Going into this I expected a competent Soulslike experience with some great humor and a good story, but it ended up being something much more special.

The Souls combat itself is basic but engaging enough, but the added factor of shells being essentially your armor, shield AND spells all at once, and the fact that they're disposable (to an extent) adds a dynamism that's completely unique to the game and will keep you experimenting and adjusting your strategy depending on the kind of enemy you fight and/or shells you have at your disposal. It all makes for a surprisingly robust experience.

The game has a light 3D platformer side to it as well. Nothing too fancy, but some areas resemble Banjo-Kazooie levels in the best way and the traversal, platforming and exploration make for a good distraction from the combat, which helps with the pacing. You never feel like you're doing the same thing over and over. Plus it's legitimately fun to engage with.

But what makes this a truly special game is that, probably to the surprise of many, the story and characters are genuinely good and have something to say. The marketing may be mostly (pretty good) jokes, and there's a ton of them in the game proper to be sure, but as it's Aggro Crab's MO by now that's just a small part of a complete package; the world of ACT is very charming and funny, but also raw and sad, because yes, this isn't a soulslike in combat alone. In fact, believe it or not, it tackles many of what are arguably the same core themes as Dark Souls', but giving them its own spin more rooted in the real world.

TL;DR this is the real deal. The actual best soulslike that isn't by From.