Okay, so this review is going to be slightly weird, because the final zone was a complete 180 in terms of quality from the rest of the game, which threw a wrench in how I'd otherwise review it.

So, my review of the first 75% of the game:

Let's start with the positives: Really cute graphics, some really nice backgrounds and landmarks throughout the areas. Main character's design is alright, but the story is all jokes and fourth-wall-breaking so you can't really take it seriously. The chiptunes are all pretty good, but you'll get tired of hearing them since there's only one per area (And each area lasts 1/4 of the game!) This game's music sort of made me realize why a lot of metroidvanias have more atmospheric music - it's annoying to have high-energy music blaring as you just backtrack and explore an area looking for secrets. It's not fitting!

The game controls really well, it's very smooth to play, the UI is nice, overall polished. Collecting chips (important collectable, must get 50 in each area to move on) is satisfying. It's rare to see a mechanic like that, so that's actually pretty cool.

I will note, the game is quite linear. This is not a metroidvania for when you want a big world to get lost in, or progress in a different order from other players.

Okay, now for my massive list of downsides:

• The map design is really not compelling. Just a big maze of similar passageways over and over, and you constantly have to backtrack around it to find the chips you need to open the door to the next area. This backtracking starts off being slightly annoying, but gets really frustrating in areas 2 and 3, which consist of big open areas full of cliffs and towers, and the way you progress is, like, "Well, let's jump off here and see where I land? Oh, this got me nowhere, okay let's climb all the way up again and try something else..." I really started to dread every time I unlocked a new part of the map because I just didn't wanna do it anymore, it was so tedious. There aren't really any upgrades that affect how you get around, most upgrades are essentially just keys. So gameplay stays very basic the whole time.

• There are some annoying design choices. Your freeze gun is an essential tool to progress through most places, to jump off frozen enemies. But you run out of ammo for it and have to farm enemies to get more, which is also tedious. After getting some energy cells in zone 2 though you'll never run out again so it stops mattering. It's often important to hold up/down to look up/down but unlike other games where pressing up moves the camera up instantly, you have to hold it for a couple seconds before it takes effect here, which, when you do it a lot, really slows down the pacing. Also, minor gripe, I don't like how performing an air attack makes your character stop moving. Again, slows you down as you're running through each area for the dozens time trying to mow through the enemies. (They respawn as soon as you take 2 steps away from them so you'll have to kill them a lot! They have to respawn because you need to use them for freeze ray jumping, of course, but that means you have to kill them over and over)

• The game is... very easy, and purposefully so. Right in the tutorial, the game informs you "Your downward stab can kill any enemy in one hit", and this is not a lie. Later areas introduce bigger enemies with scarier attacks, but it doesn't matter, they all die in one hit! You can also freeze any enemy, which also means they can be killed in one hit. The bosses are very easy. There's really just never any challenge, but more importantly, this means there's no sense of progression, because the final area is just as easy as the starting area, at least in terms of enemy HP. Some enemies do move faster or shoot more bullets, but, meh.

• So, I already said this, but getting around the map is annoying. The map is not very detailed. You can show the outline of all terrain on it but it's small and hard to really tell the walkable areas from the walls. You're gonna be running around revisiting all these tunnels, not sure what connects to what, retreading ground you've already been through a dozen times, thinking this looks like it leads where you wanna go, but oops, no, there's a wall, go back and around! There is... I don't wanna say "fast travel"... there's "travel". You open up two (unrelated) sets of teleporters. But there's just two total per area (one from each set of connected portals - they couldn't even have them all connected to each other!) and they're often, like, all the way at the edge of the map. Traveling to the fast travel locations is not fast. It is slow. You'll have to trek through the whole area just to reach one, then trek through the entirety of the next area that you teleported to to reach what you actually want to get to. Game would be much improved if you got a key item that let you teleport to any portal at any time.

• There are 4 different types of collectables you can find, and they all do nothing. The game does straight-up tell you this at the start, to be fair. But I dunno, it was still underwhelming. They couldn't give you some reward...? One of the collectable types even has an NPC who thanks you for returning all their children. But they give you nothing! Also, for some of these collectable types, there is no record of which ones you've gotten, so you'll almost certainly use a guide to go find the remaining ones at the end of the game. I'd advise screenshotting each one as you get them so that you remember which you've got already. (If you want to get them, which, again, you don't need to, they give nothing!)

Uhhh. I think I had some more gripes I can edit in if I remember them. But that's mostly it. Basically it's just like. It's fine but it's just not that good. But it's not that bad either! It's totally playable.

And, uh, then I reached the final zone and... it immediately introduced an exciting new mechanic (in a game which otherwise only added one new mechanic throughout the whole first three zones, and barely used it anyway), and then not only that but the map design just got way better and it was fun to explore, and each level segment was cool and didn't involve a bunch of boring backtracking, movement through the zone was easier and more intuitive, there were new puzzles, a few new mechanics, I stopped being able to know what to expect because the design choices weren't uninspired and repetitive anymore. It was like I was playing a totally different game! It's crazy because it still keeps a lot of the same elements, it just adds a few things and changes a bit of design and suddenly everything works and the same mechanics I was tired of help form a really awesome final world. I'm not sure I've experienced anything like it before, a game that flips 180 from "meh" to "fantastic". Oh, and the music track here was also pretty good, maybe the highest energy one, so that helped I guess.

Basically the reason why it works so much better is, instead of backtracking through a bunch of annoying maze-like passages, you backtrack by getting in your ship and flying through the big open area, which makes it so much smoother to get where you wanna go quickly! Then in the second-half you have the little hub room connecting to the 4 plugs, so, again, no tedious backtracking.

I'm ultimately leaving the score as a 2 because the game as a whole is still not that great, but it's a 2 game that has, like, a 4 final chapter. What a delightful surprise that was after forcing myself to slog through the rest of the game.