Master of the Wind

Those poor Mistwalkers. Just imagine how upset Zala is going to be when she finds out that because of Shroud, Stoic and Finley, yet another species on Solest has gone extinct.

I never had any kind of problem with the timing- and reaction-based minigames, and in fact they were one of the aspects of the game that made me like MotW so much, since I hadn't seen things like that in many RPG Maker games before. But then again, my reflexes for games like these are pretty good, and I can understand that the absence of an option to make those events easier or skip them entirely could have frustrated some people. In later parts of the game, I remember you added in an "easy mode" for some puzzles and minigames. That would probably have helped here, too.

I imagine that Zala's tears would either just be pure salt, or consist of lava. Although asking about that is really stretching the demand for realism. And that's coming from me.

Either way, I know the tone of the game is going to be quite different for a while from now on. But I imagine that's not necessarily a bad thing for a Let's Play, since you'll have a lot of content to provide commentary on.
I enjoyed this episode and the return of your brother. Thanks, you both!