BOOK OF HOURS

资料比科研学术多，很好的锻炼了做笔记整理的能力。

They kinda exaggerate, the books only take like 2 minutes to read.

内容太大，然后还没有教程，玩了几个小时一点再开的欲望都没有

If you can enjoy the genius of Cultist Simulator, you will enjoy sorting things.

美術不錯，文本也看得出想營造的氛圍，但...真的太散了，太被動了，如果能像蘇丹的遊戲一樣，體驗就會好很多

the higher i rise the more i see

The Book of Hours does some fun thing with progression -- the more you know, the further you are in the game. Most of its elements are right under your nose from the beginning, but to actually use it, or even notice it, you have to go through a process of research and discovery. Very tiny details hint you in the right direction, but the scrutiny and the fun of making connections and gaining insights are all yours. The game reminds me of a mystery box. You fiddle with it, experiment with it, try stuff, mine for knowledge and keys, and it rewards you with a new puzzle and brings the very special type of joy -- joy of discovery. If you are generally a curious person -- this game might scratch the right itch. Cultist Simulator could've done the same job, but time pressure and the game's unforgiving nature killed the vibe for me, when the Book of Hours eliminates that not-fun part, so you can focus on working out its mechanics and gathering the lore without gambling part and risk of flushing your progress down the sink because of unlucky RNG(even though they share the meta-progression mechanic). Peculiar thing -- the game made me make a spreadsheet, and I actually enjoyed it. Gathering key information and categorising it in my own manner helped me to immerse in librarian skin very well. Additional flavour for immersion comes with atmosphere of secret societies, forbidden knowledge, reticency and mystery(and speaking of that -- Alexis Kennedy knows the ball!). Art, music and especially writing -- everything works great. The story revolves around a library(to be recovered) on the Cornish oceanside, full of occult mysterious knowledge from the dust of ages and insights of passionate minds, and you are here to shed some light on it and eventually -- ascend with one of the arcane arts(or something else?). I didn't finish the game yet, but from what I've learned so far, replayability is very decent -- you cannot gather everything in one playthrough, but all the knowledge you dug up persists(in my case in the form of a spreadsheet), so you may focus on exploring the new stuff. Likely I'll be back to revise this after 100 hours, but my love for the game won't ever perish.