Because I played the original demo (ivory springs, before the first iconoclasts demo) many years ago the beginning was quite standard for me, I knew everything for the first two areas. After that I was treated to a steady increase in quality in story, gameplay and progression until the very end, a welcome twist to the typical metroidvania that tends to weaken out at the end. This however doesn't mean the game was without issues. The first issue I had was that right after the first 2-3 areas I got stuck not knowing what to do (looking for 3 keys, that's all I'll say), I knew what my goal was but due to one lock not working until a restart and not knowing exactly where to go I ended up wasting 2 hours in an area that shouldn't have taken more than 30 minutes tops. The second issue was une unclear nature of what types of block was liftable, it never clicket to me that the flickering blocks were liftable because the lift prompt only appeared when you jumped on said blocks, if this had been made more clear it would have been easier to not get stuck an additional hour or so. The last issue I had was soflocks, in the area with lots of elevators I managed to make the screen transition get stuck in a loop which lead to me needing to restart, another earlier issue was a lock that didn't work (I had to look up a guide to figure out something was wrong). Even though all of these issues (giving me more frustration than Wings of Vi day 1 no patches) I found the game to be very enjoyable and in conclusion a game I really reccomend playing instead of watching.
