Solid game, one major flaw
This is a solid game with a fun story, amazing music, and a fun twist of a combat system where you use abilities with certain traits to try to break and stop opponents rather than just maximizing damage.
There's the one major flaw though: The combat is constant QTEs: time button presses to attack, time button presses to dodge, and the majority of your skills are useless without doing a mini-game attached to them. These really detract from the game a ton. They turn the game from strategic to a stressful/lucky. And it's absolutely mandatory unless you turn on a bunch of the game's "make the game easier" options.
Not too long into the game (an hour or two), you are able to buy an accessibility option that semi-automates the basic timing for attacks and blocks -- which makes the game *possible*. But all your skills still require the interactions, and the blocking one is only 35%. (These should've been available immediately from the start.) Various "make the game easier/harder" relics are available to purchase or find in chests throughout the game. It's a good system, that one starter set aside.
Some of the boss battles, especially late game, are really interesting and really require you to use a lot of the options the game gives you to get through them strategically.
Most characters are not deeply developed, but that's OK. Those that are get good screen time and only a few are by-the-book stock characters.
The game is mostly linear with occasional backtracking, but that's OK. I'd have found "able to go outside your current comfort zone" frustrating in this game unlike most, because of the timed input requirements -- there'd be no easy way to know if it's your strategy or your reflexes causing you to die.
The game supposedly crosses over with The Messenger (a Ninja Gaiden style game from the same developer), and aside a few tidbits here and there, it's not much. I certainly don't see the "you must know The Messenger to make any sense of the story" complaints I've seen. A few of the music tracks are reminiscent of (or maybe even directl imported from?) The Messenger.
The music! It's great! Most musics in the game have variants that play depending on what time of day it is or other traits. (If you know Super Mario World, it's similar to being on/off Yoshi adding/removing a drum track.) And much of the music has a 3rd version that plays in the game's inns that's a "bardcore instrumental" version of it... including morphing the music a bit when you talk one of those band members and they aren't playing their instrument.
The graphics, you can easily judge yourself from the game card. I find them above average with a lot of creative enemy design and the animated cut scenes are high-quality and always at big story beats.
I didn't try couch co-op. A handful of the game's achievements (which are tracked in-game with a reference NPC you unlock about 1/3 of the way in) require it.
The mini-game (wheels) is fun, not frustrating, and doesn't overstay its welcome. Fishing is fortunately quite minimized and you need not do it except to catch one of each fish, which the game clearly and directly informs you of their locations.
Minimal to no grind, especially once you find the XP Boost relic. Any such grind is usually farming maps for cooking ingredients to cook to sell. Money is tight in this game!
Great game. I'd give it a 5 if it weren't for the timing inputs/QTEs in combat.
About the DLC: It's not so hot. The art/music/etc maintains the same to better quality, but the gameplay leans HEAVILY in to constant mini-games, both in- and out- of combat and the difficulty is turned way up. And currency is replaced by "do all the minigames" tokens.
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