I finished Luigi's Mansion 3 and had a few things I still wanted to do in the game. Nope. It kicked me to the menu. Outside of loading an old save, you cannot keep playing.
Kinda stupid imo.
In botw, it reverts you to just before the final fight. You're free to keep exploring and can keep killing Ganon.
Great.
Death Stranding, Witcher 3, and most open games are the same. Beat the game but keep playing in some way.
So what games in your opinion do it best? Or is the end actually being the end a good thing?
I absolutely hate the revert to before the final boss fight end. It feels as it negated my entire progress and I didnt finish the mission.
If it's open world or semi open world like GoW. Just have it return to the world with no main mission available to do. And the remain side content being available to play.
I'd add another category:
Full ending: no returning to the game after finishing
Game+: restart the game with bonuses
Revert: last mission stays regardless of finishing it
Soft ending: main quest is done and can not be returned to.
Full endings are entirely bad I think, nothing gained by taking away everything.
Game+ has a lot of variety. Overall I think it's great way to have a full ending without taking away all the progress the player made. It's pretty much the full ending without the negatives.
(Bloodborne is one of my favorite games and it has Game+. Just great to re-explore while still holding onto the progress with levels and weapons already done.).
Revert is okay, but it does feel kind of lame if the last boss or quest is forever part of the world. It just feels like there's not really an ending. Might be almost as bad as a full ending.
Soft ending is great too. Especially because games can feel more like worlds, not just stories.
Minor death stranding spoiler.