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.