I really wanted to like this game because the visuals are brilliant. This pixelated, cyberpunkish, 2.5D aesthetic is beautiful, detailed, cinematic, and actually somewhat novel. I don't know of any other game that bridges the 2D and 3D in such a fluid and seamless manner, and it lends itself to some really cool moments where it feels like this 2D game suddenly comes alive and pulls out a whole another dimension out of the hat, revealing that you've actually been watching a movie all along.
The problem is that everything else about the game is not as masterful as the graphics. I was not a fan of the fighting system. I read somewhere that it is in the style of Arkham Knight, but 2D, so it's supposedly a solid foundation, but I don't find brawler type of battles engaging, and nothing about the mechanics convinced me otherwise. The platforming feels "tokenish", as in "here's the token challenging sequence we had to throw in here to justify calling it a platformer, when in reality we would rather focus on letting you walk around and sight seeing the setting". The game does feel a bit like a walking simulator at times, at least in the first 2 hours. Maybe the fighting and platforming evolves in the later stages of the game, but I decided that I wasn't interested in finding out, and it actually wasn't the fighting or the platforming that made me call it quits. It was the writing.
The writing and world building just isn't great. The world building is composed entirely of cyberpunk cliches, while somehow being a weaker version of those cliches. Literally everything in the world building is been-here-done-that-better-elsewhere. The writing itself- the dialogue, the text entries you find- it's all quite bland. Text entries feel like in-your-face exposition pieces, not like real articles you might find somewhere, the dialogue is amateurish, and I just felt like there is nothing of value for me to discover by exploring that world. I can already see it's the spiritual successor of Blade Runner if Blade Runner was some film student's graduation project.
Overall, I know that many people will love this game just for the visuals, but I really didn't want explore any of it further, so I got a refund, and that means I give it a thumbs down, even though there is enough to love about this game.
