excellent game. an improvement over the first game in every area.

combat and movement are satisfying but never too frustrating or painful. it's so enjoyable jumping, dashing and launching into the air in this game, you just want to do it all day. I played with a controller, not sure how it goes with a keyboard/mouse. the slow drip of abilities and power-ups is perfect, every 30-60 min you are gaining some extra ability or way to move throughout the game so you never get bored.

the map is big without being too gigantic. there's just enough exploration and backtracking without it becoming tedious, and certain quests and vendor purchases help you uncover some of the map and collectables so you aren't left clueless the entire time

boss fights are fun and reasonably tough (on normal difficulty) but never so frustrating that you want to quit. you can easily switch out your abilities for more combat-focused abilities and get the boss fight done.

the game runs at whatever frames you want it to really, but the graphics/art design are some of the prettiest ♥♥♥♥ you'll ever see in a videogame, it's genuinely amazing, seriously I can't think of many games that look better than this.

the music is top tier, the exploration music is charming and the music during boss fights and chase scenes gives you goosebumps. it swells up in all the right places.

the story is "simple" I guess, mostly consisting of a handful of narrated cutscenes. but the graphics, music and animations combined with some concise writing just leave you feeling emotional throughout

the only negative to the game was one of the dungeons (Mouldwood Depths) where the devs tried a certain mechanic and it ended up just being frustrating rather than difficult or enjoyable. but that was about one hour out of the whole game. there's also "spirit trials" which are essentially time-trials where you have to get to one point on the map to another within a certain time - I finished all of these eventually but to be honest I hate time trials and some of these sucked.

overall I give this 10/10

♥♥♥♥

masterpiece