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

Here we are for the penultimate day for Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail. I last left off right before doing the level 99 dungeon, the Origenics, so I’m very excited because that means that day six will be the final day of my playthrough. So the first thing that happened is that we did the train bomb sequence, which was super, super fun. I would have loved to play that out because I think that would have been a lot more fun. We bombed the Vanguard and we start to go approach the Vanguard, which was going to be our next level 97 dungeon. And that dungeon was so awesome. For one, the music was absolutely incredible. Such amazing music.

Really cool environments. I particularly love the design of all the technology and it feels so much different than Allagans. I also love how hectic that entire dungeon was, where so many enemies had abilities of like AoE attacks or like range attacks that are line of sight. So you just saw like hundreds of patterns on the floor and you had to dodge it, which leads to one of my favorite bosses in that dungeon, which was the second boss, where it was just like setting up fences. It was shooting lasers all throughout and you’re like, I can’t find a safe place to stand in this dungeon. It was like, it was a ton of fun.

The whole the whole dungeon was so much fun. And then you actually face against the final boss, who actually ends up being human, which actually was very surprising. And then what they had on their head was a regulator similar to Zoraal Ja. And what we learned about those regulators not only allow you to imbue the person who’s wielding it with like a beast soul, similar to what we’ve seen with Zoraal Ja or similar to what we’ve seen with this dude here, where they can actually transform into a beast if they have enough of those souls.

Afterwards we visit a place called Heritage Found, which you just see the darkness in the sky, all the lightning constantly shooting down. These people are trying to live within these harsh conditions. And a lot of these people, including people who are from Tuliyollal, have these regulators on them. And these regulators help keep their happiness up by like, let’s say, if they die, they’re able to come back to life because it’s using souls. And if someone else in their life dies and they’re no longer able to be resurrected, the name of that person disappears so they don’t have to feel the suffering and pain of death. It’s really messed up.

Heritage Found was just a really fascinating location because we are seeing this area in Erenville’s perspective. Originally, we are told this place was built three years ago, but how is it already decrepit? How is it already falling apart? We’re trying to figure out and trying to understand everything that’s going on. We see all this lightning in the sky. We see these towers here. And what we later come to realize is that this is what the Ascians were referring to when they meant the rejoining. But we realize that this area is somehow the merging of two different reflections at once. And this happened to be a greater area than G’raha has ever seen.

The biggest reveal was that the dome dropped 30 years ago. Something happened to where the connection between the barrier that was created and the outside of the world in the source, like connected together, which resulted in the Alexandria being like temporally connected with the source. So now the time will no longer flow faster there than it is out here. So that was really fascinating to listen to. We also got to meet a character, Sphene, the Queen of Alexandria.

She was such an interesting character because throughout the entire situation, the game does a really good job about this. It’s like they really make you feel suspicious of her when she’s always happy. She’s so excited. She’s like, oh, I want to protect my people, all these things. But anytime we ask her like specific questions, she like wears her heart on her sleeve. When we ask if we help her with something? She felt uncomfortable with a lot of the situation that was happening with everyone. In fact, somehow, somehow Zoraal Ja became king and she was queen. And somehow also Zoraal Ja had a child and I which was that was also baffling. I don’t know how that man wanted to…

Either way. She was very interesting. We end up learning that she is an endless, which means that when someone dies, their soul gets taken and they extract the memories from the soul so that the soul becomes pure so that other people can use it to live longer lives. But those memories could also be imbued into other people, which for obviously for the queen of Alexandria, they just imbued it into another body. We also meet a character named Otis, who is also the same thing. We also meet Erenville’s mother, who I believe is also an endless. We don’t know yet. But given the most recent line of questioning that Erenville gave her and then her never wanting to show herself to Erenville. Her entire soul is inside this bot, much like Otis, because Otis is not an endless because once they die, once that body dies, they’re gone forever, right? Similar to a flesh body, whereas Sphene, she’s an endless because even though a body will die, she can still move to different bodies because of the soul. The way the way the soul thing works, I’m not quite sure.

Oh, this was also really interesting. So one of the questions that Wuk Lamat asked about the attack on Tuliyollal & it was pretty clear that Sphene definitely chose to go to Tuliyollal and eventually we do end up learning that. She wants to prolong the life of her people and in order to do that, she needs more souls, she needs more life. And how do you do that? You take souls from other people. And so that’s why she went and attacked Tuliyollal.

I was so suspicious with her the entire time. So the fact that she ends up revealing to be evil is really cool. Obviously, I only describe it as evil just because of she’s very similar to Bakool Ja Ja. She is put in a situation that she feels she has no way out and that the only way she can achieve is by killing other people. I hope that once we resolve this issue, she will not need to resort to evil.

However, with Zoraal Ja, I don’t think that’s the case. It’s very interesting though, because I’m curious how her writing is going to continue. Obviously, I think it’s safe to assume that she’s going to live and that she’s going to continue ruling over Solution 9 well after Zoraal Ja. At the same time, we can’t just let her free. We can’t just let her go. She has to be punished in some way. Whether that is we give Solution 9 a different ruler, maybe it’s no longer under a monarch, maybe Oblivion takes over. Either way, it’s like, I don’t know how we can truly redeem Sphene.

Aside from that, we got to visit a place called Solution 9. After visiting all the different villages and towns in Tural, and you go to Solution 9 and you’re like, this is like so bland and sterile. And I’m not sure if that is purposely done because Alexandria is meant to be a place where nothing bad happens. It’s all perfect just for you. And maybe that’s why it feels so stale and feels so lack of life.

An issue that every game has is when you have a massive city like Solution 9, where you can see buildings upon buildings upon buildings, it really feels like a video game area because you can only visit like this small section. And here it is. But you can still see the vast amount of buildings that you could visit if it was the real world, but because it’s a video game, you just see this stuff. And it’s like, oh, it makes it less interesting or fun to explore because when you visit like the rest of Tural, when you see a village, when you see a city, you’re like, oh, I can go throughout the entire city. Sure, you can’t enter every building. That’s fine. But you can go through the entire city and go like, I’ve explored all of this building.

But when you look at Solution 9, it’s like, oh, my God, you you can only visit like this small little tiny section of it. And it’s like, oh, we also have the dope cutscene with the second attack on Tuliyollal. And that was incredible. Though the plan of like when Wuk Lamat was like, it’s like, look, I’m not the only Dawn servant. And then we see the entire plan that they had planned. We got Vitra showing up. Goddamn, dude, what a freaking amazing way of just showcasing the power of people coming together to fight for their nation. It’s it’s just so cool. It’s just so cool to see that entire cutscene. So I greatly enjoyed that.