I've been playing this since it was released for PS+. It's a game with challenging bosses that you're really supposed to throw yourself at time and again until you learn each of their little tricks, patterns, and weaknesses. It's cool to go through bullet hell-like ranged phases where you slide around, shooting your blaster, and then whittling down their HP to get into a duel phase where you then slide around and parry and strike from openings they leave in their defenses.
The game uses a feature where phases of a boss fight are determined by how many HP bars they have remaining, signified by the blocks under their current meter. You also have multiple bars, allowing for multiple retries despite getting downed. The clincher is that when one of the combatant's loses their current HP bar, the winner will regain all of the HP they've lost. It sucks to lose a phase and have to start all over, but then it's also really nice to finish a phase with a sliver of HP left, and then get it all back for the next one. On the other hand, it sucks getting the boss so close to the next phase only to screw up and have to start it over. The entire concept of the separate HP meters sort of act as a way to retry portions of the fights without having to reload the entire fight over again like you'd normally do, but then you also have to suffer through not having infinite reloads from later phases - it all sorta incentivizes learning the bosses' patterns in a slightly better environment instead of having to start entirely over upon every failure. I do sorta have a problem that the bosses usually have more HP bars than you, and that they sometimes technically have two HP bars within each phase per bar, where you have to deal with one for both the ranged and duel phases, and yet the Stranger has to carry the injuries from a ranged phase into a duel phase. The only element that balances out the bosses having more HP than you is that when you parry a melee attack, you get HP back. You can also Just parry to stun the boss and leave them open, but it's sorta dumb that you don't also get a greater amount of HP back on such a risky parry.
Bosses are fairly varied and do something different to certain phases. One boss you fight in a sewer has bullets that can disorient you slightly, and many of his shots also leave behind a gaseous streak; a sniper lady has shots that kill in one hit, so you need to dart around cover in the spaceous room to get int close; there's a warrior who uses a sword and shield, meaning you can take potshots at him without reflecting the shots back at you; or a samurai that really tests your ability to get through duel phases
The dodging is a bit...dodgy (puns!) since it relies on the release of the key, because you can also charge up your dodge to dash farther, and you can charge up your slash. It's not the best concept when the game consistently demands fast and responsive inputs to survive. Not game-breaking, but it can be a little annoying, and it's a bit baffling since I've played plenty of games that have inputs that use a tap and charge, and it's not on release, or at least it certainly feels way more precise. Either way, simple-ish controls, despite the few hang-ups I had.
The style is pretty cool, from the same artist who did Afro Samurai, and the music is from the same people who scored Hotline Miami. The story that comes through betwixt the fights isn't anything too special, just a lot of vague chatter about how a boss got their, and maaaaaaaaybe what part they played in the Stranger's imprisonment.
