I went into this game without prior knowledge (I don't even recall seeing the trailer, I got recommended this by someone else and knew I had to buy it just based on the promo picture and description) and just WOW this is an amazing game, I expected it to be really good but it surpassed that by a wide margin and this is going to be a game I'd wanna talk to people about a lot if it wouldn't spoil story moments and lore (because those are really gripping and impactful when experienced without prior knowledge). I'll still be recommending it a lot for sure though, just without the spoilers!
This game is going up there with my absolute favourites of all time! I was worried that the story would result in an ending I didn't like so I was tempted to look up how it ended to save me the worry, but I am legitimately so glad I didn't! Playing this without prior knowledge I feel enhanced my experience a lot, also the game is honestly quite a bit longer than I expected in a pleasantly surprising way!
When I first was going through the game, I was like "I'll do the sidequests and exploration later on", I would say do it as you go along and early! It can really help out, especially if you're finding stuff tricky. I found the [spoiler]Manticore[/spoiler] and [spoiler]General Mechos[/spoiler] fights very tough the first lot of tries, for the latter of those mentioned fights I decided to leave the level and grind for a couple of hours, as well as search for secrets and it was really fun finding cool things on the map. Then when I fought the aforementioned boss again, it felt challenging but not to an extreme.
Losing money and experience points to the next level on death isn't too punishing overall, especially as levels are relatively close together and you can't level down. It can be a bit demotivating to see all the money you found in a secret go away, but there is a really good spot for grinding money (if you can find it, you should if you look on the map for places to go though) so it doesn't matter too much as you can get money back quickly.
The thing I find the most punishing though is using items on a tough encounter, as they don't come back after dying. I recommend making a safety save before the encounter so you can quit without saving and reload if you need, otherwise you might get trapped in a death loop unless you quit out of the level and redo it. This is honestly the main issue I had with the game and it's easily bypassed using the safety save method.
It took me about 20 hours to complete the game the first time round, but I did nearly 100% it during that time and I was quite inexperienced with a game of this type.
I've never played Zelda 2 or Shovel Knight (and I've basically never seen the former aside from the world map, the towns, and one boss fight) but I can definitely see where the game is similar to these, this isn't a bad thing in my opinion though! The game has a unique identity from what I can see, with the systems it chooses to take inspiration from (and ones it doesn't) picked with the experience in mind and not just taken for the sake of being there. Building upon what has worked before is a good plan when the underlying reasons and considerations are taken into account, which they are in this game.
I bought this game in June 2025 but I got round to playing it in Nov 2025, I should've done sooner! This shall be one of my top picks to suggest to people, I'll have this game and its world in my thoughts, and I thank all those involved in the creation of this game greatly for making such an excellent and unforgettable experience.
