Very little here for me in the first like 70 minutes of my experience

Traverse rooms over and over that looks the same (dull and ugly), backtrack if you have to- in finding items or paths to get to the same type of areas, so I can get the items and find the door for next area where I do the same shit again again again, where tf am I supposed to go fuck everything looks the same (already feels like that atp)

Uncreative puzzle designs like SH2 that are there just to have to do them and have no art to them at all (requires knowledge of chemicals, very smart)

No stakes really of being attacked or necessity to worry about survival or items since u can just run past everything

Nothingburger cutscenes that amount to "Wow this is really weird" + vague nothings implying there is more mystery to be revealed

I'm prob done with this one. I bet I would've liked SH2 more on a replay, tho I still don't think that'd be all that worthwhile either ofc. That game doesn't have a nothingburger story, that's one thing going for it so far against SH3, even if the mystery feels too linear

Gameplay still is not my thing at all and too empty and repetitive. It's spooky and abominably hideous I guess for moments, even if it can't string anything together to keep my attention for long. In one scene there was a cool tune too. So that stuff holds it from being bad for me completely maybe

Worst game I've ever played.

Takes most critical control away and just wants you to drag yourself to the same thoughtfully crafted flukeortunities over and over until it works. Even when you succeed it's like the most headscratching sensation ever, like "wait wtf just happened? how did that work?" I never felt like the game was smart, I felt maybe like I was attentive enough to sniff out the path to fluke relative early on, but I shouldn't have got my hopes up that there'd be any satisfactory control towards our goal.

All the times when I didn't know what was going on and it took me over and over really made me realize all the wasted time I avoided in fluking those stages early on.

What kind of hope is a fluke tho?

Take the control you have and never play this piece of shit.

If I wasn't using this as background activity with the music I was listening to I would have no excuse to have completed this game.

Kinda empty gameplay loop at the start of the game and weird stylistic juggling between an anime and a videogame that feels off

Apparently this game is just paced weird idk, but it just feels off, I think I'll bypass this one for 4 or a return to 5

Style seemed pretty Persona at least

Accidentally deleted all my saves after trying to go back to a stage 2 - 9 credit, wasn't too far, just wasn't gonna 1 credit an entire screen where the 1st of two bosses drains ur health automatically so you have to walk in with basically perfect health to make it through, and then there's another boss that has a health bar with length the size of a full school day (and is 1 + 1 levels of design and boring af)

If I could've reloaded on the 2nd level with the 9 credits I would've done it again but my own mistake really reminded me of how valuable my time is, I just don't wanna replay this shit over and over for no reason cuz of bullshit design. It might get better but that one screen was cringe

Maybe I'll come back to this one day with my friends as a challenge thing, it was pretty enjoyable and had a lot going on, catchy music, but having to replay something I felt like I pretty much mastered pissed me off. Don't wanna spend time just mastering every stage and inevitably failing in the next or one after until I 1-credit (or at least ig 1 set of credits) all of it. Not on my own at least

I could replay this game. But I have little reason to believe this game is better than the soundtrack on it's own, and the game itself really mostly feels like it only clutters a pretty alike experience with it's gameplay. Walking around and puzzles is most of the game, there's unique events and atmospheres in the game for sequences, but mostly it's walking around and puzzles, and they were A to B tasks in the first place, but after playing it once- that A to Bness is even more the case when you know where to go- or even knowing you Have To go somewhere. And that is really the gameplay, you have to go to places and do stuff, and sometimes cool moments and story happen. But that's more rare than what I'd call average in the game.

I don't think the mystery reveal at the end is dynamic enough either to fix what the game is, I don't know if that ever could be the case, but if anything there's even a little less nuance to get out of the road to the end.

5/10, 6/10 at best in my estimations.

I played this on a keyboard. This review is only about Chapters 1-7, the main content really.

I could stew on a chapter more which would be to the betterment of the rating, namely 5, which I thought had a decent bit of exploration sections that weren't very dynamic and wouldn't be on return, and also a decent bit of dialogue (which I'll get to overall soon)

What makes this game great for me:

I think this game succeeds mostly by outrewarding the pain of failure, to me this is done by a dynamic design that provides the challenge with proper room for tangible steps to victory, wherein being given the path and tools to allow for innovating with each failed attempt, toward grasping each one of these micro steps, we get the feeling that even when we fail and don't clear a stage- we feel closer and we feel like we learned something new about what we can do, which is wonderful in of itself. It's what encourages us to the current end goal.

The style of this game and the osts are also quite charming and complement the stage designs, which can make for cool sets and atmosphere, and really electric sequences when the game flows rewardingly. The anxious chase, and peace and motivation both are represented well here.

What makes it not as great for me:

The overwhelming majority of dialogue in this game to put it simply. It feels like it comes from a good place, most of the people in this game seem like cool people, but not necessarily characters that make music between different instruments, it feels a lot like one song or instrument in one key, and when it's not the same song the dichotomy is comprised of: people that are kind and anxious vs people that are meanies- for the most part. Overall, text can be quite predictable / general, on the nose, and even tacky at times as it attempts to evoke a perspective of optimism and conflict of it's era. I think what I see as the positives of its gameplay is what really fills in most of the story, the text is more so an attempt at an outline to perceive and define the gameplay's contributions in, which clutters things a bit for me. It's not responsible for much of the intimate or evocative quality that the gameplay boasts, it's often redundant even, and dilutes quality.

I reference the first paragraph of the positives when I say that- the other times this game doesn't work is when the level designs regress to stuff that provides very undynamic pieces for us to execute upon towards victory; effectively puzzle stages where we know the few steps we have to take, the steps are so few yet so challenging and requiring tight execution- asking not to innovate our ability for success one step at a time towards the stars, but to invent an entire rocket out of nothing to get there, which is hard to do and usually results in massive amounts of unrewarded failure. I don't think any philosophy of "you can do anything if you keep trying" when you have infinite attempts is fulfilling or respectful to the player that suffers through these tedious high execution puzzle stages, and I don't think it even comes from any founded place. It's like slamming your head into a wall hoping to find the answer, it's jumping into a void, it's a leap of empty faith. This game is never a void tho, it's full, and it's beauty is founded by it's and our progressive innovation and the courage and drive we gain from that. It's great for embodying that spirit, it would not be great to me if it was just some game that was an agony to get through, and then once overcome destructively, be used as a 2 minute ego stroke that "I did it".

Sections:

Idk if I could rank my favorite chapters in order, but the ones I thought were great are 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7. My least favorites are 3 and 5 as of rn.

7.5/10