It has a very unique aesthetic and some of the simple boss fights were pretty fun, but as a puzzle game I think relies too heavily on its style of logic solving which is to say: I solved almost every puzzle of navigation by simply going back and hitting a binary switch one more time (that is, if they weren't the smaller lone room switch puzzles that were very much just a hifalutin take on looking around a room for a door code painted in blood). The "crossing the bridge" type puzzles in the end picked it up a lot more though when it was careful not to be TOO confusing but still required some multi-tier shifting to progress. But at this point this kind of token art game anti-narrative just felt obvious, and comes at a sacrifice of making any sort of final level where the puzzle elements could've really coalesced. The type of puzzle game where there's only one solution so there's not really much room to "figure it out."

Elevates its simple beat-em-up design with some fun strategy like tag-team characters and using special attacks to get health pickups, and unlockable characters and varied paths to liven it up for some replay value. Simple enough design that still at best with co-op (local only admittedly a drawback). Also worth giving at least a passing grade to because it's a modern day beat em up where you can suplex a dog. UPDATE: I've replayed a few times and the new character choices really boost up the game's longevity, bumping up a half-star.

I'd been wanting this for long enough (despite having skipped 4 and 5) that its only upon playing that I realized the limitations of the series as well as its many charms, but thankfully the latter outnumber the former. That is, the customization and weaponry is varied enough to make arena fighting and boss solving a blast, but the level design and general missions are simple enough to be cheesed regardless. Still pretty fun and always had its quality of life to stop it from getting one stuck for too long, and this is the smoothest controls and combat the series has ever had.

Was starting off pretty into its smaller, sci-fi flavored Souls-like take with a pretty dynamic combat system and ingenious customization, but had to admit after some remarkable open-air areas it starts to get more and more confined and the loopy nature of the shortcuts is a lot less clever than how Souls games would approach it. So many vent-corridors. Still cool enough that I played it through and even enjoyed its relatively easy-to-master boss fights, but hoping the sequel fine-tunes this and has more inventive level design.