The sense of progression is very satisfying until you hit Richter, where things are then ruined by needing to do a bunch of specific obscure shit to access the second half of the game. It got me back on board at that point by being pure combat 'till the end, which was great because I was really regretting not being able to explore what was clearly a deep and good-feeling combat system.

There's a lot of little annoyances and flaws which keep this from being truly great. The genre has moved far beyond SotN, and for good reason. That said, I can't deny the super fun gothic cheese here.