This is one of those rare games where I think it's amazing and everyone should play it, but I also think it's incredibly overrated.

It's not groundbreaking or changing the genre in anyway, despite what all the reviews and hype seems to suggest. It's just a really, really good metroidvania that understands the genre perfectly. Its full of secrets that are fun to explore, and it really felt like I would rarely go the "wrong way".

That said, the only thing stopping this from being 5 stars is the save points system. It feels really out of place in a game like this, with such a focus on puzzles. Either spawning in the room you died in, like Celeste, or just having way more save points would have made this game so much easier to play - especially towards the end

Despite feeling a bit rough around the edges in terms of performance and UI, I had a lot of fun with this. The tactics gameplay is just the right level of complexity for me to enjoy, more similar to something like Chimera Squad than the main XCOM games. It's got enough options to lead to interesting situations and moments that make you feel smart, but its not so difficult that making one wrong move will ruin an entire mission. I was a little worried about how random card draw would affect the tactics, but with such small decks and plenty of deck-cycling options like targeted redraw, I never ran into a situation where I found myself drawing the "wrong" card and losing a mission due to that.

Character moments are fun and cute, though I did find myself not caring about some of them and feeling like more characters got highlighted in the story while others could have just been left out entirely without much change to the overall plot or team relationships. I will say that not letting us properly romance characters was disappointing. Let me date Magik you cowards.

A girlboss, a nerd, and two orbs fight some smoke.

I had a lot of fun with this, but it was a little bit disappointing. It could have been a much stronger story and gameplay experience if it was just a little more varied.

While I enjoyed the Nopon party members (they were cute to me, not quite annoying) I would have preferred to have Tyrea as a playable member instead - allowing more focus on her. I think it was smart to not have any more main story characters though. They barely had enough for Shulk, I don't think they could have reasonably fitted in much development for the other characters.

I love that this is Melia's story, and Shulk is just along for the ride. She really deserves the focus and was always one of my favourites in the main story.

Ponspectors were fun but didn't feel like they made a major change to the combat - a bit simpler than chain attacks which I think makes sense with the scope of this story.