So I thought I'd give Imaginarium a try before writing it off like the Abyss and I actually ended up liking it a lot somehow. Cleared the whole thing on my first "dry run" on Hard and only missed 2 "flowers" for the whole run. Still got all of the rewards, so I take it that it's not that demanding and I actually don't know what the flowers are for.
I didn't understand the mechanics at first and wasted one of Arle's stamina points on the very first node like a moron. Didn't bring any friend trial characters but a mode like this was basically made for someone like me that builds out a LOT of characters to "pretty ok" status instead of focusing on 1-2 meta teams. IMO the hardest part was the dual vishaps due to that fucking revive mechanic, I ended up having to use Arle's 2nd stamina on that stage to clear it in time for the rewards. Also, one of the random battle stages I got with a bunch of shielded hilichurls and the big samurai I lost a flower on, due to kill times being slow for the teams I had available at the time. The rest was a breeze. They don't let you restart the final boss node if you don't get all of the objectives though, which kinda sucked. Good to know for next time. I kept picking the 'wonders' option and the recruit, but they always wanted to give me Anemo characters instead of Pyro/Electro which I needed. One node I beat with Yae/Jean/Kaz/Sayu with full rewards, out of lack of options.
I liked having the recently used team hang out in the room for extra dialogue, the poses are just a little flourish, nothing to get excited or mad about. I only got 3 medals so I picked Shogun/Jean/Noelle. I'm assuming they will continually rotate in and out, so I'm not worried about missing them. Wonder if you can get more medals if you re-run the mode or if it's only 3 per reset? I liked the little "cast" scroll when you beat it, like at the end of a movie. My "took most damage" was Yoimiya. What a tank. My own personal votes for MVP in there were Arle (obviously, and I put her up for rent if you're on Americas server), Cloud Retainer, Sucrose, Raiden, Yae, and surprisingly Dehya was really solid. I have an extremely over-invested Dehya though (for defensive purposes) so she made face tanking a lot of the smaller enemies not a big deal.
I think there's lots of room for improvement but I will actually play this mode unlike Abyss, there's some strategy and randomness involved. It'd be nice if they added a shop or a node before the final boss to restore 1 stamina to a character of your choosing. I think that would alleviate a lot of the RNG so you can reliably clear it. Pretty cool that they give the "main cast" buffs that work both inside and outside of the imaginarium (permanent 10% ATK/DEF/HP buff for the 30 days duration of the cycle).
Anyways, for someone that hates most gacha endgame content, this was a welcome surprise.
jonnyXx
are you on Americas server?
*edit*
I found out that the challenge stars (the things I called flowers) are just for bragging rights. You don't even need to worry about them to get all the rewards, it's just for showing off in your profile. So that makes this mode even easier.