Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

Nier...

I haven't played the games in the series, but I found the Tower to be the best so far, be it in terms of aesthetics, music or the bosses - especially enjoyed the third one and the creative use of mechanics. Story-wise it does seem to resolve to alien invaders using a portal, so doesn't seem to touch overly much on XIV lore, beyond some thematic parallels with the main story stuff. Dwarf babysitting was sort of funny.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

I would have to guess that the bridge character won't be Nerva himself, but rather his kid Titus. If Nerva is either dead, tempered, or just uncooperative, Titus would be the last remaining heir to the Garlean throne.

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Titus is Solus's second son. As far as I recall, lord Nerva is a cousin of Varis (therefore he'd be the son of Titus.) The reference in the story to Titus having no "ready heir" as at the time he attempted to assassinate Zenos could imply a considerable age gap between father and son (and possibly also first son of Solus and second, therefore allowing a sizeable age gap with his cousin, Varis.)

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

More musings on Werlyt, and sort of responding to Cilia's take on the fight.

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The answer is quite simple:

Just about everything in the Diamond Weapon fight we've already seen, and more dynamic at that.

Diamond Weapon's armored form relies on the powers of the previous three Weapons: Ruby's claw tentacles, Sapphire's chest blaster, and Emerald's disembodied hands. It's unique abilities consist mainly of explosions, which... aren't all that impressive. This version appears to use Shinryu's skeleton, albeit with unique animations.

Diamond Weapon's unarmored form is... a coked-up mecha Ifrit, whose main form of attack is knockback into a bottomless pit. It's... not a particularly novel strategy in this game, and while other bosses do employ it said strategy is particularly egregious here because you probably aren't going to die otherwise in this phase.

Finally, the backdrop is... and endless expanse of clouds. While fighting high in the sky on an airship deck is interesting, we've already done crazier stuff; the Bismarck fight is almost identical in setup, except there you're on a floating island being towed behind an airship, shooting harpoons into a sky whale while it manipulates the weather and throws endless flunkies at you... it's much more dynamic than the Diamond Weapon fight which is, again, just an endless expanse of clouds. You hit the Weapon and swap platforms to evade some of its armored attacks. Woo.

As for EX differences... I've watched some tutorial videos to get ready for it (maybe), and there are no major changes to the fight. It's essentially the same as most EX fights: same as normal with some tighter coordination needed, no AoE markers so you have to rely purely on visual tells to dodge attacks, and a couple new mechanics to keep it fresh. I haven't seen the "mutation" type animation anywhere; I dunno, maybe there's a secret phase with Zenos' combat data that triggers if you bring it down fast enough? (Probably not.)

Ruby had the Evangelion-style Nael hatching out of its back. Sapphire was a mano e mano mecha battle. Emerald was a complete battlefield shift, along with a chance to see Gaius in his prime. Diamond... is you beating on a mecha while riding an airship, surrounded by an endless cloud expanse. It's just boring in comparison. There's no "wow" factor.

To me, at least.

2/3 way through Diamond Weapon EX prog:

This fight is boring. For the most part it feels the same as Normal but with no indicators, which is never a good look, especially since the indicators were pretty much the only distinctive graphics the fight had. Without those you're basically stuck watching the text log for unvoiced text bubbles you ignored and doing trigonometry on the fly, since the floor is also entirely unhelpful for the first time since before Second Coil. At least it's not a circle?

The NieR raids are much more dynamic in comparison, even when they don't have indicators, or only have "you failed" indicators right as the AoEs snapshot their victims. I'm glad I main a braindead 1-2-3-er that doesn't need to watch hotbars, because otherwise I'd be on the floor. They're certainly the closest FFXIV has come to being an ARPG, even though I do think the timing is a little tighter than it should be in "casual" content.

There's also no special "what if" twist to it, unlike the Minstrel's Ballad fights, which is a shame. Would've been cool to see more of the other pilots' data, since we never had a chance to know them as individuals besides Rex, and Milisandia was the only one mourned individually, probably owing to her being essentially a posthumous character (and a woman). Feels like a bit of a backslide into the ol' "death matters, but not life," schtick of Pre-Stormblood FFXIV, and that's already me doing more thinking on this story than I wanted to.

Honestly, all three of Weapon fights don't differ much on extreme vs. normal outside of the usual lack of indicators, forced tank swaps, and certain mechanics targeting everyone instead of just a few people.

I do agree that there was a relative lack of stylistic flair due to it lacking a proper second phase and change of music, though.

So an interesting theory I had when Playing the Werlyt questline

Does anyone else think the area we find diamond in after it crashes and where Gaius fights Valens in look really detailed to be just a throwaway zone used only for a cutscene. I know some of it was used in the Emerald Weapon fight but it got me thinking what if Werlyt proper is one of the new zones added in 6.0 perhaps to get closer to Garlemald and recruit Gaius.

The Sorrow of Werlyt:

It's a shame that there's so few male Raen NPC's of note and that when we finally see some more, they all end up dying. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Allie was the only orphan to emerge unscathed. On that front, it was rather boring and predictable. Valens was amusing in a similar manner to Fandaniel. He also seems to be inspired by Hojo from FFVII to a degree with the whole obsession with dangerous and weird science experiments. Ultimately, it was obvious that the entire quest chain served as an excuse for some cool and flashy robot fights with some body horror mixed in.

I thought that the fight itself was decent, though compared to some of the other trials we've seen recently it's far from my favourite. I liked the design of Werlyt itself. It's pretty and as someone who grew up next to the ocean, I have a soft spot for the views in such places. I feel it was a missed opportunity not to use our fight against the Sapphire Weapon as an excuse to show us what Regula looked like. Worse yet, there's a lot of missing potential in Gaius not acknowledging that Regula took it upon himself to root out corruption from within Garlemald.

At least he's on the path to finally try and restore his homeland to its former glory, though. I liked his 1.0 and 2.0 self much better than his 4.0 and 5.0 self. We'll see how his experiences in Werlyt shape him. I think he'd serve well as the right hand man and military commander to a Larsa type figure, so hopefully he's being nudged in such a direction. Either way, he's almost certainly going to show up again in 6.0. Hopefully somebody gives him a memo about the Ascians and explains their side of the story to give a better distinction between the goals of the Unsundered compared to the goals of Zenos and Fandaniel.

YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse

Yep, loads of unexplained nonsense, as foretold by Salzman! expected of this raid series. I expect more will be revealed in the effective NG+ weekly quests, or something... the fights are fun (if rather difficult if you don't know what you're doing) and the music is great, but having not played any of Yoko Taro's previous works I had no attachment to the characters, and none of them have really done anything to endear themselves to me.

The philosophical denouement was interesting, but storywise... ehh.

Rambling about Werlyt and MSQ

Personally, I don't think they'd have Gaius ride off into the sunset to be American Shogun of Werlyt only to bring him back next patch as our "in" to Garlemald. But maybe.

Either way, at present I'm not expecting Nerva and the IIIrd to play a big part in what's to come. Were he so important I get the feelin' he'd be more than name dropped a few times as one of many contenders for the Imperial throne, who was ultimately nothing but a puppet of Danny Boy. Further what we've seen of the Imperial capital in preview material shows it's going to be a blasted ruin, and between confirmed and heavily implied areas we're going to Thavnair, Sharlayan, the ruined Imperial capital, and the freakin' Moon... and with the Empire having been supplanted by the Telophori, and stopping a literal apocalypse in its tracks being our main goal in Endwalker, sorting out the Garlean Empire's political woes is likely to be very very low on our list of priorities.

Extra notes:
-Crafted versions of the Byakko and Hades weapons were added (no Byakkos for GNB/DNC, of course); the former has ink blot effects, while the latter generates arcane rings like the boss'.
-The Easter event finally started today and only takes 15 minutes or so. Subservient Chicken makes his debut in Eorzea.

Nier:

Well now certainly lots of references to past Yoko Taro games in these fights.

Boss 1 : Emil and shadow inspired, perhaps the machines took the data from Nier to produce this scenario.

Bosses 2: Direct from Nier it is Yoko Taro's duo of just trying to protect themselves Hanzel and Gretel but you can't understand them until play through 2 :P I jest but I am really interested in what they and the 1st boss are saying in their code.

Boss 3: Red girl remains as creepy and ambiguous as ever

Boss 4 p1: Queen beast inspired more from Drakengaurd 3 than 1 and this carries over into p2.

Boss 4 p2: Kaine the hermaphrodite's theme is the remix and the boss has 2P's and a red girl's heads while adorned with the same flowers from Drakengaurd 3 set in Nier's Japan timeline after the white disease from the Queen beast from Drakengaurd 1. This boss is pure fan service while being very good fight for non fans. Bravo on this one.

As for the entire story not Yoko Taro's better works imo, there is more in the weeklies, but as is definitely needed more of a hook than what was shown. I'd like to know what Anogg saw when she went through or what world she went to because she really learned a lot about those orbs perhaps a bit of a teaser to Taro's next work.

I'll go over MSQ and Werlyt after sleep

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Originally Posted by JeanneOrnitier

Okay, here's my theory with the towers (specifically the big one in Garlemald)

And then the beams coming from the smaller towers are broadcasting its tempering to other locations beyond its immediate vicinity.

I don't know how the Lunar Primals fit in, but that's what I think is going on in the imperial capital.

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Is this where I put some characters? Yay!

In agreement on the almost quite literal broadcasting. Those things look hugely like RKO-inspired radio towers it's been in my mind for some time that's kind of what they do, maybe using lightning aether.

Enjoyed the MSQ overall. More dragons is always good. Also wondering when I can file adoption papers for the twins; they are my pixel kids after all. Fandaniel has another role in another life as Salacious Crumb - I have no idea why he makes me think that, but he just does.

On the subject of the MSQ...

I really hope they have the sense to just let us go investigate one of towers in the second part of 5.5 and that we get a clear picture of exactly what is going on with them; particularly how they appeared out of nowhere and what the deal is with their strange bio-mechanical nature.

If they can just pop up wherever Fandaniel wants, it begs the question of what's keeping him from just deploying them near the capital cities.

I'm also really curious as to just what exactly is tempering everyone with the mention of the victims only hearing a deafening roar and no recollection of anything happening after. We know from Titan's victims that their minds are normally being flooded with thoughts of the primal in question, whereas this "primal" seems more like it's simply mind-controlling people through sheer force of will as its victims seem decidedly less...coherent then the usual tempering victims who at times were able to pass themselves off as being normal.