Yeah, especially since the game has a true ending that's easy to give up on if you're bad at finding conches. Can be intimidating, as I watch someone quietly quit at the final boss.
They should have swapped a couple of the conch rewards, so you get a flimsy hammer at 60 and the true ending at 48. Pushing your players into an extra 5 hours of searching just kills the game's pacing
I ended up just getting them for my wife, the funny thing is it took me like 20 minutes to get 20 once you know all the harder ones (like oasis). But yeah, I agree. Optional bosses made sense at least.
Honestly, the true ending is nothing to write home about. Sea of Stars is probably one of my favourite JRPG ever, but the entire last arc and both endings were a huge letdown.