Loved the aesthetic, the world felt full of (grimy) life, lots of clutter, lots of NPCs milling around, it's a great-looking game from such a small team. Fundamentally, the game plays well and mostly hangs together pretty nicely, story flows, characters are various degrees of bastard as you might expect in this sort of world, and it's punky on a few different levels. The guns at points feel satisfying and punchy, and there's some good variety to the weaponry as you progress. The augmentation attacks can also be a great way to mix up encounters.

Combat scaling is where the game lets itself down. Enemies scale so aggressively in areas that even the most fun weapons don't feel that rewarding to wield for much of the game. Upgrading doesn't really change that fact either. Fine in the early game where you'd expect that friction, but the reward for levelling, exploring for new guns, and upgrading them later is meagre - about half-way in I had a transitional moment where I'd found some better weapons, upgraded them, and suddenly was able to shred most enemies for a while. That was fun as all hell. Then the curve caught up, and eventually, I was back to overwhelming bullet-sponges. I just wished that fun had continued as the weapons handle great.

This married to a less-than-friendly fast travel system made me feel, perhaps by design, like the designers want you to be ground down in much the same way as the denizens of The Ascent, and there's some of the game that feels almost Souls-y. In some substantial flashes, there's great fun to be had - and the game is truly beautiful, in a kinda well-rendered grotty way. I had a really good time with it overall, and I'd recommend it to others. I just can't shake the feeling I could've enjoyed it even more with a few small tweaks.