I thought that it was overall good fun. The battle system is excellent and the music is great. The characters are cool and generally quite enjoyable. However, the standard ending of the game really annoyed me. It’s totally anti-climactic. I really don’t want to go back and do a bunch of side quests (collectathon in particular) to unlock the true ending.
Oh, I thought that the conches were entirely a completionist thing, learning that they are required for the true ending puts a damper on my desire to finish this game... It was a fun game, but I got no desire to 100% it. Oh well, guess I'll just watch the true ending on YouTube instead.
I know about the bird, I just have absolutely no desire to go hunting through the maps for the one chest I missed. I'm not a completionist, and this game was definitely not incredible enough to get me to become one.