Firstly, some niggles.

1. There’s some graphics pop-in and the areas are very sparse. Even allowing for a massive lack of environmental detail, the areas are pretty empty.
2. There’s actually some secrets that come from making jumps and drops off the beaten path, which is nice. The problem is that its not consistent with where you can go and where you can’t. There’s a lot of invisible walls that don’t allow you to jump into large holes in buildings or make jumps you know you can make and so you start to automatically discount areas that you know you shouldn’t be able to go - except it turns out sometimes you can. It can be a little infuriating.
3. Framerate drops. There’s not massive, but sometimes when entering a new area, coming over the top of something large or when switching camera perspective, there’s a quick half-second judder, then back to 60fps. Not game-breaking, but once again it’s there.
4. This one is slightly more spoilery, so i’ll wrap it up in a second spoiler. It’s a story / gameplay thing you’ll encounter about 40 minutes in to the game. 5. Side-quests have, so far, been very fun to do, but not exactly imaginative. The gameplay is so good that I don’t mind going to Location A and finding 5 of item B, but up until now that’s the type of quest i’ve had. Item gathering, people finding etc. Classic RPG stuff, for better or worse.

Now for the good stuff:

If you’ve played the demo, you’ll know how it plays. Quick and heavy attacks, lock on and ranged projectiles, as well as a jump and an evade. It’s very fast and very slick. Then there’s the camera and playstyle switches - standard action combat, then isometric top down combat and shooting, and then SHMUP sections. That’s not just in the opening section, that’s pretty standard throughout the game. They all play fantastically.

The best thing about the game, though, is the chipsets.

The way the RPG side of the game works is like this: You are an android and you can customise your chipset. In the beginning you only have a small number of slots (I can’t remember but it may be around 20 or so). Everything you can do besides the basic combat stuff is controlled by these chips. So, for example, the ability to see save points on the map takes up one slot. But there are other chips you can find which alter you in different ways - increase melee damage output, or reduce melee damage taken, for example.

So it’s at this point that you can start to customise your character. Want to be aggressive? Increase melee power and install a chip that increases evade, allowing you to dodge through huge amounts of projectiles and get right up in their faces.

Wanna play clinical and punish the opposition? Install the Counter chip, which automatically counters when you dodge INTO an enemy’s attack at the right time and deals back a percentage of damage.

Wanna tank it? Install chips to boost melee and ranged defense, as well as one which recovers health over time and then, just for extra safety, there’s a chip which can make you temporarily invincible after taking damage.

It reminds me a LOT of how Bayonetta and Ultimate G’n’G allowed you to change equipment to fundamentally alter the way the game plays. You can set up 3 different chipset setups and switch them on the fly, so you can alter your strategy to suit the opposition you face.

Furthermore, you can “fuse” these chips together to make more powerful ones. If you have 2 Attack Up chips, fuse the together to make an Attack Up +1, if you have 2 of them then you can make a +2. You can buy these chips, but the ones you buy generally take quite a few slots - but the ones you find from enemy drops can often use far fewer slots. Use the lower slot one as a base to fuse with the higher slot one and you can increase the power of the one that requires fewer slots, thus maximising the benefit to can reap by allowing you space to add more chips to your set.

And you’ll need that space because it’s easy to fill the set completely to the brim. Then you’ll have to start making difficult choices. I only need 2 more slots to be able to add the Evade +2 chip (60% bonus to evade), do I really need to see my health bar?

Your health bar, item pickup text, enemy health bars, damage type readouts, minimap and visible save points - everything in your HUD is controlled by the chips in your head. Don’t want ‘em? Remove them and make your character stronger. But watch out because now you’re gonna have to stay very aware of how may hits you’ve taken - at least, until you get to low health, when the screen turns monochrome.

You can also buy different special powers for your flying robot helper - the one that shoots for you. The L1 starts as a laser blast, but it could switch to a super strong melee attack, a shield, a buff, whatever. You can buy and install a wide variety of them. This just adds to the massive amount of ways you can customise your fighting play style.

Overall, the whole fighting setup reminds me a lot of FFVII’s materia system - the way you could add or remove battle utility. It looks complex but it’s quite easy to grasp once you get your head around it.

Another great thing about the game is the bosses. I’ve only done 4, but…wow. The first 2 are good. However, that 3rd one ranks as an all-time great Platinum boss. It’s an absolute mindfuck and if it’s indicative of the quality of the rest of the game then I’m in for a treat.

The soundtrack is also fantastic.

And it’s funny. The game has made me laugh a couple of times already.

And, despite the sparseness of the areas, they’re varied and attractive. The graphics aren’t great, but they are stylised. There’s a really unique flatness of colour added to it which I can’t quite place, but it really works. And the animation is gorgeous.

There’s also multiple weapons which can all be upgraded. They have different move sets and, depending on where you put them in your loadout, you can use them for either the quick or heavy attacks. The weapons themselves are varied - not all swords. I found a lovely spear earlier which has been great for crowd management. I’ve also seen axes, hammers etc.

chipsets sounds great (especially comparisons to materia - you know how to get me excited).