A great little metroidvania with spectacular movement mechanics, good atmosphere, and very little hand-holding (maybe too little).
Once it gets going, the traversal is fluid and engaging. It's rarely clear whether reaching some ledge is a sequence break, or the game is legitimately expecting you to get there as part of the critical path. That ambiguity makes it a lot of fun to try things you're not sure you can do, and sometimes get away with them. The abilities chain together in interesting ways, but every individual one adds a lot of fun complexity to the movement kit all on its own. Some nuances of the movement aren't fully explained, so it's definitely worth experimenting with what you can do.
The metroidvania structure of the game is great, full of unexpected shortcuts and an interesting variety of areas, but there's a desperate need for a bit more direction; once you feel like you've exhausted all of your exploration options, you have no other tools to track down what you missed besides scouring everything all over again. Which can be a little bit rough given the lack of map and very minimal key item tracking. I'd have loved to see little clues peppered around the world to nudge me towards powerups and key items. It can be frustrating to have no idea where you missed something.
At the end of the day, I pulled up a guide or consulted the wiki to track down a couple of items when I got thoroughly stuck; I highly recommend this approach if you don't know where to look. I also had some visibility issues with one of the areas that isn't supposed to be impossibly dark (just very very dark), so beware of this if you have an HDR display. Despite these little problems, there's truly a lot to love.
Once it gets going, the traversal is fluid and engaging. It's rarely clear whether reaching some ledge is a sequence break, or the game is legitimately expecting you to get there as part of the critical path. That ambiguity makes it a lot of fun to try things you're not sure you can do, and sometimes get away with them. The abilities chain together in interesting ways, but every individual one adds a lot of fun complexity to the movement kit all on its own. Some nuances of the movement aren't fully explained, so it's definitely worth experimenting with what you can do.
The metroidvania structure of the game is great, full of unexpected shortcuts and an interesting variety of areas, but there's a desperate need for a bit more direction; once you feel like you've exhausted all of your exploration options, you have no other tools to track down what you missed besides scouring everything all over again. Which can be a little bit rough given the lack of map and very minimal key item tracking. I'd have loved to see little clues peppered around the world to nudge me towards powerups and key items. It can be frustrating to have no idea where you missed something.
At the end of the day, I pulled up a guide or consulted the wiki to track down a couple of items when I got thoroughly stuck; I highly recommend this approach if you don't know where to look. I also had some visibility issues with one of the areas that isn't supposed to be impossibly dark (just very very dark), so beware of this if you have an HDR display. Despite these little problems, there's truly a lot to love.