Dust: An Elysian Tail could be described as a Metroidvania lite. You gain new abilities as you progress through the levels, and you can return to old levels if you wish, but it generally plays in a linear fashion. There's platforming, combat, and some exploration.
You play as Dust, who wakes up in a forest with amnesia. A talking sword appears as well as its guardian flying fox-like creature (Nimbat) called Fidget.
In combat, Dust uses his sword to slash, and Fidget chips in with some magic. By holding Y, Dust spins up a dust storm which enhances Fidgets weak magic attacks into powerful multi-target damage. As you progress through the game, you get different and more powerful elements. You would have thought it would be used to solve puzzles but it is used once near the end.
The combat seems praised by many but I didn't enjoy it. It is well animated, and the basic attacks, magic and dodge are all the basic components you'd expect. Enemies tend to come in groups and are quite passive which means you just end up slashing around until they are all defeated. The melee combat is fast and fluid, and is quite satisfying to launch enemies around. You can parry if you press and hold the attack button as your opponent attacks. This is necessary against some of the massive enemies with high defence.
When enemies do attack, they either do a small amount of damage or leave you on 1 health point. This was a source of annoyance for me. On normal difficulty, save points restore you to half health; so I seemed to have either half health, 1 HP, or whatever value I got up to after using a health restoration item (to get me away from 1HP). Health restorations drop quite frequently and they can be assigned to a quick-use slot. When you level up, you can choose Health, Defence, Attack or Fidget. I was initially investing in Defence because Health seemed pointless if enemies were just dealing damage to get me down to 1HP. But then Defence seemed pointless too in that regard. Your highest attribute can only be 4 points ahead of your lowest attribute, so you basically have to keep things fairly balanced, but you may as well focus on Fidget. Then with Fidget powered up, you don't really need to go slashing around, but just rely on Fidget’s magic then hold a button down to attack all enemies on screen. Your magic metre is limited though but can be restored quickly by attacking once with your sword. I think magic is also encouraged by the bonus experience if you maintain your combo without being hit, so ranged attacks are preferable.
If you don't want to stand still doing the dust storm, you can dash around the screen in a flying manoeuvre. Not only do you still do the magic attack, but you can do damage with Dust too by tornadoing around the screen. The flying dash seems to only go horizontal unless there are enemies on screen, then can dash vertically but seems to be automatic. I never felt truly in control of the combat because I couldn't really predict it.
This flying move can easily be abused in the open areas, because you can just fly over all the enemies. The developer has tried to make you fight by putting up a barrier if there are enemies near the edge of the screen, and he often places enemies there. So you either just drop down and kill those before moving on, or often you can just lure them away a bit, or even try to get enough height that you seem to be out of the range to block you.
Stopping to kill enemies drops coins, items and experience though so you shouldn't bypass all the fights. Enemies do respawn if you return to previous areas, which sometimes is necessary through some forced backtracking.
There's plenty of treasure chests to find by exploring but these require keys to open which are also found by exploring or purchase from the frequent shops. There are some harder to find chests which contain a character from an indie game like Spelunky or Super Meat Boy. These require 4 keys, which is frustrating if you navigate the platforming challenges and find one, just to not be able to open it to get your reward. Opening a chest involves a mini game which is just a sequence of button presses against a time limit.
Another way to get experience is to complete the sidequests. These often involve going to separate areas rather than making you go through familiar levels which I appreciated. You seem to get exp from talking to townspeople. Seems mad when you level up and there's a dramatic explosion though which definitely made me jump a few times. There can be a fair bit of dialogue at times, so talking drags the pace down.
There are plenty of save points and you can teleport to the start or end of levels using a teleport gem which you can buy from the shops. Not sure why that is necessary really. It's a minor inconvenience but I don't think you should be discouraged from exploring in a game full of chest rewards for exploring. Save points will be close to bosses, but not right next to them which means you will have to traverse a few platforms to restart the fight. You can skip parts of dialogue using the menu, but bosses often have a few sequences. So it's really inconvenient to get back to the fight then skip through a few dialogue sequences.
The puzzles in the game often just involve leading a flying bomb to a wall. The challenge can be that it is on a timer, or some aren't but there could be enemies that will explode when touched, or loads of platforms in the way that will prevent passage.
In addition to your attributes, you can equip a weapon augment, armour, pendant, and 2 rings. There is a Luck attribute that can only be boosted with these items. Also there can be perks like health regen, item/coin drop boosts. You will find some of these in chests or rare drops, but often they come in the form of blueprints that must be crafted using the items you find. Although you don't really need to find them because you can just purchase them from the shop and mainly seem quite cheap. The items are only able to be purchased if you sell 1 item to the shopkeeper to catalogue it. Going back to the blacksmith would be tedious but if you complete her sidequest, you can then just craft them whenever you want directly in the menu.
The graphics are really impressive with a cartoon hand drawn aesthetic. The character design puts some people off because they are all animals which is kinda reminiscent of classic Disney, like Robin Hood, but then it's also reminiscent of Furry fandom. There’s a few areas that can be dark in places, then it is also harder to see with the post processing and blur. You can turn it off in the options though.
It’s impressive from a technical perspective and was primarily made by a single developer. I think there’s a few ideas that don’t quite work: like crafting but you can just buy the parts, choosing an ability point but having to keep them fairly balanced, health and defence attributes that seem meaningless due to the way the enemies apply damage. It’s a decent game but definitely overrated.