Interactions in this game usually go like this:

Voice from off screen: “Hey Van, you called?” (Camera pans to reveal Blorpko Shitface, VA: John Voiceactor, returning from Trails Up Your Butt. You haven’t seen him in over 500 hours of gameplay.)

Van: Ah, Blorpko the Cum Drinker, good to see you.

Agnés: (Wait, the cum drinker? I’ve seen him in magazines before, didn’t he help out in the Bay of Poms incident?)

Blorpko: This is paying you back for helping me during Trails of Cold Steel 4, which I was notably absent from.

Yeah, I think I'm dropping it, at least for now. For all of the critical acclaim this has gotten over the years, I was left stunned by how poorly written the whole thing really is. It's a story about fighting people who abuse their power and make other people's lives miserable. It's also a game where every interaction is gamefied to the point of making literally all relationships purely transactional. The whole thing collapses under its own message because it never practices what it preaches. It's a pity, because the game underneath that is really fucking good. But I'm done forcing myself to move through narrative quicksand. Oh well...

This expansion was super good. The world is really fun to explore and the side content is really good and give you a better reason to fight random enemies than any previous game. The combat is really similar to xb3 but with a bit less customization but it works for a shorter game. The music is mostly reused from previous games but everything that's new is super good. The characters are all really likable although I wish they all got a bit more screen time for character moments. The story is interesting until the final chapter where it just goes insane in the best way possible. The story does the few things I thought were missing from xb3's story. Overall this game was an excellent final xenoblade game with plenty of fanservice for longtime fans.