I'm a few hours into this game — two bosses and on my way to the third — and the game is *staggeringly* cohesive. All of the gameplay choices, all of the design choices, everything is done in service of the character/story development. This is an excellent example of a game being art.

The new Path of Exile expansion, Atlas of Worlds, just dropped. And there go my billables.

For what it's worth, I've been hateloving this game for basically all of the reasons you cited as complaints. Mighty No. 9 looks like Megaman, but its closest relative might actually be Demons Souls (which, granted, drew a lot from and expanded on the Megaman memorize-patterns-to-progress approach).

I'd like to direct you all to chessboxing:

This is a sort of game that I have absolutely no interest in playing but am overjoyed is being made.

So I've played a bit of Beyond Earth now and had a great time with it, but there are some issues with the AI that are some combination of hilarious and frustrating.

This makes me wish I had, or would ever have, a handheld. But if it's not on console or, even better, PC, I'll never play it. Very sad.