short and sweet with a nice look and sound. i think this one is the one in the franchise where it starts to settle into having its own personality, lore and detach itself a bit from its inspirations; not to say its not somewhat derivative but its derivative in that way that makes it fun to look at the things you can recognize its taking inspiration from and it differentiates itself enough to be its own thing.
i will say the soundtrack of the first game is, in my opinion, better, but for everything else Momodora 2 is just the better game. one of those sequels that just does more and does that "more" better.

ech, its hard to recommend. it feels super loose to control in that really bad way you dont want your sidescroller to feel, the hitboxes are super weird, the save points are all on really annoying places where you can go entire sections without one when you really need it and theres no way to recover health midway through a section so hope you just dont get hit. also you get kicked to the main menu every time you die, which you will be doing a lot of, and its like too strong a deterrent to keep going.
if you like the franchise and want to see where it started its fine enough but its not really a game id recommend to anyone.
the music is good at least.