SIGNALIS

Sesbian lex

What Signalis does right, it does exceptionally well. The art design, atmosphere, music (especially the main menu), and classic survival horror backtrack gameplay. BUT.... I'm not going to give this game 5 stars simply because its Yuri like a lot of these reviews care about.... the game has some serious flaws. While I said they did an exceptional job at the classic survival horror gameplay.... they get complacent. The first area or 2 are very cool but how many times can we get an area where its "find these 4-6 things with the entire area open?" Im not arguing for handholding, but when you open a large area and give the player complete freedom to tackle the many key objects over and over again... you lose quality level design. There is a reason the best survival horror games would have sections like this (usually one) then the rest was broken up to where you had large areas but one key item was needed at a time that then further unlocked more map to be less daunting. It just loses its appeal when you get to a new area over and over and the entire 4-5 floor area is mostly open and treated like a fallout 3 open world. There is a lack of quality control and the pacing of the story can really suffer. Onthat topic... I really enjoy, close to love the story... but not from what i experienced but by what i had to research after. I got the main premise in my run but the finer details are harder to get due to vagueness that would make silent hill blush and the previously mentioned bad pacing where you only get a bref cutscene after every full area is done. Due to the open element of each area the devs aren't feeding the story to you at a decent pace, they have to wait until you get all key items since they have no idea what area you will tackle first. I hate to say it, but unlike a Resident Evil, Cronos, Evil Within etc.... I didnt care about the plot and struggled early on about what was actually going on for too long. Some vagueness is nice but not to the point where I'm questioning if the snow planet was in the future, the past etc (i obviously found this out later). example: Silent Hill is vague and teases the real plot through vague dialogue and notes throughout the game but at least you have a goal, even if its a fake one, directly in your face. Its a shame since i really liked the story but I only got the feeling of story fulfillment after the credits already rolled due to my own research. My only other real complaint besides the spamming of too open horror searching gameplay was the combat. Its not great. Some enemies can attack you the instant you enter an area. In the second or third area I would enter a hallway where no one was previously pulled and be hit before it even loaded because some guys just walk right past the door and u can get unlucky. That doesnt feel like great game design and may be an affect of the more open "beat this how you want" game structure. Tie in with awful aiming and enemy spam in certain rooms and in boss fights... you get gameplay that doesnt feel rewarding. All that being said the 4 stars given should be obvious. This was made with a lot of passion and they nailed the art design they were going for. I just wish it was handled with more expertly crafted horror gameplay care but its very good for how small this dev team was.

absolutely beautifully done game. not only is the story incredible (albeit you won't really be able to fully understand what is going on by just playing due to how the game presents everything), but the gameplay is actually extremely fun too. the enemy and area design is perfectly formatted to encourage avoiding combat, but it is still perfectly reasonable to fight everything. the puzzles the game has are actually pretty good and well though out too, even if their design is fundamentally rather simple. 10/10 game, the few gripes I have about the game are either negligible, or can be solved by just being better at puzzles than I am.

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thank you hero

one of the best narratives ive experienced

Personally not a fan of horror games but SIGNALIS is pretty good. I liked the puzzles the most since I actually had to turn my brain on for once. Story is a bit cryptic but it still manages to make sense in the end.