Ignoring the Metroidvania formula -which I do not like in games most of the time and didn’t expect to magically work in Pseudoregalia’s context specifially- what I found here regarding movement, expressivity and problem solving (not to be confused with puzzle solving) was lackluster.
Despite its looks it does not play like an old school platformer at all. Its structure, level design, movement options, combat approach and character control are direct descendants of the Hollow Knights and such, not a glimpse of uniqueness anywhere. Problem solving basically consists on using the same combinations of moves all the time in order to maximize distance and height covered, and most of the time feel either too repetitive or too hacky to even be notable in the first place, which leads to expressivity being fairly limited or almost non-existant. But movement is what bothers me the most.
In a game about flow and mechanics as a way of self-expression I expected the flow to be something more than a floaty, weightless character with a set of pre-defined, specific mechanic combinations that have hardcoded momentum values that are added to the character when executed properly, like how long jump (think Mario 64’s long jump that covers a large horizontal distance) plus neutral jump when landing pushes you forward again with great speed but just long jump barely makes you slip on landing. No real weight or inertia are present in the game’s physics and so no mastering is needed in order to traverse spaces, you just need to press the some buttons with a very specific timing and that’s it. To add to the inconsistencies, the wall jump is absolutely infuriating past a certain point in the game (thanks to a small ability that you unlock somewhere in the map I can’t remember) because the character keeps doing air kicks after each jump for no particular reason, messing up edge grabs that lead to falling down and having to repeat a specific section (or dying) and making more seemingly complex movement combinations to go from A to Be where multiple wall rides are needed just a pain in the ass.
Once would think that traversing Pseudoregalia’s world would be more fun to explore the more mechanics you unlock, but it ends up becoming tedious and repetitive at last when it was boring and toothless at first.