Holy. Crap.

Beautiful and brutal, a true masterpiece.

This game was wild. I really enjoyed it so much. I finally played the full game all the way through in December of 2023 after playing the prologue like 2 years ago. I have so many regrets... about not playing it sooner! The permadeath is so intense that while I'm very glad about all 4 difficulty levels available and I know I could have played it easier if I wanted, I was freaking out playing it on its "intended" settings! 😱It was awesome!

❥ Accessibility
While this game doesn't have any warnings when you first open or on the Steam store page where I know they could have used some, let's talk about what it does have.

Good independent volume sliders as always, subtitles of course but also font sizes to pick from, highlighting hotspots, visual cues when listening for those who are HoH/Deaf/have audio processing issues/etc., vibration for important moments that you can turn on (which really helped me notice a couple things I may have missed or died from if I was any later)

❥ Audience/Difficulty
☑ Story Mode - "E.T.A. Hoffmann"
☑ Novice - "M.R. James"
☑ Intermediate - "The Original Experience" (exactly as it was envisioned by the devs) - "Edgar Allan Poe"
☑ Seeking a Challenge - Harder Than Harder (absolutely unrelenting) - "H.P. Lovecraft"
☑ Varied - Customizable/Good selection of Difficulty Options

This game is CHALLENGING. Also, I love that they used authors as the difficulty names as someone who has enjoyed the work of all four of them so I understand exactly WHY they used these four for these levels but I think it's very important that you can cover over all of them to see all the details of what you're signing up for. All difficulties have permadeath other than the "Just the story, please" of E.T.A. Hoffmann. You do have to unlock Lovecraft difficulty by beating the game on one of the difficulties with permadeath. But I think playing it on Edgar Allan Poe gave me a really great view of what the developers saw when they envisioned this project even though I felt no obligation to not switch to James or even potentially Hoffmann when all my characters were starting to get picked off haha.

❥ Bugs
☑ No bugs encountered

Bestieeesss, when I tell you that this game was flawless. It was fantastic.

❥ Graphics (Accounting for different art styles)
☑ An actual masterpiece

The art is horrific and stunning, beautiful, warm, terrifying, detailed, subtle when needed, it was a lovely movie I played haha.

❥ Gameplay
☑ Brutal
☑ Fun
☑ Action Packed
☑ Challenging

Even the slower moments felt tense and dripped with anticipation as you'd wait with bated breathe to see what might lurk around any corner, behind every door, inside any object, or even in the floors and walls themselves. The sound design married with the graphics, and the way the game play worked was devasting in a way that will haunt me until I play it again. It was very reminiscent of many older horror games it pays an homage to from chapter to chapter, but it felt so fresh anyway. It was like playing an old fixed camera view horror classic like the early Resident Evils or Silent Hills, or Fatal Frame. It took me back 20 years to being a scared youth in front of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (sans the 4th Wall being Kool-Aid Man'd constantly haha.) I want something to make me feel this way again.

❥ Game time / Length
☑ Average (10 - 25 hours [if you focus on the main story])
☑ Long (25-40 hours [if you complete everything])

It took me about 27 hours, but I could see it taking way less time if people were more driven to just plow through it - especially if you aren't also streaming and dealing with distractions.

❥ Music
☑ Other

There isn't really.... music? There's amazing sound design but you're never really in a place to hear music except for the music box at the heart of the story and related music you hear in key plot moments I won't spoil. But the music box's song is haunting (in a way I like.)

❥ Price / Quality $
☑ Worth full price

No notes. Just was worth it.

❥ Story
☑ Story-Rich
☑ Masterpiece
☑ Great balance of story and other gameplay

It is an incredibly story rich game that has little lore drops between all the big lore moments, massive cutscenes and sequences, but it is so far from a walking simulator. When the action is there - OH BOY IS IT THERE.


Over all, I think if you like games that are more of the defensive style of horror with a fixed camera and limited ways to protect yourself... if you like the idea of permadeath being on the table but the ability to just consume the story with reduced danger... if you want to see how so many lives can be impacted by even one person's mistakes... play it