Deaths Gambit

Review
Death's Gambit: Afterlife is a very polished MetroidVania with punishing but solid combat, good exploration, a very nice RPG aspect, and a sense of uncovering that is quite rare to encounter. It has some minor snags, though.
The Highlights
You have lots of classes to choose from when you start. And after you level up, you can distribute points in your build, like in a classic RPG.
The RPG aspect is heavy; you have lots of equipment and items that you can use and get passive buffs. Also, there's a skill tree that you can branch into different skills and abilities.
The pixel art is not overly detailed and is somewhat rustic, but I like it. It's difficult for me not to like pixel art.
I didn't like the combat at first (as I don't like the "Souls combat" where stamina is needed to act), but after a while I adapted to it, and it became pretty fluid.
The dialogue has voice acting; it's nice; normally you don't find voice acting alongside dialogues (at least I don't), so it's cool when I come across it. But, weirdly enough, the protagonist has no voice lines. I got the true ending, but I still don't get this design choice.
You have a lot of freedom; the game allows you to engage in ways that feel like they're organic. For example, you can attack pretty much any NPC—kill Bast! Also, the exploration was very satisfying; I was always finding new things and items for wherever I was exploring.
The game is pretty challenging, the enemies are unforgiven, and the damage taken is substantial. And the bosses are equally hard. Although there are some difficulty spikes, they are quite preposterous.
The Drawbacks
One major negative point is that there is no fast travel until you reach the endgame. Like, c'mon, who thought this was a good idea?
There are several little minor nuisances in details that I noticed, like: some voice lines are missing from the dialogue. And other little technical things that I observed that were not polished.
But I gotta say... there are some design choices that are just perplexing. Like, I'm all on board for obscure secret puzzling stuff, but that invisible platforming puzzle to unlock the secret boss is abolutely atrocious. One thing is trying to make something difficult; the other is creating an obtuse, stupid section that sucks all the fun away from the game.
Conclusion:
Death's Gambit: Afterlife is a pretty big MetroidVania (40+ hours), with lots of content, challenging battles, prime exploration, huge RPG elements, and... it's FUN (for the most part); it's not perfect in totality, but it is a very solid game. The score can't be anything less than:
8/10

Game is impressively simple and fun. I like Metroidvanias, top 3 genres, for sure. The end game is a little overly zealous with the heroic bosses being ridiculously hard and my processor can't keep up with Amulvaro AT ALL but I really enjoyed this game. I will play it again, in the future. It's more forgiving than other 'souls-like' games in the sense that you don't lose your currency when you die, just drop one of your healing items you have to go reclaim, but that's alright. Not everything has to be an immense struggle; that's what reality is for.
The plot is okay, I guess. There's nothing really surprising about it, I put everything together..pretty quick. The 'big twist' at the end isn't really much of a twist, just more of a "Protagonist is dumb as rocks" moment. After the first couple of scenes with Endless, we kinda all knew where things were going except for Soren. Although, I must say, I genuinely did not see the "Go fight these robots in an underground factory that are commanded by a lightning lizard" part coming. I guess that was..kinda neat..? Bysurge is alright, just stupidly easy on normal and then viciously difficult for all the wrong reasons on heroic.
My only complaint is sometimes I wish Death would shut up and just let me play the game. I died to a flower and he made fun of me for it. Not cool, man..

When I started the game, I felt it was clunky, I didn't love the art style and in general I don't like Souls-likes.
Well, I did not only finish the game, I even started a New Game+. Something I literally never did for any other game before.
tl;dr: I can really recommend this game.

Tbh, there's better games out there. This doesn't even need to be something you buy, you don't miss out on much
But after playing through and beating it, I won't do NG+. Not because it's bad or anything, but because my character got their happy end
I won't make them relive the nightmare. I owe it to them as their Observer

The TL;DR Positives:
Gorgeous visuals.
Classes/abilities are fun to experiment with and most of the collectibles are at least worth finding to try out.
Excellent dialogue and voice acting (for the most part.)
Great sound design.
Story is somewhat predictable, but is still thought provoking and a joy to experience, even for subsequent playthroughs.
Now for Criticism. But before going any further, here are My System Specs:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7800X CPU @ 3.50GHz 3.50 GHz
16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Not high end modern system to be sure, but decent enough that you would think that I shouldn't have any technical issues running this game.
Performance & Stuttering Issues:
You can do some online searches for how to address these issues, but the TL;DR is that Ti cards have been known to have particularly bad performance issues with Death's Gambit. But they can be addressed... to a degree.
Regardless here's what you should know going into this game.
FPS tracking will not help you because the performance issues typically don't directly affect the frame rate at all. During some of the worst instances of performance/stuttering that I experienced, my frame rate was consistently at a steady 55FPS at worst and capped out at 60FPS during most of my play time.
Death's Gambit Afterlife is a memory hog and you can expect it demand at least 50% of your system memory during combat especially boss fights, which are particularly poorly optimized.
Steam Link is likely to make these issues even worse, and if you haven't setup your steam link settings to maximize game performance already, you should, because this game deserves to be played on a big screen.
The temptation to button mash can be overwhelming, and even with button buffering it can be weirdly effective because input delay/failure bugs can occur during combat. However, button mashing can make performance and stuttering issues worse, especially with player or enemy abilities/attacks that generate VFX with more complex animations.
Input Delay/Failure Bugs and Button Buffering:
You are guaranteed to experience seemingly random button input failure and or delay at least once and it typically occurs during intense boss fights. I usually encountered the issue during the heroic forms of bosses. Possibly one of the best examples of this problem is the Tundra Lord Kaern boss (even during the 1st fight,) because the player needs to alternate between ground slams and air dashes. It's a boss design that would otherwise be interesting if it weren't so plagued by this issue. The Phoenix Rider boss is another great example of how performance issues combined with button input delay/failure can really burn the player experience.
Like many modern games after the early 2000s, Death's Gambit Afterlife has mandatory button buffering imposed on its controls. This is to discourage button mashing and to keep the player from bugging out the game with button mashing or sequence breaking button precision karate like they're playing in a GDQ. Button buffering, in my opinion, is dumb and a cheap cop-out from designing more stable gameplay. It is already bad enough that air-dash and ground-slam are locked to the same button press, but the button buffering combined with button input delay/failure bugs can cause massive frustration even when game performance is running perfectly.
Unfortunately, there is no fix that I know off to effectively address these button input delay/failure issues. You can try remapping your controls to see if that helps you. Best suggestions I can offer is do what you can to correct any performance issues first as these will only make your input delay/failure experiences even more soul-crushing, and then be prepared to die around 5 times at the minimum to any bosses where these issues manifest with the goal of getting a feel for the optimal button input strategy and timing rhythm for said fights.
Final Thoughts:
Death's Gambit After Life is absolutely worth playing for any souls-like fan and for any 2-D Action Platformer fan. If you like this game, try Salt & Sanctuary 1 too; you'll find similar appeal and issues with both.
Personally, I would not bother trying to "git gud" at this game, because so much of the late game content challenges are poorly optimized and some bosses are so cheesy they give some of the worst ATLUS games boss fights a run for their money. Instead, if you want to unlock different ending options that are challenging, such as the breaking the death contract and no-save-point-run, save yourself some time/energy and install a mod to make the game easier. I certainly won't judge you for it.

Soulsvania with difficult but fair bossfights, good non-linear exploration, an interesting story (more fleshed out than most soulslikes), beautiful pixelart and great voiceacting. Biggest downside for me was the fact that most weapons of the same type play the exact same way but there are enough different weapon types to allow for good variety anyway. Highly recommend if you're into soulslikes or metroidvanias. ^^

I have played many metroidvanias in the last 3 years and this game is a must-play for every fan of this genre.
It's incredibly well done, complex, versatile and fun.
The story is immersive and interesting.
The mood is magical and dark.
Conversations and characters are unique and colorful.
Combat is very fulfilling and rewarding (I would say it's forgiving but only when you know this genre well).
Do yourself a favor and buy this game <3