Rule of Rose is a game that seemingly has everything going for it at the start. The game opens with a gritty, dark look to it and your character is riding a bus to a long-forgotten area where she grew up, and the resulting adventure is a deep foray into her fragmented, distorted memories.

The game does not use jumpscares at all, and the horror is completely handled through dark imagery, foreboding situations, body horror and a constant sense of unease. The cutscenes are often brutal, including things such as being buried alive, or contained in a bag where children take turns throwing insects and spiders down upon you.

Early on, you also acquire a dog as a companion who you can give items to 'track' and that becomes the waypoint system. You can't ever see where you need to go on the map, but Brown, your dog, will lead you to where you need to go at every instance, creating an interesting companion system.

The game itself is, unfortunately, hampered entirely by the movement and combat system. Bad camera angles as well are an issue, but those are fairly common in the PS1/PS2 era of horror games so I won't count those against it. But your character, Jennifer, is perhaps one of the most useless main characters in a horror game that I have ever seen. There is reason for it, as revealed by the plot, but it makes it no less frustrating when even the slightest aggression can knock you down, forcing you to wait for a several-second stand-up animation to occur, which can happen multiple times per encounter.

Both Jennifer and the enemies have full immunity frames while attacking, which means if you attempt to attack while an opponent does, you will not do any damage. Worse, nearly all attacks by enemies have a longer animation than yours do, which means if you both attack at the same time, your attack animation, and your immunity frames, will run out first and you will take damage.

The boss fights are frustrating due to the above reasons, but navigation around the area is hampered by legions of small children-like creatures that are unnerving for the first area or two... but as you find other weapons like a steel pipe and later an axe, it almost becomes comedic in watching this sickly woman all-but slaughter droves of children-like creatures.

The ending is bizarre, with both a 'good end' and a 'bad end' both erasable, although it's honestly hard to tell for sure which is which, as the 'good end' leaves off with what seems to be a rather mentally broken Jennifer, and the 'bad end' at least has her come to terms with her trauma, even at the loss of much.

There are apparently a number of film canisters as well that I never found any of, which may add more to the story but I don't foresee myself replaying this game anytime soon.

Overall, and this is a rating I rarely, if ever, give to games- just watch someone else play it instead. Preferably with no commentary, in the dark. It's beautifully disturbing in all the best ways...but the actual gameplay ruins what could otherwise be a horror masterpiece.