You can tell some of the seams as you play, like a lot of dungeons have just 1 shard and nothing else and its janky to move around in the overworld animation system instead of third person. I doubt that was the "intent", they just probably ran out of time/resources to fill it in. Doesn't matter in the slightest since some of the dungeons are mind blowing fun.
The writing and technical details are just completely nailed in this game, with so many places to jump and fuck around I've only gotten "stuck" once and only lost like 1 min of a fight when I rolled back a save. Pretty wild, considering other recent games have jank and bugs out the ass. Not a super short game either, I'm nearing the end of act 2 and at 26 hours, gonna try to go for 100%.
absolutely fantastic 10/10 game the story and writing really is great, I still have no idea honestly what the actual story/lore is (i am closing in I think) but I love how characters don't go into expo dump mode but just naturally say shit like "I can't believe you didn't tell me" when they read a note, not tell us their entire life backstory at the drop of a hat. Having only gotten into anime in the last 2 years it is fascinating to see the french take on "anime tropes", its different but the bones poke through.
Reminds me a bit of Sea of Stars (also French I think?) although that game wasn't as gorgeous or well written as this.