Metroidvania action game where every character (the protagonist and NPCs alike) has a ticking clock counting down to their death—unless, like me, you choose to play with the timers turned off so you can explore at your leisure. In retrospect I kinda wish I’d left the timers on, but at the same time I don’t think I would have tried the game in the first place if I hadn’t had the option to get rid of them. It was still plenty of fun even without that central hook though!
Exploring and solving puzzles and whatnot were a good time, but my favorite part of the game was the combat; parrying attacks feels great and the equippable upgrade chips allow for a lot of flexibility in terms of your build and playstyle. I personally made myself into a crit-heavy glass cannon with unlimited sprinting and auto-refilling Estus flasks healing syringes. I could only survive one or two hits, but as long as I could dodge for a few seconds, I could consistently heal back to full, and I only needed a few good charged-up hits to kill each boss.
Shoutout to the real MVP of the game though: the small boxes you can pick up. I bypassed so many traversal puzzles by just climbing a stack of them that I made, and also used them to cheat at the “sliding blocks on ice” puzzles by placing them in the blocks’ path.