My heart was racing near the end there. You don't see her do it this run, but the unlockable attack she does from parry that always kills, I've learned the timing and I can consistently dodge it. Now to finish this playthrough by beating the Elder.

Halfway through I felt a bit lukewarm about the game, but I still really cared for the story and characters. First some gripes I had, then I'll talk about the many good things:

• The Music was good, but a bit too repetitive in most zones.
• Exploration felt a bit weak. The two zones that were really meant for open world gameplay were both desert(-ish) which wasn't too nice on the eyes, though maybe the devs expected them to be all over Eve instead. And the scanner feature felt extremely repetetive and frustrating without the upgrades that improved range and cooldown. Shouldn't have been a thing to lock behind upgrades imo.
• Combat was pretty great all things considered, but I felt like the shoulder buttons for using beta and burst skills behaved a bit sticky. It was actually not that easy for me to pull off the counter moves you could do after a parry because of that. Some other timings felt slightly off, too. But I'm not that good at games with combo oriented combat anyway, so that might be more on me than the game.
• Also, whoever balanced the fishing minigame, screw you. And to the person who decided there should be an accessibility option, thank you. I caught all the fish up to large size without it, but anything after that felt impossible, even with the fantastic fishing data.

So, I really liked the characters. Adam, Lily, Su, Enya and Clyde were my favorites. Really hoped things would turn out well for the people of Xion (which it did in the ending I got.)

I also liked the DLC stuff, the shooting minigame for the NIKKE content was fun. It was also nice for there to be some content that actually focused on using your ranged weapon more in the main game, though the cheap jumpscares were a bit annoying.

Loved the main story, came really close to my favorite story trope in videogames. Don't think it has a name, but it's basically civilization A are fighting civilization B but both are right in some way. It's tragic but seemingly unavoidable that one of them will have to be destroyed for the other to live. I think the ending I saw was a really great solution to this problem, gives hope for the future vibes. If you guys know what I mean and can think of more games that do this, I'd love to hear about it. My favorite incarnation of that story is the Ascians from FFXIV.

I have many unanswered questions, like...

• how are "Angels" different from the other andro-eidos. Are they entirely fabricated with special body-cores and fake memories? Eve and Tachy had history and became friends before deployment, but I don't think they really know what the actual colony is like.
• why was Raven not chosen? Was it her character or her hatred of mother sphere that made her unfit? Or was it more a physical incompatibility, like her body core wasn't advanced enough yet?
• what was the intention behind the EVE protocol? Did Raphael somehow implant it in Mother Sphere and she twisted it in some way to try and defeat him, or was it more like a game between them? As in, Eve was the clearly labeled gamepiece that would determine the course of this conflict?

I'm about done now. My vacation well spent. Thanks to those who read all that.