Maprower

I feel sorry for anyone who goes into this expecting an arcade co-op shooter, or a diablo-like game. This is the most definitively Hazy game I've ever played. There's not a single aspect that's particularly good or outright bad. I'd have to individually point at every single aspect and break it down to try and find out where it sort of lost me but not completely. The quests: There's a fair few of them, and some have fun dialogue, but beyond the unique rewards they give there's no real consequences, you never really feel like you're having any effect on the world. A few are just fetch quests. The art: It's so nice, it's so nice, guys. It's impossible to communicate how nice it is. The exploration: The landscapes are amazing, but with respawning enemies, no sprint and inconvenient fast-travel points it starts to feel like a boring commute. And I wouldn't advise skipping side quests/side exploration (opening every map-marked chest), as it seems you'll be easily underlevelled and undergeared for the main campaign, which is a very bad idea. The combat: The cover mechanics are welcome at first, but since there's no real way to heal ingame, most encounters (outside of the Ferals) are over as soon as they start to balance for it, and the few prolonged fights are total death marches without rejuv field+tactical recharge The progression: tangible, and some of the aug abilities and armour sets are really nice (I never let go of the ability to summon a Spider Bot army once I got it), but the balancing is awful - as an example you want a Digital weapon at all times after a certain point because that's the only decent way to damage robots, and there's exactly one Digital weapon in the game. A shotgun you need to fire point blank in a game that'll happily murder you outside of cover, unless you're overlevelled/geared. Could keep going but won't. Every single point about the game has a fair few qualifiers that make you go eeeeeh as to how you feel about it. Apart from the art. It's so nice. I enjoyed it, but I can't honestly say I'd have finished it if it was a low-res pixelart game that relied on the gameplay and music.

A definite Hazy rating for me. It's a touch, to use something that makes less sense the more you think about it, "over-balanced"? You start with a stick hitting enemies that have 2 basic attacks, and die in 4 hits. By the endgame you've got the maxed-out Club of The Heavens, armour of the Deep Dwellers, mask of the High Enchanter, fighting monoliths and ancient guardians that have 2 basic attacks, and die in 4 hits. Combined with 3/4 of the maps being just flat planes with stuff littered across them (borderline Ubisoft map), no real music to speak of, and very dry sidequests/lore/characters, and it's an extremely monotonous experience. Only thing that kept me going to the end was the little townbuilding side-thing. It's hands-off and just passively happens when you progress the story, but you get to see a little town come together, it's neat. But the ending sucks so even that has some baggage. More I think about it, closer it is to Doubt. But it had enough going for it that I got to the end.

Heads up, the original version of this game (released in 2016 as per the OP) was released separately as freeware in "Shrouded In Sanity: Freebirth" , links to Steam Store page. The paid-for version includes post-game updates like the multiple playable characters, boss rush, wave survival mode... none of which I would say are worth the entry fee. It's a neat little game, pretty rough around the edges but the compact level design built around a single checkpoint really carried it for me. Good atmosphere and pacing. Not so good writing or characters.

Agreeing with Mira here, it's half an hour long but still manages to be somewhat tedious with the bumper-car "combat". Has some fantastic visual storytelling while being appropriately stressful. "Annoying but leaves you fondly reflecting on it", which is a recommendation, of sorts, I guess.