Man it is hard to review this game. I think the loving crafted tongue in cheek adaption of the Pinnichio story into some apocalyptic world with factions and a bunch of varied settings while incredibly ridiculous, is really charming. They put a lot of work into forcing as many references or conversions of the original work as they could and I just really appreciate that. The characters just slide into the description I can only summarize as “that’s neat”. Everyone looks so pretty too and not just in a horny way like other games. Just really nice to look at the world and chill with the characters and everyone is just sickeningly nice to each other. I think that’s alright from time to time.
Level design is also really great. Its a really linear game but I think that’s great because when they give you branching paths they don’t want you to feel lost for too long so they turn into dead ends very quick. Enemy placement is really good and never felt like an overly frustrating experience.
That said the combat is clunky in that old ps3 game sort of way where they think they had something clever but didn’t really tie it together completely, but what that opens up is the ability to come up with an incredible amount of cheese to tackle hard bosses if you can’t be bothered to learn the parry reaction timings. And i really missed playing a game i could break. So even though i think it just barely deserves it. I’ll drop 4 stars on this game for just letting me have fun with it.

I enjoyed my time with the game. Which is surprising because at first the exploration was really boring with these large open-ended areas. About 5 hours in I was hooked though, as the open-ended level transitioned into tightly designed platforming set pieces and some mildly amusing puzzles. Fallen Order is definitely the better game with its zelda-esque temples. But this game's story and characters keeps me seated for the experience.

In the negatives, the game's combat is jank as heck, enemies are hard to hit because of the animations and dodging and blocking makes no sense because enemies don't telegraph well or don't give you enough time to react. Pretty much the only guaranteed parry point is after an opponent parries you. Enemies can just randomly spam unreactable unblockables too. You are supposed to dodge these, but the dodge timing is so weird you could dodge, but then the enemy just homing missiles to your location and hits you anyway. Their definition of hard is just "block this mixup" every second while you are trying to heal. The game becomes a joke though if you go one spot down from the "normal" difficulty setting. I would not play it again especially for combat reasons, it just isn't fun.

Cutscenes and objectives are also jank. Cal frequently clips through stuff mid cutscene and some characters might just be T-Posing in the background. You may have to reset the game back to menu because something didn't load properly and you are softlocked. But at least it didn't corrupt my save like the first game did. Yay for bare minimum.

Exploration is where the meat of the game is and is super fun except when it just leads you to a dumb cosmetic for your weapons or one of five or so currencies that lead you to different vendors that also only sell you dumb cosmetics for your weapons. I'm cool with costumes, but the cosmetic customization for the weapons you can barely see is dumb. Think of something cooler EA!

The story is a bit shallow and predictable but it sticks the landing in the end with some pretty character defining moments for Cal. I root for him and his optimism throughout the whole adventure. Excited to see where he goes in the 3rd game that is inevitable. Hope it's good.

Magically beautiful and extremely approachable. I feel like this is my new fav shmup. Pretty easy to get the hang of and feels like it could be fun the master. Being able to upgrade at anytime is a treat but I feel like more could’ve been done to make your ship incredibly stupid (like 10 weapons slots and removing weapon overrides) but that would definitely ruin the games balance. A short and sweet experience though. Don’t come here for extremely hard bullet hell, its just a fun little treat for those who may just want to dip their toes in the shmup waters without getting too overwhelmed.

Honestly I don't really have anything to complain about, it's fine. Kinda feels a bit more like Sonic 1/2 then what I would've preferred (3, & Knuckles, or Mania). Level variety is nice, but camera is far too zoomed in to see where you are going and levels lack a lot of landmarks to make them memorable outside of the boss areas. But the level mechanics are varied enough to be interesting. I like the bosses in concept, but they are still kinda annoying to fight with a lot of wait your turn for hit moments.