so, I gotta start this by saying that this is the first time I'm making a Steam review, so it may be a bit messy? I've been really excited to play this game since it released but I wasn't able to buy it back then (and after buying it I forgot it on my backlog for a few months lol), so I've seen people hyping this up for 2 years now and after finally playing it, I gotta say... it was good. just that, really. not as "amazing" as we've heard people say but y'know, still good.
(really made me realize how slow I am at playing games tho, HowLongToBeat puts the Completionist playtime estimate at 3 and a half hours and I took almost double that, [i]6 hours and 40 minutes[/i], to 100% the game lmao)
[b]TL;DR:[/b] the story, characters, artstyle are all great. the gameplay... not as much. I still recommend the game, but you won't really be missing much if you watch someone's playthrough instead
the plot is obviously the highlight and it [i]is[/i] indeed as solid and well-made as I've heard, and the artstyle is really amazing, but the gameplay was just like, fine... most of the game did boil down to "pick up items, use items" and "find the number code" puzzles, which is okay, this is a story-focused game after all (and I'm a fan of Doki Doki Literature Club, not having High-Action Gameplay™ in a "story game" is not really a negative for me), but it did make it kinda jarring when the game started doing [i]more[/i] than just that in a few sections, occasionally turning into [spoiler]a stealth game (the Blind Beast and the Centipede) or a shooter (Swansea's Graveyard)[/spoiler], which were, in my opinion, the weakest sections of the game
(CW full major spoilers from now on)
[spoiler]the Blind Beast was just boring. the first 2-3 tries were [i]a bit[/i] tense, but by the 4th try, when I understood what I had to do, it just became a really annoying loop of "take 5-10 steps, stop, wait however long it takes for that prick to get away from me, repeat". pretty sure that section took me [i]at least[/i] 30-40 minutes, and at that point whatever horror or tension that section had just became annoyance... (funnily enough, the most fun I had in that section was doing the "Any% Glitched" achievement, where you have to skip the entire section by flying forwards with the no-clip dev cheat, since you have to finish the section in less than 35 seconds. and y'know, when skipping a section of the game is more fun than actually playing through it, something definitely went wrong there...)[/spoiler]
[spoiler]the Centipede... gonna be completely honest, I have no idea what the heck I did to pass that section. I died a couple times, searched up how to do this section, everyone was saying completely different ways to do it, as well as that they had no idea [i]why[/i] their methods worked out, I ended up just like, dodging it twice and then I suddenly finished it?? I think I don't have to explain that, when people can't even figure out what they were supposed to do in that section and beat it pretty much by accident, it isn't a very well designed section...[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Swansea's Graveyard was fine. after I noticed I was supposed to shoot him instead of trying to find an exit, I just stayed in Daisuke's mausoleum and turned around whenever he was right behind me to shoot him... it did take me a while though, half because I suck at shooters, half because I think my mouse button wasn't working correctly? cause no bullets were being fired when I pressed it once so I had to like, press it twice quickly to actually shoot the gun, but that's probably more an issue with my mouse than with the game (it did make me get The Good Ending achievement, for dying 10 times in this section, which was probably the moment I laughed the most cause I wasn't expecting an achievement for that lmao)[/spoiler]
anyways, onto the actually interesting part of the game, the story and characters! (starting by the story, or more specifically, the way it's presented)
before this though, I need to confess... I [i]did[/i] get spoiled that [spoiler]Jimmy raped Anya, although I thought it was something that was gonna happen [i]during[/i] the game's story, not before it[/spoiler]. however, I did [i]not[/i] get spoiled on [spoiler]the twist that Jimmy crashed the ship instead of Curly[/spoiler], that still caught me off guard, especially because the non-linear structure of the story did make me confused at times, mostly cause I'd forget certain details/foreshadowing, like [spoiler]Anya saying that the sugar in the mouthwash "probably offsets any potential as a disinfectant" (which is why it didn't work when Jimmy tried to use it on Daisuke's burns) or the game starting on the co-pilot's chair (which foreshadows the twist of Jimmy causing the crash)[/spoiler]. definitely more of a personal issue than a story problem tho. and while I do like [spoiler]the Bizarro sequences (a.k.a. the dream and hallucination sequences)[/spoiler] aesthetically/visually, they're a bit too vague for their own good story-wise (per example, I didn't really understand what [spoiler]Curly's red ocean of ladders and warning signs followed by a white void[/spoiler] was supposed to mean until a friend explained it to me. really cool visuals, had no idea what that was about by myself)
surprisingly, the game and its story didn't really scare me much, maybe because I'm somewhat desensitized to fictional gore, so the more disturbing scenes like [spoiler]having to cut off Curly's leg while listening to his painful sounds/screams[/spoiler] didn't affect me much. still, there were 5 scenes that actually made me jump or had me scared:
[olist]
[*][spoiler]the distorted Polle statue at the beginning of the game (inanimate object following you + jumpscare, I'm still human after all)
[*][spoiler]when the crew's corpses "woke up" in Jimmy's birthday party (corpses seemingly "resurrecting" out of nowhere, like, c'mon)
[*][spoiler]the Curly head on the floor in one of the Take Responsibility sections (giant head below the ground, staring at you... I don't really like being stared at)
[*][spoiler]the circular hallway with Curly eyes (have I said I don't like being stared at? you get stared at by [i]dozens[/i] of giant eyes in this part, nopenopenopenopenope)
[*][spoiler]and the first time I saw the Centipede in the vents (insects don't usually scare me... unless they're gigantic and coming in my direction)[/spoiler]
[/olist]
what the game/story [i]did[/i] do a lot to me, however, was make me really [i]really[/i] sad, but it's better to talk about it while talking about the characters... so let's do that now!
before that tho, I gotta blow off some steam.
(CW caps lock, [i]very[/i] harsh and furious language, mention of eternal punishment hell)
JIMMY IS [spoiler]A HORRIBLE MISOGYNISTIC PIECE OF ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I HATE HIM, I HATE HIM SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MUCH, HOPE THAT DISGUSTING MANIPULATIVE RAPIST IS BURNING FOR ALL OF ETERNITY IN THE DARKEST DEPTHS OF HELL WHERE HE BELONGS!!![/spoiler] [i][breathes][/i] okay I'm calmer now. I used my normal "default" speaking voice when reading his lines (since I assumed (correctly) that he was gonna have more dialogue than everyone else) and now I [i]deeply[/i] regret the decision to use [i]my[/i] voice for [i]this[/i] character. anyways, let's actually talk about Jimmy now cause he's actually a really interesting character
{continues on the comments, got too long, had to divide into 8 comments due to the 1000 character limit I didn't know about... yeah, it's that long...}
