What a wonderful experience from start to finish!
This game feels like a true oldschool video game where you can lose yourself in for a few hours to forget everything and just have fun, but enhanced with modern and fluid gameplay.
A perfect blend between a Zelda-like adventure game and a shoot'em up with a little bullethell sprinkled on.
I can recommend this game fully with nothing really negative to say!

I can imagine this being a very forgiving entrypoint into the world of "shmups" and "bullet hell" games for some folks since even beginners to this genre should have no problem on the easy and normal difficulties.
I played on "advanced" difficulty and found that it nails a perfect balance between challenge and fairness throughout the open-world campaign, with a nice steady ramp-up in difficulty.
Nonetheless the difficulty can be adjusted on-the-fly if needed, however up to a certain point you'll need to stay on advanced difficulty to get a certain achievement for advanced mode.
After that point there is also an arena-style gameplay which is not my cup of tea and was getting a little frustrating, but it is very doable with a handful of tries on normal difficulty.

Moving around feels extremely fluid, satisfying and frankly even fun at times.
The input feels direct and reacts instantly, any mistake I made while moving/dodging felt like I had only myself to blame and not the game.

The artstyle is very nice and crisp, lots of color yet easy on the eyes.
Enemies and bullets are recognizeable at a glance, even in busy situations.
Level design and exploration is well done, reminiscent of classic Zelda games, many things to do and discover, and for all the completionists there are some helpful upgrades available later on to see if there is anything you missed.

Top notch sound design, from the cute little reactions of your ship, to the impact and firing sounds and movement, everything has a little acoustic feedback that makes everything feel very "alive" for the lack of a better word.
The music is pretty good, I wish there was a downloadable soundtrack on Steam or Bandcamp though.
One curious point I want to mention though is that the Overworld/Town track is basically an altered version of Disasterpeace's "Adventure" track from the FEZ OST. The similarity is so blatant that I refuse to believe this is a mere coincidence. The track for the "Woods" area is also sounds very suspiciously similar to something I have heard in FEZ before.
All the other tracks sounded "original" though and fit the overall theme really nicely, and those did not trigger such a massive "deja vu" for me.

About 8,5 h for campaign completion (to trigger the achievements to complete the game) and collecting most upgrades and secrets.
For full completion I'd say about 10-14h, I 100%ed the game at 16,7h but that is with some added hours AFK time.

So, again, can fully recommend to anyone interested even slightly in Zelda-likes and/or shmups!

[h3]Description and Recommendation[/h3] What a wonderful experience from start to finish! This game feels like a true oldschool video game where you can lose yourself in for a few hours to forget everything and just have fun, but enhanced with modern and fluid gameplay. A perfect blend between a Zelda-like adventure game and a shoot'em up with a little bullethell sprinkled on. I can recommend this game fully with nothing really negative to say! [h3]Difficulty[/h3] I can imagine this being a very forgiving entrypoint into the world of "shmups" and "bullet hell" games for some folks since even beginners to this genre should have no problem on the easy and normal difficulties. I played on "advanced" difficulty and found that it nails a perfect balance between challenge and fairness throughout the open-world campaign, with a nice steady ramp-up in difficulty. Nonetheless the difficulty can be adjusted on-the-fly if needed, however up to a certain point you'll need to stay on advanced difficulty to get a certain achievement for advanced mode. After that point there is also an arena-style gameplay which is not my cup of tea and was getting a little frustrating, but it is very doable with a handful of tries on normal difficulty. [h3]Movement[/h3] Moving around feels extremely fluid, satisfying and frankly even fun at times. The input feels direct and reacts instantly, any mistake I made while moving/dodging felt like I had only myself to blame and not the game. [h3]Art & Level Design[/h3] The artstyle is very nice and crisp, lots of color yet easy on the eyes. Enemies and bullets are recognizeable at a glance, even in busy situations. Level design and exploration is well done, reminiscent of classic Zelda games, many things to do and discover, and for all the completionists there are some helpful upgrades available later on to see if there is anything you missed. [h3]Sound & Music[/h3] Top notch sound design, from the cute little reactions of your ship, to the impact and firing sounds and movement, everything has a little acoustic feedback that makes everything feel very "alive" for the lack of a better word. The music is pretty good, I wish there was a downloadable soundtrack on Steam or Bandcamp though. One curious point I want to mention though is that the Overworld/Town track is basically an altered version of Disasterpeace's "Adventure" track from the FEZ OST. The similarity is so blatant that I refuse to believe this is a mere coincidence. The track for the "Woods" area is also sounds very suspiciously similar to something I have heard in FEZ before. All the other tracks sounded "original" though and fit the overall theme really nicely, and those did not trigger such a massive "deja vu" for me. [h3]Time to complete[/h3] About 8,5 h for campaign completion (to trigger the achievements to complete the game) and collecting most upgrades and secrets. For full completion I'd say about 10-14h, I 100%ed the game at 16,7h but that is with some added hours AFK time. So, again, can fully recommend to anyone interested even slightly in Zelda-likes and/or shmups!