Shirogane (Extreme)
Sometimes the only way to win is not to play. I wouldn't give up a Mist house with a terraced garden and market board just to get my weeb on.


MSQ
I'm glad the Echo shield is becoming a recurring thing, and that we have two other people already who can do it, too. I always felt that tempering was a needlessly edgy justification for why we can't fight Primals alongside story NPCs, so it's good that they're addressing that now that the instanced battle scripting has gotten to the point that it has.

Tsuyu is... cute? I always have mixed feelings about amnesia plots, not just because of... that story. I have mixed feelings about it all across the board, as both the loss of the "original" personality by way of amnesia and the loss of the "new" personality by way of recovery are on the same level as death as far as narratives go, but almost never treated as such. It's about as tacky/cruel as killing someone off and bringing in their replacement in the next episode. Bonus points for long lost twins.

But we don't know it's amnesia yet. I just saw it as another side of her we haven't seen before. We'll know more next patch.

And who is this mysterious gloved man? The plot thickens!

Meta aside:
Arenvald's (Japanese) voice is still way too cute for a male Highlander. It's great that he's getting more screen time, but him sharing a VA with Hancock is weird. Double-casting in general is weird, but it worked for Nanamo and Tataru because they're both female Lalas, and it worked for Urianger and Isse because the latter let KENN speak without mangling his vocal cords like he does for Uri.


Ivalice
Having a previous game's story in its entirety exist in some small way in the lore of another FF game... isn't totally unheard of, so I'll wait and see how it unfolds from here. Since they actually have the original creator on board for this one, I hope that the clever references eventually give way to an entirely new story, and not... the other way around...

I never got a chance to play FF Tactics myself, but... I know a little about how it ends. Yes, I'm still me. Yes, I still see a story with ancient bloodlines and lost secrets and go, "oh, no, not this again." FFXIV's writing all across the board has been a lot more carefully thought out lately, so I'll try to believe for now.

I wonder if the '???' area grouping will have some significance later. I mean, they already told us we were going to Dalmasca, so...