The good
- good level design
- enemies do not feel repetitive

The bad
- no checkpoints or manual save, you restart game from the place you last saved
- dismantling items requires alchemist ingredient, so needs a lot of grind
- bosses (especially the last two) don't have predictable movie set and focus more on luck than skill
- character can blend with the background, making it hard to see where we are during the boss fights
- villains are too predictable
- difficulty is not even, and there is moment with huge spike, where we move from killing everything in 1 hit, to being killed by even buffed-weakest-enemy in one hit

Conclusion:
It is good a metroidvania, but bosses fights made me want to drop the game few times. They aren't as polished as bosses in Hollow Knight, and more annoying to beat than skill-challenging.

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Story:

We are the shardbinder - human that is able to fight with demons, as they have special shard(s) in their body that are able to bind to demon power and use it. We are sent to the demon castle, tasked with banishing it from the world. Along the way we learn the origin of the shardbinders, do some easy fetch quests. Setting is interesting, but plot is uninspiring and shallow.

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Gameplay:

Metroidvania quite similar to the Hollow Knight. We jump around, kill enemies, use new powers to access previously locked parts of the map. Controls are responsive and the platforming part is good.

There are few weapons to chose from (swords, great swords, katanas, shoes (that are used to kick enemies...), whips). But I found all weapons apart from the swords to be too slow to be used effectively. There are fire arms, but I also never used those. Weapons can be found around the map or crafted. We can also customize our armor and shards that gives us passive bonuses - armor is found or crafted, while shards are randomly given to us when we kill certain enemy type.

Mana is used to activate shards - shooting arrows, summoning dragon that attacks enemies or paintings that act as (rather bad) shield, use elemental powers etc. Shards are upgraded by either finding another shard of the same type (they stack up), or upgrading the shard itself. Both requires a lot of grind, as chance to drop shard from enemy or ingredients is low.

Crafting system is quite robust, but requires enormous amount of grind if we'd want to unlock everything. Cooking recipes gives passive bonuses such as higher mana regeneration, higher damage or higher luck. Crafting best weapons and armors also requires a lot of crafting materials, and they are dropped with 5% or 10% chance from specific enemies. Enemies respawn when we make transition between the screens, but it still takes a lot of time to drop something we need.

Inventory is neatly organized, but it could remember sorting options we prefer.

There are some pointless fetch quests that are supposed to extend the gameplay - kill x monsters, bring grandma specific food to eat, bring specific piece of clothing. But it's not worth the effort that would need to be put into grind and then crafting.

Enemies are different enough to not be boring, and require bit different strategy when dealt with. At the end of the game everything dies in 1 - 2 hits, so at this point we just rush between different bosses. Although there is this nasty difficulty spike around end of the game, that makes it just annoying to progress as weak enemies gets enormous buff. Granted - enemies do not scale with our level, so different parts of the map have different difficulty. And only 1 - 2 small parts of the map have overpowered enemies.

There are no choices or moral dilemmas. Game does have normal and true ending which is neat, but in the end just resolves to "did you visit whole map? if yes - true ending".

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Fitting to the atmosphere, but our character can blend with some backgrounds
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - I don't remember anything about the music, so it's neither good or bad. Voice acting is on good level though. Apart from fetch quests NPCs that literally say one line over and over gain
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any

The good
- game net code works well
- very nice graphic, visual effects and weapon sounds
- good environmental physic - a lot of objects can be moved, glass shatters etc.

The bad
- objects clip through the walls
- animation problems (when enemies were killed close to me, dying animation was rendered in like 30 FPS)
- quest can not register enemies were killed, and next scripts are not executed
- "They killed Alex!" - literally every enemy in the start part of the game is named Alex. Later "Alex" is swapped with another name, but still each zone has only enemies with one name
- loot drops are uninteresting
- cosmetics are uninteresting and not really noticeable
- problem with going into windowed mode on each game startup
- enemies are repetitive and uninteresting
- enemies are dumb

Conclusion:
It is fine game if you don't have anything else to play in co-op. Must be quite boring in SP. I did not touch PvP, so can't comment on that. But even in co-op there are only few missions with some essence, and everything else is copy-pasted fetch quests. Graphic and technical level are really good, but it's like blown egg on the Easter - pretty outside, empty inside.

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Story:

Oh no, someone made a virus that killed half of the Manhattan, and we're sent to save the day! Kill evil people who terrorize citizens and find a cure for the virus! I mean.. yeah. Plot is shallow, uninteresting and predictable. Setting is also not interesting, as we're part of The Division - super secret military organization that is everywhere, and any citizen can be part of it. No one can know about Division existence though. When alarm rings we take a gun and run to save the day! If you want to play this game for plot don't be surprised to get disappointed.

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Gameplay:

Looter shooter. So you run around, kill enemies, get marginally better gear and run to another encounter to get slightly better gear yet again. Weirdly there is no obvious progression here, as not single time I felt like I get weapon that is way better than my previous one. Feels like we get weapons just to keep up with higher level enemies, not to give player feeling they received something interesting.

Which brings us to the cosmetic microtranzactions. They are so utterly pointless, as game is stylized to be realistic. So everyone wears dark trousers, dark bullet-proof vest and a hat. If you equip jacket it makes your T-shirt not visible. Not to mention jacket is also barely visible, as 90% of upper body is hidden under the bullet vest. Manhattan is really well made, but fact it's realistic made game really dark (no electricity, shadows of the skyscrapers), which in turn makes it hard to even see your cosmetics. Why would you buy cosmetics that are hard to spot even for you? I did see many players in the hub areas, and not single time I thought "oh this looks nice, I'd want to have it!".

There are tons of useless junk to collect - phones, cam videos, laptops etc. that are supposed to give more depth to the world, but in the end it's just description of how the first days of apocalypse looked like. And we have 2020 now, so we're all well aware how apocalypse looks like. So it just rings hollow.

There is crafting system and shops, but both are useless when playing only PvE. Crafting requires running around to collect parts in specific areas (like electronic in electronic shop, pieces of fabric in clothing shop etc), and crafted weapons feels the same as the ones we find. Shops are terribly overpriced, and by the end of the game I would be able to buy only 2 weapons for my level. After hoarding cash for whole game, and selling all junk I was finding on the enemies. No idea if they are of use in PvP.

We can upgrade our base, but I did it only for the completion feeling. There is literally nothing that is gained by doing so - we can get chest that will drop a piece of fabric every 1 real-life hour or more fancy crafting station. Upgrading the base is requirement to unlock abilities upgrades but again - they are useless. Especially passive bonuses feels pointless. Like "you have chance to get some ammo when you kill enemy with a head-shot" - when you're swimming in ammo. Maybe useful in PvP. Dunno.

There is simple abilities system - healing, tech or security trees, and extra abilities (or abilities modifiers) are unlocked by upgrading said base. You want to have homing grenade? Get enough resources to upgrade base water purification system! I was just sticking to healing pack and scanner, as one was healing me and other makes enemies visible behind the cover. Majority of abilities feel like useless fodder, just to make the abilities screen have more icons. Why would you use mobile cover, when there is something to hide behind every 5m? Why would you use turret that dies after enemy hits it few times? Passive abilities are equally bad. All in all it does not feel you can customize your character in any meaningful way.

Map is divided into sub-areas with different level enemies. So we're forced to beat the map in certain order, as facing enemies with higher than our level will kill us in few shots. And we will not find weapons of higher level in previous or current area. It is always the same or 1 level above us.

Whole gameplay is: hide behind the cover (or you will die in 5s), pick some enemies, change cover, kill some more enemies. There is no planning or strategy, as enemies are copy-pasted with different clothes color, and are embarrassingly stupid. They will walk into grenade your threw, or stand behind the cover and allow you to head-shot them few times. The only difference are the cleaners - enemies with big gas bottle and flame throwers - you can shot the bottle to make them go boom. I think it was most enjoyable part of the game. Aim for the cleaners bottle to make them die in style. We sometimes encourage buffed enemies versions - their HP bar is either yellow or purple - they they are just bullet sponge versions of normal enemies.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Graphic is really good, just like whole technical layer of the game
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Music is "realistic" just like rest of the game. So nor much to say here, as most of the time it's just environmental sounds. Voice acting is decent. But not amazing. Also they get Alex!
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Maybe not abundance, but fare bit of them. Nothing game breaking though.