So before I moved to Southern California I almost never ate fast food. Living in New York if I needed something cheap and fast in the middle of the night I'd just get a slice of pizza, or maybe Chinese food, hell maybe even a bodega sandwich. Then I moved out here and started grad school and found myself eating Taco Bell or Jack in the Box 2 or 3 nights a week because it was the only thing open at 1 in the morning. I guess it became a habit because now getting fast food and eating in my car in the parking lot next to the drive-thru is like a weekly occurrence. My go-to spots are Taco Bell, Wendy's, Popeyes, and In-N-Out, and I can't really eat at Jack in the Box anymore cause I had too many of the gnarly 2-for-a-dollar tacos and now everything from there makes me nauseous. (Psychosomatic?) When I first moved here I'd never tried Del Taco before, and my first experience I remember being like "this is awful, it tastes like nothing." The mild sauce tastes like someone literally just squeezed a tomato onto your food and the hot sauce tastes exactly the same but it makes your tongue tingle. The ingredients are all pretty fresh. Unlike Taco Bell it doesn't feel like you're eating a simulacrum of human food. It just kind of feels like someone made one of those Old El Paso taco kits, but they somehow lost the seasoning packet so they had to raid their own spice cabinet but all they had was salt and some cumin powder that expired 3 years ago. After that first experience I figured I'd never eat there ever again. But every once in a blue moon I'll find myself getting a craving for it. I eat at Del Taco probably once every 3 or 4 months now, and it's nice. I wouldn't say it's "good" or "tasty," but in some weird way it hits the spot.

ANYWAY! This was like... fine? Got to the final boss and kind of just didn't feel like finishing. But it wasn't a bad experience, just kind of a bland one. If they ever make a sequel I'll probably play it.

The controls are tight. Cool, diverse skill set. The enemy and level design are nothing special but aren't terrible. Some decently challenging boss fights. Lots of goodies to collect. A little on the linear side for a Metroidvania. The art is really well done, if not exactly my taste.

Does not tug on the heart strings or 'make ya think' as much as it seems to think it does. There's an area of the map filled with poison gas that quickly kills you if you don't have a special mask item, and it's straight up called "The Verboten Domain." That's the level of poetry we're talkin' about here lol

Also: Games have GOT to stop doing the Dark Souls "have a bunch of flavor text vaguely point toward a story rather than just telling you a story outright" thing unless they actually know how to write evocatively and have a lore that's WORTH BEING CURIOUS ABOUT!! Like idk, I'm an obsessive completionist so I picked up all of the notes or letters or engravings or what have you and what I can tell you is that this game is about princesses. Who are sort of like clones, maybe? And there was like a plague or some shit, for sure. Turned people into zombies, sort of? A king went mad at some point, definitely. I don't know who "The Ancients" are but they're definitely important. And some well meaning (?) wizards did some evil experiments or something? Whatever, who care.

✨𝒄𝒖𝒆 𝒕𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒍𝒚 𝒑𝒊𝒂𝒏𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒄 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒈𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒚 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒍𝒆 𝒆𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒔✨