Alright at best and annoying at worst. This is the kind of game theater kids come up with and that's not a compliment. Visually quite interesting that is the main thing the game has going for it, some beautiful scenes and visual compositions in that abstract artsy kind of way the kind you would use as a background for your lofi beats mix #69 in a youtube video. One chapter feels like it was pulled straight out of a Platinum game which was tonally jarring but exciting to go through, certainly a highlight moment.

Overall gameplay is serviceable, could've used more enemies, weapons and moves to use, a proper dodge and less platforming that fucks with your depth perception due to noisy filters on screen and zoomed out 3D perspective.

Much like a fart in the wind memory of this playthrough will soon dissipate and I will hopefully spend my time playing something more interesting.

An extremely visually unique game with a beautiful soundtrack and some cool designs, but a little bit jank on the gameplay side. Kind of the textbook "presentation over gameplay" game; while the gameplay is present here more than like a walking sim or something it's extremely bare bones. While the death recovery mechanic is cool (and plays into frustrated button mashing), it's so easy to pull off it does make it hard to actually die which conversely seems like the fights had to be more tedious and prolonged. There is a pattern to follow, but to me fights took way longer than they should have and it eventually became more annoying than fun. Would be a great game to own the artbook for and the soundtrack, but only get the game on sale if ever.

Oh boy...
So it seems this has become a cult classic. I deeply wish I could recommend this game but too many things get in its way.

The presentation is fairly superb, but the visuals make it near impossible to gauge jumps while platforming.

The seamless gameplay helps keep you engaged, but the lack of menus and UI make some aspects of the game obtuse to interact with, I'm also fairly sure it caused a lot of my crashes.

The storytelling is unique and the characters interesting, but the story itself is bizarre to understand.

The list goes on and on.
There were moments I loved playing this game, scenes that were a treat to traverse, The gameplay never suspends during load times, what there was to the plot kept me going, and the bossfights while repetitive were fun.

BUT
The gameplay is endlessly repetitive, the platforming is awful, a number of mechanics fully broke, a bunch of scenes completely dragged on, the combat lacked variety, enemies are way too spongey, the games absolute refusal to give on screen info makes a number of encounters feel awful...

oh boy,
This game has a lot going on, but a lot feels unfinished or worse, intentionally bad ideas.

When I weigh it all up... I honestly find it shocking I even finished this game. Yet, some part of me kept going, kept defending it.
Something about this game is unique, some of it ideas could have been worth something, too many incomplete and poorly designed ideas stand between the player and the good stuff.

I don't recommend playing El Shaddai, watch a playthrough on youtube, you'll get the good stuff without having to suffer through actually playing it.

El Shaddai needs no introductions: one of the most beautiful and artsy games to come out of the peak 360/PS3 era that has a so-so combat system and a very unfocused and barebones plot that's also a reinterpretation of the Book of Enoch. Very easy to appreciate on the surface, but very hard to stay engaged with as it has a chronic lack of depth. Still, worth the ride if you're into these kinds of japanese oddities. I would rate it a perfectly good 6... ¿So how come that I'm giving it a 7?

The 2021 PC "Remaster" (AFAIK it's just a straight up port, but nowadays ports can't be marketed without some fancy words) is about what you'd expect from these types of rereleases but what I didn't expect is that it includes an extract of the El Shaddai novelization that coincidentally includes a new ending for the game. The prelude actually explains that El Shaddai faced a lot of development troubles and the novel was meant as a way to release the intended experience in some way or another.

The writting isn't top notch stuff, but I think the concepts at hand help a lot into giving a proper third act to the game that ties together the elements of the game for a pretty climatic payoff... and then the novel kinda just speedruns through a whole sequel. I'm not kidding.

It's pretty interesting, and it's sad that the original game couldn't really do everything its creators wanted to do. The director/writer/designer is still repping El Shaddai really hard to this very day, he actually just released a whole new spin off manga staring Enoch and Lucifer, so finding out about all of this just made me look at this weird little experiment in a much more positive way. This was someone's passion project, they got the one chance to make it a reality, and things didn't go according to plan... but they still pushed through and managed to finish it even years after the development ended and then bring it to a whole new generation.

When it's all set and done, even if I think the end result was lacking in some areas, I wish every release had the passion and ambition this had.

THIS WAS MADE WITH GAMEBRYO, THE ENGINE OF FALLOUT 3. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????