The combat is pretty fun, every shell has a couple different clear builds you can try around certain abilities for player expression, weapons are very well animated and full of character, same goes for executions which is good because you will be seeing the same ones millions of times, game is also pretty if we care about this still, the charm system is fine and synergizes with some builds.
It is incredibly buggy, could not go 30 minutes without some different variety of inconvenience, ranging from mild annoyances and unexpected behavior to getting permanently stuck behind chests or falling through the ground or sending enemies flying with the axe throw ability. It consistently froze for a couple seconds after getting weapons/guns/shells. Enemy variety is too low even for the short run time, it does the thing where late-game enemies are just early game ones with 10x the health and damage, possibly a status effect and maybe some changes to moveset if you’re lucky. Final boss sucks ♥♥♥♥(and balls), bosses in general are lacking in personality, weight, or maybe buildup. It also does the souls thing of not giving you enough resources to upgrade what you want but the problem is that this has a smaller selection of weapons(and characters) with more personality, so not being able to use them feels like choosing between fun and effectiveness(and not in the good way). The items you slot in either passive or active effect never got interesting, most are just “gain x y resource” or “take 30% less damage against fire attacks!”(which also was never really useful except when you remember to use it against the very convenient fire boss or whatever), they look and feel very bland and never stop following the same format of buffs. Enemies have super human tracking and perception, i swear to god you could fall from the sky a few meters behind the enemy and they would start an attack animation as soon as your feet touched the ground, turn 180 degrees instantly and then inexplicably translocate to you during the animation somehow in only 2 steps. The ost is also unremarkable, it has a style, but never caught my attention at any point, when you can usually count on these types of games to have great soundtracks. A lot of shrine dungeons were pretty much one room filled with random enemies and that's it for the trials, felt lazy. Gloom on death would sometimes not show up(might have been fixed). At any point in the game you are susceptible to being one-shot by an enemy attack, second life or not it never feels fun to be one shot(love that game), especially when you get in hitstun after a fodder enemy hits you once, and then you stay in place for what feels like an eternity until the not fodder enemy kills you right after. weapon upgrading couldn't be simpler, you pay coin and the elden ring tiered ore, your weapons "power value" goes up by the same amount every time, least engaging system i've ever seen for this.
meh
