Captures the feeling of a floaty Tao combat without actually feeling floaty.
Smaller than hollow knight, despite being adjacent in many gameplay elements.
Also cats...

The theme is right up my alley. Visuals, music and that, fluid floaty feel to combat really sells that eastern fantasy.

I love that a lot of combat is parry-oriented. Early stages are rough as they have some grouped enemies, which you might be able to parry, but cannot safely counter-attack (not without upgrades that enabled tagging multiple enemies). I'd call it Sekiro-adjacent. You don't have a million parry techniques to remember and parries/dodges aren't limited by stamina/ammo. Instead counters and dashes are on a short cooldown and failed counters can count as guard instead (so you take temporary damage which can be recovered). I prefer this approach over stamina management.

There's also some exploration. It's better than looter games, but it's not on par with best metroidvanias out there as only about a fifth of all finds actually feel valuable.

• XP loss is particularly annoying because XP in this game isn't a tiny stat boost as it is in most souls-likes. It's your combat options, INCLUDING ability to counter-attack multiple enemies, reflect projectiles and so much more.
  
• There's a type of delayed counter-attack which is impossible to learn without failing on each enemy that requires it first. I didn't like it in general, and it also feels clunky because it can't be initiated mid-air.
  
• 3 missable achievements (1 of which are fairly late in game), very low replay value and no cutscene/dialog skips, making replays a very tedious affair.

Captures the feeling of a floaty Tao combat without actually feeling floaty. Smaller than hollow knight, despite being adjacent in many gameplay elements. Also cats... [h1]Summary[/h1] The theme is right up my alley. Visuals, music and that, fluid floaty feel to combat really sells that eastern fantasy. I love that a lot of combat is parry-oriented. Early stages are rough as they have some grouped enemies, which you might be able to parry, but cannot safely counter-attack (not without upgrades that enabled tagging multiple enemies). I'd call it Sekiro-adjacent. You don't have a million parry techniques to remember and parries/dodges aren't limited by stamina/ammo. Instead counters and dashes are on a short cooldown and failed counters can count as guard instead (so you take temporary damage which can be recovered). I prefer this approach over stamina management. There's also some exploration. It's better than looter games, but it's not on par with best metroidvanias out there as only about a fifth of all finds actually feel valuable. [h1]Negatives[/h1] [list] [*] XP loss is particularly annoying because XP in this game isn't a tiny stat boost as it is in most souls-likes. It's your combat options, INCLUDING ability to counter-attack multiple enemies, reflect projectiles and so much more. [*] There's a type of delayed counter-attack which is impossible to learn without failing on each enemy that requires it first. I didn't like it in general, and it also feels clunky because it can't be initiated mid-air. [*] 3 missable achievements (1 of which are fairly late in game), very low replay value and no cutscene/dialog skips, making replays a very tedious affair.