What would you do if you were told you were only living for someone else's sake? What would happen if you chose to live for yourself instead?

Genuinely really fantastic work--it's very much building directly on From Software's work, but it does it so well. It's like a greatest hits mixtape from their biggest fan: the fast-paced blow trading of Sekiro, the build diversity of Dark Souls games, the wide array of unique weapons from Bloodborne, all wrapped up with a thousand tiny QoL improvements like your souls spawning outside the boss door and little markers to let you know you can advance NPC questlines. When it hits it hits and it rarely misses--there's a crummy boss or bad level here and there but the game more than makes up for them with some really fantastic fights and sequences (ESPECIALLY the true final boss.)

The concept and story can be pretty silly--I realized at one point that I was wholeheartedly saying "Pinocchio, why didn't you use your Estus? I hit the button!" at my TV and started laughing--but I do genuinely really like the story, the story of a city that builds slaves that can think and feel and then drops them into the trash, the story of someone who realizes he's not a tool, or a copy of someone else, but his own real person, who we watch as he self-actualizes. The "lie" system is sort of oddly realized at times but it's also used in some really clever ways--there's one conversation with Geppetto near the end of the game that particularly floored me, where it conveys something to you about Pinocchio's thoughts regardless of what you pick. The game's explanation for the respawning mechanic is another unexpectedly clever touch, and (unless I missed something) the game holds on to actually fully explaining it until the very end, making for a really cool reveal when it comes.

Also it is presented so well--the city looks absolutely fantastic, and the changing daytime mechanic is also a fantastic touch that breathes a lot of life into the story and setting; I like that we get a sense that the game takes place over the course of several days. None of the boss themes really stood out to me, but I loved the phonograph music, and the environmental music was also pulled off really well--several areas have a little off-tune ambient song playing from an unseen loudspeaker or record player, and then a couple of areas just have standard ambient songs, all of which is nevertheless used sparingly enough to keep it memorable.

Highly recommended, and I'm very much looking forward to the sequel--as an aside, the Metal Gear Solid style post-credits phone call sequence where they tease the sequel is so funny, I cannot wait. The Neowiz "late Victorian children's fiction" gaming universe will be the next big thing, I can feel it.