Easily the best Souls-like (since surpassed by Lords of the Fallen from 2023) and I personally like it more than Dark Souls itself. However it is a little buggy, but nothing I encountered that breaks the game.

+I totally love that with every melee hit you refill your mana and health injections, based on your weapon's leech stat. This gives you great sustain. and is a huge quality of life feature.
+I like the sci-fi setting and weird monsters.
+Combat feels responsive and great. Enemies and bosses (except for the final boss) don't spam bs AOE attacks constantly coughEldenRingcough.
+Your melee weapon doesn't bounce off walls. Sounds insignificant... until you play Dark Souls and get killed repeatedly because your attack doesn't land because it bounced off the wall letting the enemy wail on you. Or worse, the bounce, which causes knockback, knocks you off the edge and you die.
+I like that you can increase and decrease the difficulty at any save point (breach) using certain effigies. With higher difficulty the enemies are tougher but drop way more axions (exp).
+If you want to you don't have to fight the final boss. You can just surrender your data and go to a new cycle.
+I love the maze-like levels and how interconnected they are, like Dark Souls 1.

+-Story is meh and almost non-existent, and told in a terrible way. I beat the game and I still have almost no idea what's going on. For some reason this seems to be a requirement for Souls-likes. Just because Dark Souls had a meh story terribly delivered doesn't mean you have to copy them there too.
+-I would have liked more weapon and moveset variety, especially for the guns and catalysts (magic).
+-There's a bunch of armor, but most of them have crappy stats. Aegis Armature is easily the best set and it's definitely worth it to increase your load stat for it regardless of build. Unfortunately you can't upgrade your armor like you can your weapon, so eventually you're going to be getting one-shot on the higher difficulties by the bosses anyway.
+-I would have liked changes for new game plus, like the items found are different, change in enemies, and so on.
+-The Omnicube is cool, but most of the programs are junk and you'll never use them. I don't even know what you're supposed to do with the cooling and warming programs.
+-I hate when these games have secret walls. Worse, you're almost required to find these secrets to progress, at least in a timely manner. But once you learn what the secret door looks like it's pretty easy to spot. This is in contrast to Dark Souls that has illusory walls that are impossible to discern and you must read a guide.
+-At first it really annoyed me that in order to warp between breaches you needed to find and use a breach synchronizer. However by the end of the game you have learned the hub areas and used your breaches there and have some to spare. Annoying as a newb, not so bad when you're experienced.
+-I wish the game had a map, even a simple one that showed you what areas connect to what other areas. Expect to be lost for a long time.
+-The black hole clock is an interesting idea, but unfortunately the game doesn't really explain what it does. When the orange symbol is at the 3 or 9 position that's when hordes will appear, behind an orange barrier like a boss, and reward special loot. Areas also have a gray circle and when the orange and gray circle meet then I believe enemies are stronger and reward more axions. Also that's when black hole (white) barriers are lowered. However some barriers need you to also input the correct eye codes (located at a certain place), and it's unnecessarily convoluted. Most of the loot behind them is uninteresting. Only bother with it to kill the First Archon Knight and the only if you care about the achievement. It also sucks that there's no way to speed up the clock.

-The game is buggy and unfortunately the dlc introduced new bugs. The devs are supposed to be looking into it. The worst ones are you can't move after dodging and your character stands there waiting to die (only happened once), and the other bad one is your healing doesn't work (happened to me several times).
-Stagger builds are useless on difficulties higher than 1. As you increase the difficulty all stats of the enemy increases, including its resistance to staggering. Stick to fast weapons.
-Almost all of the melee weapon abilities are useless. You're almost always better off using an elemental conductor and activating its special ability to enhance your weapon with that element doing a lot more damage, especially if the enemy is weak to it.

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Ultimately worth a buy, especially on sale.

Easily the best Souls-like (since surpassed by Lords of the Fallen from 2023) and I personally like it more than Dark Souls itself. However it is a little buggy, but nothing I encountered that breaks the game. [h1]Pros[/h1] +I totally love that with every melee hit you refill your mana and health injections, based on your weapon's leech stat. This gives you great sustain. and is a huge quality of life feature. +I like the sci-fi setting and weird monsters. +Combat feels responsive and great. Enemies and bosses (except for the final boss) don't spam bs AOE attacks constantly coughEldenRingcough. +Your melee weapon doesn't bounce off walls. Sounds insignificant... until you play Dark Souls and get killed repeatedly because your attack doesn't land because it bounced off the wall letting the enemy wail on you. Or worse, the bounce, which causes knockback, knocks you off the edge and you die. +I like that you can increase and decrease the difficulty at any save point (breach) using certain effigies. With higher difficulty the enemies are tougher but drop way more axions (exp). +If you want to you don't have to fight the final boss. You can just surrender your data and go to a new cycle. +I love the maze-like levels and how interconnected they are, like Dark Souls 1. [h1]Neutral[/h1] +-Story is meh and almost non-existent, and told in a terrible way. I beat the game and I still have almost no idea what's going on. For some reason this seems to be a requirement for Souls-likes. Just because Dark Souls had a meh story terribly delivered doesn't mean you have to copy them there too. +-I would have liked more weapon and moveset variety, especially for the guns and catalysts (magic). +-There's a bunch of armor, but most of them have crappy stats. Aegis Armature is easily the best set and it's definitely worth it to increase your load stat for it regardless of build. Unfortunately you can't upgrade your armor like you can your weapon, so eventually you're going to be getting one-shot on the higher difficulties by the bosses anyway. +-I would have liked changes for new game plus, like the items found are different, change in enemies, and so on. +-The Omnicube is cool, but most of the programs are junk and you'll never use them. I don't even know what you're supposed to do with the cooling and warming programs. +-I hate when these games have secret walls. Worse, you're almost required to find these secrets to progress, at least in a timely manner. But once you learn what the secret door looks like it's pretty easy to spot. This is in contrast to Dark Souls that has illusory walls that are impossible to discern and you must read a guide. +-At first it really annoyed me that in order to warp between breaches you needed to find and use a breach synchronizer. However by the end of the game you have learned the hub areas and used your breaches there and have some to spare. Annoying as a newb, not so bad when you're experienced. +-I wish the game had a map, even a simple one that showed you what areas connect to what other areas. Expect to be lost for a long time. +-The black hole clock is an interesting idea, but unfortunately the game doesn't really explain what it does. When the orange symbol is at the 3 or 9 position that's when hordes will appear, behind an orange barrier like a boss, and reward special loot. Areas also have a gray circle and when the orange and gray circle meet then I believe enemies are stronger and reward more axions. Also that's when black hole (white) barriers are lowered. However some barriers need you to also input the correct eye codes (located at a certain place), and it's unnecessarily convoluted. Most of the loot behind them is uninteresting. Only bother with it to kill the First Archon Knight and the only if you care about the achievement. It also sucks that there's no way to speed up the clock. [h1]Cons[/h1] -The game is buggy and unfortunately the dlc introduced new bugs. The devs are supposed to be looking into it. The worst ones are you can't move after dodging and your character stands there waiting to die (only happened once), and the other bad one is your healing doesn't work (happened to me several times). -Stagger builds are useless on difficulties higher than 1. As you increase the difficulty all stats of the enemy increases, including its resistance to staggering. Stick to fast weapons. -Almost all of the melee weapon abilities are useless. You're almost always better off using an elemental conductor and activating its special ability to enhance your weapon with that element doing a lot more damage, especially if the enemy is weak to it. ------------- Ultimately worth a buy, especially on sale.