I thought that it was overall good fun. The battle system is excellent and the music is great. The characters are cool and generally quite enjoyable. However, the standard ending of the game really annoyed me. It’s totally anti-climactic. I really don’t want to go back and do a bunch of side quests (collectathon in particular) to unlock the true ending.

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[–] Aielman15 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The gameplay is fantastic and offers a lot of variety (especially as you grow your team and unlock more skills and combo attacks), and the art style and art direction, locations, and the soundtrack are beautiful. I had a lot of fun exploring, looking for treasure, talking to everyone, finding tons of secrets and side quests. The story is very much cliché and mostly an afterthought, but it's fine (not bad, not good, just fine) and the cast is cute.

Unfortunately, 2/3 into the game, the developers either depleted their budget, or they stopped giving a shit. The story feels super rushed in the last act, and the ending is downright insulting. Half the cast enters a portal at the end of the second act, and you never see or hear from them again. One of the main party members goes like "Oh my, this thing I just discovered changes everything, I need to study this more" but you never see them again until the very end, and they don't do anything, nor do they say why the thing they found was important or what did they study. A lot of things that were foreshadowed or hinted at, like the legendary sea slug or the Queen that was, are just random optional bosses scattered in the game's world with no purpose or backstory whatsoever. Most don't even have a dungeon attached to them. The true ending is a slap in the face.

I loved the game, but the last act and the ending really soured my experience with it.

[–] sosodev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s a good point about Resh’an. I kept expecting him to come back and be like “Sorry I left. This is still our best hope.”

Why do you say the true ending is a slap in the face?

[–] Aielman15 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'd have to spoiler tag the entire message to be able to reply to that.

spoiler

For a multitude of reasons. First of all, the true ending is achieved by collecting random Shells around the world. Sure, you have a magical parrot telling you where the missing chests are, but in my case it would tell me that a chest was missing in the Flooded Graveyard, and I'd spend four hours straight going up and down the same map over, and over and over again, until I finally gave up and looked for an internet guide to tell me where the missing chest was. I'm a completionist, but I don't care about achievements: I like exploring maps and collecting stuff and finding secrets, but I hate random, pointless collectibles and I never care about them in the games I play. Having them tied to the true ending was a huge mistake IMO and ruined my experience.

Secondly, as I said in another comment of mine: I despise time travel. Always. It just doesn’t work, unless you put a lot of thought into it, and the Sea of Stars developers clearly didn’t even try. Garl's chapter was probably the most emotional moment of the game, but the true ending comes and says "Yeah, no, he's alive and well, and actually it never happened. B'st did those things, not Garl", which doesn't make any sense as B'st did not know Garl and would not be able to imitate him, nor do the same things he did.

The purpose of reviving Garl was for him to throw an apple at the bad guy to taunt him and have him choose to fight in place of his minion? Seriously, you go through the hassle of collecting all conches, and that's the only thing that differs from the normal ending. The rest plays out exactly the same. You defeat the Fleshmancer, and... Resha'an shows up, takes his bf into a portal with him, doesn't say a word to the party, and goes away. And everyone's happy. To say that I was underwhelmed is an euphemism.

I was expecting some new revelations, some closure, but all I got is a slightly different turn of events with a different boss fight and an equally disappointing ending. Meanwhile, dozens of questions remain unanswered. What was Resha'an researching? What the heck was the "night" inside of Zale, and why had he to confront it? Valere is able to fly just as well as he does, and has no night inside her at all. Why was Serai hiding her true identity from her crew? What happened to Brugaves, the Acolytes and the Dweller? (Yes, I know that they end up being boss fights in the Messenger, but I should NOT be required to play an entirely different game to have some closure to this storyline. That would be like Capcom asking their players to play Monster Hunter to know what happens to Ada in Resident Evil)