It's "worse Axiom Verge", for me.
Soundtrack is similar, but uninspiring.
Visuals are similar, but worse (and areas look very same-y, as do room-to-room designs).
Gameplay feels like someone tried to take some solid principles of Metroidvanias and do their own thing with them, resulting in design choices that are either worse or similar but pointless. Bombs that you have to physically attach to things you want to check, rather than being able to just drop them? Being able to rotate between which of two buttons shoots the missile versus the charge beam (as opposed to just...using the other button when needed) -- things like that. None of it feels intuitive, but just like another layer of unnecessary complication tacked on to a game that didn't need it.
I decided to put this one back into the backlog after managing to softlock myself because the game let me travel a LONG distance out of my way to an area I shouldn't have been in because there were no clear indicators of where I should go to get more items for gating progression. Ended up dropping into an area where there's instadeath fire on the ground, no way back up, and the only forward progress is through a boss that is extremely RNG-heavy and everyone suggests bringing a weapon from an entire previous area that I never got. Couldn't even get the boss below 75% health most of the time, so I definitely shouldn't have been there, but there was no clear signposting that I was going about things the wrong way.
So, I guess -- the game is fun when it doesn't get in its own way, but I would hardly ever actively reach for this game when there's so many better options out there. Maybe I'll feel better about this when I pick it back up (thankfully, the game didn't let me save in the area where I softlocked beyond the point of no return).
Soundtrack is similar, but uninspiring.
Visuals are similar, but worse (and areas look very same-y, as do room-to-room designs).
Gameplay feels like someone tried to take some solid principles of Metroidvanias and do their own thing with them, resulting in design choices that are either worse or similar but pointless. Bombs that you have to physically attach to things you want to check, rather than being able to just drop them? Being able to rotate between which of two buttons shoots the missile versus the charge beam (as opposed to just...using the other button when needed) -- things like that. None of it feels intuitive, but just like another layer of unnecessary complication tacked on to a game that didn't need it.
I decided to put this one back into the backlog after managing to softlock myself because the game let me travel a LONG distance out of my way to an area I shouldn't have been in because there were no clear indicators of where I should go to get more items for gating progression. Ended up dropping into an area where there's instadeath fire on the ground, no way back up, and the only forward progress is through a boss that is extremely RNG-heavy and everyone suggests bringing a weapon from an entire previous area that I never got. Couldn't even get the boss below 75% health most of the time, so I definitely shouldn't have been there, but there was no clear signposting that I was going about things the wrong way.
So, I guess -- the game is fun when it doesn't get in its own way, but I would hardly ever actively reach for this game when there's so many better options out there. Maybe I'll feel better about this when I pick it back up (thankfully, the game didn't let me save in the area where I softlocked beyond the point of no return).