There are fun gameplay aspects and things the game did right. Most of the environment locations has great atmosphere. Foggy, wet island with a mystery. Eerie buildings that make you feel you're being followed. They did a great job with audio. As you play, you earn character points you can place in four attributes. Two are focused on gameplay, while the other two help with dialogue. Leveling the dialogue options gives you more options to question NCPs. It makes the investigation part unique, almost RPG-like. The final two attributes can only be leveled by reading books and observing objects in the world. It encourages you to explore and find content. You also have a sanity meter that makes a difference in your playthrough.

This game starts off VERY strong and the final level feels powerful. There are four different endings and the studio did a great job with the cinematics. The middle suffers the most. I'm not sure if that happened because one studio was working on this project and then handed it to another. There were dumb horror tropes and odd sequences that had no place in the game. Perhaps the team was running low on time? But the strange transitions were off-putting. The story becomes nonsensical. I have played this twice and still had to wrap my head around the fckary that was happening.

I understand Lovecraft's style of dread and questioning your own sanity. Sadly, I don't feel it worked here. Though I'm certain that would be a difficult job.

Last complaint: the monster. When you first meet them, wow! Great job being scary...and then they keep using it. Three different times! Surely Lovecraft had more creatures? It becomes "ah, spooky!" to "get the fck outta my way!" in a hurry. Every time I saw them in game, I mentally spit in their direction. Screw that thing for being a nuisance.

Please stop putting instant kills in horror games. It quickly desensitizes the player to your monster. When I died and just spawned back in the game, there's nothing to fear. Only eye strain from the rolling.