My thoughts upon finishing the game.

[Eternal Echo]

• I love the giant monsters. They're wonderful. They do huge amounts of damage and so you're always on the backfoot when it comes to stripping them down to eek out a win, not to mention the heat-and-cold conductive system of the game makes for incredibly dynamic battles. That, and how the bosses traverse the maps. I wish more boss fights in games were like these.
  
• The characters and writing are solid and nicely rounded. I really appreciated that we still had drama and character growth even when everyone was communicating very maturely and smartly; no conflicts were fuelled by contrived miscommunications but, even with the best intentions and words and spirits, things can get away from anyone no matter what they say.
  
• I think this game would've vastly benefited from cutting out the basic enemies and leaving just the giant monsters. When I'm jumping and leaping and climbing around, doing all the blasted fetch quests and making my way to the giant monsters, the basic enemies are nothing more than irritating speed bumps. They're too tanky to easily dispose of with a basic combo but they're too simple to waste time with strategies or tricks against.
  
• I understand the game's intentions to make us prepare a variety of equipment pieces for different climates and enemies. That said, the game is definitely not hard or diverse enough to make me bother. There are only three elements and the giants barely varied things up to the extent that making multiple loadouts would be worth the effort and time. Not to mention most of the equipment you can find is very samey bar some minor adjustments to stats or a very situational special attack. Speaking of...
  
• The weapons feel more suited for fighting the mobs than the giant monsters, which feels misguided. If I could parry a giant robot punch, that'd be wonderful but the freeze bow having tracking projectiles serves no purpose except for those blasted annoying spitfires. It feels like a lot of the equipment is designed around the mobs rather than the giants that I would much prefer to be fighting, and I've already mentioned I hate the mobs. Although, speaking of the weapons...
  
• The Kinetic Two-Hander is so much fun. I enjoyed using it to climb up the giants and traverse the levels. I wish more equipment was like this, enhancing my ability to get around the world and fighting the monsters but in ways that aren't numerical.
  
• Most of the magic is ineffectual at best or useless at worst. I tried using the Ice Wall to get to the Hearthguard Gauntlets... but the bridge kept breaking. Really, there were very few situations where I would need to use the Ice Wall to make a bridge, or even would want to when there were faster alternatives and there were no gaps that were actually that big... or there were and Ice Wall didn't work anyway. Ice Wall is still useful for immobilising enemies but that's just by holding down the magic button, which feels very one-note.
  
• Upgrading the spells sucks. It just takes them from "piddling and useless" to "actually works as advertised but I don't really need it". Not to mention that they're upgraded exactly by grinding against the same enemy three times in a row and that just gets annoying. And why do I need to take it right back to Dahm before I can use its full power? Why can't it just be upgraded use it as soon as I get the strand?
  
• I just wish the world demanded the use of magic more. I was drawn to this game under the impression that magic would be required to explore the game like solving an exploration puzzle with the fight pieces and creativity would get me far. But that just doesn't happen; the magic isn't required and it's barely even necessary. The Enclave is said to be shattered after an apocalyptic event but it's still perfectly traversible. Magic is not only weak and pathetic, it's not even necessary.
  
• I feel that the player progression plateaus. You already have access to the best materials in the game out the gate and the game doesn't offer better materials later on; they just get easier to find. Once I've gotten my first Kinetic Two-Hander made out of five-star everything, where am I supposed to go from there? I can't help but feel like this game would've worked better as a Metroidvania.
  
• Watching the final cutscene where a magic mech fights another magic mech, I couldn't help but think "Wow, this looks like it'd be fun to play."
  
• The characters grow on me. However, I cannot remember the names of the races or places for the life of me. So much of the actual world is just names that have no meaning to me, whereas the people I have grown to care about are all right here.
  
• I wish the game didn't just dump me back into the game world after the credits like some kind of MMO after a raid. We just finished a story; say your thanks and goodnights and let's close the book.
  
• It's weird that we have visual novel-style cutscenes, in-engine cutscenes, and 2D animated scenes. I can excuse the visual novel scenes, of course, but the mix of the in-engine and 2D stuff feels very dissonant.