Overall fairly decent, above average and worth playing for many people I'd say.
It's quality is... not the best, but not outright bad or anything, it's a bit of a rough game in several areas, but for the most part they put in the effort to make sure the core of everything does work or feel ok, even if polish is clearly lacking in some areas.
Exploration and world:
Ok, the world is fairly large, bigger than you might expect. Decent few biome types. There are objects hidden around the map, some requiring an ability to get to, others walls to notice and break to find hidden goodies. There's a variety of environment types from water to dark to normal, to spoiler. A few puzzles and stuff along the way to solve as well. Overall it's decent, however... each biome is within itself, mostly the same, so room after room can feel a bit generic or samey at times. For the most part each biome or zone isn't full of good environmental story or subdivided areas or anything. And visually you don't find any "oh wow" areas while exploring sadly. So there is a lot, and it's ok... but never really great or amazing. Still, overall good.
Combat and Gameplay:
At it's core, combat is... ok. You have basic attacks, two weapons per character at a time, and skills for each of those weapons based on directional inputs like a fighting game (up down right attack for example). In addition you got to artifacts (spells), jump, dodge, and the ability to swap between any of your up to 3 characters at a time on the fly. So there is a lot to learn, and a good bit of depth. Each character might have 4 or so weapon types, so for all of them that's like ~12 weapons to learn how to fight with, and how they can be paired together. As you explore you can find new skills for weapons (the parries can help in a few areas, very important to find them), skills like double jump, dash through enemies, etc...
You also have a good number of bosses, as well as general enemy types, so in theory you have everything you need for a great game here... Unfortunately, that lack of polish is present. Not every move is ballanced by any means, the input queuing system has a few bugs you need to learn to play around, and not every enemy is always well designed. If you want a game with tight combat where you can no hit run enemies on pure skill... this isn't your game. Sure, some bosses you can, but others you can't. This game does also rely a LOT on stats. You can easily overpower most enemies by just over leveling or maxing your gear at any given point. And by the end game... oh god it kinda gets too easy at least for me.
So, it's not a perfect dance type of game like some people might want, but make no mistake skill and knowing the enemy moves does help a lot and will make a big difference. It's just you aren't always learnign to avid every hit, or what openings to exploit, but more learning sometimes what gambles are worth taking and what ones aren't. You will get hurt, just hurt them more. This was kinda dispaointing and when I first really hit a wall on a key boss here and I realized, there was no avoiding some of that damage... it kinda hit me badly, but once I got used to and accepted that, that's just not how they made this game, it was still overall ok to fairly decent.
There is a boss re-challenge room where you fight each boss again with various increasing difficulty conditions, though I advise replaying most bosses shortly after you first fought them. Wait too long, and you'll insta melt most with no challenge when you come back outside mode 0, where dmg scales on multipliers instead of your raw stats at least.
Characters and Story:
Animations... not great, characters... mostly very simple and 2d, with often one line you get when you talk to them, and it wont change the ENTIRE game. For the most part, the only things that matter are the main 3 characters, and sorta few bosses a bit. But mostly just your 3 characters. There is a bit of development, mostly though they already are the character they will be at the end, no big arks or development here, just people doing a job and exploring and solving a problem, not some personal epic for the most part. That said, the characters are... hit and miss in my opinion. None are bad, but likability and how they act varies from reasonable to they probably have a brain worm or something... Overall they are ok.
Big story wise, a few plot issues I noticed, one in particular kinda major... but overall it's ok. Not really a surprising story, but ok, not completely predictable from the very start at least. Still. it's mostly just context for you killing stuff and why you are doing what you're doing, not really what you're here for with this game.
Graphics and Art:
Hit and miss again. Character art is ok in gameplay, cinematics are lacking, Environments are generally ok, not great, not bad, though often reptitive and some areas do really stand out with the lower poly or quality in a few spots, still never looks outright bad, though also never really looks outright great either. Music was ok, didn't notice too much of it as with how long the game was going on, often without major development I took to listening to youtube videos while playing, the music had a few ok pieces here and there, but overall didn't come across as amazing or worth jus listening to on it's own instead. So, overall, it's ok, works, serviceable, etc... But nothing amazing.
In summary, the game is ok, decent, nothing amazing, but still good enough and long enough for the cost to be worth considering, especially if you can get it on sale. It wont be your favorite game, but just an ok one you'll remember at least.
