Out of the haze of pixiv fever dreams comes one of the standard bearers of the "explaining to your Steam friends it's a real game with gameplay and it doesn't have a one-handed mode" sub-genre. It's hard not to take note of this one, with how often it's championed as one of the very best metroidvanias on the market. Having played it... I think that's somewhat fair, with some caveats.

The aesthetic takes a specific taste, but I can mesh with it. A constant stream of bright, colorful pixel art and a soundtrack teetering between pounding electronic and sickly-sweet j-pop demands a specific kind of upbeat optimism I found refreshing. The anime illustrations are also, in a word, cute, even if the constant malaise of vague horniness gives the entire proceeding a slightly creepy quality, like the game is a sexually frustrated aunt at a wedding making googly eyes at the groom cake topper. Another thing worth mentioning in passing is the visual clarity, if only because such a thing is critical for a bullet hell.

Exploration, as one would hope for in a Metroidvania, essentially involves finding a high ledge, a watery sinkhole, and a realization of the crushing weight of a conscious existence, before running back and forth over the map, searching for the double jump, swim ability, and indomitable human spirit to bypass such obstacles and progress further along the map. Exploration tends to be functional, but rudimentary; aside from one (very fun) section consisting entirely of platforming, few areas offer any unique environmental challenges. Instead, downtime between boss fights means boffing your giant-ass hammer against hordes of bunny girls coming at you with all the piss and vinegar of a baby sparrow, while simultaneously stopping every four feet to kick every rock and pull every blade of grass to make sure none of them are hiding a health potion or the entrance to the secret kingdom of the mole people. In this way, exploring becomes tedious, especially when the map notably omits pathways you haven't tried yet, so opening locked routes feels less like putting your new skills to use and more like a German tourist wandering around trying to find the best schnitzel in Bangkok.

At various locations throughout the map come the boss fights, which are easily the highlight. The combination of side-scroller combo attacks with bullet hell mechanics make these fights as much a test of platforming / maneuvering as they are actual combat. In addition, there is a staggering variety of different patterns, putting you through energy zig zags, spinning electricity wheels, arcing fire pillars, a sprite construction of La Pietà made entirely of bubbles, each with a specific dodge pattern before you can get in a couple of meaty bonks. Or at least, for the most part; when the game vomits out projectiles in every direction across the whole screen like Mr. Creosote, it feels like kind of a cheap shot. Regardless, these sequences are what make the game worth playing, and there are plenty of them, with your ever-increasing tool kit of carrot-themed demolition equipment providing added depth as you progress. By the end, you're swinging, rolling, and sashaying through 15-minute boss fights that really get the blood pumping.

From the best part of the game to the worst part of the game, I don't even know if I want to attempt to explain the story. It's probably one of the most incoherent plots I've ever experienced in a game. It's hard to communicate, however, because so much of it comes in the form of random non-sequitur pieces of information. For most of the "main game", you are a bunny who has been magically turned into a human girl through the power of weird fetishism, tasked with locating your owner's sister trapped in another world. This is achieved by scouring the land looking for magic users. The hands-off approach to how / where you locate these people was appreciated, encouraging exploration. The main thrust of the plot here is supposed to be the personalities of the various magical characters. If you've ever seen an anime before in your life, you've seen every one of these characters, and you've seen them written more interestingly. After four separate attempts to open this portal, the grand villain is introduced, her backstory is rapid-fired straight at you like a lawyer reciting the last deposition before lunch, she dies, and the game ends. Except, it doesn't end? It picks up again on a completely different one of the many plot threads introduced and poorly elaborated on. Then, the next chapter starts over again, before the game actually ends. Or, I should say, you arrive at the open lego peg the endless stream of DLC can slot on to. As much as the game likes to propose conflicts, it's less keen on actually showing any resolution to them. The sister is returned, but every threat concerning their connection to this other world, the main character remaining transformed into a marketable mascot, what precisely the deal was with bunny Cortana, is all just capped off with a big question mark. The horrible writing is equal parts frustrating and amusing, so I suppose it's not the worst thing to be the major bug bear.

i have been reviewing the evil maths games with a repetitious and comedic tone that appeals to practically only 1/1000000 or so people. such is the nature of comedic writing.
i don't consider this an evil math game.
just something stupid that happened once.
but you might think it's an evil math game.
so i'm reviewing it just so you know what i think, even though you don't deserve it.

Man, Nintendo keeps putting out mid and stuff I already played, I really don't want to get back to that game I really don't like and complete it out of necessity. I might need to buy a Steam Deck or dig out that Retroid Pocket in my dresser, oh woe is me...help...won't someone please help...

Trumpets sound and clouds in the sky begin parting as heavenly light shines down upon me, Jupiter Corporation descends downward offering something in hand

"Here child, 2,700 Picross puzzles across nine games, only 4.99 each plus applicable taxes..."

Bless you o' green sailor senshi of thunder and courage, I am forever in your debt.

“But, since we're all gonna die, there's one more secret I feel I have to share with you: I did not care for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.”

“What?”

“Did not care for Wind Waker.”

“How can you even say that, Dad?”

“Didn't like... didn't like it.”

“Peter, it's so good. It's like the perfect adventure game.”

“This is what everyone always says whenever...”

“Eiji Aonuma, Takashi Tezuka... I mean, you never see... Koji Kondo!”

“I know. Great, great composer. Did not like the game.”

“Why not?”

“Couldn't get into it.”

“Explain yourself. What didn't you like about it?”

“It insists upon itself, Lois.”

“What?”

“It insists upon itself.”

“What does that even mean?”

“'Cause it has a valid point to make, it's insistent!”

“It takes forever getting in, and then you go through this really terrible stealth section, and then, I can't even get through it. I can't even finish the game. I've never even seen the ending.”

“You've never seen the ending?!”

“How can you say you don't like it if you haven't even given it a chance?”

“I agree with Stewie. It's not really fair.”

“I have tried, on three separate occasions, to get through it, and I... I get to the part where you have to power up the Master Sword…”

“Yeah. That's a great part. I love that scene.”

“It's noted in every annal.”

“And you’re just going from place to place through the dungeons. Like, it’s really repetitive and the stuff you’re doing isn’t that interesting. That's why I lose interest and I go away.”

“It’s giving you freedom of exploration!”

“It’s offering you a wonderous adventure through a magical world, something you don't understand.”

“I love Link’s Awakening. That is my answer to that statement.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Whatever.”

“I like that game, too.”

(Hopefully) least controversial thing first: the story sucks.
It’s not just “revenge bad”, it’s also “have you ever considered that the people who murdered you in cold blood might actually be the good guys? Bet you didn’t! Bet you feel really bad now huh?”
Also, it’s very funny that this game lets you spare bosses after killing all of their underlings (or the “drug addicts that they control”, yikes), that’s like ludonarrative dissonance 101.

I don’t particularly like the gameplay either. Attacking is fun but dodging feels very unreliable. There’s not enough feedback for whether you successfully parry or not. I also felt like parries barely did anything but who knows if I actually parried all that much, I certainly don’t. Also, when fighting groups, enemies are mostly waiting their turn, which just an occasional punch from someone you’re not currently engaged with to keep up the illusion of fighting many at once.

The game’s difficulty is almost entirely based on attrition. On a micro level, each individual fight (other than the boss fights) is pretty easy and you mostly just die because the chip damage accumulated too much.
And on a macro level, a singular death doesn’t matter all that much, you just age with every single death and eventually you’re 70 and your next death will be your last. So, if you’re struggling with the last level, you might have to replay older levels and get better at them so you’re younger at the start. I’m personally not a fan of attrition as a major form of difficulty.
How much the game’s difficulty relies on this attrition becomes obvious in the easy mode which I activated after getting frustrated during the second level. Easy mode reduces enemy aggression, simplifies some of their attacks, and most importantly heals you fully after every major combat encounter and slows down the rate at which you age when dying. These last two changes made the game trivial to me, I ended up beating the rest of the game in less time than I spend dying over and over in the first two levels. I’m not complaining that the easy mode is easy, I’m complaining that the difficulty falls too much from the previous difficulty option, I’d have preferred a mode between easy and normal.

The existence of shortcuts is very weird. You’d think that the game wants you to run levels over and over, improving each time, getting your age down. But for every level you unlock something that allows you to skip ~80% of the level. Would love to hear from someone who enjoys the game how they feel about the shortcuts.

The upgrade system is very interesting, but unfortunately, anything you spend on focus actions and weapons will be wasted on the final boss. I spent almost everything I had on focus actions and weapons so I imagine I would have been very frustrated by the final boss if the difficulty mode hadn’t made the entire game as easy as it did.

Don't want to be too negative so I'll also say that I think the game is really beautiful and it's the first time I've seen any game make interesting use of the speaker built into the ds4 controller.

I can see why people enjoy this game, but unfortunately, it’s really not my cup of tea.