I began playing so as to attempt learning intuitively, and I might add that this is a strong yet overlooked compromise in setting difficulty, and consequentially not cramping such a small game by tutorializing the game before I play it. My experience of about a dozen blind attempts was so thoroughly engaging that I nearly forgot to open the "How To" section; admittedly I was also distracted by the charming access to the other menu windows via traveling in-game. After playing blind, I'm not so sure about the "How To's" insistence on using the boxes of debris for grappling; using the gun for movement and the grapple for emergencies was my emergent strategy, and I thought that the boxes were static obstacles that I was meant to destroy or avoid.
The game has primary and secondary bases of mechs: the mazer and spotter respectively. The perpendicular texturing of these two mechanical processes is the well-carved path to greatness for many classic Nerve games. In a constantly expanding arena I would slightly prefer quantity over quality, since anything with a unique modifier is ideally just defeated from a distance before I figure out what it does. On the other hand, situations where my movement is driven further out of my control aren't infrequent as the number of planets expands.
Playing Outer Wilds without using the ship is essentially analogous to this game exactly, although that might not have been the intent for the former. Frankly, it might be the game's weakest link; none of the space travel and physics are actually incorporated into the game's story objectives, when it is by and large what makes the game so special and fun. Ultimately, the most engaging Land mazer of the decade is relegated as a means to an end, and there's no perpendicular design between it and the goal-oriented banter. Perhaps in some respects that's for the better, since otherwise it runs the risk of enabling Feldspar's Dark Bramble Superman 64 ring course.