person who is not his child to come together to become the next Dawn Servant by following in his footsteps going through the entirety of the saga. And the saga is seven panels. So there are seven different feats that each of the Dawn Servants need to achieve. They’ll be collecting keystones and after they collect all seven keystones, they also get access to the City of Gold.

The fun thing about this whole lore, this whole legend about the saga, and you’re specifically requested by Gurool Ja Ja to… and you’re Warrior of Light. Now, even with Wuk Lamat, they just requested you, Warrior of Light, to come see him. And you get this amazing fight scene with him, which was a ton of fun, which kind of represents the cinematic where the Warrior of Light, Viper, was fighting with him. And he mentions that you recognize… he’s like, if Wuk Lamat is ready for the throne. And you can give him a straight answer or you can give him a little rough answer, both leading to, no, she’s not ready for the throne. And he’s like, you’re right. I also believe she’s not ready for the throne. And he’s like, you probably also realize that no one, none of the claimants are ready for the throne. And your character, I think, looked a bit confused. And he goes on to explain that the purpose of this rite of succession, this whole journey to go through the saga, is not for someone to win the throne. It is for Gurool Ja Ja to create a proper Dawn servant. And what I love most about this is that Gurool Ja Ja said at the very end of this whole conversation that if he does not see anyone worthy of sitting on that throne, he will continue to rule, earn the throne. But he does trust his children to be capable of at least ascending to the throne.

And he has three children, right? The first promise, the resilient son, Zoraal Ja. And then, and this is his like, this is his blood son. So this is also a Mamool Ja. Who we learn, who we learn is insanely powerful. I’m going to take a little brief detour. There’s a freaking amazing moment, right? Throughout the entire game, they set up that a two-headed Mamool Ja is so powerful because one head is the peak physical, the other head is peak magical, and one of the competitors is a two-headed Mamool Ja. And he is very racist, let’s just say. He wants to take the throne of the Dawn Servant so that only Mamool Ja can… well, I guess technically the world, right? But specifically, he just wants to take over Tural. And there’s a moment where he’s trying to steal our pot sworn from Zoraal Ja. And this is the moment where you’re like, oh no, oh no, they’re going to go into a fight. They’re going to get into a fight. And there’s a moment where the seer, he’s about to like, hey, hold it, Zoraal Ja. And you’re like, oh my God, he’s going to tell him to run away. This is not worth the fight. You should wait. And what he says is, he’s like, keep him alive. And you’re like, wait, what? And then you see without any effort, without even pulling out his blade, hitting him with the hilt, a single strike, Zoraal Ja strikes Bakool Ja Ja, and Bakool Ja Ja goes to his knees. And then the seer, as they walk by, the seer is like, we still have, we still have use for you. And just creating that power scale of just like, no, Zoraal Ja is extremely powerful. This whole time they set up Bakool Ja Ja to be that powerful character. And it’s like, nah, nah, man, dude is just a fodder. Dude is enemy fodder to create havoc in this competition. But he is nowhere near as powerful as Zoraal Ja. So I think that was super cool.

We also go to the second promise, which is an adopted son. He is a cat boy, Koana. And the interesting about Koana is he’s not this physically powerful character like Zoraal Ja. He is, in fact, more of the intelligent character, the innovator. This character went to old Sharlayan to study, and he brought back how to create aetherytes. He brought back airship tech to create the dirigibles. And he continues to learn from Sharlayan to create these amazing inventions to help improve people’s conditions in Tural. And we learn through him the way he rules. A lot of people want to see these new technologies to continue to improve their living conditions, wanting to continue to improve their trades. You know, when you visit the Pelu Pelu, who are who are a mercantile nation, they are constantly celebrating Koana for like, oh, my God, you’re going to make trade so much easier for us. You’re going to create these technologies that we can sell and that we can create. And they’re all so happy. And I mean, even to the first the first promise, right, Zoraal Ja, even for him, people were celebrating him because he would create war, which means that there would be a economy. And so there’s so many different perspectives on like there isn’t like a one correct layer. I mean, there is one correct person who should deserve the throne. But I just mean in terms of like everyone loves everyone.

So everyone has a reason for supporting a different person other than the main person that we are trying to support, which is Wuk Lamat. And let’s speak about Wuk Lamat. Wuk Lamat being the third promise. Actually, I want to save Wuk Lamat for later because Wuk Lamat actually has I want to end it on Wuk Lamat because I have a lot to say about her. So we got we got off on a huge tangent about the first promise, the second promise about what is a dawn servant and all that fun stuff. But let’s actually go back to Gurool Ja Ja for a quick second, because the whole purpose of, you know, getting all these keystones is that you have the ability to access the city of gold. And the important thing about the city of gold is that in every legend, and we’ve learned this from one of my favorite characters, Wuk Evu. He is a big cat boy who helped us build the float when we were helping the Hanu Hanu, which was a very fantastic moment. We’re doing like some celebrations and some festival stuff. It was a lot of fun. But essentially what he mentioned to us is that he was like, hey, I want to tell you something about the city of gold because I know you’re looking for it. And he was like, in every legend, they’re always different. But there is one common thing, and is that no one ever returns. And what we have seen and in this in the trailer is that we have seen people disappear in what potentially is the city of gold, given that the trailer talks about it.

And there’s some spoilers about who the people were that disappeared in the in the cinematic, but I won’t discuss that here. But who I do want to discuss is a guy named Ketenramm. Now, Ketenramm was the first Eorzean to set foot in Tural 80 years ago, and he was actually a part of Gurool Ja Ja’s group as they started to build Tuliyollal. So this first Eorzean who’s helping build this peaceful nation. There’s a specific thing about him in both the Eorzean legends and the Tural legends about Ketenramm. There’s another common theme. He disappears, he goes missing. And what we know about Gurool Ja Ja is that he has visited the Golden City. So we know he’s gone to the Gold City and he somehow returned. But what we also know is that Ketenramm, who was with him, also disappears. So most likely he will be at hiding or he won’t be hiding. Maybe he’ll just be stuck in the City of Gold, which I found really fascinating because now we’re still connecting everything to the City of Gold. And I love that.

We also got this offhanded comment and I forget I forget who it was from, but they mentioned that the City of Gold was in the sky and immediately, if anyone has read One Piece, we know this is this is the Skypiea Arc. So I was very I was very happy about that. I was super happy about that. I want to next talk about the different cultures. I think this is where Dawntrail really shines is that every single culture that is represented, every single and I don’t mean like real world culture. I just mean every single culture, because the whole the point of Dawntrail is this uniting of different nations, this uniting of different cultures to come together, to create peace. In fact, Alisaie and Alphinaud specifically tell us at the beginning of the quest that the reason why they really want to go to Tural is so that they can see how these different cultures, these different nations are able to interact with each other and have peace, because they want to learn from those lessons and apply that to Garlemald as they work on restoring Garlemald and as they work on basically bringing Garlemald into the fold of the Alliance. And I found that so powerful that they were like, we need to learn how other nations are able to create peace among each other. And so they found that going to Tural would be that option. And I think that’s so beautiful. And what’s so excellent about this game is that no matter which region, which area you’re visiting, you’re always visiting a different culture.

And as such, there’s always just this amazingly different in terms of architecture, in terms of the way they go about their business, whether you’re looking at the Pelu Pelu and they’re always focused on trading. So the huge benefit to them is like, hey, if even if you don’t have the money for something, we love a fair trade. So they’re always willing to trade things that that seem worth it to them. And so, you know, you don’t have to worry about money over there. They just want to trade. And I and I love that about that culture. And it just we go into like the Hanu Hanu culture and they have this, which I hope becomes an emote. They have this greeting called the Ohokaliy and they go Ohokaliy, you know, and it’s it’s just so adorable. And it’s and what’s cool about this group is that they’re more geared towards festivals. They’re more geared towards prayer and a lot of their aspects revolve around that. And you can clearly tell based off the the story that you’re visiting here of starting up a harvest festival for them. And it’s just it’s so beautiful. And you even meeting the Moblins and the fact that they have all these architectures, all these buildings built in like pot shapes, you know, they’re they look ceramic, you know, with the new lighting system, they look so ceramic. It’s crazy.

And it’s just this attention to detail, this this care for this world and this the different cultures, the fact that their facial animations are so perfect. When you look at a Mamool Ja Ja emote, when you look at a Hanu Hanu emote, these are not stereotypical humanoid characters. But the way the animators were able to convincingly create such beautiful emotions in these characters faces is something I I was never expecting, but it added lent so much to feeling the emotions of each of the characters, not looking at a character going, oh, you an ugly creature, but like really feeling the human emotions that are coming from them to help me understand the emotions that they’re feeling. It was incredible.

And it’s this story is so beautiful. And the whole theme of this story is about peace. It’s about finding common ground among the people that, you know, might be a lot different from you, you know, whether it be race, whether it be creed, whether it be the color of your skin at whatever it is, this whole purpose, this whole story about Dawntrail is about coming together and living in peace in this world, you know, and it’s such a beautiful story. And the way this story is encompassed, the way the story is shared is through, I think, one of the best characters, you know, Final Fantasy 14 has ever written, which is Wuk Lamat. I think Final Fantasy 14 has some of the best characters in the game. But being able to tell a story through a character like Wuk Lamat, a character who isn’t confident in herself. Sure, she has this bravado of like, hey, I’m a tough girl boss, let’s freaking go. But the true aspect of her story is that she’s not as strong as the first promise, her brother. She’s not as smart as her second brother, the second promise, go on then. She doesn’t have any titles to her name, any victories. She is just there. And throughout this entire story, we hear her struggle. We see how hard she takes it. And it’s such a relatable story because it’s this character who just feels so inferior to everyone else. She constantly thinks, why is she a part of this running? Why does she think she deserves to sit on the throne? She feels like she’s just a disappointment.

And there’s this constant reminder to her in the story. And even as you go through the quest, you see that there’s something so unique about her that no one else that we’ve seen in this competition gets. And it’s that for Wuk Lamat, she cares about the people. You know, when you look at Zoraal Ja, he’s more concerned about war, about, you know, we need in order to create peace, we need to have complete control via power. When you look at Koana’s like, oh, you have an issue? Let me solve that with technology. And there’s a very, very strong moment. We visit Koana as we are helping out the Hanu Hanu with their festival. And he is like, I don’t understand these rituals that they’re doing. Like, he’s like confused. He’s like, okay, I could just fix it with technology. No, he doesn’t understand these cultural moments that really help these people, right?

But the thing with Wuk Lamat is that Wuk Lamat is constantly letting us know that like, she wants to understand and wants to learn these different cultures. Whether we’re talking about Mablu, who’s a character that we meet during the Pelu Pelu quest of who wants to be a peddler and sell goods, you know, where she’s like, I don’t know, you know, Tolrobi kind of, you know, he raised me and he wants me to be a farmhand, but I want to be a peddler. And us giving her that confidence, Wuk Lamat trying to understand the different aspects of these cultures, understanding each person individually. The fact that her herself is like her, the way she thinks is by first like wanting to help someone, not because of the right succession.

There is literally a moment where we are doing quest things that don’t relate to getting a keystone because she’s like, we want to help you first so that then we can start doing the keystone stuff, you know? And it’s just, it’s stuff like that where this character is so strong. It’s so powerful to see her growth already is so incredible. You know, she cares so much about the people of Tyrol and you see that through the story. They don’t tell you this. They show you it in the dialogue. They show you it or I shouldn’t say they show you in the dialogue of her like conversing with the different nations where you go look at her and see, oh my God, she cares so much about these people in the way she holds herself in the way she takes on this pain, the struggle throughout the entirety of the quest that I’ve gone through.

But the one thing that I love so much is the reason why she hasn’t given up yet. And it’s because she’s like, I love my father and I love what he has done to create peace in this world. I want to continue that legacy. And because of that sole purpose alone, does she fight so hard and struggle so much to try and become the Dawn Servant. And that is something just so beautiful. And I think I’m so excited to see Wuk Lamat continue to grow. I mean, obviously, I mean, look, at least to me, she’s got to be the Dawn Servant, right? It would be a crazy twist if she didn’t become a Dawn Servant, but I feel like she is really the only one who truly knows how and why her father was able to create peace. And I think that’s a huge purpose for Wuk Lamat.

The first dungeon is absolutely incredible. Very cool designs of the boss, like the giant like beetle boss was really cool. It was cool to fight like the mimics of all of our characters moving around. It was also very funny that we ran into Koana, Thancred, and Urianger’s group during the dungeon. And then Thancred’s like, hey, you take the long way. And then he breaks, he like causes like a rock slide to occur. And then he blocks our way out. I love moments like that. And so I really hope like the competitive aspect of this game continues, because that stuff is just a ton of fun. Competing against Urianger and Thancred is actually like a ton of fun. So I’m excited to learn more. Thank you so much. And until next time, I’ll see you later. Bye.