This game is definitely a masterpiece, I finished the first ending after 16h, almost without a guide (didn't know you can move further with the manta ray). I also skipped all story sections.
Pros:
+ Beautiful in design and music
+ Tight combat, almost souls-like
+ Huge area to explore, but doesn't feel like it's too big
+ An enormous amount of bosses and normal enemies with unique movesets
+ Surprisingly complex gear system, with afterimages (permantent and semi-permanent buffs), a huge skill tree, huge number of gear with various effects
+ Game is really cheap for how much it offers, I also haven't found any technical issues
Cons:
- You won't like this game if you dislike exploring big maps or doors that cannot be open from this side
- Enemy placement can be hit or miss, I really dislike putting big enemies in tight corridors
- There are way too many endings which are impossible to get without a guide

Overall my favorite Metroidvania in the last few years, sitting even on top of great games like Bloodstained and Unsighted.

EDIT: I have now finished the true ending after 24 hours. Yeah, the game peaked at the first ending, you won't miss much. There's just a ton of fetch quests, a "new" location (just an old location but palette swapped) and a NG+ that's just story. Crazy that 13.6% of people reached the true ending.

If you want to cheese bosses, simply equip the Ravager (steal ATK of DEF on hit) and Nosferatu's Fangs (heal on hit).

Afterimage is a Metroidvania with a ton of potential that’s unfortunately held back by some truly questionable design choices.

The Good:
Very clean overall presentation and art style — especially appealing if you enjoy anime style aesthetics.
Sound design and music are overall very pleasant.
Controls feel responsive, with full remapping options.
No performance issues running on max settings at 3440x1440 ultrawide. Frame rate is consistent with no visual glitches.

The Bad:
Exploration rarely feels rewarding and map design is fairly lacklustre.
Lots of tedious backtracking involved, especially if you're a completionist type of gamer.
Story and dialogue seem to be an afterthought. You'll often find yourself reading a lot of words and getting very little narrative payoff.

The Ugly:
Contact damage is probably the single biggest aspect of this game keeping it from being a truly good Metroidvania experience.
Practically every enemy hurtbox doubles as a damaging hitbox. Enemies can clip into you at the tail end of attacks — even when you’re clearly behind or above them. Several player abilities feel actively punished by this system, turning what should be satisfying combat into cheap and artificial difficulty.
Some players might view it as an extra layer of challenge, but for me it felt frustrating and unintuitive rather than offering meaningful engagement.

While I genuinely enjoyed the majority of my time with the game from start to finish, I cannot confidently recommend it to just any gamer.
Try Afterimage if you're really into Metroidvanias and the anime aesthetic, but be prepared to deal with some truly rough edges.

A chill metroidvania which is focused mostly on exploration. Visuals are detailed and varied, music adds to the atmosphere but is not al that memorable, and there is story and worldbuilding but I checked out early on. For combat you get a variety of weapons (and magical staffs for magic attacks), but for the most part they feel functional but very stiff until you unlock more attacks with them. You can equip two weapons at a time which allows for mix and matching, but outside the daggers and scythe combo (with most moves unlocked) most combinations just didn't feel like a proper match. I can't say much about the magic attacks, since I forgot I had them most of the time because they felt rather weak...to be fair I also never geared towards magic.

There is a lot to explore and to mark on your map to come back to, but half of the time you get out of your way to do a short platforming challenge to get money, equipment, or a substantial amount of time you get a teleport potion. The latter genuinely baffles me, because that has to be one of the most mundane rewards for going out of your way, because you are spending time to get a teleport potion to save yourself time from backtracking...?
Mix and matching equipment can also be a lot more tedious than it should be, because you don't get a proper oversight of what the different mix and matching does to your stats compared to your prevous set.

Personally what took me of the pacing the most is the ambiguity of where you are supposed to go next. I don't want a metroidvania to handhold me on where to go next, but if you unlock a mandatory for progression teleporter in an inconspicuous location which you forgot to mark it should have been marked by the game.
Most important locations are marked and I completely forgot about it...So I brute forced areas which the game told me it iwas too difficult for my stats dragging the pacing down even further. When I rediscovered the teleporter I was overleveled and all the subsequent bosses in the next area where dead within a few hits, so I got robbed from those battles as well making it feel just a bit worse.

What drags the pacing down as well is that if you want to explore most of the places and check if different places you marked can now be unlocked you will need a fair amount of teleport potions which drains your money fast (though the game is quite generous so for stuff you want you will have enough most of the time) a nice QoL would have been to unlock free teleporting at some point just so I don't have to grind for money for the moments I feel like exploring more.

TLDR: Nice enough metroidvania, wished it had some more QoL and better rewards for exploration to respect my time more. Perfect game to binge watch something on the side