Gotta agree. I love the art and characters. But it is very short and the ending came out of no where :(
I enjoyed what i played. But wish there was more to it

I just finished it tonight, and while a 3- or 4- hour length adventure isn't necessarily "short" (go ask Shovel Knight), I agree that the story didn't seem to actually "conclude" or "resolve" anything clearly, it just kinda ... stopped and rolled credits.

Endings are hard to write (as everyone who's ever picked up a pen or keyboard to write their own fiction can attest) and it's stock advice (even cliche!) that you should know your ending first, but it's not wrong either: the ending is the last chance of a story to leave a good impression, and this game ... fumbled the ball. (I walked away from Ocarina of Time feeling similarly: decent adventure, but poor ending)

Not to get TOO deep into spoilers (for anyone who hasn't finished), but after Arietta's adventures on one day cause her to stay out too long, her reasonably-worried parents ask her to promise she'll stick close to the cabin tomorrow. I was expecting maybe a day of narrative downtime (if you've played Nintendo's Astral Chain, just recall Chapter/File 8), but NOPE your quest objective is to immediately disobey a direct promise made, and get into another adventure ... which (again, avoiding spoilers) ends with Arietta being found by a search & rescue team and escorted safely back to her (presumably) even MORE worried parents (who are, mind you, none the wiser about her adventures). And now the credits are rolling? What?

I was already anticipating that the game was approaching its end soon (based on the collectibles list and achievements grid -- I turned those notifications off by the way) and the endgame section was genuinely climactic.

I'm not one for much literary analysis, but if Arietta was written to have a character development arc I'm just not seeing what it was supposed to be. Again, the story doesn't feel like it "ended", it just kinda "stopped".

The previous game I played that also suffered a premature-ending problem was Monster Hunter Rise (before v3.0 update), where after completing one certain quest I was like "wait, that's it? the credits are rolling now?" The game's other main questline had a similar moment, where after defeating its (at the time) final boss you were left with a foreshadowing that it had, in fact, gotten away and the true finale wouldn't arrive for another update or two (but when it did, it did NOT disappoint either!).

I could go on but ... yeah, I'm just mostly rambling here. I liked the setting, the pixel art is charming, and as a game it was certainly fun enough.

Yeah, I honestly got the same feeling. Like, the end credits roll did have what seemed to be a sequel hook, so presumably the reason it doesn't feel like the story 'resolved' is because there's still more to come in some future game, but... I dunno. The game just sorta felt like a 4 hour long prologue.

Not to necro the thread, but yes, that struck me as a very odd decision, as well. In a game where one of the central themes is bringing closure to others, it's all the more noticeable that neither you nor your character get any.

I didn't think the end didn't resolve anything. She beats back the dark force and loses her spirit buddy in the process. The cool part is the parents are none the wiser and think she just got lost. All she can do is cry when she meets them. I felt it was a suitable end for what it was. Otherwise I agree this feels like Act I of a 3-Act game that wasn't finished. There was a little replay with Extreme mode but even that went by pretty quick.