This game could have been amazing, if it wasn't for the whole gameplay aspect. Everything about this game is fantastic, except for the core loop, which I kind of hate. As a game, it's a pretty classic metroidvania with some modern touches, like the very modern mapping system that I quite like. It looks very good, it sounds good, and exploration and unlocks are unenjoyable, but the core gameplay is not.

There really isn't much to say about the positives. You can see how good it looks in screens and videos! I love the slightly fuzzy aesthetic to the backgrounds, especially the sunny outdoor regions, and I love the mapping system even more, since it shows you if you're done with a room immediately after clearing it, and you always know that the solution to a conundrum is either in the room you're in, or it's easy to tell that you have to enter through a side door and come back later. Aside from some chests with cash, which is useful for guns, and the collectibles that unlock new outfits for each team member, the things you find in the various shadowy corners are useful unlocks for your skill tree, and clearing and figuring each room out as you go, doing what can be done without certain upgrades, is consistently satisfying. Looks, sounds and code are all excellent here!

So, everything about this game is good...except for the gameplay. I feel like basically everything in this game has been timed incorrectly, at laest for my tastes, and nothing feels good to do. Latching onto a wall for a wall jump takes just a split second too long, as your character attaches at the end of the animation as opposed to the beginning like in every other game. Similarly, there's a delay when you do things like toss out your grappling hook and you kinda have to learn how to launch these tools before you think you should. The time between dashes is just a smidge too long and doesn't feel right for either dodging or speedy traversal. But worst of all is the fucking reloading. I loathe it so much. This game has shoe-horned reloading that has absolutely no place in this game, and what's worse, it doesn't let you manually reload! You can only reload by emptying your weapon, or by waiting for a subtle little timer (that you will absolutely not be looking since it's in a bottom corner and not in the middle of the screen where you need to be looking to be able to dodge incoming shots), which constantly leads to not knowing if you can fire or not, or dodging a set of advanced attacks from the boss only to find that you land with one shot left in your mag, so you get to spend the entire vulnerability period reloading. Because, of course, on top of all of that, the reloading has to take approximately 17,000 years. The world freezes over and thaws again in the time if takes your annoying character to finally reload, and it's so constantly and consistently unfun to deal with that this alone ruined the whole game for me. I hate, hate, hate this so much that it really destroyed everything else that's good about the game.

And hatred towards reloading and bad timing is only after you discover that the game's default controller scheme is miserable and that you must change the settings, because it's very obvious that these devs do not play controller games. I don't know why they decided that they should make a game that none of them play, but they did, and the default control scheme expects you to be able to aim/fire (right stick), dodge/dash (left stick and R1), switch characters in mid-air (triangle or d-pad) and using your characters special skill (L1). How many fingers do you think I have, devs?! Even with customized controls, which this game thankfully supports even on console, it just becomes too much and some of these scenarios can't make sense with any type of control method, specifically speaking about the little obstacle courses where you have to make multiple character switches in mid-air. I beat them all, but they were unsatisfying, frustrating and seeing the beginning of an obstacle course in a room only gave me anxiety.

I guess this all means that this game is an exercise in how one pointless design choice can ruin the whole game, and one dumb choice by a game designer undoes all the wonderful work by the artists, programmers, composers and everyone else involved with this game. Had they just skipped the reloading, I could've dealt with the odd timing on everything and even the clumsy control scheme, but the reloading is there to remind you of its existence literally every second of this game, and so it becomes impossible to ever relax and just enjoy the many good parts of this game. It's pretty, it's vibey, it's charming, it's silly and it's so annoying to play.