VERY solid game. We enjoyed this a lot. Arron's route in particular was VERY enjoyable - it feels VERY good to watch someone find his legs, to bloom into a beautiful young dragon. God, we loved seeing him go from a timid little critter second-guessing his every choice and living in the shadow of his great-great-(repeating) grandfather to a young drake self-assured in himself and enjoying his job, instead of seeming to only really draw joy from books. BEAUTIFUL character writing, INCREDIBLE art, overall deeply enjoyable game!
Our only critique, ironically, is in the ending - ending spoilers, obviously, but [spoiler]we got the "conquerer" ending for killing Arthur after a playthrough of peace, and it feels... hmm, off? It feels strange to be treated as a conquerer after dedicating our playthrough to peace. We were perfectly content leaving everyone else to rule in peace - we were planning to let the tower crumble anyways, without the threat of the empire on our heels, we see no need to remain Sovereign, especially not when the ending says the empire crumbles when he's gone. He threatened us with war under the excuse that his empire would see us as weak - and now that he is gone, and the empire has an example of what happens when you try and bring war to us, we have no reason to pursue grudges against a peoples who do not inherit the crimes of their leader.
We don't feel that killing the man who explicitly said he was only invading because we were seen as weak should lead to us conquering his entire country. As a leader, our duty is to our people, and we've already set the characterization for our character - we have two wifes (a wife in former-stone and a wife in fishscales) who both would love to travel with us, to see the world beyond these walls, and it feels unbelievably strange to not take the chance when the threat is gone. A shortened life is no less valuable, and while a figurehead is useful to rally a people, we are not needed to manage a prosperous land. We don't feel the need to extend our life when it would serve the people better to live freely. It feels... strange and empty to feel everything that we worked for through the playthrough, everything we built towards, all discarded in the end because we chose to kill an emperor who explicitly told us the only reason he was invading was our weakness, rather than marrying the man who called us a rabid dog.
It's... dissonance-inducing to have a sovereign who only accumulated, like, two points towards tyranny with three levels of kindness be called a man who cannot understand kindness for killing someone who very much attacked first. It feels out of character, and it feels strange that after a full playthrough of showing mercy, the only decision that matters is our last one.[/spoiler]
Anyways, Act... three we're pretty sure spoilers, [spoiler]the Victoria storyline is great, but we think that if we fool her thrice and she only figures out that we lied to her because the guy we told her we assassinated shows up in court while she's still actively there, she should at least respect the audacity. Also when she accuses us of lying we would really like to have options beyond "apologizing" and "being nervous" we are VERY smug about pulling off no less than three deceptions right under her nose and we would very much like her to know it.[/spoiler]
