TLDR; found this game by accident, played the demo without many expectations, bought full version, ruined my sleep schedule due to "one more run". Definitely worth the price. If you are not sure, try the demo and if you enjoy it, complete game is way better.
When it comes to gameplay it is pretty simple because you attack automatically, so you mostly focus on moving forward and not getting hit, but at first it was a bit confusing how am I supposed to use the timestop or work around the tiny 30 seconds time limit. But knowing with this type of games you are supposed to fail and get a bit further on each attempt, I kept going and things started to click.
The loop is pretty standard - kill monsters to get stronger so you can kill more monsters, until eventually you can clear the whole map and kill the final boss. To help you with that, there is a lot of progression in this game. While some are only per-run like the pick-one Tech Chips, weapon upgrades / modules, gadgets and stat boosts, you also find various permanent items to equip and currencies. And oh boy, not only items have static stats and later set bonuses, but also quality determining their magnitudes, few random stats, which you can reroll. You also upgrade the time machine to give you stuff like extra time (duh), buy passive stats and get even more passive stats just for finding everything to fill the handbook. It is definitely more than I expected but I am absolutely not complaining, minmaxers rejoice.
The goal is to eventually clear all stages and kill the final boss, after which you get access to Multidimension Mode, that makes things progressively harder, but also rewards you with more stuff, so technically to beat the game and get access to everything you need to clear it 13 times in total. For context, start to finish on max difficulty, it took me 48 hours, but I definitely made a lot of mistakes. After that, it seems you just get infinitely scaling monster level to see how far you can push, so it's a good opportunity to try out different builds and Avatars, which I'm yet to do. I have only used the Blossom Blade (which probably made things harder to learn due to melee nature), but giving others a brief try, they definitely feels different, so variety is great.
For other miscellaneous positives; music is cool (Undertow hits hard and Afterimage fits final area perfectly), visual effects are flashy, loot explosions give a dopamine hit. Destroying bosses with single Blossom Blade timestop slash? That thing is like heroin. And yes, you can get to the point where you just zoom around at high speeds and obliterate everything with numbers in trillions, feels really good and reminds me of endgame Path of Exile 1.
Overall, very nice game, especially considering the price, and much better than I expected based on what the demo shows. Also the timestop mechanic makes it feel really unique. While it's a great value already and not an early access title, I hope they add even more stuff or at least consider a sequel, because I can't get enough. Therefore this essay, I suppose.
However it is not all sunshines and rainbows, because there are definitely some rough edges. So for the mixed and the bad, especially since devs seem to be reading reviews (hopefully the positive ones too):
- monster telegraphs are very confusing. Red indicator appears, but you have no clue whether you have to dodge instantly or it will be delayed. Sometimes whole screen is covered in red but boss didn't do anything yet, so you kinda have to remember the patterns. Final stage is the biggest offender and you really want to nuke everything instantly or risk losing the run due to some BS.
- dash has no iframes and is just a way to move faster, so you will get hit a lot until you remember that, especially since some enemies have insane tracking. Or those damn snails with aura around them, which I inevitably jump into as melee character. I know they can't simply change that because whole balance would be wrecked, but still.
- you smash a box and randomly a high level timestop immune monster spawns, which hits you instantly. It happens rarely, but really?
- every stage layout is static, which hurts replayability a bit and I wish it was randomized to some degree. At least sewers are a bit unique due to circular design and contamination, but it can also mean backtracking.
- speaking of the contamination, it spreading and making enemies harder is fine, but seeping my time, even in timestop? Not cool.
- you can see damage distribution, but not what contributed to it. Was it my bleed, crit, high base attack, weapon upgrade, etc.? Who knows.
- wording on some stuff is a bit weird, this was definitely translated to English.
- the story is... I dunno. I know this is the least important aspect for this genre, but the hidden "true" ending gave me strong impression something is missing.
- for completionists, good luck filling the handbook. Why do I have to pick every chip in every quality, can't getting legendary just tick all the tiers below? Either I am missing something, or it will take at least few hundred hours to do, with manually checking what you are missing every time, because there is no indicator whether something is "new" during the run. Same for monster variants, which seem to be pure RNG and I don't know how to find them deliberately.
- also some achievements are bugged if you play demo first, but at least devs are aware of that.
- something is weird with performance after playing for many hours straight (couldn't be me), but at least restarting game fixes it.
