Just started this last night. It's quite different from anything I've played before and I almost stopped after a couple of hours because of the initial souls-like vibe, but I'm starting to get the hang of it, the story has started to unfold, and it's really quite good.

The world has sort of -- imploded -- there's a great evil called the Paintress killing people each year according to their age, that age goes down a year each year, and those who have one year left go off on a mission to stop her. The combat is relatively simple so far, the voice acting is very good, and the world itself is lovely.

My son has played through this game three times now. Yes, he really liked it!

I'm still struggling with some of the details of the game but yes, it's enjoyable. The music is hypnotic.

I have wondered about this so please keep us informed

The one thing I hate is that there is no map. Yes, I understand being lost is supposed to be part of the "expedition" but it does eventually become an issue, since I end up backtracking and getting annoyed. And any sensible adventurer would make a map as they travelled, so the party-line justification for no map is a bit dodgy IMHO.

On the plus side, the enemies respawn when you re-enter an area, so levelling up happens fast if you get lost.

So I'm farther in, and having a blast. The combat is turn-based but loads of fun, Right now I'm lost, but who cares? There are lots of places to save the game so there's no fear of going too far or attacking something too strong. If you lose a fight you get the option to back off or try again. Sometimes you can even run past a particularly nasty enemy.

The character development trees are easy to understand for the most part and weapons can be upgraded by a skeleton-like entity in your camp (a nod to BG 3?). The other thing that's fun is that apart from the odd costume or hairstyle you can buy and weapons, there's no inventory to speak of, so no inventory management. Weapons you find or buy are character-specific. There is no armour, just outfits.

This is a fast-moving game that's pretty straightforward once you master the tricks of combat.

I'm playing it on my Steam Deck, BTW. I made a few tweaks and of course it doesn't look as pretty as it would on PC, but it runs very smoothly apart from a few lags here and there.