Let me get the gripes out of the way before I gush, because they're bothersome enough that I feel like they're worth mentioning.

-- I'm not a fan of tying the Horizontal and Vertical Dash upgrades to the same button, because it's very easy to accidentally tilt slightly up while in movement and V-Dash when you totally meant to H-Dash, and consequently end up falling flat on your face or eating boss damage like it's candy. Maybe that's a controller-only issue, I don't know. I just know it happened to me enough times that it was significantly noticeable.

-- Despite the game sometimes holding your hand about the general idea of where to go, there are some subsections of the station that can be a bit of a pain to navigate or to be certain where you need to go to get there. Hard to really complain here, since I love exploration, but if I know I'm in the right area and I'm still having trouble figuring out how to progress, maybe the pathing could be a little better.

-- Putting a kill-plane right below a boss for an area you're expected to drop down to is just garbo. Especially if you haven't gotten the "Cheat My Face Off" power-up to make your movement nice and easy.

-- The woodland biome had a couple branches that felt like actual ledges when they weren't. Minor frustration, but it happened enough times that I felt like noting it.

With that out of the way, let's talk about why this game is some solid gold.

The boss design is pretty good in most cases (assuming you're playing on Normal -- on Easy, you can probably tank most of the bosses in a run without much grief). There's some optional bosses in the main game that will also be more than happy to take you to task if you can reach them.

Power-ups feel significant and it's very easy to see how they impact your movement through the world. The hookshot is a little cumbersome at first, but once you get a handle on your angles, it's amazing fun to just launch yourself into the air off a well-timed use of it. The game also does an excellent job of really getting you used to using these abilities, because you'll absolutely need them by the end of the game.

General world design is clever, with lots of hidden passages for you to wander into -- some are obvious, some are not, and some will leave you scratching your head as to what the point of them is, at first.

And that leads us to where the real shine of this game is -- the postgame. The postgame asks you to beat those main game optional bosses and make sure you've got all the power-ups you need, then gives you the opportunity to use them to navigate some hellish area designs that result in even more optional boss encounters and several additional endings. Clues are scattered all over the station while you're playing the main game -- veritable hints to let you know that something more significant is going on. Frankly, I'd recommend a guide for the postgame because it's just that overwhelming of a level of exploration.

Beyond that, the music's pleasant, the graphics are rough but work well enough that you're largely able to appreciate everything that's going on without having to squint to figure out what's what in a retro-looking game.

In short, the game has a few drawbacks that keep it from being in my personal pantheon of the best of Metroidvanias, but if you're looking for a solid one, it's well worth it to pick this up at full price -- a whopping eight bucks. You could always keep an eye out for a sale, though -- as I write this, the Steam Winter Sale is going on and the game has been discounted 60%, down to $3.19 USD. If you're a fan of Metroidvanias, do this dev a solid and support them because they definitely earned it with ESA.