Part 87: My final thoughts on the game

I'll be honest, I didn't expect this LP to take nearly nine months to do. Part of it was being busier than I was with my previous LP's, particularly the last couple of months, and part of it was because I was putting much more work into it between all the GIFs (which were definitely worth the effort) and a bunch of extra little things I wanted to do just because I love this game so damn much.

Overall, I'm happy with the narrative. It was definitely rough in some parts, especially the beginning when I tried to incorporate the game mechanics into the narrative. I think what really ended up helping it was doing separate commentary updates, so I could focus on showing off the story and cover game mechanics later. Plus it gave me a chance to go into all the stuff I loved about this game, which is one of the parts I love most about doing LP's. I felt a narrative would really work with the game's story-telling approach, a silent protagonist who actually serves the purpose of one, an observer somewhat-passively interacting with a world that moves on its own. It's a perfect set up to creating your own persona for your character, which is what I ended up doing. Of course, I ended up making my own choices to suit my own tastes, and partly because getting all the quests to activate can be so damn finicky at times, so it hurt participation a bit. I found alternate ways to get everyone involved at least, and in the end everyone seemed to enjoy my narrative well enough, so I'm happy with it. That said, after this and Harvest Moon, I'm done with narratives simply because I love doing regular commentary so much more.

As for the game itself, it's still perhaps my all-time favorite video game. It has some gorgeous artwork, a fantastic soundtrack, and a fantastic world that clearly has a ton of care put into yet. Of course, the gameplay's a bit bland, it's really easy to miss some quests, and the nonlinearity leads to there being no actual main plot, as you can see with the game's sorta non-ending, but damn if I don't love the immense amounts of charm in this game. In particular, it was a pleasure showing off some of the fantastic animations in this game, and I'm glad I learned to make GIFs.

Huge thanks for everyone who followed. Special thanks to Shaezerus for more wonderful fan art, Explosionface for all the amazing avatars, Odd for taking the time to show off some wonderful LoM swag, and Vil for explaining a ton of the game's obscure mechanics and helping me out at times. Also huge props to Azure_Horizon, who made a pretty awesome LP of this game before. I appreciate everyone else who watched the entire LP, and I'm glad everyone feels I did this game justice.

All that said, bonus updates will be trickling in slowly. Real life's still hectic, though after the holidays everything should slow down a bit. I'll also be resuming my Harvest Moon LP soon, so keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for reading!