the good: gameplay ties into the narrative better than almost any game i've played. production quality is untouchable. voice acting, soundtrack, etc all fantastic. controlling the character feels amazing, combat is very fun.
the bad: asking a player to run through the same location ten times to complete the main story would be a questionable decision even if there was enough gameplay variation to make every run unique. on top of that, though, the attempts to differentiate runs are not effective enough: none of the boons radically change anything about how you play, the pact difficulty modifiers/heat system don't feel like a great way of adding difficulty (i would like to face new bosses or enemies, not the same enemies but with 20% more health), and i didn't find myself too interested in trying out different weapons when doing so meant spending more attempts than i needed to finish the already prolonged story (and the aspects are a good addition but not enough for me).
the bad: asking a player to run through the same location ten times to complete the main story would be a questionable decision even if there was enough gameplay variation to make every run unique. on top of that, though, the attempts to differentiate runs are not effective enough: none of the boons radically change anything about how you play, the pact difficulty modifiers/heat system don't feel like a great way of adding difficulty (i would like to face new bosses or enemies, not the same enemies but with 20% more health), and i didn't find myself too interested in trying out different weapons when doing so meant spending more attempts than i needed to finish the already prolonged story (and the aspects are a good addition but not enough for me).