Now, there's going to be a lot of complaining in this review, but that doesn't really reflect how much I liked the game. There's many things that could be improved, but none of these are major issues and the core gameplay is solid. Overall, this was quite a nice metroidvania.

First and foremost, the game suffers a bit from having slightly too many abilities and upgrades, and would probably have been a better game if a few had been removed and more time and polish were spent on each of the remaining ones.

Map is large and fairly good, though backtracking is a bit of a chore. There's a bit too many long and windy passages without any shortcuts, and the fast travel system wasn't good enough for most of the game.

Save points are also a little sparse and not discoverable enough. That is compensated somewhat by the lives-system, but it feels a bit out of place and like a band-aid solution. The sparseness is also a problem because by default, the map only updates when you visit a save point. Now, this behaviour is easy to change, but I wish the game had just committed to one and designed the map to suit that one.

The optional platforming challenges remind me of Celeste and I liked many of them, but also disliked many because of how fiddly the timings are.