Hey, I realise this topic is unlikely to go anywhere since i'm playing the game months after everyone else has moved on, but i'd really like to know if anyone else feels the same way as me about this aspect of the game;

Now I was absolutely in love with the game for the vast majority of it. With the exception of a couple frustrating "level-up character; they immediately die off-screen" moments, I had a fantastic time throughout; the world was interesting, the characters compelling, the choices difficult and the combat fulfilling and intense.

Then came the final boss.

So you're forced to have two party members (for some reason I was forced to bring Alette despite her not carrying the Silver Arrow) pre-selected, the boss has two forms, in both forms the area is filled with enemies, the boss regenerates, can force party-members to skip turns, can ignore turn-order and attack when he likes, and one-hit-kills most party-members. Oh, and did I mention that one of your party members is unavoidably killed after the first form, too? It felt like a ludicrous jump in difficulty that forced a very specific play-style and unfairly brushed off many of the mechanics that had been ground into your head over the course of the entire game. It felt really overdone, and turned the final battle from climactic to tedious.

Then came the ending.

...I don't really know what to say about that. Nothing really gets wrapped up, they just push a boat out and show you some pretty trees. No epilogues, no real character interactions, no mention of your caravan, not even an explanation of what the fuck that giant snake was. It just ends.

I'm really looking forward to a later entry in the series, because like I said I was in love with the game for most of the play-through, but man, what a disappointing note to go out on.

Yeeeeeeep. Final Boss is a ridiculous difficulty spike and I thought the ending was pretty terrible when I played the game back in like January. There's something to be said for cliffhangers, and then there's something to be said for not explaining anything and expecting that to be satisfactory.

Yeah that last fight is a nutter. I leveled my guys the way I do all TRPG's, which turned out to be the absolutely worst decision. I actually ended up having to set the difficulty down a notch.

That said, I actually really enjoyed the ending. Maybe it's because I always knew this was only a small part of a bigger story, but I thought it was a properly somber finish to just let all the focus be about the death. At that moment nothing else mattered.

The last fight was definitely by far the hardest part of the game but eh, I didn't think it was too difficult. I had only lost two fights up until that point and the last fight look me like four or five tries.

The ending was a little anti-climatic, I agree. I thought for sure there was going to be at least one more chapter to deal with this "darkness" everyone was talking about and the serpent. But as long as we get a sequel, I don't really mind leaving the story unresolved.

I don't know when you did the fight, but I think they patched it in the last month or so to make it less difficult.

@ssully said:

Interesting. In what way? I know back when it released originally, Bellower had like 20 HP and 20 armour, and some fairly strong ability that I forget. Plus all the enemies you basically have to ignore and spend every turn just wailing on Bellower instead.

The final battle made me quit this game, I might return to it in order to see how the ending actually goes.

I liked the rest of the game a ton, though

I finished the game today. I think he might have had slightly less than 20/20, at least for his second form. The only ability I saw was his bellow ability that did a small amount of damage to every member of the party and pushed them back a bit.

The final battle was really boring/bad but I wasn't too turned off because the rest of the game had already turned me off by that point. I remember really liking the leadup to the boss fight, and was almost shocked that that was the end of the game.

Definitely not a high point for the game. I liked the ending mostly because it really pointed out how minor your characters are with respect to the rest of the universe, even if that isn't the most friendly way to describe a bunch of characters in a tactical game like this. As long as they stick to their plan for sequels then its just a better way to end the story they had written anyways.

I thought the last fight was really easy and smoked Bellower , but maybe I got lucky.

ok sound like I did just get lucky since I finished a couple days ago.

I definitely would have liked some more substance to the ending though. I don't mind cliffhangers, but that felt really abrupt. I wonder if the choice you made at the end will carry over to future games. I'd love to play more games in this story and world. The Varl character storylines in particular (Hakon & Ubin) seemed to just completely disappear after chapter 3.

I was aware it ended in a cliffhanger, and i had no problem with it, but i found the narrative of the final section very disappointing. The whole "silver arrow that will instill doubt so if everybody else believe he's dying he will believe it too and go in a deep sleep" left me with a profound "meh". But the worst part was the decision on who should have the arrow: I understand you should see it as "my daughter has matured in an adult and I should accept that and give her the responsability", but Alette had no such character arc; there is only the initial bit about letting her and Egil join the fight. Nothing during the whole travel to Boersgard made me think of her as an evolving character and as such deserving of that kind of ending. I don't see why Rooks would have suddenly been all "you know what? I just now realized you're no longer my young girl, here's the arrow". If the choice had been between Rooks and Iver i would have felt it more, since the latter has a prominent role in the game and an actual connection to Bellower.

Yep, that last section was a bit of a bummer: Regenerating boss, unskippable cutscenes, Juno's dialogue that covers up your characters, a scripted death, willpower resetting after the first part of the battle. It took me three tries to get it. Luckily, 90% of the game is fantastic.

Also, the credits go for half an hour...that's a record, right?

Nope! Assassins Creed 3's credits go for 40 minutes, are completely unskippable and if you quit before they end you have to redo the end sequence again.