all the mysteries that were set up this chapter are really interesting. i feel like the beginning might've been a bit slow, but the story really picked up afterwards imo. phaethon being able to properly navigate in hollows now is definitely an interesting turn of events. that on top of ellen's brief comment at the beginning mentioning them "learning combat skills" makes me wonder if we'll eventually get playable phaethon agents down the line.
that ending/cliffhanger was wild. lycaon really got that DAWG in him. but there's literally a 0% chance hugo's actually dead, plus with hartman sneaking away presumably with the sacrifice core, it seems like the next part of the chapter is going to be absolutely nuts. definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next. the only nitpick i have with the chapter aside from the somewhat slow start was the random sanby/trigger portion, and how the game basically suggested you should've played her agent story before the main story. i didn't know that since i usually like jumping into the main story first before doing the agent stories after so seeing the two appear all of a sudden was a bit jarring. they didn't really play that big of a part in the overall story though so i guess it wasn't too bad
hugo for me was the absolute star of the show this chapter. he's such an entertaining character, everything from his personality and charisma to his past. him and lycaon's dynamic is fantastic too. it's both really refreshing to see two characters actually dislike each other rather than being immediately buddy buddy, but their back and forth banter and bickering is also unironically really funny. one of my favorite segments of the chapter was anby calling the two annoying, that was hilarious. also, props to his eng dub voice man, he absolutely killed the role. so much personality injected into every single line delivery, i could tell he had a blast voicing him
on the other hand, vivian is a character that i initially was a bit conflicted on, but i think i've warmed up to her more. i wasn't initially super huge on the whole phaethon simp thing, but on the other hand, i do at least like that they didn't do the annoying trope where she was blissfully unaware about phaethon's true identity and denied it the entire time. i also like that her admiration is less overly obsessed yandere and more like a child idolizing a hero. at the very least, she's an interesting and pretty entertaining character. her future sight was something i absolutely wasn't expecting, but it's really cool and i can already see how it's going to be used for foreshadowing later down the line given what we saw at the end of the chapter. i'm also interested in learning more about her and why she admires phaethon so much, which we'll hopefully see more of in 1.7. also, i really like her and hugo's dynamic, the brother-sister relationship they have is pretty wholesome.
