The story is a bit more convoluted than that. There are several factions, including the Church, which provides protection to the few humans left on Earth from the Necros (weird big zombie-like creatures), and Seed, comprised of other robot girls (called Bladers) like your character, Arissa.
In my playthrough, I only encountered two bugs: one which was fixed by verifying the Steam files, and the other being a recurring fall damage bug, so you should have a decently bug-free experience if you pick it up.
World & Atmosphere
Unlike most games in the genre, humans actually comprise a big chunk of the enemies you fight. There's a decent variety in landscapes/environments, despite plant life being canonically extinct in-game. There's poison swamps, underground caverns, a futuristic palace, and more.
The NPCs you encounter are all interesting, and I felt compelled to finish their quests and listen to their dialogue, something that's rare in this genre in my experience.
Humans survive by exclusively eating Mud, a magical substance that's visually identical to normal mud, but has some weird properties like spawning monsters known collectively as the Void. It also serves as a secondary healing item and is mysteriously linked to the Church and Necros, as you'll discover by reading various bits of lore throughout the game. Some of the lore items you pick up can even be sold for a lot of money, so there's a real incentive to read it all.
The level design in this game is very strong, easily on par with games like Dark Souls 1 & 2, Lies of P, and sections of Elden Ring. There are tons of shortcuts, areas that loop back around, and enough challenging enemies guarding hidden items to keep exploration rewarding. The world is about as interconnected as it can be.
One huge downside of the game being offline is there aren't messages on the ground to guide you (like those found in Elden Ring) to where secret areas are, so you'll almost certainly need to consult an online guide if you want to find all the weapons, armor, and upgrade materials.
Mechanics
This game is pretty difficult and unfortunately borrows a lot of bad mechanics from other souls games, but also strips away some of the more outdated features like stamina and carry-weight limits.
You can dodge and attack infinitely, but your damage gets lowered if your sync bar (a combination between stamina and mana) gets depleted by getting hit/casting spells. The bar is restored by attacking enemies, and it's a huge improvement over the standard stamina/magic bars you see in every souls-like/RPG.
Parkour is torture. You can only jump while sprinting, and only to cross gaps because there's no verticality to it, just like in the Dark Souls trilogy. The fall damage calculations are completely random; you can fall off the same edge and lose 90% of your HP or just half.
On death, the only penalty is you'll always lose a portion of your currency (between 10–50%) depending on what items you have equipped. It's really not an issue.
Reallocating your stats is completely free and can be done at any resting branch once you find a certain item in a hidden area. This prevents you from getting soft-locked by a terrible build.
Weapon upgrading is the same as any other souls-like. Every weapon has 10 levels, with the final material being the only one that can't be bought infinitely. Fortunately, there are only 4 upgrade materials, and you actually find enough to use more than 1–2 weapons in a playthrough.
Bosses
The bosses are a mixed bag, with only 3 having NPC summons (these are also some of the best-looking boss fights). In terms of difficulty, they're all over the place, with some late-game bosses being much easier than early-game ones. Atmospherically, there are no misses. I didn't encounter anything that felt out of place, and almost none of the bosses are reskins aside from a few in the end-game.
Healing is very limited early on, meaning you'll pretty much need to parry every boss until you get more healing items, because tanking/DPS isn't viable until mid-game, and you can't actually knock down bosses for a critical hit without parrying. In my playthrough I used a strength/magic build, so it was frustrating to have no reward for charging up big power attacks to hit a boss.
This leads to an unsatisfying feeling when you finally take down these early-game bosses because parrying isn't as hard as in games like Elden Ring, but not parrying makes the difficulty excessively high.
Around the mid-game, you start to encounter more standard souls-like bosses, and can use strategies other than spamming parry.
There are several humanoid-sized bosses as well; of course, these are also the most challenging.
Unfortunately, there are no gimmick bosses. Everything is just a straight-up fight.
Final Take
Overall, I can only recommend this game to you if you've at least finished Elden Ring or Dark Souls 3. It's not a great intro to the genre, and at times the difficulty is on par with harder games like Sekiro. The story is quite hard to follow in the late game, and I actually had to consult guides on where to go next despite having completed pretty much every other game in this genre. It took me about 30hrs to finish the game, including all the optional content aside from one hidden boss.
If you play these games primarily for the exploration like I do, you'll have a good time. But if you're looking for a more boss-focused experience like Elden Ring/Dark Souls 3, this game probably isn't for you.
It's an 8/10 for me and I can see myself buying a DLC for it or replaying it in the future.
