First off: Sorry I'm late! I had no idea this was released last August, and so I was quite excited to see the first chapter released.
So, I played for about an hour, and I feel like I'm ready to give my thoughts on this.
First, the good:
+ I really, really like Li's new design. He looks much better with a head full of hair, instead of that stupid mohawk-buzzcut he had originally. And I liked the fact that his hair had turned gray in the opening scene, it really felt like a huge span of time had passed since Naija went missing.
+ The new areas are absolutely beautiful and exotic. The expansion to the Song Cave in particular made my jaw drop, and seeing Erulians swimming through the water (even little baby ones!) was a real delight.
+ The ability to save anywhere is amazing!
+ The sound effects of Li's blaster activating and deactivating are super cool.
+ I like the visions the Erulians gave when you interact with them. Wonderful bits of storytelling without words, and I'm presuming a lot of it will be foreshadowing.
The less-than-positive:
- Li's blaster is just...not very good. At all. I get that it's a starting weapon, and that it's probably not meant to be used throughout the whole game, but...meh. The main problem, I feel, is the lack of homing shots or charged shots; Energy Form's main draw was that you could hold the button and fire off a cluster of stronger blasts. It was all about staying mobile, knowing when to charge up a shot and when to spam right click until your finger seizes up. Li's little peashooter doesn't have any of those advantages; it's weak, it fires in a straight line, and the lack of shot tracking means that it's all-too-easy to miss a shot or have the enemy move a hair out of the way to dodge it. At the very least, having homing shots would go a long way to making the weapon feel useful; as it is, it's just more effective to run away from fights instead of engage enemies (especially since you don't have the Shield song right now - more on that later.)
- The use of jelly heads to make the anemones in the Song Cave close up was a neat little puzzle, but it took me a while to realize that different colored anemones needed different color jellies. It wasn't that I couldn't figure out that red unlocks red, green unlocks green, etc. It was more the fact that I had no idea that the other colors of jelly even existed, or were needed. From what I could see, red jellyfish heads were used to unlock all anemone; so when I tried throwing it at those purple ones that poison you (AWESOME visual effect BTW) and it didn't work. I assumed I was doing it wrong. I think that this could be solved by adding greater numbers and variety of jellies early on; that way, when Li figures out how to feed the anemones, the player can intuit "Oh hey, there are jellyfish of other colors besides red...I wonder if these heads will work?" I dunno, just something that irritated me.
- Another thing that really irritated me: traveling. I understand why it's this way from a story perspective, but so far 90% of my playtime has just been retreading the old Home Waters from Aquaria as Li, who's somewhat slower as Naija and nowhere near as graceful. Maybe it's because I'm impatient to see the new stuff, but I resented having to swim back and forth across Home Waters again and again, going from Home to the Song Cave to the Energy Temple, only to go back because I didn't go in the correct entrance...it just felt like padding. I'm sure the awesome stuff is coming soon, but for now, it'd be nice if there was at least some visual variety to spruce these old, well-worn grounds up a little.
- I know that Li can't sing, and that he doesn't have the power over the Verse as his sweetheart does. But it sure doesn't make the combat any easier, or make exploring any more satisfying. I keep seeing song bulbs that stare me in the face, quivering and waiting for me to sing the right note to get to their sweet treats inside. But Li can't sing at all, so they're just there, taunting me. Also, no Shield song means that there's no way to protect from projectiles, and no Bind song means that you can't get plant leaves or pick up rocks for bludgeoning and defense. Again, I know why that is from a narrative perspective...but the gameplay definitely suffers from these missing features.
Now, bear in mind that I haven't completely finished Chapter 1 yet, so I can't speak for the ending or the levels to come. But I'll be sure to come back and give my report once I finish the chapter.
Speaking of which...
Where exactly IS that light source I need? I tried bringing Lucien with me to get the Dumbo Octopus pet to follow, but then it just disappears as soon as I leave the Home Cave. It only shows up again when I enter the Energy Temple again, at which point Li decides that bringing a little baby into a place filled with bad guys might not be the best parenting decision and puts him back at home. No matter what I do, I can't get the Dumbo Octopus to follow me, and it doesn't look like it provides all that much light anyways. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again for making this happen! It made my day to see that this thing is still going strong-ish.
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), so now I'm ready to give my full feedback! 
), but what I've seen is pretty great.