The village of Panselo is shown to be a nice place where everyone is friendly, especially the orphanage. You can get Pumpkin Muffins from Nana, and help Kitt by bringing him some milk to use in the dinner he's making (which he'll even pay you back for), and there is a sign that says you should hug the Perros, which will lay eggs if you do that while they're sitting down. You can also tell Rutea that she can accept her brother's offer of leaving the village to work with him if she really wants to. All of this makes the abduction even more heartbreaking.
Seeing the children playing in the forest is just adorable.
After the villagers are taken, Alex asks Gail how they should break the news to those who didn't see the ship arrive. Regardless of whether you choose to tell them the truth or not, Alex will say that Gail's answer is mature.
If you choose to lie, the children won't believe it, leading to Alex telling the truth anyway.
Everyone freaks out at first when they find out that aliens took their friends and families, but the next morning they try to carry on with life as normal, doing the chores that the adults would normally do, and admitting it helps to distract them from the situation. It's a refreshing twist from the usual trope of places falling apart when there are no adults around.
Gail's meeting with Lisa in Atai. Lisa calls Gail her sister, and the two share a hug. And when Gail finds out about Lisa's debt, she immediately decides to ask the Mayor to let her go.
In order to progress, you need to ask Lisa's friend Garnet to unlock a door for you so you can get some bombs. She asks you to look after the children while she's away, leading to a cute game of hide-and-seek. You can even play it a second time if you do the "Trading Sequence" sidequest.
Speaking of badges, there's another one called "Not for profit", which involves finding three NPCs who will still serve you even when you don't have enough money on hand. These are the innkeeper at Sunflower Road, the ferryman at the northern port at Moonlight Ravine, and the pianist in Daea City. It goes to show that the player character isn't the only one who can do nice things.
After earning Lisa's freedom, she hugs Gail again, this time picking her up and spinning her around. The two also head back to Panselo together.
The fact that Gail doesn't want anyone to know that she was the one who captured Birdy. It shows that she doesn't really care about the fame that comes from it, only doing it to help Lisa.
When Lisa returns, things get a bit better in the village. Even though the children are still upset, Lisa says she'll give them whatever support they can, and the music even returns to the usual upbeat theme.
If you return to Atai after capturing Birdy, a new sidequest becomes available where you help to find some letters that the Mayor's parents wrote for his next fifty birthdays. Even though they knew they were likely to be killed, they still wanted their son to know they loved him.
If you follow Zeke's requests to bring him certain foods, he'll suggest that you also bring some for Birdy the first time, and shares with her all the times after that, while they reminisce on their past days. This is especially heartwarming because Birdy had previously betrayed Zeke and let him be caught after blowing up the bridges. She also gradually warms up to Gail and eventually explains why she took over the tribe and damaged the bridges.
Daea City is a friendly place to visit, with many areas of interest. Some NPCs also say that the Prince usually visits their establishments and spoke to people despite being royalty.
Despite Thomas initially thinking Gail is a Peace Minister sent to put a stop to his work and making her fight the Wrecker he was working on, she doesn't hold it against him, knowing that it was a misunderstanding and even refers to him as her friend when asking the guards about him after he's captured.
Thomas' relationship with his sister Rutea is quite sweet, and the two don't even appear onscreen together outside of pictures. Said pictures include one of them playing on the beach as kids, and another of Thomas giving Rutea bunny ears, the same picture of which she has in her bedroom. After finding out she's been abducted, Thomas swears revenge against those responsible.
After he returns to Panselo and sets up a room to sleep in at Rutea's lab, Thomas moves the picture of them there. It's also implied that he read through her book of poems, the first of which is about how much she looks up to him. Also doubles as a tearjerker.
Since some of the guards from Daea also come to the village, the children are free to play again.
The fact that Bart wants to help save the world, to the point of disobeying the Galactic Federation after they denied his race trying to claim the planet to save it from being invaded. And unlike Billy from the flash game, he is genuinely good.
While visiting Cosette, Gail finds that Aella, a girl from her village, has amnesia and doesn't remember who she is. Despite the two being rivals, Gail still wants to help her regain her memory.
What does it take in the end to get her to remember? Playing a song that everyone in the village knows, which Aella would sometimes sing to her younger brother.
Aella is so thankful for Gail helping her despite their rivalry that she decides to help her back by teaching her a new technique. In general, their relationship is portrayed as a Friendly Rivalry and the two don't hate each other at all.
There's another sidequest in the nearby farm that involves two people who are in love but are afraid to talk to each other based on things they've dreamt about. The girl is afraid that something bad will happen to the boy if he goes to bring her the fruit from an orange tree, while the boy is afraid of cheating on the girl if he meets another girl with red hair. You help them by defeating the huge boar near the tree, and dyeing your hair red so the boy will realise he can just stay away from red-haired girls. After that, they get together, and their family members will thank you for it.
The girl also mentions that she's always wanted to dye her hair red. The ending scene shows that she's done just that.
The "Trading Sequence" sidequest has a few nice moments:
You start the sidequest when a man at the GEO club says that the turtle in the aquarium is lonely and could do with a friend. There's a hidden cave in the Panselo reigon where you can fish up another turtle. The man will reward you with a ring for bringing it to him.
At Moonlight Ravine, you encounter a couple on a date. If you give them chocolate, you'll then be asked by the boy to bring some jewellery. Give him the ring and the girl will be really happy.
Eventually, you end up needing a dog to track down a pair of scammers. There's a girl in Cosette Village with a Golem dog who wants a letter of recommendation so she can leave to get a job. You get the letter from a noblewoman after giving her daughter a stuffed toy, and this is after you refuse her offer to give you a job.
The Golem dog breaks after being used, and Gail is shown to be sad about it. You can find the owner in Daea at the tailor's shop, and try to break the news to her, but she'll reveal that it can easily be fixed.
There's an optional scene after the scammers are caught where you learn that one of them is Garnet's brother, and she is very disappointed in him, but still believes he can be a better person. She says that she'll pay back Gail for the money she was scammed out of, but the diaglogue choices suggest that Gail isn't bothered about it, which Garnet says is a lot like Lisa.
It's been hinted that Garnet used to be a criminal herself until Lisa convinced her to change, and Word of God has said that it was actually Garnet's debt she was working off and not her own because she's just that nice.
If you pay the Troubadors after your first encounter with them, you can help them throughout the game, paying them in your next encounters with them. After a certain point, Cobette runs off and Alto, who is implied to have a crush on her, gets sad about it. But if you paid Melody at the Ouroboros hideout, and then donate enough money to the Cupid's Fountain, she'll reveal that she was hiding and she'll end up joining the group. When you see them in Daea again, they're all performing while several people are watching.
The reason Cobette ran away is because she's actually one of Bart's allies called Coby, whose Golem was disguised holographically. Despite claiming that they won't go back after you tell them that the Troubadors miss them, the ending scene shows them performing with the group again, suggesting that they reconsidered.
Though it's also a tearjerker, you learn by reading some of the messages on the computers in E.D.E.N that there were four scientists who worked under Grasso to help make the planet's surface habitable for human life again, and their logs show their personalities well. If you unlock the room next to the very last save point, you can also find out that two of them got married.
In the same room, you can learn a song that results in a flashback to when Gail and Kitt were first brought to Panselo. After losing her children, Nana decided to raise them, and to open an orphanage to look after any other children with no one else to look after them. The whole scene is very bittersweet.
When Bart teleports in and meets Gail in person for the first time, he adorably ruffles her hair.
After Gail tells him that she found out she's a Phoenix, he doesn't get scared or upset, and tells her that this is a good thing because she's a good person.
When Bart and Audrey manage to wake up one of the phoenixes, Bart talks to him as if he's a person instead of a living weapon, and decides that they will eventually come up with another name to call him rather than "Zero".
The ending, while bittersweet, shows that despite many buildings being damaged, the invasion was successfully stopped and the world was saved, and it appears that everyone survived. They're also shown to be restoring the buildings, and the more sidequests you complete, the more characters you'll get to see.
It's mentioned that the Stellanites are now allied with the humans, with many of them seen helping to repair things, and their children playing around.
Thomas and Fran are shown to be rivals in the game, but in the ending it's implied that they put aside their differences to work together against the invasion, and to prevent future invasions. Additionally, the Peace Ministers are said to have eased their restrictions, and the two scientists don't seem to mind having them nearby despite their earlier encounters with them going badly.
The ending artwork called "Warm nights" shows more characters depending on your completion level. Almost everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, with most of the characters enjoying the campfire.
