I REALLY want to score this game higher because the story and themes are amazing and the gameplay was okay for the most part. But the last biome is unironically one of the worst things I have ever seen in gaming as a whole and it's design and philosophy go directly against what the devs accomplished in earlier portions of the game. I beat the entire game, collected all pieces for the secret ending, saw the last home scene and on my way to the last boss I got grazed by a fucking shockwave attack going though the floor. I didn't even die, but I still took out the disk and decided I'm done with the game. I was tired of asking myself why do I only ever take damage when the visibility is dogshit or something teleports behind me or a shockwave comes from behind a wall, or when I'm in the air with limited movement options. I feel like when you take Retunal under the microscope you start seeing this everywhere. Why are there attacks that penetrate walls and floors below you, which results in truly unavoidable hits? Why design all these awesome risk/reward mechanics when the optimal strategy in EVERY SINGLE RUN is to never engage with them? Why do 75% of the weapons just straight-up suck? Why are there so many artifacts that do next to nothing or are just worse versions of other artifacts in the game? Why did the devs pick one of the most gameplay-heavy genres if their primary objective was to tell a story? If Returnal was not a roguelike and just a story-driven experience I would gladly give it an 8 or a 9. But it is a roguelike and I have to compare it to other roguelikes, and they all fucking sweep it with no effort.