just beat the game and progressing through the postgame and i can say this game is a gem dont let the mixed reviews fool you

the combat and platforming feels very good and fun and starts to only really be somewhat challenging in the postgame and all the bosses are fair and fun to learn despite what other reviews are saying they really arent as hard as people say they are the only somewhat hard bosses are the final boss, the pink parasite, and the secret boss (who i havent beat yet) also none of the bosses are entirely rng lmao the only one that may take a little bit of luck is prolly the final boss but even then its still completely doable if youre skilled enough its just a skill issue if youre dying a lot

the exploring is also pretty fun and requires a good bit of thinking to get through
however in the late game things can be somewhat cryptic and easy to miss as certain breakable blocks are either blending in with the background and easy to miss or just forgettable especially for certain upgrades and a lot of puzzles and clues on where to progress involve deciphering an alien language that can be annoying to decipher but those are the only complaints about it and might not even affect you if you pay super close attention and are patient

8/10 so far would highly recommend
if you like metroidvanias you will like this game

I enjoyed the first few hours. The pixel art is nice, if a bit -too- chunky for my taste. The music is great.

I reached an area where some plant-looking monsters were shooting at me while I was trying to swing multiple times with the hookshot. I didn't have any tools that could hurt them, so I just had to try over and over. Between the plant monsters and the wonky hookshot mechanics, it took awhile, but I eventually made it across. Instead of feeling good about it, however, I just sighed.

I filtered the Steam reviews to the negative ones to see what people were saying about the difficulty as the game goes on, and learned that of course it gets worse. It's a bit of a shame that I won't see the rest of the game.