My favourite story ever told in a videogame, and for sure overall top 3 game of all time for me, and I dare say that means something after decades of gaming.
Best way to describe the gameplay would be that you are a detective cop doing detective things, and that you should be prepared for a lot of voice acted reading. And damn, the voice acting is good. It feels like reading a book at times, which does mean it is not for everyone, but it doesn't have to be. I feel like changing anything about this game would ruin the overall experience, like everything was masterfully designed and blended together into this masterpiece.

Anyone I ask has a different story to tell about their first playthrough of this masterpiece. They had different struggles, got stuck in different places, took different routes to objectives... they also found different items/weapons, some missed big locations because the devs were not afraid to hide whole levels behind layers of secrets like fake walls or using random abilities/items in random spots. The game doesn't hold your hand and lets you make mistakes and learn from them, bosses being the most obvious examples of this, with clearly telegraphed attacks that are punishing but, once learned, easily avoidable. The combat is slow and clunky, mistakes costly. The map is interconnected and full of different items that might be useful for different builds, which means exploration feels very rewarding. I would say the game is not for everyone, especially over a decade later when the genre it has started has evolved in more ways than one, mostly thanks to the same developer working on sequels and spiritual successors.

If you like souls-like games and also like diablo/PoE, this was made for you. I am one of those people, to the point where I feel like I can't be biased giving this a review.
It just took everything I liked from both genres of games and blended it together perfectly.
Combat is slow and enemies are punishing if not respected.
Maps are beautifully crafted and rewarding to explore.
Story is interesting and I can't wait for devs to finish it (game is still in early access at point of writing this).

Feels like a 10/10 concept that was just terribly executed.
Art style is unique, personally I did not like it, others might though.
It is a peaceful game without violence, focused on exploration and completing short and sweet quests.
It gives you a few different ways of completing it depending on how you enjoy spending your time in the game.
I completed it in one afternoon, but you can extend that if you want to do optional stuff or alternative ways of completing the main goal.

It was nothing special, but it was more than I expected from Ubisoft in 2024. Boomers will see it as a decent reimagining of the 2D PoP games from (was it late 80s? early 90s?) Bit younger audience will see it as Hollow Knight if Hollow Knight was mid. It is best described as PoP metroidvania. Would like to have seen more time twisting stuff that is usually expected from PoP. Combat just kinda did not feel satisfying to me. Exploration was decent but also did not feel rewarding. Nothing really bad to say about the game, but also nothing good.