Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 2)

Finally got around to whirlwind sprinting through Zadnor

Story had interesting happenings. Particularly, I thought the aetheric frequency machine to blow up the ceruleum was genius. It reminded me of the Sunfire being used to blow up the Sunfire driven engine of the Dreadnaught in FFII, only a little less dramatic and a lot more innovative.


I was surprised that mettle gains were over 10x what we got in Bozja right out of the gate. But big numbers please my ape brain, and the whole process felt expedited. I wondered about the Honors buffs as I leveled, and I watched a WHM with them do the Serpent's Head duel in a traditional, slow method. Though I didn't really realize what lost actions they were using to defend themselves. I got the duel later, and hadn't looked it up, not expecting to get picked. Died to the first cast, because I didn't have Lost Reflect. Heard and saw on Youtube that duels can be effectively cheesed... I say more power to that. Duels are kinda BS if they can one shot you right out of the gate too, though I suppose they've been like that.

Really liked all the little lore that piled up across the skirmishes, and seeing the Ivalician Lucavi reappearing in Skirmishes was certainly welcome. I wish that they'd added lines for Oboro and Tsubame to recognize you if you'd done the Ninja questline.

I honestly kind of think Pagaga's backstory is sorta dumb. I'd much rather they had introduced a proper Vochstein Ala Mhigan. Her emote is cute though.

The zone look and feel was good. Felt like a salt flat kinda, and then you get the sorta sparse forest in the second area, and then more salt flat with extra craters. Definitely seems like they made each area bigger, so that people would compartmentalize, so that relic farmer isn't just easily done. You have to commit to an area pretty much, cause even with the riding map there's no getting credit on all or even half of the skirmishes in zone.

Dalriada was really fun, if a bit easy. Diabolos was quite a surprise, though it's not really Diabolos, but an Allagan driven manifestation of him controlled and weaponized. The call back to Lost City door mech was a nice touch. It actually killed me because my eyes are bad at reading angles/depth, but only that first run.

I also really loved the fight with uhm... Garlean guy in a robot and Lyon. It really highlighted how much more powerful it is to be a being that can manipulate aether, with Dawon the Younger giving his life force to power the mech back up.

The fights before that were visual set pieces. I've gone top every time so far, because no one seems interested in doing that, so I have no idea what's on the bottom route at the start.

Storyline wise I expected the non-choice. It seems like SE thinks that giving us choices is more of a, "How would you like to be emotionally/mentally manipulated by the plot?" Cause I sorta read it as, if you believe that evil doers should get an immediate come-uppence and in this case, one at all, that oh you didn't think they might be important... cause the scriptwriter said so! I did appreciate that the story lets you kill her though, and you resolve to do it, but then are stopped... cause she succumbs to her injuries first. :/ \: Let me express myself as closely as the dialogue options allow, please, or just go back to having the WoL nod. Smh. The only thing so far to have had a truly different outcome that I know of is the Eureka choice, and that has yet to come back around for a true difference between playthroughs/MSQ.

Anyway, I'm still having fun with Zadnor. I like the honors grind to get insanely powerful. I've already seen some claims that the echo bonus for Dalriada has allowed people to do it with a mere three people, they having 600k HP due to Honors and Echo. Sounds insane.

To be fair, Yoshida did explicitly state that the outcome wouldn't change, and that the choices were just there to better fit events to your own morality.