Is there more in the final battle than that scene when Tav thinks about accepting the final tadpole from the emperor? I never got even that one because I instantly agreed to shrimp Orpheus - I am very ok with shrimping Orpheus - I just had Astarion scold me for even thinking about using Origin-Gale's bomb at the brain stem. Which is so on brand for Astarion. Everyone else asks why Gale hesitates, while Astarion sees right through it.
The romance epilogue is a bit too short for me to say anything real about it, it's lacking the middle portion. But in general I prefer it when sweetness comes from warmth, hope and the confidence of managing hard times together, rather than from ignoring problems. I recently saw Gale's proposal when Tav is a mind flayer and that's kind of perfect in this regard, addressing possible problems and countering them with warmth and confidence, and I wish the spawn ending had a bit more of that in the romance. That's the charm of bitter-sweet, no?
There are a bunch of throwaway comments that you might or might not get since they appear kind of at random, some of them might be overly sweet but I don't find them jarring/OOC (for example, him lamenting Gale's death, since they travelled together for 4 months) but some of them I'm like ohhhh that's a bit too much.
I don't know if I truly have an issue regarding the bittersweetness or the sweetness of the spawn romanced epilogue, I just think it's quite bland. P much every PC gets the same dialogue no matter what and it's quite short, they could've done something like Shadowheart's romanced epilogue where she's pondering which stories to tell (similar to human Gale). The positives for me are that the hug contrast is a nice callback, and at first I found his body language while saying "bitter and twisted" cute but now I kind of cringe a bit haha. The dialogue just feels very standard and flavorless (and almost rushed, when compared to other companion's epilogues) when Astarion is usually quite distinguishable, I think p much anyone could say what he said to a romanced PC (that we all deserve happiness etc. I'm not against him saying something like that but it still felt weird to me?). I saw it more clearly during the epilogue with friend Durge where he's hiding a knife, that's a moment where I thought "yeah that's Astarion alright".
In some ways the epilogue left a bitter taste in my mouth cus it made me realise that Astarion's narrative arc is truly done with, but I guess that makes sense. It's just hard to let a character you like go lol.
Also in regards to the Underdark ending, I'm not even sure if it was originally meant to be the canon spawn ending. In the datamines for the original epilogue it was, but now Adventurer's the default, which I'm glad for since I think it suits him more and he'd be happier that way. It's also confusing that if you break up with him during the ending he says he will look for the Spawn but unless you've told him "we should go look for the spawn" he doesn't do it. It sounds bugged, even though I don't want it fixed tbh.
