I thought that it was overall good fun. The battle system is excellent and the music is great. The characters are cool and generally quite enjoyable. However, the standard ending of the game really annoyed me. It’s totally anti-climactic. I really don’t want to go back and do a bunch of side quests (collectathon in particular) to unlock the true ending.
I had a similar reaction!
Spending a couple extra hours wrapping up quests and collecting conches (on the recommendation of a friend) wound up being well worth it for me, the true ending felt much more satisfying.
For what it’s worth, all the quests take somewhere around 20-40 minutes each, if I remember correctly. Even the collection quest wasn’t too bad, thanks to the treasure finding parrot.
Yeah… I’ll probably end up doing it eventually. It’s just really lame to get hyped for the final fight and be told “go do side quests for a few more hours and then come back.”