This is like, Prime Indie Game.
Haven't played basically any sports platforming games like Tony Hawk or Jet Set Radio at all, but I can instantly get the appeal from this game. I hadn't ever checked out those games because, tbh, they just aren't available on modern platforms of my time. And from the people being pissy about how different it is from those games, even I can tell it sets itself apart as something new and cool.
That in itself ties into the short but effective story and themes of identity. In a literal sense and in a meta way, the story is very blatantly about the concepts of personal identity vs background. There's the cyberpunk way of body modification and your place in society but also the way the game is itself a splintering from the games that made it. This isn't even getting into how it perfectly replicates the high stylization, low fidelity of 6th gen games that became a style in how itself. And it was able to say this in only like 10 hours of game without that heavy a story. Again, tbh, I wouldn't expect this sort of dense, self aware sort of writing anywhere else other than a game that couldn't mice words.
After coming off some dense AAA releases this year, there's a contrast from the nature of what this game is and gets done from being smaller scale.