#because the sq actually opens up with 'there could be a chance with siegfried we bring eizen back to normal'

[lastthroes]

i really don't think that my issue with the eizen sq is that eizen dies. sure, i'm biased towards wanting to see my favorite characters earn their happy endings, but most of my favorite tales characters die through the canon so eizen isn't special. i think it's more about how that's a huge point of conflict and drama with an extremely underwhelming resolution that i'd dare say borders character assassination for other characters (ie sorey) because of its execution, because would it really be a yamamoto game if "character assassination for the sake of following the script" wasn't a thing in it? this was literally x2's bread and butter

nothing changes if you use edna in that battle or not, except maybe one or two throwaway lines like "now is the time" (i'm not 100% sure right now and i can't be bothered to go back to an old save and defeat him twice for a post right now). it's a stark difference from fighting van with luke and tear in abyss, for putting an example. there's no new scene, new dialogue, new music, nothing. for how much eizen was hyped through promotion and in the actual game, the resolution he gets is one of the blandest things i've seen in this franchise

if i think about zelos and seles, or senel and shirley and i don't know if asbel and hubert because i wasn't that good at japanese/english at the time and haven't replayed it yet going by my memories, i never felt as... scammed? as i did with eizen and edna. then again neither of those were hyped to that extent, nor are like edna, where her main drive is "saving her brother". this is literally the reason she joins at all, eizen is really most of her characterization

the eizen sidequest just came to me like the team with a killerboner striking again. i guess most people who were fine with it didn't get to go through this kind of disappointment before, but by the time zestiria was released i was already too fed up: besides hearts not being this hopeless for no reason (though i do find a certain death very contrived still), given when it came to what you could call its lore version of the issue of malevolence, zest didn't get to have the same number of emotional beats on the matter that previous games like x2 had (and take a shoot everytime someone, often lailah, brings up "don't feel things too much because you might fall malevolent" in the game about 'passion'). it came with the plotholes despite the larger dev cycle, but there was not enough given to make you... feel for it. i still felt something with x2 despite being some big bullshit writing-wise - when i saw alt milla falling into the abyss i felt something, and when i saw elle crying over victor's body or over the soup ludger made for her in the aftermath i felt something. i didn't have that with dezel or eizen's death, unless "being confused with the sudden infodumping" or "being confused at how it ended just like that and searching if i fucked up and missed something" counts, so it really just boils down to "i feel really scammed"