When seeing people criticize this game I always see them talk about the dream world segments and the gameplay in general, which is justified because those are both insufferable and make this game an absolute chore to play. The gameplay lacks any depth whatsoever and becomes an absolute slog to play almost immediately. Dream world in general has a similar issue in being a complete slog with the dialogue being extremely dull and the segments being way longer than they have any right to be, this game is about 20 hours long but dream world makes it feel like 50.

What I don't see people talk about is the dumbass story with some of the most fake character interactions & dialogue I have ever seen in my life. Like brother there CANNOT be people who say this game's story is realistic when years of unhandled trauma are handled immediately and the main cast goes back to being friends with no problems whatsoever, obviously there's still the drama with Omori & Basil but that extends past that immediate friend group. I'm talking about the main 4 characters here, which is the main focus for the majority of the game and is resolved immediately. Even fucking Shark Tale had a more realistic conclusion between Fish Man and Mob Boss Shark and all they said was "We cool". The Dialogue after said issue is resolved is bland as hell and falls flat on its face with most of it just being them reaffirming the fact that they are friends, gj Omori, this is how real people act I think.

The real meat of the plot is so edgy and stupid it honestly circles back to being funny, Black Space and the real twist behind Mari's death are SO fucking dumb man, how do people take these seriously I need to know. Surely real children would see that beloved sister died and say "Ah man I don't want my friend to get in trouble gotta frame it as a suicide", very real and relatable traumatic experience thank you Omori this is definitely not edgy garbage trying to be something deep.

I was so confused playing this not long after English release, thinking it was ass, and then a few years later learning that people actually liked this game after it exploded in popularity. Humbling experience.
I thought this game had w/e combat made tedious due to the constant vision interruptions, a cast of mostly nothing characters with the characters that are actually relevant (like 3 of them in the main cast) still not being great, a fairly lame and cliche story only made only slightly better due to the cool setting, and a completely fucking lame final act. But clearly I went wrong somewhere because this is actually one of the greatest games ever made.
I cannot lie though, some story beats really hit me in the feelsies like when Dickson said "Can't say I feel too good about deceiving those kids." near the beginning of the game, powerful stuff.

Bros will buy the game with scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it and complain that there are scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it. I just wanna ask what the fellas in the backloggd reviews were expecting when buying said game. This is the equivalent of some fella lookin at a war shooter and getting upset that it's indeed a war shooter but buying it anyways and complaining about that fact as if they didn't know exactly what they were getting into. I don't care how good the reviews are for said game, people should be able to recognize when something is clearly not made for them. (and also recognize that steam reviews normally don't mean shit in the first place)

Ignoring the weirdos that are upset about this and bought the game anyways, the gameplay here is good, very good, my favorite gameplay in fact. As someone who adores both platformers of the metroidvania variety and bullet hells this becomes something special with how it blends these two genres together perfectly. It really says a lot about a game's quality when I ACTUALLY want to go through the entire "beat difficulty to unlock higher difficulty" fiasco, something I didn't even do in something as good as DMC5. Also the boss fights are kinda phenomenal, they're very distinct from one another, have an absurd amount of attacks which constantly keeps them fresh, feel very fair despite the difficulty, and there's more than 30 of them lmao. The ost is also great with "Finale" being one of my favorite final boss tracks ever. overall a good time.

tldr game is very good but it attracts animephobic weirdos despite the very obvious exterior, obviously don't play this if you are for some reason scared of scantily clad anime girls like so many people in the backloggd reviews clearly are.

Edit after playing the Tevi demo: ANYBODY who likes this game needs to hop on Tevi, it's a spiritual successor to Rabi Ribi and is a perfect evolution of it. I very easily see it dethroning Rabi Ribi as my favorite game ever if it even matches the quality of the demo. The wait for Tevi's full release will be a difficult one... November 29th bros...