A ruined nation of Houses Millius and Frost, homunculi created to serve humans, and a blight born of people’s hatred form the melancholic backdrop, and the storytelling earns its grim tone through letters, memories and diaries rather than exposition dumps. Side threads land hard: a girl’s tragic arc, a pair of side characters whose fates resolve quietly, and item text that consistently treats the artificial servants as people rather than props. The tuneers’ knowledge of each homunculus doubles as worldbuilding, and the dying-world atmosphere never slips into mere grimness for its own sake. Hidden arena towers and the number-seven twist lurking within one of them give the endgame structure an extra layer for thorough explorers.
The companion-homunculus system is the design’s backbone: abilities are characters with memories, side stories and unlockable upgrade trees. A dive and ground pound, a web grapple, a wall dash, an ascent and more each unlock traversal and combat options simultaneously, so every acquisition changes both the map and the loadout. The loop is genuinely addictive: each new ability immediately sends exploration back to previously blocked areas, and the map-hunting rhythm never palls across a full completionist run.
Quality-of-life design sets a genre benchmark. Items are shown on the map, and completed areas change colour, both features tailored to thorough players and both absent from most peers. The soundtrack earns unprompted praise across sessions, melancholic compositions that suit the blighted nation perfectly, and weapon and relic slots invite constant tinkering, with slot costs and healing-potency trade-offs deep enough to reward experimentation rather than punish it.
Combat depth comes from statuses and break systems. Multi-phase bosses carry break and stagger mechanics, and status effects (fire, shock, freeze) matter considerably; shock’s defence reduction becomes a core tactic rather than an optional garnish. Weapon choice stays fluid throughout, sword, scythe and axe each viable, with the scythe’s reach eventually winning commitment, and the loadout freedom means no build is ever locked away from the player.
Boss design draws the sharpest criticism. Most fights are fine, but several frustrate: bosses that summon healers extend encounters artificially, specific fights render counters useless, and a punishing final phase demands more of the player’s reflexes than the rest of the game has taught. The arena tower gauntlet, with no rest point between its stages, and a two-hitting early boss spike test patience; the Garbage King’s tower climbs similarly steepen the middle. None of it dents the overall experience, but the inconsistency is real. Contact damage catches veterans of contact-free metroidvanias off-guard deep into the run.
The post-game holds one genuine misstep. A dash-challenge room demands pixel-perfect inputs across four consecutive trials, an absurd difficulty spike in a game whose pacing is otherwise straightforward, and it is the single most ire-drawing element in an otherwise generous package. Minor text rough edges (duplicated letters in item names) barely register, and the gatekeeper homunculus’s dry comedy lands as charm rather than friction.
Overall, this is a clear step up from an already excellent predecessor: the ability-unlock loop, the map quality-of-life and the haunting music combine into roughly sixteen and a half hours of near-frictionless completionist play, and the far-bigger-than-expected final act (an upper stratum, a land of origin, two endings and a true final fight) rewards the journey generously. Occasional boss frustrations and the pixel-perfect room aside, this is a studio whose next metroidvania is already worth anticipating.
