MSQ
Alisae as a hacker was awesome, even if it didn't work out.
I loved getting to see Matoya again, and her dungeon. Heck, I loved seeing the whole FF1 cast on the walls of the final room (but where was the Armoire of Invincibility?)
Fandaniel was neat; I wish he was around for more than one cutscene. I'm going to be shocked if is motive really is 'destroy it all for the lolz'. I'm glad this thread came up with the translation of 'Endbringers'; all I could figure out from google is that Telophorous is a genus of birds.
WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT LYSE POSSIBLY BEING DEAD? Granted, it doesn't make a lot of sense that she'd die from a single sword stroke plus fade to black. But then, Varis died the same way, a few patches back! And was surrounded by *way* more healers and doctors than Lyse was!
Werlyt
Decent fight. And maybe, unlike Ruby Weapon, I won't feel compelled to ignore Trial Roulette for a patch too - we'll see how it goes next week.
Did Gaius know that was his data in Emerald Weapon? He sure didn't react to it much, if so.
At some point, Valens Van Varro crossed the line from villainy to cartoonish-super-villainy, and I just couldn't take him seriously anymore. Probably the expression on his face. Up until that point, he's the NPC I've most wanted to kill in a computer game, ever.
Eden
And I was ridiculed in 5.0 when I said Gaia was an Ascian. Who's laughing now?
I understand that's Cloud of Darkness's Disidia appearance? I was bummed she didn't get her own theme music. Or even just Hungerer again. It's one of FF's best boss themes.
Cylva was a giant wolf monster? ... maybe I should have paid more attention to the old role quests.
Evil Thancred didn't make a lot of sense to me lorewise. Also, I managed to clear without anyone in the party figuring out how those red and blue circles worked.
The majority of the last fight, where we see the 6 former primals, was amazing. The cutscene bits were nice - once - but grew really grating the second time, when we wiped around 30%; I can't imagine listening to them every week.
Someone in our raid called out "rest your weary soul in my 20 bosoms" and it made my day.
Apparently 'Ultimecia' is better translated as 'Artimecia'? And there was a lot more FF8 symbolism in that last fight, that completely went over my head.
It was good to see that the Ascians were capable of love, even back in the day. And that they'll be reincarnated, hopefully sans evil and/or Tempering.
Moving onward
It seemed really weird that all the patch's sarcastic responses and item descriptions were in Ununkulhai's followup quest.
Along those lines - with it being optional and highly gated - and "possibly taking years" - it looks like we can rule out going to the 13th for 6.0. Or maybe ever.
Why didn't we introduce Gaia to them? She's from the 13th too, I thought? Maybe in 5.5.
We had a number of mentions of Sharlayan, and one very noticeable one of the Moon. Possible 6.0 destinations?
If we're directly continuing the 5.4 plot in 6.0, it would seem to mostly be about Beastmen relations. I'm not sure how that would lend itself to exploring a new continent, which seems to be almost a requirement. Though it *is* supposedly going to be called 'Forspoken'; and 'Spoken' is 14's word for 'player character races'. Perhaps about expanding the definition of 'Spoken' to actually include everyone? Or, less optimistically, an all-out Beastman war?
No idea with the towers. They don't seem like a single-patch threat. It really looks like they do tempering, and we've conveniently just got ourselves a cure for tempering. Which would mean I guess they could be following WoW's modus operandi of "Your steadfast ally just went crazy, and now you've gotta fight them" - though at least we'd be curing them instead. If they indeed bring about "the final Days", it would be through rampant Summoning. The Twelve, perhaps? I dunno.