Quite alright! The dream diving sequences are mostly just tedious and there's no reason to not just use a guide since the puzzle solutions are complete nonsense (there's no reasoning behind what option it is that makes you progress and you have a finite number of guesses). The story is cool, and then it isn't, and then it is again, and then settles somewhere in the middle. It's multiple routes but you're gated off some routes until you finish another one, so then you have some whiplash between "what was different in this storyline compared to the other ones?" that makes it hard to get too invested.
Coming into it I didn't expect me to have a complaint about painfully forced dance/song sequences that happen multiple times, but here we are. It can't really maintain a tone to save it's life and has to make repeated jokes that rarely if ever land. Little girl is incredibly strong and single handedly fights off a dozen bodyguards? Snooze. Protag is so incredibly horny that the mention of a porno mag sends him into a frenzy where his reaction time is multiplied? What are we doing here man?
Good voice work and music at least (besides the one song they use for each dance number and that the english VA can't quite pull off singing).

Also have to note that the dream diving machine is repeatedly stated to be Top Secret Do Not Tell Anyone About because it would cause a worldwide crisis, but anyone you dive into is aware of it and you frequently explain what it is to them. The only thing really maintained as a secret is his AI eyeball, for reasons? I'm not sure of an explicit reason to keep it a secret from everyone.

Slower paced Metroid is a good hook. Atmosphere, art, and music are all really well done.
The gun overheat boosting melee damage is a smart gimmick to encourage switching constantly during fights. The combat is otherwise decent, enemy designs don't change much and bosses tend to not have more than 1 or 2 moves to use at a time so it can feel a bit stale. I was expecting there to not be other melee options but to instead have different gun options, so it was a nice pivot from Metroid to do the opposite. The passive mod abilities are cool and there is enough good variety that you do have to consider which ones to take, but I can't say the same about the weapon abilities. The first one you get, the rocket, really does seem like the most effective one barring the novelty of having a "summon" ability, so it really doesn't seem like a worthwhile endeavor to equip multiple weapons abilities since they take from the same energy pool that passive mods use.
Skimming through reviews, I do agree that the backtracking from each objective item to the hub felt unnecessary and did come across more like padding. Some small skeleton head enemies will spawn when you're doing this backtracking but they're pretty easy for what they are, so it really is just doing the same rooms again with practically no change. I even stopped to grab another macguffin on my way back to return another, but it told me I couldn't take it until I dropped the other one off. Naturally this meant walking to the hub, walking back to the macguffin, and then walking back to the macguffin again.There not being an upgrade/fast travel station at the hub too is kinda silly, of all places why not there?

Pretty solid! The musics good but feels like there's too few tracks even for its shortish length at ~5 hours. The wallrunning and bullet time combo is pretty sweet though I feel like enemies often took inconsistent damage from seemingly identical shots.
The game could also use a touch more signposting, I got lost in the city street level because it's just a fairly open space with a lot of identical streets with no indication of where to go. I'd think with this kind of game you want to go go go but thats broken up by spinning in circles for a few minutes pretty frequently trying to know where to go.

Nice to play a good metroidvania again.
Gotta shot out the jump and spinning top in this for making traversal feel so good, really wasn't expecting that. The parry-centric combat is nice and there's some good platforming and puzzle solving to do.
I ended up just sticking with the starting sword for most of the run time, the upgrade economy seems a bit scuffed and funnels you into sticking with few choices more than it probably should. The movesets dont differ so you have to ask yourself if you want a regular sword or a sword with a colored element swing that will also be more expensive to upgrade.
Some areas got a bit tedious to backtrack, primarily the lava area and the windy area. Both could have used more shortcuts to cut down on having to go in a big circle to get to where you want to go.

Pretty decent! Didn't really entice me to continue looking for secrets after doing the final area, but I ended with around 20 eggs found. The item abilities are pretty cool and each have at least a couple different ways to use them.
I think the minimal art style and almost entirely absent soundtrack kinda works against itself a bit because everything feels very samey (outside of the final area really). That would be less of a problem if the game didn't require so much backtracking and tedium, if you die (sometimes either from exhausting your HP or otherwise there are one hit instant deaths) you will be warped back to the place you last saved and then have to trek back across several rooms to get to where you were. That does often mean having to redo platforming or puzzle challenges, over and over, since most really don't seem to unlock shortcuts or means to circumvent. There is a fast travel hub but it's a secret unlocked after finding some number of secret eggs, and there's then a secret that will teleport you to the fast travel hub you can use once you collect more secret eggs (I did not know about this until I beat it).
Another art issue is the use of spikes as obstacles, they're very often not clearly presented as being dangerous and background elements can also look like spikes but aren't. Often times found myself trying to avoid something that wasn't harmful, or thinking something was safe when it wasn't. On the positive side the lighting and smoke effects can be very impressive, though honestly set me up thinking they'd be more present.
The controls have some issues too, primarily around abilities. Rather than them each being mapped to different buttons, you cycle through them individually using the shoulder buttons. It makes things feel slower than they should and sorta impedes creating a rhythm. They give a lot of leeway on your character falling off of edges, but that can work against you when you need to quickly (like being chased) fall down. There's a few times where you have to fall into holes about the width of the player and it would refuse to have me go down.
I played it through PS+ so can't complain there, but the $25 asking price is way steep. It's pretty well a 2 hour long game but with all the backtracking and repeated rooms to clear that can about double. It seems like a decent enough recommendation for $5-10 but man $25 is rough, there's just not enough meat here and no real Wowing X Factor to latch onto. Ultros seems like a more compelling recent metroidvania that could use some more eyes on it.

I did every dungeon and probably just about every boss so that you don't have to! Because you shouldn't.
A game that probably should've had like 1/2 the content so that more of it could have been focused on being meaningful rather than uninspired tedium. Lacks the feeling of intentionality from their prior games (enemies and bosses are placed willy-nilly across the game world) so you will be seeing a lot of similar faces. They took a sort of Skyrim approach to NPC's and factions where you can now be allied with anyone and everyone simultaneously, regardless of them being entirely opposed to one another, which makes your involvement feel pretty flaccid. Your choices at least culminate in a 10 second cutscene, half of which are just colored differently, and afterwards you continue like nothings changed.
At least they finally figured out how to make shields good, I guess? The art and character design is good as usual, the music is fairly average, and they managed to have your human characters not look terrible.

I think this might be where I bow out of FromSoft's catalog unfortunately. I started with Demons Souls on the PS3 and their Souls-esque series has evolved from an experimental and creative adventure game with great vibes, to a fairly mediocre action game entry propelled by great art direction. Sorta feels like they're out of ideas, with the exception of Radahn each boss is just your typical action challenge without much of interest. Command your two brain cells to dodge an attack (maybe two attacks if they're feeling daring), hit once or twice, repeat. They took maybe one break away from this model to take another crack at a Demons Souls boss (this time Storm King) and as usual it's just a worse imitation.

"This is my favorite spot where to play. I like it because the view is pretty" Sea of Stars, 2023.
A masterclass in terrible writing. The main duo are missing any personality and instead are just generically "Hero", any dialogue or flavor text is dry and uninteresting. Combat is okay at first but has almost entirely no evolution; what it starts as is what it stays as and you'll be doing it A LOT.
The only reason it got this high of a score is because the 2d art is nice and the music can be good. This being anywhere near a best of list was laughable.