I had to make an account to review this game. I'm surprised there are no reviews for this game yet! A travesty here. I'm rooting for this gameI had to make an account to review this game. I'm surprised there are no reviews for this game yet! A travesty here. I'm rooting for this game and want it to get some attention, because there's a lot to like here.
The gameplay is methodical, and somehow brings over the same feel you get from a Resident Evil game--enemies can be faster than you, and you have to really think about how to approach a situation, especially if there are multiple enemies. Controls are responsive. It can take some effort to get used to when to use Manual vs Automatic aim, but I appreciate the options.
The biggest puzzle in the game is unwinding the tangled web of lock & keys, which really requires your mental map more than anything else (more on that later). But there are a handful of puzzles throughout the game which require some thinking, pushing the right buttons, entering the right combinations, etc., and those are always a treat.
The story is compelling enough. The main character can be a bit one-dimensional, but she's always entertaining. The character design and character portraits are all really cute. I never wanted to skip dialog--it was fun to read.
The graphics are where this game shines. The pixel art is attractive, there's nice ambient animations on all the characters and foliage. I don't see that many repeating tile elements, it really feels like the entire map was created pixel-by-pixel with mostly unique set decorations. You'll often stumble into a room that has entirely unique tileset, items, decorations, and clutter. There's a cool lighting system that has actual gameplay consequences, since enemies can be hiding in dark hallways, forcing you to proceed with caution (you have a light source). This pairs nicely with the persistent thunderstorm--every time lightning strikes, you get to see everything lit up, which can really help find enemies hiding in the dark. Sound design is good, you can tell which enemies there are based on the sounds they make. There's thunder, outdoor noise, spooky sounds, flickering lights...
All-in-all, this game NAILS the atmosphere. It stops being scary after about the first hour or two once you're familiar with the systems, though.
Onto the complaints and nitpicks... I played on Balanced, and I played mostly on the 1.0 patch, so take this with a grain of salt, as there's a Casual mode that I should have selected, and the devs have already released multiple balance patches. There were times where combat felt tedious. Because ammo is so scarce, you really want to use your knife or run away from certain encounters.
One random complaint: I think the knife attack rate is faster than the enemies' i-frame timer. Sometimes, I'd mash the knife button, but my attack phased through the enemy, then I'd take a counter attack. Maybe that's fixed, I'm not sure.
The lack of a map system, as a high level design choice, is cool, and really makes you learn the layout. However, it seems like every new key/item I find meant I had to spend 15 minutes running around the entire map to find where that locked thingie was. I found myself just taking video recordings with the Switch so I could easily find where to backtrack. The game does do a decent job of spawning some new mobs, so if you find some new enemies in an area you've cleared out already, you're heading in the right direction.
Because healing items are so scarce, I saved and reloaded quite often if I took unnecessary damage. I'm not sure if the game has adaptive difficulty and item drops based on your inventory, so I don't want to be too critical here. But I got to the final boss and I still felt like I didn't have enough healing items, even though I save scummed and conserved ammo religiously. I'm currently stuck on the final boss. I probably should have run away from more encounters, but I hated leaving enemies behind in rooms, because enemies you've left behind can and do appear right next to you when you go through a door, and can attack on the first frame for an unavoidable hit. AI is manipulable in a good way; you can kite them around furniture or bait out attacks, which feels great. But it's equally easy to cheese the AI, because you can get them stuck behind a chair and keep knifing them.
Again, the game has already gotten a few difficulty tweaks, which have helped with the tediousness of the combat. Given the developers' patch activity, I feel like they'll quickly get this game fine-tuned so that it's more forgiving and more enjoyable to play.
Anyway, I'm rambling at this point. If you're a fan of Resident Evil, you'll appreciate this game. It's worth it for aesthetics alone.… Expand
