i had my eye on this one for a while cause it just looked so striking but always with tempered expectations because these games come out and are just ok or a bit over-reliant on nostalgia and references, but this one really does not fall in these trappings it's a game that while very inspired it's not overtly so it has an aesthetic to call its own with this really nice looking and ever-changing amusement park, it nails the fundamentals of the genre in turns of combat and item management while adding its own lil twists with a camera that moves and the aimings which are also the hardest thing to get used to you really need to rewire your brain a bit when you start playing this game I had moments where I went wow this door is really easy to miss oh wait if I just move the camera... because I kept playing as if it was a fixed camera angle game the aiming though for me definitely the weakest bit I get that they are taking use of the free camera so you are always aiming from behind the mc but that can create some odd situations where the camera cant really be behind the character and it blocks your vision and its not like in lets say old resident evil where you could just aim and shoot even if you couldn't really see but you are aiming with basically a 3rd person control just from an isometric angle so I would that's probably my biggest issue with the game but it also enables for some more varied enimy types so its not all bad and idk if giving a more traditional aiming system would fix it out right as a lot of survival horror is often made better by such constrains. The puzzles though great I think they feel intuitive while still having that lil bit of a wacky nature to them in this case brought upon by the setting also items tend to have multiple uses which adds to a less linear feel and also a bigger insensitive to explore which I like it gives the feeling that each playthrough can be different or tackled differently even if the objectives are still the same. Storywise it is surprisingly original obviously there needs to be certain elements to it so it fits within this genre but the overall themes and mystery created here were really engaging all throughout even if a big part of it is delivered through fairly simple text boxes I get that with this aesthetic it would be hard to have readable text on anything but I really wish some of these felt a bit more diegetic, letters covered in blood, torn up newspapers things like that I think would go a long way here to make this even more of an immersive experience because everything else feels so artistically deliberate already.
Overall though amazing experience so far probably my favorite game to come out this year which I think is funny because I said something similar less than 2 years ago for Signalis and that's still one of my favorite games to have come out in recent years. its a good time to be a survival horror fan

wow, this one blows the first game out of the water so much more going on story-wise even if it still suffers from similar characterization issues but there is just so much more going on that it makes up for it. it is though very annoying to have to start with all the basic skills again right after a game where you had all the end-game powers, it also this one really endulges on the smt LONG ASS final dungeon "trope"? but aside from that even though this is a very similar game mechanically to the first game there is just much more going on the game constantly forces you into specific parties taking and giving you characters feeling like a very tailored experience compared to most smt games where you usually have a big control over that a la pokeman. this taking away and giving characters also feels very unhinged video game writing wise and even if I don't think its the deepest writing I seen I still enjoyed it so idk it's not the best smt game but I really enjoy its weirdness definitely went from "really this game has a cult following?" to "wow ok this is why this has a cult following"