TL;DR - At least as far as story mode goes, a game that had a lot of promise, with a depressing story lacking in closure or 'hero's reward'.

Massive spoilers:

The gameplay isn't bad- it's quite fun at times. I enjoyed sailing around and finding new islands - but it's far, far more downspirited than the summary would have led me to believe. For example: /Most/ of the people you meet will be miserable, making  the joy of meeting new folks....negligible.

You might think the game will be happier as it goes on - that people will be happier, that maybe you could /help/ them. (Whether individually or through the traditional 'save the world, make a treaty with dragons' method, which is what the game /implies/ you will be doing.)

That isn't what happens.

This game is depressing. Compelling, yes- I found myself coming back to it despite my distaste for the sheer level of hopelessness (both of the villagers and in the strange, unexplained dream-segment-esque interludes, which seem promising in the beginning but quickly fail to integrate with the rest of the experience in a way beyond 'the world is a frustrating, upsetting place and it may or may not be hopeless, but it probably is' message that seems interwoven into both.) Depressing, and more than a little disappointing.

I /liked/ sailing from place to place, is the thing -  the magic was cool! it was useful! The sailing itself was interesting.

I had a mixed relationship with fishing (much like the rest of this game), which had a /lot/ of issues. Soul shards were obstructive and distracting. The effective range of the rod was /very/ small and blocked by your own boat. The time constraint from hunger and thirst, all told, was a total pain. Still, it was at least kind of fun.

A positive, as far as emotional investment and immersion goes: My heart was pounding with dread during my first thunderstorm; at one point, a non-dragon winged beast* scooped my character off and tried to carry them off for dinner, which was /also/ somewhat terrifying.

*either a griffon or a hippogriff, probably; I was a bit busy trying not to get eaten to identify its exact species.

Dragons attacked my boat multiple times, and it was frightening every time - though it was very, very unpleasant to have the camera inexplicably follow each dragon as it swooped away /instead of the player character/ during an emergency.

It made it ///pretty difficult// to get into the water so that I didn't /burn. to death/ with the camera weaving around like it was drunk.

The way time would automatically fast-forward while sailing made aiming the larger ships towards any but the largest target (like an island) /difficult/ at best, and nearly impossible combined with the engine - which you couldn't really avoid using once you had it.

I mostly gave up on gathering souls or coins from the water once I was at that point for this reason; a dragon destroyed my engine, and I strongly considered /not/ replacing it, except that I was fairly certain I would need it to survive, at the very least, the trip to the dragon's island.

The mechanical frustration would have been forgivable if not for the story itself, which felt hopeless and more than a little lackluster.

The end lacked more than the barest feeling of resolution, and seemingly merged the two worlds- dream-interlude modern and sailing fantasy- in a way that had me questioning whether the ending was even /happening/, or if this would be another thing the main character would 'wake up' from.

I mentioned the dream-interludes, yes? They typically popped up during a moment of danger -which could be seen as either a reprieve or an annoyance, depending on your perspective- and featured a much more modern-seeming world than the one the player character lives in.

Despite this, it /is/ the player character who you control during these....dreams? Hallucinations? Break-throughs to a different reality?

The whole thing feels confusing and /unnecessary/. The first few seemed to be going somewhere, but trailed off into more depressing meandering.

You're also shadowed throughout the game by two characters who pop up once in a while and are either some aspect of your subconscious or semi-metaphysical entities (or both?), one of whom has it out for you and the other who treats you as an old friend and someone who 'likes to help people', despite the lack of meaningful interaction with other people in the game.

You are, presumably, helping this figure-the white, nice one- /somehow/ by collecting spirit (or spirit fragments?) from the waters.

This is never explained.

You're also supposed to be helping spirits by bringing them to the island of dragons (for....some reason?), which could have been, at least, /some/ sort of resolution to the game; you've brought spirits, or you've ....used them all up?

'Okay, so there are no dragons here. But...this is where the spirits belong, for whatever reason. Maybe you can't save the world, but you can save a few people.

Granted, they're already dead, but you can't have everything.' Or possibly seeing all the spirits you've used as spell-fuel already there, waiting to say goodbye.

....I digress. The end of the game makes everything twice as confusing, tying the dream-segments of the modern world into this fantasy world in a way that made me question whether all of this was just supposed to be the main character 'living in their own head' and imagining everything that had happened.

Much like the very similar twist 'it was all a dream' endings, this is not a trope I have any fondness for whatsoever (for...too many reasons to go into here), and I'm not sure what the alternative option even /is/ here.

At the end you climb on back of the mystical green dragon you expect will lead you to some sort of hope, or wisdom, or perhaps a peace summit with other dragons? 

Instead, you are brought on a whistle-stop tour to the islands you had visited previously (some of which possess people who apparently want to talk to you, which rather takes you out of the moment - if you were in it to begin with) and finally back home - where, the first time through, I accidentally talked to the wrong person 'early' and was firmly whisked away from talking to the rest of my village to see what they had to say about all this, which led to having to restart the sequence.

I had more questions by the end of this game than I did at the beginning, and very few of them were philosophical. This feels like a game that is trying very hard to find some sort of meaning in life, and fails desperately beyond 'life is hard, and I'm tired'. As someone who's struggled with depression since I was very young, I failed to find this uplifting or meaningful.

This game presented multiple subversions, but I can't speak well of most of them.

I was looking forward to a, if not /joyful/, then at least not /depressing/ experience - difficult, yes, but surmountable - with some sort of reward for my efforts at the end, as video games tend to do.

TL;DR (again)

I felt a lot of things playing this game - most of them not super positive- and was holding out hope for a happy ending. The best I got was 'you maybe, possibly didn't die, unless you did or are and this is all a hallucination. Also, this might be a fantasy you're playing out in your head, but I'm only going to tell you that at the end, and then vaguely and with lots of room for questioning that.'

This game kind of made me want to walk into the sea, and searching
restlessly for meaning with the ending the third time, I did.

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