Gameplay: 6/10
Art: 7/10
Sound Design: 9/10
Narrative: 8/10
Overall: 7.75/10

Now, keep in mind, I've completed this game 100% less than a week after launch, and the developers have already stated they're working on a patch, so in the future the game may be even better. With that out of the way, let's get into what this game does well, and what it does poorly.

- There is no "end goal." There's a quest that ends the game, but it can be completed early on if you've already gotten what you came for. Or, you can scour every corner of the landscape looking for whatever secret (mostly bugs) you can find.
- This game captures a bunch of great feelings from other media. Whether it's the feeling of climbing to a mountaintop to see what points of interest are nearby like Breath of the Wild, the loneliness of crossing a desert landscape with only your steed beside you like Shadow of the Colossus, or curious wonder invoked by the scene of Ray scrapping a crashed imperial star destroyer in The Force Awakens.
- If you look for them, you can find beautiful, heart touching stories. Hidden among the tall stony pillars, there was one conversation with a character named Llhor that made me take a minute and really sit with the philosophical questions they had just asked.
- The game is inclusive of gender and Identity. While you do play a strictly female protagonist, the Midden is full of characters of all kinds filling any type of job. Behind the masks, you can't tell what the characters look like; but the language and characterization used for them often includes the casual use of singular they, whether for a binary gendered character or even exclusively for some characters who are implied to be non-binary. If the current political climate around gender is something that concerns you one way or another, you'll be happy either way (unless the only women you want to see in games are unrealistic caricatures with absurd proportions). I saw representation in some awesome characters, but people who may not be as supportive of the movement as I am (i.e. against) probably won't even notice.
- The art, while simple, is absolutely stunning at times. The whole game is rendered in mostly flat colors with the only shading in textures coming from shadows cast by the sun, and outlined with a line filter. The entire color pallet of the game shifts with the in-game clock, from bright vibrant colors by day, to a monochrome gray (maybe blue, I'm a bit colorblind)
- The soundtrack was absolutely gorgeous. There were a few times when the sound of an area fit just right for me to let the game idle and have a really relaxing meal or a couple drinks and just enjoy myself. The climactic points in the game's (loose) narrative structure were backed up with expressive music that reinforces the bittersweet moods
- The game doesn't add unnecessary challenge. While this may not be a plus for everyone, I really admire the game sticking to the idea of exploration. There are puzzles and climbing challenges you can do, as well as a few "races" you can complete, but it's always in service of discovering something new, and never gets in the way of it.

I could sing this game's praises all day, but here are some of the issues I had with it. Keep in mind, some of these things may have been patched by the time you read this or play the game.

- You're probably gonna get trash framerate. I definitely wouldn't say my computer is super beefy or high-spec, but I would regularly get below 20fps on a setup I built for game development. Expect frame drops, input lag, and a bit of choppiness.
- When riding on your hoverbike, you may go flying in random directions (often nose-first into the ground, where you'll end up spinning for a minute until it decides to settle down).
- The flat textures can sometimes make depth perception difficult, which can make life difficult when trying glide down to a platform from 100m away.
- Almost everything in the game is entirely skippable/missable. I was 10 hours in before I realized you could upgrade your stamina. The best quests (imho) don't have any markers on the map, which may make players think they're less important. For the most part they give the best items, or reveal all the lore. Less of the game's context and worldbuilding should be so easily missed.
- Aside from the inconveniences, there are also a few bugs that may require you to reload your last save to fix them, such as:
- A bug where you can only walk forward and can't turn the camera, jump, or interact with anything
- A bug where you walk inside a wall instead of climbing it, and then can't walk out because you're stuck climbing the inside of the wall
- Areas that aren't out of bounds (one specifically is in the middle of a puzzle) that you can easily get into but there's literally no way out of
- If your character is in the way when some animations are played, they can be forced through floors or walls into the void
And these are just the ones I personally experienced ^^

All this being said, I absolutely loved the game, and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a rather casual exploration game.