I generally haven't enjoyed Soulslike games, but have had a blast with ACT. It manages a very respectable variety with the enemy design and mechanics, and it becomes very satisfying to pull off parries and best the many bosses in the environment. Exploring is often very rewarding, and there's a lot more to see in terms of shortcuts, rewards, and powerups than what the main story points you to directly.

By soulslike standards, ACT isn't "so" hard, but even most familiar players will die many times as they adjust to the preferred strategies in the world, or work out what their build should focus on. And, if you're really hating one bit of the game, they let you basically turn on cheats of several kinds.

The story and character development manages to become pretty captivating, even though not much of it happens early on, and the inciting incidents feel pretty simple. They walk past the humor of "fish under the sea wearing trash" to having actual commentary on greed and life goals (not just "pollution bad").

Revisiting this review, something I can add after finishing: I could be biased as I don't think this is a high bar, but I think ACT has the *best* story out of any Soulslike. Some of the character developments, social commentary, and changes of circumstance towards the game's conclusion are actually pretty hard-hitting. It gets away with a lot of surprises simply because you wouldn't expect a sudden wham line about capitalism, privilege, or even just societal anger, from a game that looks like a Spongebob episode.

I think by some people's AAA standards, ACT is "short/small" but I'm it hasn't felt like that to me. Certainly there's some amount of reuse (seeing what used to be a boss become a common enemy honestly just feels satisfying once you've gotten stronger) but it's well-placed.

The game does have some glitches, which never totally ruined my experience. The devs saw fit to add a "die instantly" option to the menus just in case people got stuck in such ways. I had a rare one that made me completely repeat a large, dark area of the game, but I would imagine not many would see that.