4/5 ★ – sirreldar's review of Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition.

Spiritfarer is a cozy management/friendship game about Stella, successor to Charon, ferryman of the recently deceased. It is your new duty to find lost spirits, feed and accommodate them as passengers on the ferry, and ultimately help them pass into the afterlife. Throughout your journey, you will make new friends, meet old friends, upgrade your ship with new stations, farms and buildings, and discover new crafting and cooking recipes. The world consists of a sprawling archipelago, which the player is challenged to explore. While ashore, the player can chat with NPCs, find new passengers to bring aboard, search for chests and other secrets, shop at street merchants, and gather resources to be refined on the ship and crafted into upgrades or recipes. I really enjoyed Spiritfarer. The overall aesthetic was pleasing, and the artwork was enjoyable. One thing I particularly appreciated about the artwork was the high framerate of the animations. Many games skimp on animations, and turn otherwise good-looking artwork into choppy, bad-looking animations. Islands contained a wide variety of settings from bustling cities, to rolling green meadows, to drab caves and mountains. Each island was fun to explore for the first time and fun to revisit, if only to enjoy the artwork there again. The bright, colorful visuals and generally lighthearted music were an interesting contrast against the games otherwise darker story. The music was good overall, though not particularly memorable. However the music consistently accentuated the rest of the scene and complimented the artwork nicely. In most cases it was enjoyable and relaxing (EXCEPT for the bus driver, which I found beyond irritating). I like how much dialog NPCs were given. Many “world” NPCs had only a simple greeting, but many had pages of dialog about their lives. Passengers especially had a LOT of dialog, which gave them each meaningful backstory and made them all feel memorable and interesting. My only minor complaint is sometimes the dialog was broken up into REALLY small chunks, and clicking to continue to the next word or half sentence got very tedious sometimes. It was especially annoying since each “page” of dialog always began with a capital letter, often making it tricky to parse what the NPC was actually saying, since it was sometimes unclear if it was a new sentence or a continuation of the sentence from the previous page. The story was beautifully told, though a bit esoteric at times. The vast dialog made for ample lore and world-building. There is really a lot to take in, if the player wishes to do so. I enjoyed most of the minigames for collecting and refining resources. None of them were difficult, and would be simple even for a novice to succeed at. The only exception was the forge, which, while not difficult, felt confusing to me. Even after finishing the game, that task never felt very clear to me, but I was able to succeed at it nonetheless. Either way, the minigames gave the tasks a small level of interactivity, making them much more enjoyable than simply clicking a button. I also really enjoyed the almost metroidvania-like elements. Many parts of the archipelago are inaccessible until the ferry has been upgraded. Furthermore, you receive many mobility upgrades during your journey, allowing you to explore previously inaccessible areas of many islands. In true metroidvania fashion, these areas are frequently teased, being clearly visible but just out of reach. This made revisiting islands fun and exciting, now that new areas were potentially available. Overall, I would highly recommend Spiritfarer. I enjoyed virtually every aspect of it, and appreciated the absence of the pressure of failure or death. If you are looking for something very chill and relaxing where you can just travel around and help people, this should definitely be near the top of your list. P.S. You can also go fishing and hug cats