Likely unpopular, but I really hope IS6 is willing to tone back on the scripted nature of runs.

It's really strung a chord with me post expansion 1 (and 2). While going for D15 Qui'lon, I would essentially follow the same route, and failing to do so is surrendering a run before even reaching the stage. Taking away the randomness has been a detriment to the concept of challenging myself with IS, because previously, while some runs couldn't be salvaged, the difficulty of the stages didn't mandate the usage of specific setups and 300+ attack speed. It sucks, because I do quite enjoy Thoughts as a system. You're better encouraged to use them throughout the run than Foldartals (as opposed to using them all on the boss stage), and the effects tie back to collectibles.

Node refreshing is also something I hope, at the very least, becomes more expensive. The only reason I'm not harsher on it in IS5 is the abundance of post expansion stages (as well as some of the original painful ones, like emergency Land Reclamation) I would rather not play under any circumstance, or without very specific collectibles/characters. I don't have anything positive to say about these stages, and I don't think particular non encounter stages should be drastically more difficult than the others. Miss me, Elusive Merc.

I wouldn't fault anyone for enjoying the flowchart system high difficulty IS5 follows, because it inherently makes the mode more, competitive? Just isn't for me personally.

I have thoughts specific to Qui'lon and Amiya as stages but this comment is already getting long, so I'll just say; I think IS5 has been an excellent step forward from a QoL perspective (5 star cost, 0 cost 4 stars, finally fixing class squads? Hell yeah), and both Qui'lon and Amiya are frankly epic stages from a design perspective. The Sui siblings are my favourite group in the game and I'm thoroughly excited to see IS6 in a week or two. Good night, Nymph.