The art direction is amazing, simply phenomenal. The score, is great.....but it does get repetitive, whereas midway through it becomes less and less special. Those are the positives, that is it.
Gameplay is horrific, and is my biggest issue with this game. The game is in substance very short, but it will take the player some time to realize that all the side-quests are worthless, the rewards are common trash you can either buy, or just get naturally from certain areas of the map from crates or natural nodes that respawn whenever you reload the area. The game shows you all its interesting combat aspects in the tutorial, and sadly the game makes almost no use out of the coolest combat feature the deflection of an enemies bullet, as most of the time you're essentially required to only use firearms. There are several weapons to unlock, but the pistol has the best range, and accuracy. Just to give an example of how poorly thought out the combat is, the sniper rifle literally becomes less accurate at range.....with the pistol having better range and accuracy. 70% of enemies will be positioned fine for the player to deal with, but 30% will be in absolutely horrific spots that will make you more and more frustrated as you try to deal with the foes, and then heaven forbid you try to reload your gun and then the bike messes up and you respawn, having to repeat the whole ordeal..... Oh and another fun *feature* is that when you kill an enemy their body and weapon then becomes a bullet sponge for you the player, whereas the enemies still alive can shoot through them no problem.....almost like the game just hates you and wants you to suffer. There is sooooooo much more I could add as to why I dislike this aspect in particular, but it cannot be understated how poorly executed almost every aspect of this games gameplay is.
But! Feel free to go waste your viscera on trying stuff out.....its not like it as a currency is super grindy and annoying to farm..... *But wait wait!* I hear you say, the game has blackjack, surely this is an easy way to farm viscera right? Nope. You always get dealt first, and the odds are stacked against you. I wasn't able to find proof online, but I would say the game expects you to lose at Blackjack, with it throwing you a win after you have either loss or tied twice in a row. So....yeah the currency system is trash, there are a plethora of materials you need to purchase or upgrade anything......and almost none of it was worth it.
*Minor spoilers, I'm just talking in a vague sense of what the story beats are, but generally no specifics*
The story is not very interesting. The world lures you in with a sense of depth, but in reality aspects of the protagonist, like being able to speak to the dead.....really have no time to shine, nor play a critical role in the story at all. As one reaches the finale, it becomes clear that the story is really just to make the player sad. Nothing good happens, every mission seems to only worsen the situation, and instead of breathing life into a dead world or really defeating the enemy......nothing really changes from beginning to end.
The game is very buggy. Sometimes your bike seems to have a mind of its own, and will just flatten you on a surface. Sometimes the reload ability doesn't work. Ya'know how *From Software* has a feeling you get as a player when playing their games? Like when you perish, it never seems quite the games fault, but rather that you as the player messed up? Well this game doesn't have that at all, and you'll spend most of the time rolling that rng to get a better outcome.......kind of like the final boss. Oh and on the topic of the finale, I beat the boss, and then.....my game bugged out, and I couldn't reload, so I couldn't finish the ending of the game......and the only in-game option was to fight the final boss again.....and I was already done with this game 12h into my playtime.....so I ended up watching the last little cutscene on Youtube.....what a great was for me to end the game....with it being so bad that YouTube is a better alternative to simply replaying one single boss battle.
This game made me upset frequently throughout, and its a shame, as I really really wanted to like this game, and at times it could be *fun*, but overall? It was a miserable slog of an experience. I genuinely love the art direction, but that is not enough to save the rest of the game from its shortcomings and poor design choices, as such I simply cannot recommend it. Maybe the sequel will be better?
