I finished playing the game on hard, and I think the game has potential.
Getting the good parts out of the way first: I like the concept of H scenes being revolved around status effects. Animations aren't perfectly crisp and fluid, but they are above average and look great. While limited, I like the idea of customizable equips. Transform mechanic was also an interesting idea, along with status effects preventing you from doing so.
The parts I liked but was a bit iffy about: the colors were nice but the contrast wasn't good enough, especially in the factory while transformed. Sometimes it was difficult to see what you were doing or where you exactly were. Sound was pretty great at first, until you realize a lot of sfx were repeated throughout the whole game, which was a bummer.
Now for the main meat of the impressions:
Nothing in the game was well-incorporated. H-scenes didn't have much to do with the gameplay. I think the status effects were supposed to tie them together, but it was too easy to remove them, and most of the restraints can be removed extremely quickly. Visor mask was a really interesting concept that crashed and burned because of the limitless potential wasted on the fact you can just forget about it after removing them in 2 seconds. I feel that the status effects can be a lot more weighty and punishing, at the cost of being a little less frequent to come across. Those vigor mask drones for example, are really annoying to deal with because they keep flying through walls and such, but if they weren't buzzing around like flies and make them actually challenging to deal with while keeping them sparse, I feel that it would've made for a better experience. Perhaps even force controlling the character to do negative things would've been pretty cool.
Most of the game was just far too easy. The bosses can be touched upon briefly to have a more satisfying experience, but I think those guys are okay compared to the rest, the "platforming." Moving around to the next objective just felt like a chore, and most of the enemies just died in one hit. The enemies blankly stare at me for few seconds before even doing anything to begin with, so I just walk up to them and hit them which oneshots them before they get to do any attack most of the time. I think the platforming section can also be more challenging. I don't think anyone would be upset to see actual death traps in the platforming, nor things like jump quest, as long as they are reasonable and not bullshit. The problem with this game however, is that there are quite a few times I can't actually see where I'm going to be because it's off some cliff and I can't see like 3 miles below where I'm standing, which has issues with my suggestion of death traps. I think keeping the game visually logical while also introducing challenges like those would be beneficial. Maybe doesn't quite need to be heavily influenced by Megaman like Rosenkreuzstilette did (although that was a pretty great platformer in my opinion), but it would've been pretty interesting to see that.
The combat feels honestly very disappointing, easily my least favorite part of the game. You can get stuck at ledges when you jump, you're stuck in animation lock when you just perform melee combos, the jump aerial is very floaty and awkward, transform beam attack is just full of nonsense (not being able to move or cancel while using the beam is just silly), list goes on and on. I pretty much bulldozed most of the game spamming jump aerial + downward slam as I was just running around. I honestly do not have a small suggestion to deal with these issues, there are far too many problems and nothing incorporated together to make for a satisfying experience. The game needs to decide whether to keep the player fast and fluid to give more power to the player, or to give them slow and weighty options, to increase the challenge of the game. I feel that the game tried to compromise and do both, which just made it feel sloppy instead.
Customization needed a lot more flavor. The equips were basically just passives. Having different types of weapons would've been extremely cool, kinda like Metroidvania, but right now, you just stick on 4 of your best passives and call it a day; it might as well not have any customization at all. Transforming also could've been a lot more interesting, but that was not the case either.
The parts I was disappointed in greatly outnumber the other two parts, but that goes to show the expectations I had. I still think the concept is interesting and have high hopes for the developer's next game.
