Forewarning that my utter disappointment with the MSQ might have negatively colored my feelings on the other new content. But here we go!

MSQ:
Ugh, MSQ was such a letdown. We didn't resolve ANYTHING. The Garleans are still menacing our doorstep. The Scions are still soulless. Elezenos is still skulking around behind the scenes. That last is particularly irksome. I seriously think that Zenos's story should have been resolved within the scope of this expansion. They either should have left him dead after 4.0, or orchestrated his swan song by now. I'll confess that I hadn't considered Iscah's point, that perhaps part of the reason this was a letdown was because we were already spoiled on a lot of the "shocking developments", like the fact that we'd be going to the First Shard. (Though, in fairness, I'd guessed that ages ago, back when Scions first started collapsing.)

Varis's crazyfase was probably the most interesting tidbit I got out of this segment of the MSQ. I strongly suspect that he's been taken over by Solus, given that the expression occurred just after he received the update on the Black Rose, and we know that Solus was keenly interested in the stuff. If it is Solus, he's playing an interesting game, since he clearly wants Elidibus to think that Varis is still his own agent, what with all the talk about man deciding man's destiny. It makes me wonder, too, if Solus might not have already been in control when Varis met with the Alliance leaders... Or, it might have nothing to do with Solus at all, and Varis has just plain lost it. Time will tell!

I'm kind of irritated that not a word was mentioned of Lyse, Yugiri, or Hien after we recovered, like we're just supposed to assume they're fine. Hien was the only one we actually saw moving after their clash with Zenos. Did Estinien rescue them as well? If not, why didn't Zenos polish them off? And speaking of which, I really do not like the developing trend of using Estinien as a deux ex machina. This is the second time now, with the first being his disabling of the big cannon in the Peaks.

The battle with Zenos was okay, but like all our clashes with Zenos didn't really feel all that epic. I would have liked to see a full-on 8-man trial with the guy, possibly with an Extreme version to really do the supposedly invincible Garlean justice.


Hildy:
Hildebrand was probably my favorite part of this update, but even it was not without some flaws. Best scene, I think, was mind-controlled Godbert, both the expected curb-stomp battle and the touching memory montage (of repeatedly pummeling his son) that snapped him out of it. I'm torn on the revelation that Jim was Greg. It's fun to see more Greg (and another Greg trial battle!), but I would have preferred to learn more about Jim as an independent character. I have the strong suspicion that his eventual reveal as Greg was NOT planned when he was originally made the boss of Kugane Castle, and I kinda would have liked to see how he would have turned out if he hadn't been co-opted for the Hildy storyline.

Love the fact that we got the Hildy end-credits dance as an emote! It's a dance I never knew I HAD to have, until I actually had it!


Beast Tribes:
This set of beast tribe quests felt really uninspired. It had a bit of promise at the start - I liked the idea of incorporating the classic folk tale of the princess who makes impossible demands of a suitor (who then somehow manages to fulfill them), and the idea of someone trying to subvert the story by presenting convincing substitutes was cool. Pretty much everything after that was sub-par, though; just an endless string of "follow the bad guy - oh no, we got here too late!" until the end of the questline. I felt bad for Alpa, relegated to damsel-in-distress for nearly the entire thing. And the Philosopher's Fin? Really? What the heck is that supposed to even be? Couldn't they have come up with some other treasure to bring the Namazu into the storyline? I mean, if they were dead set on a kidnapping, they could have had Goyrei accidentally swallow it, or something.

I also feel that they should have actually included the meeting with the demandy-pants princess, both because witnessing her astonishment at seeing her demands fulfilled would have been amusing - and also because it makes no damned sense to butcher Alpa before showing her to the princess! If they just brought her a plate of raw meat, why on earth would she believe that it came from an actual mermaid? Same for the fins. Maybe. Honestly not sure what the "real" Philosopher's Fin is supposed to be, so it's hard to say.

The HW unified Beast Tribe quests were also a bit on the lame side, so my expectations weren't that high, but these quests still failed to meet them. The original ARR unified beast tribe quests set a pretty high bar in terms of storytelling, admittedly!