Aesthetically, this game is unmatched. Every moment of the game is an audio-visual feast that I can't help but love, easily the best of the year, and narratively its well-trodden ground but "good enough". If this was simply a visual novel or walk-around-simulator, I'd give it much higher marks.
The issue is that behind all that gloss, this is a really mediocre RPGMaker horror game. Janky hitboxes, unclear uninteresting puzzles, absurdly dull and frustrating mechanics hinder the actual playing of the game. But, what really gets me is one specific mechanic--sanity.
The non-horror segment gameplay revolves around managing your various resource meters, one of which is sanity. Now, sanity is funny in this game, despite the main plot resting on you trying to serve a sort of spooky elder god figure, that doesn't effect it. If you follow the main story only, you can go the entire game never interacting with sanity at all.
No, what effect sanity is every piece of optional content in the game. The various "golden girl" collectibless and the sidequests for the alternate ending being the main two. The game is pretty clearly balanced around having high sanity, so this means trying to interact with the game, well, at all, punishes you. Which I don't actually hate--"you want the golden ending? Play the game a bit harder." is a good tact, I think. BUT, what bothers me is the implementation. See, sanity doesn't actually effect anything mechanically--as long as its not zero(instant loss), you're good. What sanity actually does is darken the screen and give it an annoying border of dark tendrils blocking the screen and more egregiously--it plays this loud spooky chanting over the rest of the audio.
So, as a completionist, I ended up playing the entire game like this. Resource management is rough in the game, so if you're doing the side content sanity naturally ends up being a "dump stat" by its pointless nature, but in doing so you don't get to actually enjoy the game--as I said at the outset, this game sells itself on its audio-visual aspects. This came to a head in one late-game horror dungeon segment that involved every bad rpgmaker cliche you can think of--enemies that spawn randomly, walk faster than you, involve you walking around a very dimly lit area with little landmarks looking for keys, on its own it wouldn't pass muster in any random dlsite game let alone a full-budget title financed by Square Enix. Then you throw on the fact I was doing this while also not being able to see or hear shit due to the sanity and you can imagine.
I didn't touch the game for a month after that. I think if they had made sanity's penaltiy mechanical instead of aesthetic, itd fix the issue a lot, and it was clear an issue because they've apparently patched the game to make sanity more lenient in a patch late last month, but the damage to me at least was done.
Anyways, I look forward to what this studio does in the future, because with some tuning I think this team has potential to make a true masterpiece with some more experience.
The issue is that behind all that gloss, this is a really mediocre RPGMaker horror game. Janky hitboxes, unclear uninteresting puzzles, absurdly dull and frustrating mechanics hinder the actual playing of the game. But, what really gets me is one specific mechanic--sanity.
The non-horror segment gameplay revolves around managing your various resource meters, one of which is sanity. Now, sanity is funny in this game, despite the main plot resting on you trying to serve a sort of spooky elder god figure, that doesn't effect it. If you follow the main story only, you can go the entire game never interacting with sanity at all.
No, what effect sanity is every piece of optional content in the game. The various "golden girl" collectibless and the sidequests for the alternate ending being the main two. The game is pretty clearly balanced around having high sanity, so this means trying to interact with the game, well, at all, punishes you. Which I don't actually hate--"you want the golden ending? Play the game a bit harder." is a good tact, I think. BUT, what bothers me is the implementation. See, sanity doesn't actually effect anything mechanically--as long as its not zero(instant loss), you're good. What sanity actually does is darken the screen and give it an annoying border of dark tendrils blocking the screen and more egregiously--it plays this loud spooky chanting over the rest of the audio.
So, as a completionist, I ended up playing the entire game like this. Resource management is rough in the game, so if you're doing the side content sanity naturally ends up being a "dump stat" by its pointless nature, but in doing so you don't get to actually enjoy the game--as I said at the outset, this game sells itself on its audio-visual aspects. This came to a head in one late-game horror dungeon segment that involved every bad rpgmaker cliche you can think of--enemies that spawn randomly, walk faster than you, involve you walking around a very dimly lit area with little landmarks looking for keys, on its own it wouldn't pass muster in any random dlsite game let alone a full-budget title financed by Square Enix. Then you throw on the fact I was doing this while also not being able to see or hear shit due to the sanity and you can imagine.
I didn't touch the game for a month after that. I think if they had made sanity's penaltiy mechanical instead of aesthetic, itd fix the issue a lot, and it was clear an issue because they've apparently patched the game to make sanity more lenient in a patch late last month, but the damage to me at least was done.
Anyways, I look forward to what this studio does in the future, because with some tuning I think this team has potential to make a true masterpiece with some more experience.