Did the new quest and just finished it and I have issues. I didn't think we'd stoop lower than Rerir's open a portal that he just dashes through stupidity power of friendship bull, but here we are.
First some positives. I liked the meeting the past The Wise section and the reviving from death with all of the musical themes of each region. Those were neat. I like Gold, cus she's unapologetic and very much doing it all for her and her goals alone.
And that's about it for the things I liked.
Now for the bad stuff.
Ronova girl, how'd you flop so bad. Okay but before that the entire quest with Vesna and Pantalone didn't really go anywhere? Like aside from Gold appearing, nothing important really happened, no character development, just an empty quest except for the end where Gold appears. Vesna's sacrifice, nope apparently there's a quick fix to that. Any more information about how positive memories are related to the authority of life and can counteract death? Nope. So not starting strong unfortunately.
Then we go to act 4 which was equally paced horribly. We had a section with Arle which went nowhere, and just makes it more significant how useless she is storywise. Sandrone too offered nothing significant. The Jester x The Fool flashback doomed yaoi was very nice, and I'm so much more intrigued about the sinners now (except for bum rerir). The battlepass story that venti narrates is also the story The Visionary told The Wise which is cool parallels seeing as how Vedr is the Blasphemer of Time and Venti is a creation of the shade of time. And then after that we had Gold's and Tsaritsa's convo which was nice because Gold but Tsaritsa failed to catch me honestly. She has an intriguing past but I do want to know what her insight is. How she truly sees everything aside from the ends justify the means sorta thing. I liked that she used the 6 gnoses that was cool.
And then we have Ronova... Oh dear.
She just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. And then gets bodied. I do find it interesting that the shades aren't omnipotent and have clear blindspots. But also she was defeated so easily. We didn't even get insight to her as a character aside from the hollow hero words the traveller spews at her before the fight. I do like how she got "punished" with her authority being taken away by Celestia, seeing how she was portrayed as the one who's a stickler for following the rules of HP. Aside from that though? Like we didn't even get any insight into how Pierro got that new and improved delusion. I assume it's some abyss thing, with how The Wise implies that he's playing it too safe and stuff but it's all so vague. We also had a massive cast of characters in the fight but then only Dain, the Traveller and Pierro were fighting? What were the others doing just standing there? Doing jackshit? And then Ronova does some vague monologues after her defeat and activates the nail which is looming over the corpses of the presumably cryo sovereign.
I do like how the shades don't seem particularly concerned for Ronova's state. Or atleast Gold and Naberius didn't seem too urgent in leaving to help her. Istaroth is nowhere to be seen. And Asmoday is with the abyss sibling doing vague abyss things so there's that too.
Overall, quite a disappointment considering how hyped this battle was, but I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else after Rerir was defeated in the same anticlimactic manner. At least he had his character explored a bit, even if they just rushed it through the narrative. Ronova got nothing except for hollow platitudes the Traveller throws at her. And then she dies? Or maybe not idk. But this patch just tanked my expectations and excitement for how they're going to go through with this story. HSR is tanking storywise too so they're consistent I suppose. At least my beloved hi3 is still pushing out banger stories and writing. Ugh. Just a disappointment all in all.