I truly wish that I was able to give this something other than "Recommended" or "Not Recommended", because this game DOES have fun moments but they're so few and far between that it's kind of mind-numbing, and it even has a really interesting world but it fails so hard at giving you any reason to actually care about its world. I truly enjoyed the first five or so hours of the game, but as it got into hour six and seven I asked myself "Why am I even playing this game?" because it kept just being more of the same constantly. Perhaps this game is intended for a more casual audience, and I come from playing most of the Armored Core games and other more demanding mecha games, and so maybe I'm just expecting more than this can give me.

What truly sucks about all of the negativity I feel towards this game is that there TRULY ARE cool segments and interesting mechanics within this game that I want to see more of, yet I truly don't have the drive to continue slaving away at it for those one or two glimpses of cool segments. Some of the coolest parts are like how there are enemies that work in tandem with one another to coordinate mortar strikes against you, or how much customization there is and how many parts there are, and how you can customize your little mecha girl to look certain ways (I made mine a pink and blue-haired samurai). DN has some interesting parts, but out of the seven hours I've played only maybe one hour of playing the game has been made up of them, and the juxtaposition of changing back to fighting the same old boring mob enemies really ruins the experience.

Dolls' Nest as a game feels like it lacks a purpose as to why it exists. DN feels like an amalgamation of a bunch of different genre's and mechanics from various mecha games taken and stapled together into some unholy machination that if you stare at long enough you can see the bloody seams tearing apart from. Dolls' Nest feels like it wants to be all of these things so badly, but fails to really have any identifying hook or feeling of its own that kept me coming back for more.

Combat is genuinely the worst part in this game, with it never really elevating itself beyond going around the enemy and shooting them in the back until they're dead, and even when you finally find a boss or enemy which you THINK might challenge this game design it pulls the blanket off of itself to reveal it follows the same design flow for the fight.
There's just SO MANY bad weapons in the game as well, and there's not really "builds" that make for them to be better or worse as there's no stat increases that directly influence them like a souls-like would have, which it claims to be. Not once since the tutorial section have I found a new weapon and been excited to try it, because while they do exist they make for combat to be more arduous and obnoxious rather than difficult by doing basically no damage for most of them.

In the entire time playing the game I've only found six weapons which have felt good to use, and melee weapons are incredibly clunky as they have no boost when using them so it feels like you're limp-wristing a noodle as you skate towards your enemies and HOPE you hit them in timing with your swing only for them to not die even still because melee weapons do basically no damage unless they're leveled up to the max. There's no reloading of stowed away weapons either aside from melee weapons, so most weapons can't even serve as a backup unless you're using a melee weapon.

So Here's my opinion on this game. I both recommend and do not recommend this game.
The concept of the game is amazing. The idea of an cyborg style anime girl with Armored core controls and build set up with Souls-like style gameplay is an amazing idea.
The execution leaves a lot to be desired.
PROS:
-Music is amazing.
-Customization is varied and nice.
-Graphics are nice, mostly.
-Story is unique and mostly pretty good for the 4ish hours I played.
-Price point is good.
CONS:
-The movement is sluggish at times. There is a delay in the input commands as well.
-Melee combat is extremely bad and needs work, Each slash has a cool down. The melee has no autolock feature or dash attack feature like in AC where melee can connect with enemies easier. You can also be at point blank range and miss attacks against stationary enemies.
-Ranged weapons needing ammo isn't a bad thing, but each weapon has a plethora of problems. Weapons either have the longest reload time, or the longest cooldown between shots.
-In combination with the last point, the lock on is messy. When "locked on" you will still miss many shots and the game does not adjust lock on for moving enemies. When fighting nymphs, the battle becomes frustrating as you have no viable means to attack efficiently.
-The first couple of bosses were too simplistic in design and in terms of combat. One of them you can just sit under it and is hard to take damage.
-Leveling up is not explained. You need to kill nymphs that appear after clearing an area then take the samples to the "Lady on a Stick" and unlock your level cap. THEN buy the extra level nodes to actually level up. Each sample gives 5 extra levels to buy. There might be an ingame explanation but I NEVER found one.
-Game is not optimized well. I can handle AC6 on my PC but Dolls Nest has sputtering moments that drastically cut frame rates in weird spots.
-Enemies glitch out of existence or just act odd in weird instances.
-The lack of music outside of bosses is a shame. The soundtrack is amazing but you hardly ever hear music. There isn't even ambiance noises to break up the silence during exploration. Not even any music when fighting enemy nymphs.
After 4 hours I unfortunately uninstalled the game. I apologize as it has potential but in its current state, I could not find the motivation to finish it. I apologize and hope that maybe some fixes will adjust the game or at the very least, I wish you the best of luck on your next title. I will not ask for a refund as I still want to support your potential growth. Thank you.

I am so happy RGE told me about this game. I enjoy this game a lot. I will no longer give money to IGN 7/10 slope. Ill support indies cause these are the Devs that truly deserve the money. I hope many more people will rally together and support this game and games like it. Thank you.