(Originally posted on Cohost on February 6th, 2024. This sure didn't age well...)
Coming in hot off the main story quest, I have a few thoughts...
First, the audio/visual presentation is fantastic. In particular, The Golden Hour and it's heavy inspiration from Metropolis really does it for me. I feel like we don't get enough 1920's art deco sci-fi these days. Even the soundtrack from that section sounds ripped from Metropolis.
Now on to the spoilers, and I mean really do NOT read this if you haven't played the story mission yet.
I'm mostly positive on the story. I like that we have been introduced to so many (potentially) playable characters and we're not just following around a generic NPC we don't care about. The new characters are full of secrets and I don't trust a single one, which works great as far as building tension. Overall, making Penacony a creepy capitalist hellscape with some scenes devolving into straight up horror is EXACTLY what I wanted out of this.
The dream world itself is also unreliable, which can be interesting but also makes me afraid they could pull the "it was all a dream" move at any point. The biggest threat for this of course is the death of Firefly. With Firefly, the writing has painted itself into a corner. If she is truly dead, it was way too abrupt and the story moved on too fast. But if it was indeed "all a dream", it just feels like cheap and easy emotional manipulation of the audience. Curiously, I'm fine with whatever happens to Robin since we didn't really spend time with her, so I think I'd be OK no matter where they go with her story.
Another small thing that nagged me was Sam, who you think would know exactly who Stelle was and probably have some direction from Kafka not to kill her. He kind of just felt like a random boss you come across rather than a member of the Stellaron Hunters that have been an important part of your journey so far. That said, they did make him feel like a badass force of destruction, and I hope he is eventually playable. And hey, who am I to pretend to understand Elio's plan?
Thankfully, this is only the first part of the story and none of my issues are unfixable. It's certainly been a huge improvement over the Luofu quests, and I'm looking forward to exploring the world of Penacony more thoroughly.
FINAL NOTE: Yes I know about the writer and what happens in Honkai Impact 3rd and it doesn't change my feelings on Firefly's death, so don't @ me with that.