For anyone who played this game before the "Afterlife" updates, I can confirm that it is much improved, in fact as far as I'm concerned it's pretty much a different game. It's not just a balance fix here and there but complete redesigning of many things. For one it actually feels like a metroidvania game now with abilities gained after bosses and actually needed to access areas and it's not just in a linear fashion anymore. It's actually quite open, I have to rate this as one of my favourite metroidvanias. It's also been given great improvements to the story. The story is pretty damn good, in fact I cried a bit during the true ending it was fantastic. The combat is also really good and I did not feel it was inaccessible, except for one point. This brings me to the one downside, the true ending is somewhat skill-gated and I think it's horrible practice to gate off narrative content, especially endings. To access it you need to defeat 5 Heroic Bosses, which are souped-up refights against previous bosses. As is often the case when souping-up bosses some of them become quite inaccessible. I was able to do it, but there are definitely people who would not be able to. And while this can be watched via youtube, the path towards the true ending really is amazing and something everyone should get to experience for themselves.