Good surprise metroidvania entry for the year, maybe parallel to what little I played of the Prince of Persia one but achieves its own sense of look and feel, and the battle system and traversal being tied together in pretty effective binary powers feels pretty good! Some of the gated exploration is pretty obvious for a game like this, sometimes reliant on an arbitrary traversal that then gets forgotten by the game for a while, and the arena fighting gets a little spongey in the end stretch (there's an especially annoying poisonous enemy). None of the optional traversal challenges are that difficult either outside of some cheap shots.