Finally done with the review. The short version, is that it's pretty good value for money. The screen is good, the battery life is good, the performance is good, and the speaker is decent. These 4 things already makes for a nice gaming experience already. I also kinda like the metal unibody more than the glass phones these days. At $429, or sometimes when qoo10 has coupons can be even cheaper, it's a pretty good deal imo.
The camera isn't as good as the Honor 10, or even the Mi A2, but it's not that bad. The software EMUI is still a bit bloated for my liking, but after disabling them and installing a launcher, it's a decent experience. I do like some of the additional features too like face unlock (which works as well as on the Honor 10), the screen recording feature for recording gameplays, long screenshots, etc.
This level of performance at this price point is pretty awesome, and it still has NFC, 802.11ac, USB C port, expandable storage, 3.5mm headphone jack. So it's quite a nice package overall. Ended up liking the phone a lot more than I thought I would. With the Honor Play around, i see no reason to go for the Nova 3i at all. haha.