Aerannis hasn't gotten much exposure, so I'm gonna make this review a long one. Scroll down for TL;DR version.

Right off the bat, I'll start by saying that I played Aerannis with a controller and on Windows 7 on the normal difficulty. I experienced no bugs/glitches/softlocks or anything of the sort in my entire playthrough. The one thing I thought may have been a graphical glitch was likely just a trippy special effect for one of the boss fights, and didn't mess with my gameplay at all.

I must admit, I knew about Aerannis for a long while, and was pretty interested in the concept of it, but I was put off by the mixed Steam reviews and how it hadn't really "caught on". Eventually I was swayed by Steam e-mailing me about the game going on sale, and I told myself "Eh, I've spent more than a few dollars on games I didn't enjoy." Turned out to be worth it to me, in this case.

Aerannis has a mix of stealth missions and run-and-gun missions. Most of the time, "stealth" means "don't let anybody see you", but it can occasionally also mean "don't shoot people or cameras". Run-and-gun missions usually have stealth opportunities in them, but often it's just not practical, or straight-up impossible (i.e. boss fights). If you dislike stealth or run-and-gun, I wouldn't recommend Aerannis. I enjoy both styles of gameplay, to the point that Aerannis kept me hooked long enough to play it all the way through in one sitting and see one of the endings.

Platforming was mostly solid. I was grumbling about dodgy controls at first, but it didn't take me long to get used to them. Ceyda (the player character) starts off with being able to jump, crouch, slide (Mega Man style with down + jump) and crawl through short spaces. Throughout the game she'll learn how to grab ledges, wall jump, and sprint. The in-game tutorials were pretty good about introducing these mechanics as you needed them. There are no true pitfalls; feel free to make a leap of faith if you feel you need to for exploration.

There are some elements I don't often see in 2D platformers that gave this experience more flavor. Enemies are capable of friendly fire, and a lot of them seem to go berserk (especially in enclosed spaces) when they spot you, so there are often hilarious self-destructs and team kills. You can also hurt yourself with the sticky bombs that you'll acquire partyway into the game, so watch where you chuck those, especially since they do more damage to you than most enemy attacks do. Note that if you decide to go in guns blazing, Ceyda is an assassin, not a commando. Attack from a distance and from advantageous angles; she has no upper hand up close unless she's behind an unaware target. A lot of enemies can soak up quite a bit of damage if you're not insta-killing them via stealth. They also have a habit of clinging to you, since they seem to be aware of the fact that contact damage exists. Honestly, I don't think contact damage is a good mechanic for the human enemies in this game; I'd have preferred if it only existed on the robots/aliens that it makes sense for (like the alien bats, or the robot worms that can roll into a ball and ram into you).

One common thing I noticed in other reviews is people being confused about where to go in whatever mission, but I didn't run into this trouble myself. In order to not run into this problem, do two things: 1) Actually read what's being spoken in-game, as most of the information you get is useful in some way. 2) Explore everything that has a little arrow over it; the game is pretty good about not opening up places of interest until you can actually accomplish something there. Pretty similar to what games were like before the era of Wikis and objective markers.

Although the gameplay was what kept me playing, the initial hook was a trans woman protagonist (which are simply not a thing ever), and I wasn't disappointed in her. I found Ceyda pretty relatable on more levels than just being a trans woman. Ceyda's habit of shooting people in the middle of a conversation is something I often wish would happen in other games. Her sharp tongue, excellent problem solving skills, and no patience for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ while not being completely shut off to different ideas meant that I was never groaning at the stupidity of the meat puppet I was in charge of.

Apparently, there are people who have been offended by certain aspects of Aerannis' setting, themes, etc.. Right off the bat, let's get one fact straight: in this game's world, men aren't around anymore. All combatants are either human women, machines, or shapeshifting aliens. It doesn't make sense to play the "misogyny" card at the violence happening against the women in the game for this reason. You also can't kill civilians. It's not really anti-feminism, either; if feminism is supposed to be about ensuring that people all get basic human courtesy and equal opportunity regardless of gender, that isn't what's portrayed here.

The only real-world folks that really get no mercy here are TERFs. Note that "TERF" in this case is not the kind of person who would say that trans women and natal women are different, thus face different problems and not necessarily be able to see eye to eye all the time...but rather, the kind of person who would say that trans women are the same as men and use that as an excuse to look down on them as vermin. Just play Aerannis and look at how the (human) antagonists in the government are portrayed. People who conduct themselves as those characters do are the ones who I would use the word TERF in reference to. I think I've said enough about that, though. This is a game review, after all.

TL;DR:

Here's what I liked:
+ Fun mix of platforming, shooting and sneaking. Mixed enough to prevent any one of them from getting too stale.
+ Very little hand-holding, I had to actually figure the missions out for myself.
+ Excellent price to content ratio.
+ Great soundtrack (find it on Bandcamp and pay what you want for it).
+ Everything about Ceyda's character.
+ Speaking as someone who typically doesn't like boss fights, I liked the ones in this game. They all felt unique.
+ Death is pretty forgiving (note that I mean actual death, not necessarily mission failure in general).
+ Non-human enemies were fun to fight.
+ Getting to shoot some virtual TERFs. These ones had it coming, trust me. Play the damn game.

Here's what I didn't like:
- Human enemy AI can be annoying (although sometimes hilarious). They act more like Zerglings than people if they see you, and sometimes get stuck in a loop.
- There were some parts of the terrain that I couldn't tell were able to be grabbed or crawled through without trial and error. Sometimes things that looked like platforms weren't, and vice versa.
- There were a couple of stealth missions that could have used some extra checkpoints.
- Not really enough to do with all the nanomachines (currency). (If it turns out I'm an idiot and didn't explore enough, I'll revoke this nitpick.)
- Nameless NPCs could use some more dialogue, especially since the game has no voice acting.
- Controls took me some getting used to, especially the wall jump. Ceyda also has a lot of trouble going prone.
- Ceyda can't shoot while prone, which is a major pain.

Here's what I'm on the fence about:
+/- The graphics. I don't dislike them enough to complain about them, but I don't like them enough to sing their praises.
+/- Aerannis is short. The length is fine for the price, and I feel I got my moneys' worth, but I know a lot of people don't like short games (and I know I'd have wanted it to be longer, mainly because I enjoyed it).
+/- I have a lot of unanswered questions about the lore. This annoys me, but at the same time, it allows me to come up with my own ideas.

In conclusion, Aerannis deserves more love and more buyers. Give it a go. I was way too late for the Kickstarter, but if a sequel or spin-off ever happens, I'll definitely support it.