There’s usually two camps when it comes to Hildibrand Manderville and his adventures/investigations: one either loves them or completely dislikes them. Then there’s another camp within the one for loving them: either loving all of it unconditionally, or liking specific sections. I personally fall into the camp of loving all of it unconditionally.
The Hildibrand Manderville stories are a set of side-stories that are typically accessed after completing a major part of the Main Scenario Quest (MSQ) and are usually just absolutely hilariously bonkers. I very much understand not liking nor enjoying these style of stories, but it makes for a very nice complement to the (usually) far darker/sadder/heavier stories and adventures that the MSQ itself tends to throw at us. Anyone who has completed up to and including The Vault, everything that involves Patch 5.3, and even completing of Endwalker in Patch 6.0 will very much understand what I mean by these being a nice complement.
So here we are at the end of Endwalker with Patch 6.55 and the finale portion of Hildibrand Manderville’s Endwalker escapades, and it was hysterical! Kind of like how the MSQ for 6.55 was a smidgen on the shorter side, this was as well but with the bonus addition of a Trial fight.
Disclaimer, I kind of sort of recall what was going on last as the prior quest was 8 months ago now, and minor spoilers as this will be talking about Patch 6.55 Hildibrand’s questline including images.
It starts right where we left off still looking for our alien friend’s, Master PuPu, missing friend and spaceship. We discover a lead in the case and quickly head out to meet up with everyone and begin investigating. From a local fisherman, we find out who is truly behind it all, one of his old friends risen to becoming a wealthy merchant, Vanhudi. What comes about after this is hilariously absurdly bonkers! Doctor Lugae appears on a large battle body, some comical dialogue happens about blatantly saying he’s there to cause trouble at Yedlihmad. Before being able to act upon said trouble-causing, Godbert Manderville comes out of nowhere to instantly stop him.
It took me a moment to register what just happened and about that moment it did, several Doctor Lugae clones appear only to be comically thwarted by Julyan Manderville with a colossal frying pan. Meanwhile the original Doctor Lugae back onto his feat only to throw a spiky bomb towards Yedlihmad. Julyan tosses her frying pan over to me and hit the thing like a baseball!
Doctor Lugae throws yet another one, which I end up missing; only to have Hildibrand leap and catch it in time…
…only for it to explode in his face. Nashu casually walking away while everyone else ran was pretty hilarious. The Doctor decides to throw one more as a fast ball with me getting ready for the big throw. He throws the pitch and I send it careering back at him. It was great, even including a dramatic freeze-pose and all when I made contact with the mine itself.
The crew cheer and we head off with all of the information we’ve gathered prior to this comical incident to confront the person behind it all, Vanhudi. We’re given a personal flight to his rather massive and fancy villa to be greeted by the man himself. After telling him we know all about his dasterly deeds, he asks me to join him to be cloned by PuPu’s Friend’s spaceship and take over the world. I decline such an insane offer (there is another dialog option agreeing to it, but I didn’t choose that one), and he goes about summoning a Primal to deal with me, Asura.
Everyone retreats from the battlefield and the Trial is unlocked! The fight with Asura is really fun; not overly complicated (except one mechanic that kind of can be), but very enjoyable none the less. After Asura is taken out, PuPu’s friend recovers their ship, joins the fray to thwart Vanhudi from escaping. The two aliens are reunited and everyone retreats back to Radz-at-Han to finish up and conclude the story. One thing of note is during the climatic final bout betwee PuPu’s friend and Vanhudi, PuPu’s friend’s ship becomes unstable and before exploding Brandihild (Hildibrand’s ‘flawed’ clone) comes to the rescue and gets the ship far away. Presumed gone after the explosion, but once the credits role on concluding the story, come to find out that Brandihild survived the explosion! I let out one hoobers of a cheer upon seeing him alright.
This was so gosh darn fun and such a hoot as always. The whole baseball reenactment scene was the main highlight for me in this part of the story. Loved the Trial lots too and look forward to it coming up in Trial Roulettes down the road once a certain Dragoon level reaches said point.
Hildibrand flies away on PuPu’s UFO into the unknown at the end, so we’ll see you next time in Tural, inspector~!