To be honest, I've always had a complicated view of the Song of Morus games. I respect the hell out of them creatively, but I've felt that they're really not for me. I love the art and incorporation of local culture, I often find the gameplay concepts interesting, but almost every game in the series is way too hard for me.
I wasn't expecting to be able to beat this one, and I didn't, but I got a lot further along than I thought I would. I think it's a little closer to my comfort zone, and I got a lot of mileage out of circle strafing.
Gameplay-wise, it's hard to say what's an actual flaw and what I just don't like. I didn't like that there's no health regeneration mechanic and if you do badly in the first wave, you're screwed later. I didn't like that you could get caught on terrain in the first level. I didn't like how bullet-spongy the enemies were. I didn't like that it was hard to tell when you took damage or why. But I don't know if any of these constitute real flaws.
The environments are impressive. I know they're 3D scans provided by third parties, and if you look closely there's a lot of roughness, but in gameplay you don't really notice that. You just see bright, colourful, detailed environments. The character models don't stand out as much, but still look good.
I found the story to be surprisingly compelling. There's some mythological backstory worked in, a macguffin, some new characters, a potentially world-ending plot. The last game kinda had an excuse plot to be honest, so having a stronger narrative this time is much appreciated.
The dialogue could use proofreading- which I know is partly my fault. It's rough in general, but also unintentionally hilarious. The first line of the game is an accidental innuendo, and there's at least one more later in the game. I'm kind of on the fence on this, but I think given the tone of the game and the series it makes more sense to fix this up than leave it.
All in all, some impressive work on display, and I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would.