It’s hard to make a good and fun metroidvania, and to make one that could top the OG? With a character that basically travel using needle and thread? That’s even harder, and takes a lot of time to design and implement. I assume they complete the whole game early on(as in playable from start to finish) but found out that it just couldn’t be as good as Hollowknight, so they went back to the drawing board and redesign a lot of stuff.