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Wish I could give it a Meh. The game is OK but overpriced, even on sale at 50% off. Maybe it would be worth it at 75% off or more.

The core gameplay mechanic is simple but relatively fun. Music/sound effects/design/visuals are nice.

There is a system for leveling up and increasing abilities, but it doesn't change the mechanics in any interesting way. Instead of taking 5 hits to break a brick, it now takes 10 and you can shoot more balls than before. That's basically it. The only real strategy/puzzle element is that some blocks can fall and be destroyed if you destroy the other blocks holding them up. Maybe more mechanics are added later but I got bored half way through the second area because it was just more of the same.

I didn't play co-op so I can't comment on that.

The dev's other games look alright, so maybe I'll check them out if they go on sale for even less.

Update:
Played through to the end after the initial review and I still think it's overpriced and that adding some mechanics may improve things. Anyway, recommended on sale.

Very fun roguelite shmup with lots of different weapons, power-ups, and synergies. The core gimmick of the gameplay is that all the weapons/attacks are based on looping timers or charged procs instead of manually triggering the attacks. In particular, the titular "Gunlock" attack is a radar sweep that marks enemies with a lock-on then fires missiles after the radar sweep is completed. Some powerups effect the cooldowns for these attacks (for example, Gunlock is upgraded to scanner sweep more quickly, lock on to more targets, do more damage, etc.).

Absolutely worth the price tag. It would be nice to see more of this style.

Pros:
- The game has quality of life features that similar games are lacking. A lot of information is documented in-game and there are little details like showing synergies for selectable upgrades and giving a few seconds after unpausing to get your bearings before resuming gameplay.
- Synergies between different powerups and attack/damage types are shown very clearly (for example, a weapon is type X and a powerup buffs type X damage so the weapon is shown as a synergy for the powerup -- and vice versa -- in the powerup selection screen). This means that it is generally very clear which weapons will be affected by which powerups.
- The difficulty curve is challenging, generally without feeling unfair. Despite a lot happening on the screen, it's usually pretty clear where the player's ship is and where threats are.
- Different pilots' weapons are selected from the standard set of weapons, but each pilot has a special buff for their weapon. This makes each pilot actually play pretty differently despite the simplistic nature of the gameplay.
- There is a decent amount of enemy variety. Leveling weapons and powerups feels very impactful between different levels.
- There isn't persistence between runs other than unlockable powerups to tweak gameplay (e.g., more rerolls of powerups when leveling up, trading a smaller hitbox for higher damage when hit, etc.). These mutators are a fun way to tweak builds.

Cons:
- Some synergy progression is not always clear. In particular, some weapon powerups ("symbionics") require getting specific weapons and then picking up an in-gameplay powerup. After unlocking them, they are shown in the in-game codex, but it's not clear how to unlock them in the first place.
- The GUI has a few weird design decisions that feel like workarounds for limitations of the engine.
- It's a mildly annoying thing, but when playing in windowed mode, the window will always re-center after loading to different screens.
- There are only four areas (three stages that end after reaching the final boss and an endless stage) and you're unlikely to reach max level before getting to the final boss of each stage.

I doubt that it would ever happen in a way that's fun to play but this makes me want Konami to develop a Gradius roguelite.

Overall a very good game though it could use a bit more polish and tuning. That said, I think it's worth the full price in its current state.

For most of the normal gameplay modes, there is a decent amount of variety and approaches, though as other reviewers have mentioned, the devs could do a bit more to promote variety and different synergies. In the ordinary mode, there are a lot more options for different builds to try which are effective but as is, the higher level gameplay modes (Torment and Endless) don't allow many options. However, the game does allow certain broken snowballing at points (which is a fun part of roguelikes IMO) so as much as I would like for the devs to try balancing some of this, I would be worried about balancing things too much and taking away that element.

If any devs see this, there are a few quality of life changes that I think could be improved in the future:
- When selecting cards (end of round rewards, merge, etc.), please allow the player to view their deck, hand, and discard pile. It's easy to forget which cards you have and then pick the wrong option.
- Clearer GUI when a card will be played vs. when it will be added back to the hand would be nice. It didn't happen much but I did accidentally use a card once or twice because I didn't drag is down far enough.
- Implement a method to cancel a click (i.e. when selecting rewards or when picking up the result of merging two cards. Far too many times, I left-clicked and held after realizing that I clicked by mistake, but there was no way to return the merge card to its slot.
- Please think more about balancing and synergy. Unholy seems to have a lot of related benefits (healing and crits), but the other damage types are just damage(?). And the card to get crits from other damage types is pretty unusual. Just for example, maybe a DoT for Hellfire and some other special trait for Holy would be cool. Adding other damage types might be another option, too (e.g. cold/freezing that slows enemies? Poison? Other crazy stuff?).
- There are a lot of cards that seem to hint at interesting build strategies or synergies, but in practice it's not really the case and the effective strategies are pretty limited when it matters (Endless or Torment). In the more casual modes, you can generally get away with playing whatever cards come up (with a little thought toward buff types), but in more difficult modes, you really have to think about the strategy you want to employ. Don't get me wrong, I think that's a good thing for the more challenging modes, but the problem is that it feels like there is a very small pool of effective builds to choose from.
-- For example, there are numerous cards that give some buff for having, for example, a Holy tower and an Unholy tower at the same time. However, the card is pretty unusual (2nd best tier, if I remember correctly) and the buff is not as strong as just sticking to, for example, Unholy Towers and then spamming buffs for Unholy and buffs for towers. So that card ends up being pretty useless unless you incidentally have a Holy tower and an Unholy tower. The same is true of cards that scale buffs based on the number of different damage types or building types or whatever. The strength of the buff does not seem worth the effort required to spec that way and it doesn't really synergize with anything else, so you're better served by just brute forcing other damage buffs.
- The risk/reward calculation feels wrong when merging a useful card. Adding some more depth to the process of merging cards could help (E.g. give the option to cancel a merge either as a character power or for all characters at the cost of 1 mana or something similar?). It's annoying to merge a Green or Blue card that's sub-optimal but possibly useful but then every time I upgrade in the chain after that, I get cards that are useless for my current strategy.

Anyway, overall I would recommend the game. I hope it does well enough that the devs can make something else and iterate on the formula.

Great game. Story mode introduces new mechanics at a nice pace but doesn't drag or overstay its welcome. If you want more maps, there's always user-created levels to choose from. There are a few frustrating levels/achievements here and there, but that's to be expected.
(Playtime's a bit inflated because I was afk for a bit, real playtime is probably closer to 10-15 hours, depending on achievements/completion)
I did't try the VR yet but the game looks and sounds very good so it might be a neat addition to the experience.

TL;DR - Good game overall. Maybe wait for a sale (and a patch or two).

The game is generally fun and good looking. My overall impression is positive and I would enjoy a sequel if it built on some of the better parts and resolved the problems that are present. It really feels like it has the potential to be the type of game where the original is considered good but the sequel is a true classic. It's hard to explain exactly, but it feels like the type of game that's been over-polished to an extent. The DLC shows a lot of promise for updating the formula, so hopefully there's more in the pipe.

There are some weird little bugs, but they will hopefully be patched out. I won't get into spoilers, but the main character, story, and themes didn't really land for me, but your mileage may vary and isn't necessary to focus on to enjoy the core gameplay.

I'd be stoked for a sequel if the devs addressed some of the following:
- The particle and lighting effects look really good, but in particularly hairy firefights it can be easy to lose track of what's going on. This is doubly frustrating because getting hit likely means your Adrenaline will be reset (though I otherwise really like the Adrenaline system).
- Semi-related to the previous point, but it would be a lot clearer what was going on if the friendly and enemy projectile colors followed a more clear pattern (for example, anything friendly is a cool color and anything hostile is a hot color, or something like that), with the worst offender being the Electopylon Driver.
- Map icons could do with more granular delineation between different items. For example, when looking for the last few collectibles for the achievements, it's annoying to not immediately know the difference between a Consumable, a Cipher, or a Parasite. This may also be resolved with a tooltip on mouse over which shows more details about the item (would be nice for guns that have been left behind, as well).
- Related to the first point, but the Malfunction system is interesting, but as implemented is more annoying than anything. Even more generally, I didn't find a lot of the buffs, debuffs, and consumables to be particularly interesting. This is part of the over-polishing problem. One part I enjoy about a lot of roguelites is the occasional build that synergizes so effectively that it's completely broken. Returnal doesn't really have that level of synergies or builds, so most runs end up feeling somewhat samey. Malfunctions might be more fun if you start with some debuff and a clear condition and are then rewarded with a buff after completing the clear condition. A much larger pool of gameplay changing buffs and debuffs would be nice, too.
- Adding more, smaller biomes with more pronounced difficulty increases in exchange for more permanent progression could be fun. This approach (minus the steep difficulty increase) seems to already be present in the Act 2 biomes when there's a bunch of backtracking to get keys.
- I never felt really compelled to fight the bosses after beating them the first time, but being forced to fight them every time to advance biomes would be very annoying.
- I really like the guns' progression systems overall, but I only really ever used 3-4 of the guns.
- There should be some permanent progression item or other late game mitigation that makes it easier to spawn rooms with locked content (scout logs, ciphers, etc). I realize that it's probably just the same level of randomization, but it feels like artificial padding as it is now and it's really annoying when you're just looking for one last log.

Anyway, good game overall. Hopefully it does well enough for the devs to make more.

Very stylish and mechanically satisfying, but I've refunded until the regional pricing gets fixed. Hope they can rectify it soon!

Fine overall, fun to just chill out. Reminds me of the original LEGO Island.

Can get a bit grindy near the end which makes it feel a bit too long.

Steam really needs a 'Meh' recommendation.

As expected for Shovel Knight, great music and visuals, but it doesn't really work as a roguelike/lite in its current form.

Maybe could be salvaged with more areas and a lot more relic/modifiers that much much much more substantially affect the gameplay but as is, it's not really worth the price. One of the best parts of roguelikes is getting modifiers that synthesize or otherwise start to break the game's systems, but this doesn't seem to reach that critical mass at any point. Maybe it does much later, but if so it's a different problem that it requires so much of a grind to get there.

Update: Just finished the game. Same opinion. Ran into some more bugs, which was annoying, one of which soft-locked me after beating a boss. Also, I grew to dislike the lack of maneuverability more and more as the game went on, which made it all the more frustrating each time I missed a jump by a tiny bit and missed out on getting a gear. Also, I get that it's random but it was really annoying to so often find keys right after passing locked doors or eggs just after passing nest rooms (and then not seeing another of either for such a long time later).

As before, I think it would be a lot better with more levels/artifacts/modifiers/etc, and if some of the current per-run modifiers were moved over to a progression system (e.g., higher jump). Or keep them as they are but allow the player to equip some subset before starting a run. As is, it's less challenging and just more annoying. I just don't think Shovel Knight's brand of platforming really lends itself well to this style of game.

Alright overall, but still much too short (especially for the price point) and too light on the "rogue" to really recommend as a roguelike/lite. Would love to revisit if some more meat was added.

Update update: Just saw that this game is also on mobile. That explains a looot (and I think dashes any hopes of them fixing the things I don't like). Good on them for making and selling an actual game on mobile, but it's too bad that it's probably a good mobile game instead of a great game, period.

Fun roguelite with interesting cycle of farming/building and exploration.

My only complaint is that there's no option to pause on lose focus or lock the mouse in the game window, so it can be easy to click outside the game window during hectic firefights and take unnecessary damage.

Very fun rogue-lite with solid gameplay loop. Very high quality animation, design, music, VO, etc. I played through Bastion and didn't really enjoy it because the combat was so slow-paced, but Hades is much improved on that front.

Minor point, but everyone loves the voiceovers in this game and I agree they are of high technical quality, but subjectively I find many of the characters' voices kind of annoying. Meg has a weird vocal fry, Zag's accent sounds like someone half-assing a non-native accent, and Dusa is squeaky and annoying. But that's just a style choice and a minor quibble. The only other complaint would be that sometimes aiming can feel a bit wonky due to the camera perspective, but this is rare as well (I only played Mouse and Keyboard, maybe controller is different).

Anyway, great game overall. Recommended.