I'll get around to the MSQ eventually. Maybe today. My expectations were in line with Cleretic's so I threw it on the back burner. Apparently I shouldn't have?

Echoes of Vana'diel:

It all began with a stone, or so the legends say.

Except the stone is Electrope and oh, by the way, Sareel Ja apparently made a saving throw against death and is now very much back for revenge.

Crystal Tower 2: Electrope Boogaloo

Prishe flipping out about a male Mithra was pretty on-brand, though she still seems a bit... sanded down from her FFXI incarnation? Glad they got Aya Hirano into the studio for her battle lines, though.

The zones look great in the small slices that we get. It's kind of a shame how hectic the combat is these days because there was almost no time to just stop and soak in the view like there was in Myths. The encounters just being out and about and using appropriate battle music was a nice touch, though.

The he/she Prishe mentions casually is clearly meant to be the FFXI player character, so probably not getting an appearance. The same trick was used in the Granblue Fantasy crossover event a couple years back (which was itself a follow-up to FFXIV's Shantotto event for some really crazy continuity). I'm relieved we can rule out Abyssea spillover this time around, at least.

I'm a 20th anniversary fake fan (and only played up through Aht Urgan so far), so I can't really weigh in on the player culture references. There's not much connecting the bosses we got to each other in the story or lore for me to comment on. It seems more like a Greatest Hits album at the moment, so the Shadow Lord fight set to "Awakening" was pretty much the perfect opening act on that front.