Just Wow.

This game has many flaws for sure, and could have used a few more months of polish. The hitboxes are genuinely bad and the texturework gets progressively more sloppy as the game goes along. Game balancing is also an issue, where the first Adaptation you get absolutely trivialises bossfights and regular enemy encounters. The game is quite sloppy in its construction, which would ordinarily kill the experience for me.

But...

This game is MASSIVE. The fact that a team of only 12 people made this was constantly buzzing throughout my mind, as I stumbled into a massive new area or discovered a secret location hidden in the landscape. The story and lore impress more than I thought it would. I've been following the game since it was announced, and nothing in the game's marketing indicated the true scope of the experience. There are several fakeouts throughout the story where I thought "surely this is the end" but it just kept going and introduced surprising new locations, bosses and mechanics. Level design and platforming is all great as well. The soundtrack is a banger too.

With some extensive patches, this could be a 9/10 though the combat stumbles too often to overlook it's issues.