So. I completed the game, here's a very quick review.
Bottom line: I love it, it's amazing and it has great design for the most part. But it has problems, and it can be pointlessly irritating without never really being difficult.
The art style is fantastic. It falls occasionally in the "flash vibe" that I find extremely offputting, but it's very limited and the wonderful art direction and amazing animations completely make up for it. It's really pleasant to the eye, with the detailed characters and vibrant colors, everything is very cohesive and it never go off-theme. Beautiful.
The controls are pretty thight and responsive, you always feel completely in control of your character - except in a few certain particular situations that can lead to frustration (more of this later). Combat is pretty simple, you click and you thrust your sword, plus the various trasformations have puzzle-solving abilities that can also be used in combat. Old school, simple, effective. I like it, but it's probably a matter of taste: my friend found it too simplicistic and didn't like it at all. I put an accent on "thrust" and this is important: since you don't swing the sword (so you don't make an arc) but just hit right in front of you, combat against flying enemies can be pretty annoying. Especially when they decide to hit you going through walls. Quite annoying.
The game starts like a classic platform-metroidvania... but this is somewhat deceiving. The more you progress, the more the accent is put on the puzzles and less on the platforming and exploration. After a certain point, every room is a puzzle room. The game changes A LOT after that certain point. And that point is the volcano. Man, fuck the volcano and whoever designed that shit. Anyway, this big change is the biggest downside in my eyes, since it makes the game kind of stressful and some "easy" connection room would have helped in relieving the stress of the constant puzzles. Let's add that the puzzles are often an exercise on frustration with no real difficulty, just plain "trial and error" that can get extremely annoying without really adding anything worthwile. Examples: as I said before, the controls are thight but not while jumping and "bouncing" on enemies, and there are a few puzzles where you are asked to do just that that quickly lead to frustration: jump, jump, you fall, you go back up, jump, jump, you fall et cetera. Both me and my friend found this really annoying and pointless. And let's not even talk about the puzzle where you have to freeze the fireballs. There's a puzzle where you follow some currents underwater, it's technically quite easy BUT if you are just a pixel too high or too low you get sucked in by another current and dragged all the way to the beginning. Irritating. Sometimes you really feel that the game is trying its best to just irritate you for no reason.
Another little thing that annoyed me quite a lot: you find the last upgrade for the best gear at the very end of the room before the final boss' room. Really, what's the fucking point? This leaves zero space to enjoy that hard-earned gear.
I realize that, me being me, I talked way more about the downsides but overall the game is great fun, it's cheerful and light-hearted, it's most of the time a joy to play and explore and I liked it a lot... just be careful that can sometimes be an irritating chore.
P.S.
Fuck the volcano.
Oh, by the way. My friend left the game at the mansion (the zone just after the volcano) because he was annoyed by the mirror puzzles: in his word that was pointless busywork and he just didn't care anymore.
