Incredible game, another mindless dungeon crawler in the best way possible, tons of awesome maps that look like scarred dreamscapes in some magical, post medieval parallel world. Honestly the aesthetics are giving FromSoft hardcore, excellent control scheme that allows for some really cool strategizing in the heat of battle. Definitely another monster hunter-like as it heavily rewards knowing your enemy, preparing your weapons and being as fast and as unharmed as possible leaves you with tons of extra rewards. Kinda skimpy "part-break" system that feels like it was better left unimplemented than the kinda half assed version here where you simply auto target a piece and blast away till it falls off, it's redeemed somewhat by having to balance breaking certain parts on certain runs as the health pool isn't big enough to sustain a "complete" defeat. The auto lock is super necessary though, just about every attack is somewhat ranged with the exceptions essentially being turn your arm into a giant (stone, flame, poison, wind, etc) arm and wail on the thing in front of you. It get's relegated mostly to a weed whacker for smaller units and boss spawns. Most of the boss monsters are so fast or large that you are better off grabbing something ranged and finding your moments to let off some shots. Voice acting is absolutely incredible with half the cast sounding like FromSoft characters and the others delivering on unique sounds and affects that are less gimmick and feel like fleshed out characters even though it mostly boils down to voice lines shouted in battle. The story telling is a bit bare bones but most of it is done through gameplay or in little tidbits shared through the mission briefing. The games takes influence less from the standard shinto/hindu mix of east asian mythos and focuses much more heavily on european or early american tales, featuring creative takes on werewolves, centaurs, dwarves, slimes, wraiths, etc. This lends an excellent visual style to the enemies steering away from elemental variations and instead seeming to pair the smaller units with the landscape having essentially a few different units per area, matching them with boss monsters depending on status effects, move type etc. Once again the player is rewarded tremendously for preparing ahead of time. Finally, this game offers the "Dark or Light" playthrough common to games of this era but again does something unique and creative to a typically underwhelming system. It is revealed early on that the monsters are actually mages like yourself who have succumbed to the madness of using the magic and turned into beasts themselves. The player can then choose to save this soul or banish it, earning not only upgrades towards the dark or light path, but also gaining instant buffs to magic attacks or healing when banishing or saving respectively. This allows for a lot of different play styles, while also reinforcing narrative through gameplay as the narrator will comment on your choice afterwards. The game will then repeat this choice to the player by marking it down in the book that serves as the quest menu as that beasts canonical ending. There's so much to the narrative of the game that the player then gets to participate in or experience first hand. Excellent design, amazing synergy and definitely one I will remember forever.