I really wanted to love this game. I’ve been excited to play it for a while and it has the foundation to be something really cool, but sadly it kinda collapses under its own weight. I can respect the title’s ambition and I love “period piece” games reflective of a simpler and more experimental time in the medium but that doesn’t stop Sin and Punishment from being a pretty big mess. The story makes absolutely 0 sense and there’s not even any charm to be found in how bafflingly it’s presented to the player. The gameplay, at its best, is pretty fun but a little too mindless even for on-rail shooter standards. What really bothers me though is the lack of a ‘gameplay throughline’, stuff kinda just happens and gameplay style/perspective shifts very suddenly, which is cool in theory but pretty jarring in execution. Variety is nice but when there’s no connecting thread on how the game feels to control it ends up feeling like…this game.