Endless creativity. Excellent Cyberpunk Metroidvania. 9/10

HAAK
Tl:Dr the movement controls randomly stop working sometimes, on multiple devices and controllers

Overall thoughts: Overall a enjoyable and challenging metroidvania, story is semi ok. Havent hit a point where there would be an opportunity for depth of the writing to be shown off. So hard to be definitive about it, The story is a classical tale of finding x person. some interesting concept Post apocalypse setting. You are HAAK, trying to find your brother who left your homeland in order to find a way to grow food in the baron land that is your villages homestead. The expedition has taken far too long and you’ve left to find your brother you meet interesting characters along the way, you often remarking when your x person would find this interesting. Some bombastic, some scummy. Overall fun arch-types, mostly written in believable and fun ways.I really dig the art style, strikes me like a comic book and the portraits when characters talk are straight out of a graphic novel it feels like.

Game Design: the difficulty system is really solid. there is a coin machine that takes tokens you get from dying, theirs one on each map. allowing you to fine tune things down to even how effective environmental hazards damage you, enable infinite hp (free), etc etc reveal the whole map etc etc. My only issue when trying to overcome issues at times, its becomes repetitive, which is good from a metroidvania perspective. But considering 120 deaths at 12 hours playtime. The majority of them are always at x difficult part of platforming. They usually have a machine close by to let you be able to mitigate that. I didn't use any of my tokens.
There is an anime character that will call and remind you that you can use the machine to customize the difficulty.

The problem: Sometimes while playing on either desktop pc or my steam deck. the movement controls lock up. I can pull up the menu and navigate it with the joystick or keyboard. It doesn't respond, i have to force relaunch the game before it works. it's a shame, because the game is solid. but i have lost progress many times due to this problem. Overall, I can't recommend the game when it randomly stops accepting inputs. this game has been out for quite a while and stuff like this. SHOULD not happen. one of the most integral parts of a metroidvania is tight controls. Thats is a huge cardinal sin and it isn't compelling enough for me wanting to get past that issue.

I would say that this is a good metroidvania, just good. Fun to play but not that great either.