[@Lonewolf685] I feel like the prime NPCs were originally established to be amazingly strong. When one showed up, you had to run away using the environment, or they got to do whatever they wanted with you. But now it feels like they're jobbing hard in a "Oh, wait you're supposed to start winning now because the plot's winding down way". You built up a giant mountain to overcome... and instead of feeling like I've grown and might have a chance to scale it, the mountain has bent down to let me over. And you have to do that, because there hasn't been enough arc time to grow the enormous amount of strength it would take to make it a satisfying contest.

I feel like the Legend Relics are immensely unsatisfying as power ups. It feels like "replace your character with a more powerful character in combat. Any random guy could pick up the relic and be relatively just as useful." The only moment that felt like Legend Relics might have some sort of interesting arc potential was Alex's Legend Relic telling him to jump back in the fight. But that only happened because he denied destiny. And with the end zooming towards us without a moment to breath, I feel like we'll never have time to do so.

Speaking of no time to breath, the feel I get from Flamelord's posts was a man desperately trying to escape the plot's eye for a moment, take a rest, and then re-enter it when he could add his character's flavor in to a mix that needed it. Meanwhile, the plot repeatedly jumped in saying "Why Aren't you a Heroic Warrior Yet Thief Man? Why Aren't you a Heroic Warrior Yet?" And it keeps hammering on like that until you send Stark to bust his face through Alex's metaphorical plot shield door with a "Here's Starkkky... Completely pushing past any sense of believe-ability and reasonable levels of metagaming to force you back into the plot in an unwanted manner."

In that way, what's happened Alex has completely double-downed my before "meh, I don't really want one, it feels like cheating" mild dislike of the Legend Relics to "Yeah, this seems like a trap, a one way train ticket, that will lock me into a press f to fire your color of legendary magic to beat the beast cutscene." I don't feel like having a Legend Relic has given Chen more player agency, just forced him onto a path, and since all his opponents seem to be leveling up with him, it doesn't even seem to add relative power, even though it certainly added absolute power.

On the subject of "why are we even here, what have we added".

Let's imagine all the changes that would happen if Monkey was never here.
An old man might still be able to have children. Dunno if he was able to before.
Chen would have had a slightly easier time getting his relic.
Axon would have had to take two trips to get up to the office, once with the gun, once with Titania.

No one likes Monkey. No one has ever thought she said something intelligent. Maybe that's all my fault, but still it leaves a poor taste in my mouth when what I thought was a relatively unique and interesting character feels like they're barely tolerated.

A huge reason why I think myself, Flame, and Frozen all felt unwanted at various times is how the NPCs always treat us like idiots. Maybe we are, but it might be nice if you occasionally said "OOC, I think you might be misunderstanding the situation, because looked at from XYZ perspective with XYZ knowledge that your character has, this seems really dumb. Are you sure?" Instead of all the NPCs instead taking the opportunity to canonize our character idiocy due to player mistake.

For my part, I was warned that talking to Yggdrasil would probably yield no fruit, so I can't claim any points there, but I feel like it has happened other times as well.