Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-104.200.138.164-20200518064152/@comment-36170150-20200522134353

NoelMittUns wrote:

I had to rely extensively on the walkthrough because the game simply didn't tell me where to go, and interacting with every single thing in the area again and again until something happens simply isn't fun gameplay. It's not true for every section of the game, but it's true often enough.

But even outside of that, optimization is very much needed, especially since bad results do snowball, meaning you end up in a world of hurt... It's something I warn people about: don't play the game if you're not okay with minmaxing and metagaming.

Having to explore everywhere was way more of a chapter 1 issue. Stineford and Yhilin were hubs where you just kind of had to stumble upon the events that allowed you to progress the main story with little or no direction, afterwards the game had the main story progression mostly on a rail, with clear-cut directions and exploration mostly just for optional stuff. I think the main exceptions would be the first Yhilin section after conquering it, and gathering the party members at the start of chapter 4, but I'm fine with those sections being designed like that based on the idea you'd like to explore the world given the developments.

I disagree with optimization being needed, bad results don't snowball as much as they simply never go away, once you get a sub-optimal result, it will prevent you from getting an optimal result on something in the future, which will in turn prevent you from getting another optimal result in the future, so on so forth. But the second best results, at least in terms of lore and ingame descriptions, are never really that bad or a "world of hurt", and they aren't locked away because you made one tiny mistake.

I think the issue is more that, while blind exploration is rarely forced by the main-story progression, it is required to do most of the side-quests that are necessary to do even passingly well in a blind playthrough, so in one way or the other, the game will end up being frustrating if you don't like being thorough.