What a ride. Heads up, the next lines are blunt.

This feels mismanaged and without a clear vision. I say this because of the comparatively large team listed here. Sure, everything is there, but what's there doesn't fit nor work well enough. The models are nice. The companion looks cute. The texturework is decent. But all pieces just clash when combined. The whole thing has a lovable clunkiness that screams passion over polish, and while I respect that, the game suffers for it. Paradoxically, less would have been more, and more in line with the theme. Neat idea, questionable execution. Taking a look at the devlog, I honestly prefer the prototype models shown there over the end product.

Also, quitting the game via Esc/Menu is diabolical.

Cool game, but pretty rough around the edges! I liked the character models a lot, especially for the player and the AI familiar. The environments were a bit repetitive and easy to get lost in due to everything looking similar, and the music was nice but stopped playing eventually.

The controls were usable but could definitely use more sound effects, especially for hitting enemies and perhaps even a footstep sound - those boots have got to make some noise! The main character felt much too fast and agile for the size of his armor (guess that’s the power of the sun for you?), though I did like the air dash ability. The gun felt extremely weak compared to the melee attack and I think I only managed to kill something once or twice with the charged shots, so I ended up sticking to melee for everything as it did the job much faster. The familiar is cute, though I’m not sure if she’s meant to serve any purpose in the game? At times she randomly seemed to fly off into the distance or get stuck looking at a dead enemy.

The main mechanic was interesting but didn’t really feel like it had much impact on gameplay, since the only ability you really needed was melee (and you could easily clear the whole map of enemies before having to give it up). Fun fact: On my first playthrough, I didn’t realize you were supposed to take your abilities back, and ended up stuck in the boss room without any means to harm it! I also discovered the boss could push you out of the map, leading to an infinite fall into the void. The lava pits also don't seem to actually hurt you, leading to another softlock if you fall down there without any helpful enemies to finish you off.

The final boss itself looked very cool, though the fight itself was a bit simplistic due to only the minions seemingly being a threat to you (and I think the boss’s body blocked most of their shots), so ultimately I just ran next to its head and spammed melee. Eventually the boss seemed to go down, but the health bar was still on screen and I was still trapped in the room, so I guess that’s the end of the game for now?

Like I said, definitely needs some polish, but there’s definitely potential there!

Interesting interpretation on the theme, we actually had a similar theme in the past (Metroidn't), to which this game would have fitted perfectly. Unfortunately I feel like the process of giving up powers was not rewarding in itself, as they were basically just keys. When getting an upgrade in a traditional metroidvania, it works because the ability actively interacts with the environment, which is not the case here (though admittedly, it was a challenge for what you were going for). Others have talked about the assets mixmatch, to which I agree, and I'm hoping the fairy has an actual purpose, maybe lore-wise, that hasn't been developed yet. If you do plan to keep working on it though, I think you have a nice foundation. Keep it up!

As you asked for proper feedback, I'll be pretty straightforward. At the start of the game I felt a bit baffled by the mishmash of styles and qualities of the assets, the strange unexplained floating furry fairy didn't look like it belonged in the same game as the plasticky burly robot marine, and the lack of any scene setting didn't help. I had no clue what I was doing or why. I felt overwhelmed by the environment and my moves list, even though I didn't even need to do anything yet, as it didn't feel like there was much of a focus on anything. The lighting was very flat, some of the animations like walking were realistic and some were very much not, like jumping or attacking, and none felt very grounded or physical at all, but rather like disconnected assets rashly thrown together. There wasn't much feedback at all on the actions, like interracting with objects or attacking, which just felt like wildly swingin at the air. Many UI elements and graphics were really low quality or flat and they didnt really mesh uniformly, feeling rather messy, certainly not minimalistic. Everything was stiff. I thought it was a questionable choise to position the camera such that you could always see the arm blade as a line of a few glimmering pixels because it was positioned exactly perpendicular against the camera. I accidentally quit the game many times when trying to pause with esc, I got pushed out of bounds through the floor by a double-jump-locked door and had to restart again. Nothing really felt polished. I thought it was unfortunate, because I could clearly see that a ton of time was poured into this project, I enjoyed things like the orange polygonal effects on the ground when moving, and the designs of some of the enemies, but it felt to me like it lacked a uniform vision to pull it together in the visuals or gameplay, not even mentioning the audio. That, and it was also probably just way too ambitious for this time, because there really wasn't a lot of polish anywhere. I couldn't get myself to finish the game because it just didn't feel good to play. I do appalud the effort though, and hope you continue making things. I'd recommend making something much more contained(minimalistic?), uniform and thoroughly polished next time first, and then expanding on that.

I think the concept of giving things up was interesting, and using it as a key to move on does follow the metroidvania aspect. I think the combat was really annoying though, I couldnt figure out how to fight the melee ones without getting hit in return. I got up to the second key on my farthest run, I think if you added a way to heal, maybe there was I just didn't find it! Also an in game tutorial would be good, just putting them on the page isn't as fun! I liked the dash, it made me feel free lol, and the art was pretty cool. Also, escape closes out the whole game, idk if this is on purpose but it made me lose when I tried to pause mid run! Great job overall!

You already know my thoughts but I think the game actually works very well as a metroidvania. Personally as long as exploration is the key element then I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing for powers to be stripped away in this case to the point where it makes it less of a metroidvania game, that stated.