Ending discussion (SPOILERS)

[greyfeld]

Just finished the game, and whew boy was it a ride! The epilogue had a lot of feels and it really had a great wrapup for all the characters.

The blue fog over the "future" scene was a great way of implying that Xero/Enda don't get their happy ending, without getting all verbose about it. Super sad. Of course the very end of the cutscenes with the leaf each on the trees, blowing in the wind... nice little tease lol.

I'm a little confused about some of the parts though.

Stones and Time Travel - So, supposedly you need all three stones and when you use them you're sent back in the past. Asera can't get the stones to activate but Xero does somehow, which *could* indicate that there's something special about Xero, but could also just be a fluke. It isn't until the end of the story (after he's gone and blown up the Unity stone, which I don't think was ever fully elaborated on what its actual power was) that suddenly Enda insists that the power is Xero's and not the stones'. Okay, sure... so does that mean this time travel thing is Xero's "unique power"? Does that also mean that the stones themselves don't actually have any powers and it's Xero all along?

Eidol/Kina - I went through the entire game thinking that Eidol was Kina's little sister that supposedly died in the city attack. But here at the end of the game I'm finding out that Eidol *is* Kina. But they look absolutely nothing alike (as well as I can tell given the artwork for the game). They also have slightly different movesets, which would make sense if they were siblings but makes less sense if they're the same person (especially when you consider there's a shard for each separate "character"). Are we supposed to just accept that Kina didn't die when she jumped off the cliff, and was picked up by Trent and had amnesia the whole time?

Young characters - Some of the characters were brought back to life in younger forms of themselves, like Barclyss and his childhood girl friend (whose name escapes me at the moment). In the case of Barclyss he also had the bulk of his memory erased (but the girl didn't). Is this just more of Xero ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with time? Some combination of his power and Enda's?

Trees - No, seriously. How the hell did they turn into trees?? It's a cool loop back to the beginning of the story, but I don't know that anybody's powers involved turning people into shrubbery lol.

[bugfragged]

1. According to the wiki, Xero has a connection to the Aeon Prism, which lets him use time-based spells. Strange that Brantle didn't bring up this unknown connection during the citadel segment even though he detected Enda's connection to the Heart Prism. One thing I want to know is why was Xero able to physically travel in time in the ending, yet could only mentally travel in time as the guide?

2. Yeah, Eidol/Kina is confusing for me too. Not to mention she transformed back into Kina in the ending. Hopefully, this will get explained when the dev updates the wiki.

3. I have no clue about this either. Considering how old some of the corpses are (like Xero's mom), I'm fan theorizing that Xero's time power is necessary to rewind the bodies to a proper state for Enda's revival to work. I still don't know how he managed to erase Barclyss's memory, but not Heindrovia's when de-aging them. I find it somewhat unsatisfying since it seems like the only solution to keep Barclyss from going evil is to keep him from reading science textbooks.

4. According to Enda's wiki entry, she was originally a leaf that was filled with the previous Spirit of Life's power. I guess turning people into plants and vice versa is part of the Heart Prism/Spirit of Life's power, which sadly isn't a gameplay mechanic. For my fan theory, considering the Spirit of Death can turn souls into zombies, maybe the Spirit of Life (aka Enda and her predecessor) can turn souls into trees (with all their magic abilities intact) as a sort of equal-but-opposite power. It's also possible that turning into trees allows them to accumulate more MP than when they were human, allowing them to pull off their global revival.

Also, what happened to General Kail? Why did he want to wipe out all life so bad and did the duo even bother reviving him?

[FoppyOmega]

I love these discussions and hate interfering, but I do want to clear up a couple things. I wrote a response on Reddit answering a couple of these already. Also you don't have to use spoiler tags here as long as the topic is marked as Spoiler :)

Important note: Anything not explicitly mentioned in-game is not considered canon -- even if it comes straight from me. Things not backed up by dialogue/text during the game are simply "developer's intentions".

I explain Xero's power a little bit in the Reddit post, but basically when he returns to the past as "The Guide" he has no idea what he's doing. Just on a lucky last-second whim he managed to escape the destroyed future (scene in Cataclysm Lab) and he returns to the most comfortable place he could think of (The Spot) back before Ellea was destroyed. He hasn't yet fully realized his power so he has "control troubles" throughout much of the story and can't fully materialize himself. As Greyfeld said, it was all Xero's power that sent him back through time and (aside from showing some futures/pasts) the stones don't do anything when combined. "Enda - The stones were a lie. You can feel it, can't you?"
By the ending, the real Xero has fully realized his powers after destroying the Cosmite meteor. He's able to travel back hundreds of years with Enda at the expense of his own life. Bugfragged, your explanation of #4 was exactly my intention.

Barclyss' motives to end all life aren't just driven by reading science textbooks. His strong connection to the Abyss Prism kinda makes him insane. Slash sort of conjectures (during his flashback) that "he had lost all regard for human life" from reading the books, but really it was the Spirit of Death/Abyss Prism dynamic.

Kail is a poor villain, I'll admit. He's just the stereotypical crazy dude who wants to kill everybody for no real reason. I didn't give him an expanded ending because I didn't feel his 1-dimensional character deserved it. His main role in this game is to drive other characters' interactions with each other, so I tried to minimize his role as much as possible. ...does he get revived? Does he even ever die? Who knows? ;)

Again, most of this is unexplained in-game so you can either choose to believe me or come up with your own theories. Yours are just as canon as mine ^_^