It's a story-focused game that doesn't have an interesting hook to start with. Things don't get interesting until the halfway point. There's little interactivity in horror games like these, so there wasn't much to keep me entertained in the meantime. I was even falling a sleep during play sessions.
The puzzles in the game are pretty light. There are some puzzles that are more interesting and intricate in the second half of the game, but they are never challenging. The focus is just to uncover the story which leads to disappointing results. The characters of interest in the story all seem to have similar backstories about childhood trauma, and in one case, childhood trauma isn't enough to explain their behavior. The story feels pretty aimless too as Marianne moves from investigating one person who leads to another and another while I have no idea why any of them matter until the second half. It leads to moments where I forget who is who. I honestly forgot what even started this all off, and the ending is pretty bad.
The coolest part of this game is how they present Marianne's medium ability. She can see the spirit world and the living world at the same time. This is presented in the game with a split screen where one half shows the living world and the other half shows the spirit world. The two worlds look different and there are things to interact with that only appear in one of the worlds. This is cool only in presentation though. There's nothing interesting gameplay-wise they do with this. As I mentioned before, the puzzles are pretty light. The game just has me interact with an object in the spirit world to trigger something in the living world and vice versa.
There is a stealth element to this game because there is a monster that occasionally stalks you. This, thankfully, is kept to a minimum. I think there are only about 5 stealth sections in this game. They aren't that bad. They aren't good, but they aren't that bad. Getting caught is a one-hit kill, but the punishment isn't much as the stealth sections are short.
There just isn't much here to make this a game worth playing.
The puzzles in the game are pretty light. There are some puzzles that are more interesting and intricate in the second half of the game, but they are never challenging. The focus is just to uncover the story which leads to disappointing results. The characters of interest in the story all seem to have similar backstories about childhood trauma, and in one case, childhood trauma isn't enough to explain their behavior. The story feels pretty aimless too as Marianne moves from investigating one person who leads to another and another while I have no idea why any of them matter until the second half. It leads to moments where I forget who is who. I honestly forgot what even started this all off, and the ending is pretty bad.
The coolest part of this game is how they present Marianne's medium ability. She can see the spirit world and the living world at the same time. This is presented in the game with a split screen where one half shows the living world and the other half shows the spirit world. The two worlds look different and there are things to interact with that only appear in one of the worlds. This is cool only in presentation though. There's nothing interesting gameplay-wise they do with this. As I mentioned before, the puzzles are pretty light. The game just has me interact with an object in the spirit world to trigger something in the living world and vice versa.
There is a stealth element to this game because there is a monster that occasionally stalks you. This, thankfully, is kept to a minimum. I think there are only about 5 stealth sections in this game. They aren't that bad. They aren't good, but they aren't that bad. Getting caught is a one-hit kill, but the punishment isn't much as the stealth sections are short.
There just isn't much here to make this a game worth playing.