Hey, you can’t spend all your time commanding spectral armies, y’know.
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I am very worried of that audience, now.
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What a game! That was one rollercoaster ride.
I was not expecting the twist with Aina at all…lol..
I chose to keep both eyes in Galdrin this time but now next I will be playing from Leviathan’s side.
I am now itching to play Stars Arisen once again.
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Had a blast playing this one. I really liked that the MC could be the most disrespectful, snarky mf to ever live/die/live(?) again. Also loved that the MC had options to not get involved in family drama/make the Holm’s issues worse lol. Maybe that’s just because I hated all the Galdrians (except Iris) and all the folks from the League, though.
Cecilia’s redemption arc was also really cool. Out of curiosity, what happens if she’s in a relationship w the MC and they only give her one eye (or no eyes)?
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That’s actually a very complicated question! Cecilia’s romance has a ton of variation based on whether you join Leviathan or not, whether you can persuade her to leave Leviathan or not, what your relationship stat is, whether you give her either or both of the Eyes, and more, not just in the ending but pretty much throughout. A lot of things can happen in a lot of different ways.
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Congrats on the release! I’ll be sure to check it out!
Do I spy some Scissor Sisters lyrics? 
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She can get both? This peaks my interest
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I enjoyed it quite a bit and was very satisfied with how the game ended in terms of resolution and hitting the right tone. That’s no easy feat with this type of game. My compliments!
And thanks to one achievement, I have this song stuck in my head since yesterday. Thanks for that, too, I guess! 
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There are indeed some Scissor Sisters lyrics in there! There’s also a Cecilia-related achievement referencing another song by a different artist that felt too thematically relevant not to include. The achievements also have a lot of Shakespeare, a fair amount of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a bit of the The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a bunch of idioms involving water, an extremely silly joke about Jaws that I was sure I would change but didn’t, and more. I forgot The Raven was in there until I looked over the list just now. Could not tell you all the rest of them offhand because, like Stars Arisen, most of the achievement names come from me going into a semi-fugue state one afternoon and googling things like “ominous quotes about eyes.” (And death. And dragons. And the ocean.)
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This was so fun to play! I’d just posted Stars Arisen before seeing the announcement of this game’s release and was stoked for another.
I was a little apprehensive of playing as a ghost, didn’t think it would be for me for some reason, but boy was I wrong. I didn’t improve the skill my first playthrough but I’m interested to see how Dread works. Communion with the dead is so cool!
Senna is so interesting to me. Imo a bit of a hot mess in terms of their escapades, though tbf they seem to always fall upwards should things go wrong. Man ik this is fiction but I want a life half as interesting as Senna.
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From the first moment that Cecilia walks into the first scene to the last scene of the epilogue, she was iconic.
There’s a lot going on in this story and it’s all wonderful but I’m here for that enemies-to-lovers toxic yuri.
I think my favorite line in the entire story is when Frey tells you to use a less formal mode of address and you can say, “Don’t tell me what to do, Your Highness.” Pretty much encapsulates how I felt about most of the interactions. I think stories of the ancient dead interacting with the present are wonderful. I spent a good deal of my time reading this thinking about Matthias Nonius, particularly when people asked me for help with one thing or another, and the lines:
“I charge you to protect the Reverend Daughter of Drearburh, and to slay her enemies.”
“Waste not your breath … Such was my task when I lived; why now in my death would I need a reminder?”
I really enjoyed the Dread mechanic. There were a decent number of times where it just made sense to not attempt to negotiate or do favors for people or run errands to win favors and to just say “Don’t fuck with me” and give them just a little memento mori, that their petty political maneuverings mean nothing to me as a reader and me as a character.
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…Ortus, is that you? 
Really enjoying reading everyone’s thoughts so far, especially on the Communion and Dread stats! Those were a lot of fun to play with.
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I feel a great deal of kinship with poor sad dead Ortus. Not sure what that says about me.
I can tell you I disagree with the poster who was surprised about Aina. Cecilia was haunting the narrative for me at least, I kept thinking “When is she going to show up? What happened to her?" I was laser focused on her from the moment she was looking at the painting “as though the two of you are sharing a joke,” I had her fucking number.
I also really liked Alek’s journey in this. Early on, you can point out to him that he seems to address objections to anything he says even when you agree, and by the end of it he has changed and grown in how he speaks. Something all-too-rare in a lot of stories, especially but not exclusively IF, is side characters who don’t have their own story arcs with emotional growth. Everyone got that here, except maybe that little pissant mama’s child whose wife was frankly WAY too ready to forgive them after she got out of jail.
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If you mean whom I think you mean, that little pissant mama’s child was nonbinary. 
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Thank you, my mistake. That whole situation evoked a thousand terrible reddit posts by poor women who married terrible men with terrible mothers.
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AITA? My wife (F28) says that I (NB28) didn’t do enough to defend her when my mother (F56) framed her for treason
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I’m totally not poking through the code to find out all the various Cecilia endstates, or anything, nope, not at all
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I’ve been eagerly awaiting this to come out of beta and so excited that it’s finally here!! The ending was just as satisfying as I’d hoped for. One thing I especially enjoyed is the stats feel fair - it’s not super hard to figure out what will do what, it usually makes obvious sense and the numbers feel proportional, both of those aspects I feel are very hard to judge in many games.
If I had any criticism at all, I would’ve loved to spend more time with my favorite RO Alek, but he was understandably pretty busy… still, it sucked that 3/4ths of any scene with him was guaranteed to be about politics or crises, little chance to know him as a person before confessing feelings. I would have loved to get to hear more about his connection to Galdrin’s physical land that seems so important to him, or his half buried love of art. I had no interest in Cecilia, so I was sad to have to get pointed in that direction so many times by comparison, but I appreciated that the game provided a path for her to somewhat reconcile with MC without me having to pretend I liked her (just playing a kind MC who expressed horror about the tragedy in Vatrai).
I also thought being able to save the day by repeatedly encouraging the autonomy of the ghosts themselves was such an interesting writing choice, and was excited to do it every single time the option came up.
Overall a wonderful playthrough and my only “regret” is I liked my ending so much that I don’t want to disturb it again with a replay, lol!
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What ending did you get, may I ask?
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Alek still on the throne, Galdrin has both eyes (MC kept Vatrai’s)
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All the Holms reconciled, Horizon came home
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MC romancing Alek and chose to remain at the castle
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MC kept and enjoyed his corporeal body and became more of a present-day hero, but is looking forward to getting a goddamn break finally
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Petra exposed, chose not to make a thing of it with the League for now. Council in a weaker political position compared to the crown
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High Galdrian unity, high support for using the Eye, strong dragon alliance (getting a personal visit from human form Mist was actually the biggest plot twist of the game for me lol)
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Good relationship with the League but encouraged Leo to get out of town quickly lol
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Iris chose not to study in Haberna for political reasons
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Tanja got out of prison and she and Lucero seemed like they…might patch things up…
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Generally good relationship with all the Galdrians/Vesper (70s~80s) and good relationship with Cecilia (70 by the end I think). Cecilia went off to try to look for some other way to save Vatrai, MC volunteered to help if they could.
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90+ ghost autonomy, killed Leviathan by asking the ghosts to do it themselves.
This was with a leadership-focused MC who mainly stuck to diplomacy (constantly urging cooperation, but ultimately a Galdrian loyalist) and ghost communion as his main power.
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