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It's great. Here's the thing: it's too big. It's a mile wide and an inch deep. The dev team has so many good ideas, but only rests on any one of them long enough to get something that technically works before moving on to the next thing. Odyssey was a disaster at launch, and even years later it's still a buggy, shallow mess.

I'd like to see the team add some much-needed polish to existing game mechanics. Despite all that, though, it's generally a good experience. The ships feel fast and powerful, combat is generally pretty satisfying (although engineering and the associated grind is basically mandatory), the visuals and audio design are awe-inspiring, and the way they incorporate player actions into storylines genuinely sets a high bar.

I can't recommend it although I wish that it were otherwise. Look, the art and story team did an astonishing job. It looks, sounds, feels AMAZING. But as is the case for so many other games, they neglected the actual 'gameplay' part of the game. The controls are nonsensical and unresponsive. Parrying and dodging are inconsistent at best unless you're fighting something 1 on 1; boss encounters are actually not too bad except for the little adds, because your AI teammates are useless and the boss will focus on only you while you try to clear the packs your allies can't. You'll get leapt on or sniped from offscreen and even though you're supposed to be piloting a goshdang super-sized walking tank, every insignificant little trash enemy can stagger you, and getting chain staggered to death is a repeat occurrence.

What is with developers these days forgetting that the gameplay is the most important part of a game

OPTIMIZE

God I really wanted to say something good about this game, and it's adorable, but it's... just so jank? Sometimes the buttons just... don't do anything? Or the crab will buffer inputs half an hour in advance? Or how dodging cancels damage but not momentum, and you'll dodge through attacks and sometimes get launched so high you can hear the splash from breaking the surface?

Tighten up the controls and fix some of the more annoying jank and we might have a solid game here, but right now it's just coasting on the admittedly brilliant humor and advertising but it isn't really all that enjoyable to actually play

I am very annoyed by this game. It tries to be Sekiro meets Bloodborne but falls far short of either. This is the risk of setting out to "make a Souls game" without fully understanding what it is that makes them good. Mechanically it's all right, but the parry system is insufficiently rewarding. Some bosses force you to engage with it, but generally it's not worth going for unless you have to. A lot of attacks push you away from the boss when parried, so engaging with this high-skill mechanic just returns you to neutral... whereas if you'd just dodged through, you'd be close to the boss, ready to unload a charged attack.

Parrying does do stance damage, and can even break an enemy's weapon, but breaking a boss's weapon often takes so many parries that if you'd just dodged them instead, they'd be dead, and dodging close for manual attacks does both stance damage and regular damage.

The lore of the game is very interesting. They put a fair amount of thought into this world. The story is similarly quite compelling, and this is probably the best "dark retelling" of a fairy tale I've ever played.

Unfortunately, the translation is awful, and they've failed to grasp that part of what makes Soulsborne dialog so gripping is that there's very little of it, and it's dense with meaning. Here they've produced a monologuing villain that punctuates his sentences with evil laughter. It's missing something crucial.

Item and ability descriptions are absolutely nonsensical. What the hell does "Generates the specter's blitz attack" mean? They clearly spent a lot of time, money, and effort crafting this world, and then saved 20 bucks by cheaping out on localization.

The voice acting is... decent. Except for the King of Riddles. That dude knew the assignment. Well done.

Overall I'm 'meh' about it. I don't feel any particular urge to play through NG+. However... I'm still recommending it because of the sheer weight of potential on display. It's got a lot of shortcomings, including resource allocation - a lot of the shinies you take detours for are worth a whopping 100 Ergo even in the late game, and why on earth would you limit the number of cranks available to change your weapon's scaling?

But it's a good game, and I am genuinely excited to see what they learn for their next one.

I mean, it's good. Of course it's good. I just wish they'd fix the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ camera. Getting real tired of fighting Camerasax, Ancient Dragon of Unplayability

Overall, I recommend it. It's beautiful to play and feels like a nice way to spend some time.

First off, the pluses:

It's BEAUTIFUL and the soundtrack is BANGIN. The pixel art style works real nice for this, and the animations are lovely.
Traversal via the dress abilities feels slick, and the way you swap back and forth between them to hop between different conditions is smooth and quick.

Negatives:

It could use a fast travel system; there's a bit of backtracking common to every metroidvania and there's no way to move faster than walking speed outside of the specific conditions required for dress traversal until the last hour of the game.

Combat is pretty basic and honestly a little easy.

Very short (<10 hours)

It's OK. Overall the design of the 'game' part of the game is lacking. Enemies will shoot at you from offscreen, while your own projectiles have laughably short range. The difficulty spikes are nonsensical, and the lackluster magic system leaves you constantly drained of mana because you can't go pick up the stuff you need to cast the spells you need to make space to get the stuff you need to cast spells.

Parts of the game that should just be base functionality, like generating mana on kill and even switching weapons, are shoehorned awkwardly into the card system as timed buffs, and since you can't discard spells without casting them you're frequently stuck in situations where your base gun is inadequate to obtain the mana you need to cast the spells you need to make space to get the stuff you need to cast spells...

I really want to rate this positively but it does too good a job of holding itself back. Parts of it are legitimately great - the art is fantastic, the voice acting is solid, I find myself invested in the characters and the survival of the crew, but... god it's just a slog to actually PLAY. Traversal is slow and a little janky; the dodge ability goes whichever way you were facing when you left the ground during a jump, sprinting is nowhere near fast enough for a game that requires as much backtracking as a Metroidvania does, and having bosses slowly grind down your HP bar, forcing you to backtrack to a repair station every few attempts, which are often quite far away, is just... you struggle to understand from a game design perspective what was going on there.

On top of that, I thought we had moved past enemies damaging you on contact even if you dodge their actual attacks.

I want to see more, I just don't want to play more to get to it, which is kind of a shame.

WE DIVE TOGETHER OR NOT AT ALL