impressive environmental design but almost everything else was shockingly bad. i know this was meant to be a spiritual successor to the Clock Tower series, at one point even beginning as a remake but it sure as hell didn't do a good job at that. it served The Struggle Within, if anything at all.

bland stalker designs and behaviors, constant QTEs, brain wormed checkpoint/save placements, mangled audio design (why was everything constantly so fucking LOUD), transphobic plot lines that might as well have been ripped from something 40 years ago. just a waltz through what not to do design wise for horror games imo.

gonna give Broken Porcelain a chance but only because i already have access (pretty sure i got it along with this one when they were on sale dirt cheap once) and the slightest chance of it offering an improvement. not expecting much though.

Well.....huh. I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand I love a lot of things about this: The soundtrack is amazing, the horror atmosphere is good, the story is alright it ain't bad I can't complain. I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared once or twice. But at the same time I don't know how I truly feel about the game if you want me to be honest. The gameplay loop is hide, sneak, distract, puzzle solving which is cool. But it feels like kind of a predictable loop whereas Clock Tower, the game this game is a spiritual successor from, had a lot more...variety in what you do I feel. But I don't know. Out of the three hunters, the first one is an old man with his bare a ss hanging out which made me giggle more often than not I know that's weird but I don't really care. The nun was the creepiest hunter there with the constant rambling. However their running animations felt floaty (or at least the old man) where he was running in place but he was moving towards you; kinda like levitating except you're moving your legs for exercise. I didn't expect the plot twists except one at the very end with a reveal that was kinda like....no shit. I won't say but if you want a quick horror game that involves a lot of hiding, running, and such it's not bad. I just hope that the sequel builds upon the foundations of this game because if it's the same game then meh.

Pros:
Soundtrack is phenomenal
I love the horror atmosphere
The story takes an interesting turn here and there

Cons:
Weird animations sometimes
Stupid quick time events
One plot twist towards the end is dumb
Loop feels predictable, especially when it involves finishing a puzzle which creates a loud noise in which you must hide
Environment can be a tad confusing
Finale is kinda frustrating

I know that I listed more cons then positives but what the positives do to me make up for A LOT of the problems that I listed. It's a game series that I hope really grows into something fantastic and I'm interested in seeing how it's sequel, Broken Porcelain, will become. However I hope it's much better than this. The game right now is about 20 dollars for like 4-5 hours of gameplay give or take. How much that's worth is up to you really.

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/

A fascinating curio of an experience. Obviously borrowing from the Resident Evil and Clock Tower formula of exploring a vast decrepit mansion uncovering a dark conspiracy but transplanted into today's contemporary horror game scene this somehow feels refreshing. There is a legible artistic vision here, albeit most of it visual homage to an array of horror film/game influences from Silence of the Lambs to Don't Look Now amongst others; which is fine because tonally, structurally, and narratively this is as close to a clumsy ass giallo as a game can get, however intentional it is at its reach for that. It makes for a wonky time with its sparse opportunities to save, haphazard button prompts, and stalker AI that just doesn't quit. Its attempt at an oppressively intense atmosphere is surface level at best with its effectively musty aesthetic and screeching soundtrack but at worst, irritatingly obfuscated with its objectives. It adds up to something that feels special in moments but is obscured by its ambition. It achieves the most during the first two acts but promptly falls apart once all its stalkers are introduced and it remembers its trying to tell a story (the ending itself is atrocious even by giallo standards lol).

This was a typical ‘meh, it was OK, I guess’ game for me.

I think most horror fans would enjoy it, especially the ones who want a real, traditional survival horror experience, like myself – however, the unresponsive controls, especially in the middle of an escape sequence, and the strange enemy AI (sometimes they can see and hear you through every object, whereas other times when they should definitely hear you, they don’t react at all) almost ruined the whole game for me, so keep this in mind before purchase. Some of the gameplay issues are so frustrating that more than once I almost rage quit the game, so be warned.

Fortunately, the story is really good with multiple twists, and thanks to the classic 'Resident Evil' feeling I could overlook all these problems in the end. I just hope the sequel will learn from the mistakes of its predecessor.

The execution of the premise is clunky. For example, listening to the entity chasing you isn't quite accurate as it should be, making progression more complicated than it should be or the fact that interacting objects rely heavily on camera orientation, affecting critical moments that will provoke more than a few unjust deaths, making the experience somewhat frustrating.

On the other hand, I'm still not sure how I feel about the plot twist the game takes in the third act, I feel it's an issue that could have been handled much better, although it's not at Bloober Team level of bad either.

The atmosphere and the design of the mansion are undoubtedly its strong points. But the gameplay loop is far to simple and repetitive, making the game tolerable just because of its length.

The game design of this game felt tight to me in the first half of the game. At first I thought that all the puzzles would be overwhelming but once I solved the first one, because of how the keys to the puzzles started to come together naturally, it reminded me a lot of the first resident evil, though the game also taking place in a mansion and the atmosphere being pretty good added to that.

Though its mainly a clock tower like, the game will sometimes take a little bit of inspiration from resident evil and other horror games, though it kinda starts falling apart the moment the twist of one of the antagonists is revealed, which although I won´t spoil exactly what it is, it should be warned that the twist itself taints the game, since it involves transphobia.

After the halfway point, the game goes for a more action like horror compared to the more tense and suspenseful first half, causing a lot of cheap deaths because of maze like new environments, which go against the level design strengths of knowing the mansion surroundings and being able to plan around that, that is sadly mostly gone in the second half.

The writing is there I guess, it gets really convoluted and bad the more the game goes along. I would maybe recommend it if you are out of survival horror games to play.

An actually rather enjoyable homage to 'adventure/exploration' horror games such as Clock Tower, Remothered wears its influences on its sleeve.
The protagonist, Rosemary is CLEARLY modelled after Jodie Foster's character in Silence of the Lambs but it's quite nice to play a vulnerable heroine that is not directly young and sexualised (I'm looking at you, Haunting Ground). The villains are a little cartoonish but the chase through the wine cellar actually got my heart racing and the Red Nun is a truly inspired piece of nightmare fuel.
Other than the typically batshit plot, the game falters mainly with the lack of polish: the sound design is clunky and repetitive but sadly in an annoying sort of way; the character models are a little bit PS3 tier; and the overall gameplay is quite dull, with very little proper exploration/puzzles.
Nevertheless, I am actually rather excited for a Remothered sequel and really hope it cleans up on the issues this game has.

Someone really released a game in 2018 where the bad guy turns out to be "oh no its a ~crazy~ man in a dress doing a woman's voice" and people had the gall to say it had literally any merit whatsoever. how the fuck is this getting a sequel

there's literally nothing redeeming about this game, the writing is godawful word salad failing at being clever, the sequences escaping from the antagonist are so hilariously inept you can literally run around one (1) bit of furniture to solve it, there's the unbelievably dated transphobia (psycho was 60 years ago mate), it's visually about as interesting as drying paint, its like 4 hours long and even that is too long. the absolute state of horror games man