Rubinite

Honestly, a 7.5/10 title total. This review contains spoilers - you have been warned. What I completed: 98% completion up to NG+ mode true end. Only missed out on a few talismans due to lacking currency. Approx 10hrs total played. What the game is about: You play as Ruby, a little girl who lost her parents to an evil calamity that befell her kingdom. As you go through the story, you find out not everything is as it seems. In terms of gameplay, it's practically a hybrid of Hades and Sekiro. Tutorial and gameplay wise, the whole thing is a pretty good play. Even though it is very hard, especially the second half, you learn to appreciate the focused vision that the developers have. The Good The entire gameplay is extremely focused. You fight bosses - 9 of them total on first run with more on NG+ (true) mode. The overall timing of iframes and dodges feels good. You feel a connection to all of the characters. Out of the 9 bosses (11 total on NG+ mode), I only felt that one of them was badly designed, but that is enough to really push the experience down. The Bad: Okay we need to talk about the elephant in the room here. Plaguebearer needs some serious retooling as the fight is completely the antithesis of everything the game is about. The game teaches you up to this point that patient play, not taking risks, and emphasizing the focus bar is the ideal way to play the game. You slowly build up focus stacks via parrying and then unleash it with the L2 button for tons of damage. Then Plaguebearer comes along and this strategy becomes COMPLETELY invalid. You're forced to rely on regular slashes to actually fight this thing. Furthermore, it splits and gets smaller and smaller, leading to a protracted battle. Overall, the entire thing is extremely not fun - especially on NG+ mode, which we'll talk about below. The second major thing is the entire true ending route (NG+) is just super contrived. Once you've beaten the game once you find out the entire first playthrough was "just a dream" and now the real thing begins. This is the point where most players will leave the game. The second playthrough [b]completely removes your ability to heal and you die in 1 hit.[/b] This will result in the majority of players not wanting to play the game a second time as the experience is [b]EXTREMELY PUNISHING[/b] on the second run. Not to mention that you are [b]forced to learn two new bosses and a new final boss phase[/b] while [b]dying in ONE hit and having ZERO healing.[/b] Other than the above major issues, there're a few minor ones as well. First, the Perfect Strike talisman doesn't seem to negate grabs, and it doesn't protect you when using Explosive Strike - this makes explosive strike pretty useless in certain fights. Next, there are too few talisman slots and most of them are borderline useless. You can see they were inspired by Hollow Knight, but the issue is that your charm build in HK defined your overall playstyle. Your charm build in this game is either right or wrong - you're either building up for crits or you aren't playing the game right. The entire talisman system needs a complete rework. The Summary: A cautious recommend if you enjoy punishing games. If Sekiro or Nine Sols was on your most favorite game list, you will be right at home here. But be aware of the extremely stiff cliff that is the NG+ mode - you might not want to finish it after you begin. If punishing games aren't your thing, then don't buy this.