This game is a big pot of strange to me. The story is pretty good, although it isn't really until the end that things really pick up. I'd say the best environment is in the sewing room, I love the wood walls and the way they contrast with the blue carper. The music is also really great. The ambient track in the area you first play as the security in is my favorite.
There are a lot of design issues with it, even simple things that I feel like could've been fixed very quickly. I'm just gonna list them off here instead of going super in depth on them, though.
- The autosaves slot takes up the first/top slot on the list of saves. Despite this, when you hit 'continue' your cursor defaults to the second slot (aka the first manual save slot). And because this is one of those die-a-lot games, you get the urge to spam enter to try again. However, the autosave often saves at further points than your manual save does, which you might not realize during multi-room chase sequences where it saves every room. So you end up having to replay a lot more than you realize if you don't select the autosave every time you die.
- Relatedly, the autosave has the potential to save over your progress if you trigger it in a further room -> die -> select manual save slot -> respawn earlier -> step on the (invisible) save trigger on accident.
- Last point on autosaves, despite the autosave feature clearly being triggered by some sort of event tile, there's at least one room where it saves before an unskippable cutscene in the middle of a chase sequence where it does nothing but show you what to interact with. This made dying in this room all the more painful as the cutscene plays every time you load the save.
- The first chase scene in the game literally has you wait by the exit for one of the monsters to move. It moves in a specific pattern so it won't chase you, so you just have to stand and wait for it to move while all these other monsters are running around you.
- There is no visual or clear distinction between enemies that move randomly, enemies that move in a specific pattern, and enemies that chase you. This makes traversing areas with hordes of enemies very confusing as you have little to no room to build strategy.
Finally, the art is really well made, but the talk sprites give off this weird feeling that they were... traced from 3D models? I don't know how to describe it. It's like the shapes and forms are solid, as is the coloring, but the lines are shaky, and the eyes in particular look really weird anatomically. And I know it's an anime art style but I mean like, eyes being vastly different sizes when it's clearly meant to be a perspective shot but it isn't being portrayed properly. I think this is the first time where I've played a game where the overworld sprites portrayed the characters with more detail and uniqueness than the talk portraits.
There are a lot of design issues with it, even simple things that I feel like could've been fixed very quickly. I'm just gonna list them off here instead of going super in depth on them, though.
- The autosaves slot takes up the first/top slot on the list of saves. Despite this, when you hit 'continue' your cursor defaults to the second slot (aka the first manual save slot). And because this is one of those die-a-lot games, you get the urge to spam enter to try again. However, the autosave often saves at further points than your manual save does, which you might not realize during multi-room chase sequences where it saves every room. So you end up having to replay a lot more than you realize if you don't select the autosave every time you die.
- Relatedly, the autosave has the potential to save over your progress if you trigger it in a further room -> die -> select manual save slot -> respawn earlier -> step on the (invisible) save trigger on accident.
- Last point on autosaves, despite the autosave feature clearly being triggered by some sort of event tile, there's at least one room where it saves before an unskippable cutscene in the middle of a chase sequence where it does nothing but show you what to interact with. This made dying in this room all the more painful as the cutscene plays every time you load the save.
- The first chase scene in the game literally has you wait by the exit for one of the monsters to move. It moves in a specific pattern so it won't chase you, so you just have to stand and wait for it to move while all these other monsters are running around you.
- There is no visual or clear distinction between enemies that move randomly, enemies that move in a specific pattern, and enemies that chase you. This makes traversing areas with hordes of enemies very confusing as you have little to no room to build strategy.
Finally, the art is really well made, but the talk sprites give off this weird feeling that they were... traced from 3D models? I don't know how to describe it. It's like the shapes and forms are solid, as is the coloring, but the lines are shaky, and the eyes in particular look really weird anatomically. And I know it's an anime art style but I mean like, eyes being vastly different sizes when it's clearly meant to be a perspective shot but it isn't being portrayed properly. I think this is the first time where I've played a game where the overworld sprites portrayed the characters with more detail and uniqueness than the talk portraits.