tl;dr

• All the characters present are cleverly utilized.

• Easy, but I missed some details, such as...
• Casino King's bodyguard actual allegiance.
• How Tamaki broke into the casino.

• Really lacking in the "everyone is here!" vibes.
• Grouping up the Bandit Sisters together was a mistake.
• The soundtrack is good. At least one part of the event lived up to expectations.

The Story Itself

My first impression of the story is that it is similar to this year's Spring event, where a character's quirk gets exploited to hell and back by another. And in this case, it's Ayami's invisibility "powers" getting exploited by Homare.

The story does a good job at giving Imuya the spotlight, where the other characters are there to pave the way for her, since their entire strategy hinges on her sneaking to steal the safe room's key from the Casino King.

Their first obstacle, the bodyguard, was interesting in the sense that as powerful as Miayu's ability is, it still has some weakness. The bodyguard noticed when Aiyum took the keys because he could smell it moving away from the Casino King's pockets. The bodyguard confronts the group, and Kaya, being the muscle for brains she is, deals with him. That makes sense.

The second obstacle, the alarm lasers, was dealt by Inori. At first, I was wondering why they couldn't just make Yuyayami do it as well, since she's clearly carrying the whole operation. Then, Homare comments that it's a good thing that Inori is small, making it easier for her to maneuver around the lasers. Smaller body means smaller hitbox, makes sense. Inori is 145cm, Yuami is 155cm, and Kaya is 156cm, so it definitely checks out.

Then, there's Homare and Tamaki. Homare using her dragon eyes to navigate the group makes sense, and her falseflagging Tamaki to throw the off the security also makes sense. Since well, I don't think there are any other noble thief in Landosol. And she's notorious enough for it to be believable.

That what makes the story so good, each character is doing things according to their skillset (or body type in the case of Inori), everything just clicks. I say body type in the case of Inori, but I suppose her awakening to her real powers during the Casino King fight also make sense, since the goal of Dragon's Nest is to find out about the origin of dragonfolks. Maybe, this is something I read from all the way back in EN.

Only 2 things didn't click to me, but this is on me and not the story.

Difficulty

The story started by telling the audience Mimiya's motive to work in the casino. She needs money to buy a present of (You), and the casino pays nicely. Alright, so far so good.

Then, enter Kaya and Inori. They chat a bit, and the two reveal that they're there by Homare's order to observe members of their gang that are working in the casino. Since the gang needs money to carry out their shady shit and what not. Alright, makes sense here as well.

They point out that the bodyguard is part of the gang (?), and that's he's a boxing champion and is quite known in the underworld scene. Okay, easy enough to understand.

This is where things stopped making sense for me. When Inori threw her tantrum and charged the casino alone, the bodyguard found her...and threw her into the dungeon. He even recognized Inori as "Homare's kid", so I was wondering if he was really part of Homare's gang. Or if Kaya and Inori really were in the casino to observe their members. Or if the gang members actually worked for the casino.

During the part where the group runs away as the Casino Staff tried to poach Mimiya, a gang member comes to help and says something alongside the lines of "someone is getting tired of the security paycheck". This at least affirms to me that some of Homare's gang members were indeed working for the casino.

In the end, Kaya and the bodyguard fight anyways. So, not really sure who the hell the bodyguard is actually working for. I'm assuming the bodyguard is just as much of a battle maniac as Kaya is, so he stuck around expecting some fights. Or maybe Homare just ordered him to prioritize keeping the facade on.

As for Tamaki, the phantom thieves were just as confused as I am wondering how she broke into the safe room without the key. I assume this is done to communicate two things: first, to show the audience that Tamaki is just that good. And second: to let Homare go "told you so" to Inori since she was downplaying Tamaki.

Got 1212/1220, which is 99% comprehension. Those 8 missed lines are all about the things I mentioned above.

Purgatory's Rebellion

Out of the gate, the part the disappointed me the most is that all the boss fights were handled by Bishokuden in the story. In the Final Battle of Landosol raid, even though the boss before the Kaiser himself were just copy paste jobs, the story clearly communicated that each servants were handled by different groups of characters, both in the story and in gameplay. I know outright restricting the use of character is a shit gameplay mechanic, but that's besides the point.

They knew this mechanic was shit, so it was replaced by a buff to units according to the Rage Legion member they're dealing with in the story in the Legion War raid. Again, they clearly communicate that each Rage Legion member is dealt with by specific group of characters. I haven't really looked into old raids in much detail, but my favorite part is probably Kariza, the brat, being dealt with by the Sarendia Orphanage kids.

Do I really need to say how massive the Final Flames of Elysion raid was? I haven't looked into it much, but it has three fucking hours of voiced dialogue. I'm pretty sure ALL (except of ReZero and Idolmaster) characters made an appearance in this event, all dealing with the respective ressurected event bosses they starred in.

Also! Purgatory's Rebellion lacked the boss banters that Rage Legion and Final Flames of Elysion raids had. Purgatory's Rebellion does have the pre-boss battle dialogue that plays when you first click a boss, but not the dialogue that plays in the beginning of a battle. Here's an illustration:

My point is, Rage Legion to Final Flames of Elysion is a step up, but Final Flames of Elysion to Purgatory's Rebellion is a step down.

Moving on. I thought the game was being clever when they presented 3 sisters plus 1 Freyja, while we currently coincidentally know 4 princesses that hail from different worlds. I was expecting Pecorine's group to deal with Freyja, while Gio Teogonia, Gehenna and Niflhel to deal with one sister each. I guess Nephi is busy shielding her world from Arachne's strings, and Lyrael did help Bishokuden get to Arachne's nest, but Violet and Grace did fucking nothing!

I guess it's too early for that since we don't have many named new characters from the new worlds playable yet. But why not use the old, or should I say more established characters? There's one part in the story where more characters were involved than in this raid! It was when the group first fought Ho-Oh.

I was expecting the raid to go something like this before we knew there were 4 worlds and 4 enemies to fight. You know, like, the cast gathering up to beat up one super big threat. I know introducing new characters is important, and is the thing they're trying to push lately, but that doesn't mean you can just abandon all your oldies.

Also, I don't know why they made us fight Arachne's small spiders, other than padding the raid screen with more bosses. I thought they were going for more "pressure" by making it cost stamina, as if to say "stop whatever you're farming and focus on saving Sheffy!", but the stamina cost of 20 is literally nothing. They could've just kept the old system where hits regenerate slowly and separated the sisters.

I guess the inclusion of an animated scenes is a step up compared to old raids? I actually kinda liked it. Arachne's humanoid torso crawling out of the spider thorax was grotesque in good way. And there's a little bit of humor when (You) brought Sheffy back, having a heartfelt reunion, only to realize that the both of them were still in mid-air. There's also the whole Sheffy henshin sequence which was extremely sex.

But!! This still goes against the point of raids, to see the cast group up to beat up one giant threat!

Hah...well, I guess it's time to get to part where I actually liked, the soundtracks.

The tracks where you fight the spiders and the sisters sound familiar, but the latter has a small difference where you can hear leitmotif in there.

• Spiders' theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbhzs3x-uWI&list=PLsvBSVegeUUAONQ0Wa7YYFfDdlz8rKKjx&index=7
• Bandit Sisters' normal theme: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=K04QyOSlBf8&list=OLAK5uy_n9KX7xLIRyqnE0Zt852vSv6rDRLnqITK0
• Bandit Sisters' raid theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucw-u3M1KmE&list=PLsvBSVegeUUAONQ0Wa7YYFfDdlz8rKKjx&index=6

The leitmotif starts at 0:43 on the raid theme. Its faint, but it perfectly communicates that they're not really being themselves. Also, the sisters' normal theme is region locked because vol. 6 of the soundtrack isn't released outside of Japan for whatever reason. And this isn't because of EN EoS or anything, the Commander and Spring event songs, which were definitely post-EN EoS, were released outside of Japan just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X970q7LGnKg
Here's a YouTube upload of it, the sisters' theme is on 1:24:12

Freyja's and Arachne's theme are based on their encounter themes in the story. Can't really find them anywhere, but it should click to you immediately if you have sound on when reading the story. Or if you read the story at all.

• Freyja's raid theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6np-2jrH8cQ
• Arachne's raid theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0St_GwROdQ

And Arachne's true form raid theme is an even more upbeat remix of an already upbeat song, Yes, Precious Harmony! It also contrasts really nicely with the Sheffy version of the song.

• Normal: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=E-BMAHyZ4Fw
• Raid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGV6oBcd4C8
• Sheffy ver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aclZAkdH8ew

One more thing, I got 238/238 comprehension here. However, it's closer to 238/247. Because apparently, there dialogues that come up when the raid boss progress reached 20% and 60%. Each dialogue has 3 lines from Peco, Kyaru and Kokkoro, and I'm sure I only got one dialogue on each bosses, because I was doing something else when the bosses reached 20%. Which means I missed 9 lines. There's also the dialogue in the animated scene that I didn't really catch because...I still need JP subs. They posted the entire raid dialogue on their official YouTube channel, but I can't be bothered to go back and recount due to how meh this raid was.

Well, that's all for this blogpost. See ya on the next one.

Arc 3's end-of-arc raid better be good.
...And I hope there will be an arc 4. And 5. And 6...and so on.