Um, it wasn't great. The first chapter started fairly strong. You're in this decrepit family mansion, sneaking around and solving cryptic puzzles. You are trying to follow your father's footsteps to stop this supposed family curse. Sounds interesting right? Well, sadly all that cool stuff was at the end. Since I didn't play the previous games, the ending felt rushed and not clear to me.
There's a ton of cutscenes and black loading screens in this game. I am not one to knock a game down for animation quality, but for the amount of cutscenes, it does leave much to be desired. The characters are incredibly stiff, with little mouth movement.
There are so many loading screens! An unreasonable amount. You will be sitting silently, looking at a black screen for a long time. I don't understand why some of the rooms or locations couldn't be connected to cut down on the shear amount of loading. There's a tiny hallway that literally only connects you to the living room from the parlor. Anytime you need that room, you get not one, but two loading screens. For a relatively small room. It's poor planning.
After chapter 1, there's less puzzles. Only one specific puzzle toward the end I can think of. The gameplay turns into a couple of boring tasks. Either run here and talk to this person then go back to speak with this person, or there's a "puzzle" but you just guess or mash a button until you get it correct. What happened to the multi-part desk puzzle that was thought out in the beginning?
There are fixed camera angles, which is part cool, part annoying. It was cool for atmosphere; but gameplay wise, trying to find clues was annoying when the camera had a mind of its own. I don't even know what to say about the characters. Everyone was so bare bones that when a name was mentioned you forgot who they were, lmao.
I don't know if this deserves a two, but I'd feel so bad if I gave it only one star. I feel like the team was TRYING. However, the finished product has so much wasted potential. I was looking forward to it but in the end, I couldn't stop laughing how absurd it turned out.
There's a ton of cutscenes and black loading screens in this game. I am not one to knock a game down for animation quality, but for the amount of cutscenes, it does leave much to be desired. The characters are incredibly stiff, with little mouth movement.
There are so many loading screens! An unreasonable amount. You will be sitting silently, looking at a black screen for a long time. I don't understand why some of the rooms or locations couldn't be connected to cut down on the shear amount of loading. There's a tiny hallway that literally only connects you to the living room from the parlor. Anytime you need that room, you get not one, but two loading screens. For a relatively small room. It's poor planning.
After chapter 1, there's less puzzles. Only one specific puzzle toward the end I can think of. The gameplay turns into a couple of boring tasks. Either run here and talk to this person then go back to speak with this person, or there's a "puzzle" but you just guess or mash a button until you get it correct. What happened to the multi-part desk puzzle that was thought out in the beginning?
There are fixed camera angles, which is part cool, part annoying. It was cool for atmosphere; but gameplay wise, trying to find clues was annoying when the camera had a mind of its own. I don't even know what to say about the characters. Everyone was so bare bones that when a name was mentioned you forgot who they were, lmao.
I don't know if this deserves a two, but I'd feel so bad if I gave it only one star. I feel like the team was TRYING. However, the finished product has so much wasted potential. I was looking forward to it but in the end, I couldn't stop laughing how absurd it turned out.