dawn of sorrow if the main character wasn't annoying, for better and for worse, since i don't like either of the sorrow games.
this feels like if dawn of sorrow had more time to cook, basically. it has aspects of other igavania games mixed in too, the motion input moves make this by far the most enjoyable combat that iga's ever made, i always liked those in sotn but werent used very often so you'd often forget about them, they were also relatively niche and specific and with sotn being a cakewalk of a game there wasn't any need for them either unless you wanted to so getting to use them and actually feeling like i kinda need them to fight is a breath of fresh air, i like that this game is harder than most of iga's other work too, around the same difficulty of order of ecclesia i'd say but with less focus on damage types for the most part if you get the 'weapon techniques' down.
shards are literally just souls, but with somehow less variety than the ones in the sorrow games. 20% actually usable stuff 70% useless garbage. crafting system is fine, less boring than dawn, the questing system that ecclesia had is here and i think less interesting since part of why i enjoyed quests in ecclesia was for the tooltips and subtle character development shanoa would get throughout, as well as the interactions between her and the npc too. you don't get it that much here, especially since miriam can just be a person with emotions and memories here.
storywise this is kinda just the same quality as the sorrow duology (so bad) none of the characters are particularily compelling, the story is very much shounen jump and there's a subtle disdain for women throughout it just like every other igavania from sotn to ooe
there's always interesting things you can extrapolate thematically but it's kinda just filler textually.
if you like the gameplay, movement and tech of igavanias with a bigger focus on sotn-style motion inputs for combat this is a really fun game and you'll feel right at home, this koji igarashi guy knows how to make a good metroidvania, its like his one skill. in my arbitrary tier list of igavania games this is 3rd place above SotN but below PoR and OoE imo, it's just a bit too long and starts to slog towards the end along with my typical complaints about his games' writing.
i'm posting this while im near the end of the game so maybe my opinion will change when i finish the game proper but i highly doubt it since i've played these games before. edit: yea, no changes in my opinion.
