The experience is... interesting.
Gameplay loop feels unintuitive at first, as the player doesn't have the resources to fight the most common enemy type at the start, and there is no map of any sort. Searching around yields a stationary hourglass save spot location where you can save and power up, but equipment items have a much larger effect on gameplay.
HP+ 2 is helpful when all foes in the area deal 3 damage, extra attack didn't do much, extra focus is rendered irrelevant when you find a Faceless Fetish, and defense appears to be practically worthless, only providing a chance to turn a 3-damage hit into a 0-damage hit when the player takes damage. The most useful stat besides HP is agility so the player can strike first, but the Bismuth Bell takes care of that.
The valuable equipment items are the Somnus Shroud (greatly decreases focus drain, letting you travel longer in one session), Faceless Fetish (massively increases focus, meaning you can stay in the dream world indefinitely), Bismuth Bell (greatly increases agility, so you can always land the first strike against foes), and Idol of the Dreamer. The latter did quite a bit of damage at level 3, meaning I could take out the common foes in two hits, allowing me to conserve pink flesh healing items and other consumables. Broken Sword has far less damage per swing. Not sure what factors into the damage calculations. I thought that the Idol scaled based on focus, but equipping three Faceless Fetishes didn't boost the damage, and it made me realize how important the Bismuth Bell's agility boost is when in combat.
One thing I feel conflicted about is the deconsecrator item used to unlock blue doors. Metroidvania style-progression is what it is, though it looks like the best way to stock up on deconsecrators is to repeatedly slay weak foes over and over until they drop a Deconsecrator or another rare item.
The thing I feel iffiest about is stamina. The menu spell can restore 10 stamina per use, almost up to the maximum stamina. This means that there is no reason to use stamina restoration items, and the mechanic simply restricts the player's ability to sprint, which wasn't very fun.