I reached the end of Spiritfarer today. I was constantly impressed with the art and animation. The sound and music are good, too. While some characters can get a little long-winded (mostly because you see only one line of dialog at a time), I like that they have distinct personalities and voices.
I don’t know whether it was just the order I happened to come across things, but I thought some of the upgrades becoming available earlier on might have improved the experience. The repetitive tasks and slow travel do serve to let you form some attachment to the characters, but I found that the game dragged a little in places. I think part of that was that I played a little too long per session. There’s always one more thing to do before quitting. And then one more thing.
I found the story clever in a Silent Hill sort of way. No overt horror, of course, but there are some pretty heavy themes on top of the overarching memento mori thing. You eventually learn pieces of Stella’s “real” story along with the stories of the passengers.
Almost all video games involve death in some way (often in a very shallow way), but this game joins the ranks of Continue?9876543210 in actually having something to say on the subject.