Mudpuddle

This specific fact made it harder to sort out the timeline regarding Kuroda and Heurta, because of the books consistently referring to them or people around them as Stylists or able to use Whim—but they had to have defeated the original outbreak of Desperate Vines prior to the War of the Heavens, because Heurta explicitly met the Wishing One, and the implication is they were both already wielding Whim at that point

Somehow it only occurred to me today that maybe there is no inconsistency, because maybe the assumption that they wouldn't have been Stylists until after the War...never applied to them

Whim as mortals use it is essentially "lesser" form of the Whim that all gods wielded (which they used/expressed differently based on their domain), so maybe Faewish Sprites in general always had Whim from the start, even prior to the War, because they are Descendants and thus created using the power of Whim? Even then—Whimancers were rare but not unheard of, so Kuroda could have been one the whole time...

I also feel the new bosses that are mainly HP sponges are just...not as memorable or interesting as the more puzzle-like ones that actually utilized other ability outfits too.

And it kind of just makes Infinity Nikki as a whole a lot less unique as a 3D open world gacha game. Good for you if you find this combat fun, but where it was largely quick and painless in the past, now it's just kind of tedious and feels like a bait and switch, or even a rug pull where the game is trying to become something I wouldn't have bothered picking up in the first place gameplay-wise

Was the Dark Bouquet on Fireworks Island exceptionally difficult or strong? No, but I felt so smart and strategic when I realized that I needed to use the fireworks instead of my purification, it felt extremely rewarding! Same with Chigda's walls he throws up - the moment you first spot that little hole in it and you realize you need to shrink to get past it and attack is a great moment!

Quite frankly, the 2.5 bossfight forcing you into the 5* outfit is a huge red flag to me. Even the most challenging bossfights in 1.x could be done with the base outfits, and needing the new 5* for it to be doable just plainly makes it a bad design for a boss. (And that's not even talking about actual gameplay, because the 1000HP, even with the 5* outfit, makes the fight drag on for so long without really anything significantly interesting happening)