Masterpiece of a game all the way through - beautiful environments, awesome sound design, and fun gameplay. Like most metroidvanias, be prepared to run around exploring some of the same areas over and over to see if you can get to a previously inaccessible area with a new ability. This wasn't a big downside to me because the world is so large and interesting that I didn't mind spending more time revisiting other areas and finding new areas!

After beating the game update:
----------------------------
Lots of improvements made to performance, and a patch today that balanced the economy and scrap amounts a bit better. My wife and I high-fived a number of times after these boss fights. They make you feel like it's impossible, but then you eventually do it and it feels so good. This game is incredible.

Original Review:
----------------------------
An incredible game so far. The environments are varied and detailed. The music sets the tone wonderfully. The voice acting is top notch, and the lore of the world expressed through writings you find or through random NPCs you meet is amazing.

I am playing on hardcore, and already lost a few characters, but still enjoying the game a ton. I love that if you play in a group and die, your teammates can still resurrect you at a checkpoint. Tying the hardcore death punishment to the group rather than the individual helps to avoid the pitfall of one teammate dies so the entire run ends. It also makes for some really intense and big plays from the survivors if they can get you back up.

There are definitely some performance issues, but not enough to impact my overall enjoyment of the game. Stuttering is quite common, especially when opening menus, though a recent patch claims to have addressed the menu lag today.

There are also still some pretty significant bugs to work out if you are a hardcore player. I was running a group with my brother and wife, and my brother had died. My wife and I were back to the checkpoint to resurrect him, and we were not in combat at all. Steam servers went offline, which severed the host connection. This meant my brother's character was permanently killed. What's more is my wife and I were also dead upon disconnect, even though there was no combat or anything else that should have caused us to die. It was like it took the status of my brother and applied it to all of us when the game went down. This was a pretty frustrating way to lose a character, and hopefully will be addressed in the near future.

There is no in-game text or voice chat at this point, which is a bit awkward when trying to play with others, but not a deal breaker to me.

All that said, I'm still playing hardcore characters, still enjoying the hell out of the combat and classes I can explore.