YMMV / Spiritfarer

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Hades questions why Stella chose to associate with death so much, acting as Spiritfarer and a pallative care nurse in real life according to the artbook. He ponders whether she was hoping to conquer death or grow accustomed to it for when her time came.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Annoying as she was many players admit that they were saddened by Elena’s Everdoor scene despite disliking her.
• Awesome Music: The music in this game is phenomenal, but Last Voyage stands out as the song that plays whenever you have to say goodbye to a spirit.
• Base-Breaking Character: Bruce is disliked by many players for being very rude, hard to please, and for his tendency to harass other spirits, lowering their mood, but there are also plenty of players that like him finding him funny and feeling sympathy for him after learning that his brother Mickey was in a coma and that Bruce committed suicide in grief.
• Ending Fatigue: By the time Elena shows up, the player character is quite likely to have completed the story arcs of Alice, Astrid, Atul, Bruce & Mickey, Summer, Stanley, Gwen, Gustav and Giovanni, the ship upgrades that allow them to go through rock, ice & fog, the master level blueprint upgrades with all the buildings unlocked & built and all of Stella's abilities. Elena's challenges can be annoying to deal with, she is a harsh Stern Teacher who doesn't show any affection at all towards Stella. As Hades the Owl will have told Stella that she can go through the Everdoor herself, players may balk at any further progression and just end the game, leaving Elena behind and possibly missing out on Buck entirely.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Stanley. Due to the fact that it has been revealed that he was an eight year-old boy from an abusive household, fans got sentimental over him.
• Jerkass Woobie: Jackie makes crude jokes and is very abrasive upwards Stella. He has a very inflated sense of self and a spiteful and resentful attitude towards his patients. However, you later learn that he's aware of all his faults and thinks much worse of himself than anybody else (despite his resentment he did take care of the patients as best he could and many people sincerely like him). He tries to be better but feels trapped and doomed by his past mistakes. In the end, he goes through the Everdoor resigned to a self image that is very unflattering and mostly inaccurate
• Narm: Since a spirit's Leitmotif plays whenever they tell you their backstory, it can be unintentionally funny to hear Bruce and Mickey's upbeat gangster theme play as Bruce tells Stella how he struggled with coping with Mickey's death, which led to Bruce's suicide.
• Nightmare Fuel: Hades' first appearance is honestly jarring and terrifying if you're not expecting it. Just this giant ghostly owl head that comes up out of nowhere while you're paying respects to Gwen.
• Player Punch: Atul doesn't get a proper sendoff like the other spirits, as he goes to the Everdoor himself after you've finished his questline. You only learn about this once he's already left and you find his spirit flower in his house. The sheer suddenness of it can come as a real punch to the gut, as even if you suspect that Atul might want to leave after the party you're planning, it's the only instance of the game not explicitly letting you decide when a character passes on, which can instill a sense of Never Got to Say Goodbye in the player.
• Popular with Furries: It's a lavishly drawn and animated game where all the spirits take the form of Funny Animals for no particular reason. Of course it would earn the Furry Fandom's attention! Especially if it features a character like Gwen.
• The Scrappy: Pretty universally, Elena has... not been a favorite. It doesn't help that she's one of the last spirits any player is likely to have on their boat, meaning that there's little to no respite from her constant negativity, not to mention the fact that she actively defies being hugged.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The blacksmithing mini-game is not as fun an activity as the others because it requires the use of the foundry (which itself is a time-consuming task), isn't exactly clear when the right moment to strike is, and has low returns in relation to the effort put into it. The saving grace is that not many things require the smithy, and those that do usually only ask for one or two at a time.
  • Every now and then, your spirits will remind you of one of your tasks. This might be annoying, since you're probably fully aware of their tasks and still gathering resources, but Atul probably takes the cake. His requests require you to get two boat upgrades, which take a fairly long time to gather resources for. Expect to receive a lot of reminders for pork chops and fried chicken.
• Spiritual Successor: The game is very reminiscent of Eternal Sonata, despite the two different genres, as they both examine the Dying Dream of their protagonist.
• That One Achievement: There is one achievement for telling Astrid about Giovanni's dalliances and another achievement for not telling her. If you want both you'll need to start an entirely separate game file for it. Note that this decision typically occurs in the second half of the game, so you'll be playing quite a while to get it and there is no other reason why you would want/need to restart your save.
  • There is a way to get both without having to start a whole new game. Make your choice, then once you get the achievement, go back to the main menu and load an automatic save from before the choice. Then, pick the other choice.
• The Woobie: Stanley. An eight year-old boy from an abusive household, the youngest patient Stella ever lost during her time as a palliative care nurse; he is so devastated by the mildest, friendliest critique of his play that he immediately asks Stella to take him to the Everdoor — only to then admit, in his final moments, how terrified he is and how much he wishes his mother were there.
• Viewer Species Confusion: Beverly is an owl, but due to her hat and bandana vaguely resembling a comb and wattles at first glance, and her following a lot of chicken Animal Stereotypes she can be mistaken for a chicken.
• Wheelchair Woobie:
  • Alice. As the game progresses she'll need her room moved to the ground floor as she can no longer climb ladders, and will eventually need Stella's help to walk.
  • Gustav was wheelchair bound in life, and talks about death allowing him to be free of it. Notably, this received a great deal of criticism from the disabled community, who pointed out the bad implications of a character all but stating that being dead was better than being disabled. The developers apologized, and promised to fix it in the Gustav update in late Summer 2021.
  • The updated version is still a case: Gustav says he didn't mind the wheelchair since his mind remained just fine and that was what really mattered, but people started treating him differently and being dismissive and condescending.

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