People are right to praise this game for it's art and atmosphere, they're great. But stacked up against other recent metroidvanias this game does not justify itself in pushing the genre forward in any meaningful way gameplay wise. The combat is solid enough but there are elements of the game that drag it down over time. 1. Some of your traversal abilities are things unlocked through sometimes obscure sidequests, the game does not guide you towards them so you can explore outwards when you finally gain more mobility. 2. Boring and time consuming method to acquire the good ending. 3. Lack of quality of life, bosses have intros you can't skip upon retries, instant death spike pits are not lenient enough with your jumps, no map pins, traversal items you have limited slots in so you have to change out from the equip screen which adds absolutely nothing to the game. 4. No double jump. Perhaps a seemingly small criticism, but it is more important if you notice that your character at the start of the game is not that meaningfully different from your character at the end of the game in terms of movement options and map control. You get new ways to kill enemies, more health, more mana, more damage, and more passives active but you never feel the power and joy of having a new way to move around and handle encounters (except in how you kill them). People are being far too lenient with this game, the devs can do better than this. It's not a bad game but it certaintly isn't a 4 or 5/5 but it needed more time in the oven to iron out it's core gameplay so that when people talk about this game they won't have to suffix every discussion about this game: "oh that game had great art and spritework buuut the gameplay wasn't that great."
