I wanted to finish this game before i gave it a proper review. While the hand animation art is spectacular, there comes a problem when it comes to game play elements that weren't looked into or properly play tested especially when it comes down to co-op. I played this with my friend and the amount of bugs we encountered were ridiculous and made the game frustrating at points in time. The only fix for said bugs is to exit to main menu (if you still can and are not blocked by a bug) or exit the game completely and reset it. The bugs we encountered are as followed:

1. One person does infrequent damage or no damage at all. Usually it affects player 1, but sometimes does affect player 2.
2. Jumping upwards on platforms to another part of the map causes player 2 most of the time to not jump up with you, leaving them behind. You will have to jump back down else player 2 will die from the timer off screen.
3. Opening the map too hastily while changing rooms will cause a black screen you can not pause and go to the main menu, you will have to reset the game completely.
4. A player can sometimes end up invisible after death and resent to the save room, simple fix walk out of the room the player will show again. (May also lead to the player affected have infrequent or no damage at all)
5. Non responsive jumps mainly in the temple area when leaving a save room where you need to double jump to avoid a spear trap, if impatient and you do not wait the double jump will not work and you will land in the spikes.
6. Force hooking to a ledge when jumping almost like a magnet when you are not even near the ledge, this seems to be a rare bug that can happen in my experience while playing.
7. No input responses on player 1 at all at times, will require a reset, pause button does not work.
8. When player 2 goes to buy an upgrade and can not afford and upgrade it will pop up the message saying you do not have enough, controls then go to player 1 until menu is backed out of. Player 2 can then regain control of the menu.

These are 8 bugs at the moment I can think of that were a huge pain, especially when we'd make a lot of progress and defeat a boss or explore a lot of areas only to lose the progress we made because there is 0 auto save. The only way the game saves is when you go to the rooms to upgrade your character and speak to the person. From checking the update history I take it there will not be any updates to fix this game. For a metroidvania I expected it to be a bit more polished.

Now let me get to a smaller issue, the voice acting. I'm sure there are plenty of talented voice actors/actresses out there, but the ones in this game felt like nails on a chalk board or just downright offensive stereotypes. Let's use Bussa for an example, I think they can voice act properly if they were given better dialogue or used proper equipment when recording the lines. His dialogue sounded so muted and a bit robotic at the time due to a poor quality mic. Akane Yamakawa takes the cake tho, this was a character I refused to play from dialogue alone, it felt so wrong when she spoke. You know what I mean if you have played this game.

We played on the classic mode, instead of their new mode. We didn't struggle much with bosses at all especially if you can just spam the "Ultra Moves" with 0 punishment or risk of taking damage, mainly using Bussa for this example because his attack is drawn out for so long. The secret bosses you find towards end game, are absolutely 0 threat compared to how i took a regular metroidvania would be, there was no challenge with any of those, no phase 2. It seemed like they were thrown in last minute for extra content if you want those achievements to defeat ALL the bosses and collect all items to finish peoples mini quests.

And lastly I thought this was just funny, but why does one of Buffalo Calf's attacks sounds like she just sharted herself before attacking? First time I heard it I was baffled, made me laugh however so thank you for that. I guess the puffin onslaught also attacking my friend was pretty hilarious too at times when they'd get knocked back off a cliff.

What can i say tho this game has some ups, but a lot of downs due to its bugs. It had the potential to be great, it just needed some more polish. Personally I'd rate it a 2.5 / 5

Play at your own risk if you are still interested in the game.

Probably the worst combat I've seen in a mv in years.

Competent 4P fun.