Of Ash and Steel (End)

 So I finished up Of Ash and Steel. And I would say that's... an ending, I suppose?

On the gameplay side, things do get easier in the later game. Teleporters are available to avoid running across the entire map. Enemies get a couple more tricky abilities, but their attack routines done change much. The final boss has a habit of teleporting back and shooting a ranged attack that took away a ridiculous amount of health before I could get up close and essentially stun-lock him. But as stats increase, gear gets better, and you can finally unlock combat-related skills, avoiding any fights is more out of time saving than genuine worry over losing.

Of more note is the story. 

Act 4 left Tris with some magical powers in a world that had seemed largely bereft of them, delving into old "Primestrider" ruins to pick up a few more. He gathers up whichever faction was chosen and retakes a fort in the center of the island, gathering allies against a nebulous foreign threat that apparently taken out two islands of the kingdom already and had a vanguard of cultist-like agents on Grayshaft. Plans are laid to take down and replace the governor so he doesn't get in the way. There were a number of side quests I didn't finish, but they didn't feel terribly important.

So then there's the assault on the castle and the governor is chased up onto the roof. Tris offers surrender by a bolt of lightning strikes the stone, scaring/knocking the governor off to his demise. A council elder says this was the act of the island's guardian titan (say what now?) and to further empower it to protect against the invasion, Tris should go to a ruin and use his powers to do a thing. He does so.

Then there's a cut scene sequence where a giant creature of stone streaked with lava lines fights with some slighlty more human-looking giant of rock and crystal, and I'm wondering what the actual fuck is going on. One of these is apparently Grayshaft's titan. Do all the islands have one? Is this something people knew about, but never talked about? All this seems to have come out of the blue. I'm unclear on who I should be rooting for, but apparently it's the enemy titan that comes out winner and ash cultists are teleporting in all over along with demon-like creatures.

This abrupt introduction of bigger supernatural stuff sets up the final run of stuff. The elder was a bad guy and actually hurt the titan. There's another pre-Primestrider artifact that should help, but it can only be activated by someone of "true Grayshaft blood" or somesuch and the cultists have a list they've been going through offing people. What precisely that means is unclear, and I'll come back to that...

One survivor is settled on. Tris rounds him up and goes to the artifact. They ambushed by the final boss (who was aboard the ship at the beginning). He offs the guy and slams Tris into the crystal, but *gasp and shock* Tris' blood activates it, destroying the enemy titan. It turns out Tris is actually the son of an NPC who helps on the island at several points and was born on Grayshaft, but taken away as a baby/child. But... shouldn't that mean said NPC was a viable person for the artifact too, which never came up? Or is it specifically being born on the island, which... haven't more people been born there, or is everyone actually a first-generation settler? This plot point is somewhere between unclear and nonsensical. 

So then it's off to the final showdown, defeating the bad guy who talks up the person he's working for without ever dropping an actual name or giving any real detail. But oh, he's still coming!

In the aftermath, a royal fleet arrives. They say they've seen further enemy ships on their way and they should evacuate the island because Grayshaft has been defeated. Tris and major NPCs strike their dramatic poses as he declares that Grayshaft has not been defeat, they are Grayshaft, implying they intend to try to hold the line there.

Roll credits.

I mean, there's some interesting stuff there, but the groundwork for it isn't laid so a lot of the plot points seem sudden and tropey. Still, overall the game's a decent ride as long as you're okay with the "high friction" design and it proved more engaging than I would have guessed looking from the outside.