The actual Game of the Year, that won't get the credit it deserves because Ubisoft are a garbage company

I mean, it's a quality game, probably the best Metroidvania I've played since Ender Lillies. But it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ubisoft, man. They insist you have Uplay installed so it can annoy you with irrelevant Toasts while you're playing, ♥♥♥♥♥ with your steam deck if you're playing offline, you have to manually put saves into and out of their cloud per device blah blah blah.

The game itself is just colourful, edgy Hollow Knight. Which is good, don't get me wrong! But gone are the people at Ubisoft who knew how to write a real character like back in the heyday of BG&E or Sands of Time, so it's just Angry Main Character and a bunch of Dreamworks staple sidekicks and antagonists. The game play moment to moment is really excellent and it actually expects you to get good at the mechanics to progress rather than just being a big flavourless sand(aha)box.

Also, obviously, they disbanded the studio that made the game, the only good Ubi game since the last Anno and -lets be honest- they did it because it isn't endlessly DLC-able live service slop. I realise how negative this review is but it's because the game itself is good! Occasionally great, even, but everything surrounding it is so awful and depressing lol.

I`m amazed by the high quality of this game, the story is interesting, the visuals are gorgeous, the game play is fluid and responsive, the combat is fun.
Amazing game overall, I hope to see a sequel!