eraneranera
5 reviews liked by eraneranera
Baldur's Gate 3
2020
Really frustrating, really gorgeous, really fun. I wish the game valued depth over breadth. Act 3 completely falls apart under its own weight. Too many quests, too many unfulfilled promises of characters you saw the previous two acts, too many bugs, the pacing is horrendous while the previous two were as tight as can be. Endless waves to bring to mind Dragon Age 2, replacing difficulty with simple numbers to bring mild variety to how much running around talking to NPCs completely unrelated to the main plot you do. This isn't helped by the fact it remains so buggy that at certain points the game feels like it's actively fighting against you as you play it, with guards seeing through walls, NPCs running through walls and out of existence, characters hitting nothing mid-air and falling to their deaths, etc. They need to focus on these instead of removing homoeroticism.
But it is a beautiful game. The world feels good to be in, the characters are likeable and wonderfully voiced. The voice acting of the main cast in this are a testament to the beauty and legitimacy of the artform of voice acting. So much of this game is carried on the shoulders of these incredible performances, and they never falter.
My main complaint with them is they all feel rather edgeless. And Larian further sands off any remaining, because people felt hurt by Lae'zel's bluntness, or Wyll's narcissism. It's a shame the company is so insecure over their writing, and I'm sad to admit it makes me think less of it as a whole.
But I'll always be happy I played it. And there's not really more I'd want as a creator than for someone to feel that way about my work.
But it is a beautiful game. The world feels good to be in, the characters are likeable and wonderfully voiced. The voice acting of the main cast in this are a testament to the beauty and legitimacy of the artform of voice acting. So much of this game is carried on the shoulders of these incredible performances, and they never falter.
My main complaint with them is they all feel rather edgeless. And Larian further sands off any remaining, because people felt hurt by Lae'zel's bluntness, or Wyll's narcissism. It's a shame the company is so insecure over their writing, and I'm sad to admit it makes me think less of it as a whole.
But I'll always be happy I played it. And there's not really more I'd want as a creator than for someone to feel that way about my work.
Insanely cool CRPG, which I don't play a whole lot of because so many of them tend to drag. WOTR is long, and it's wordy, but the writing across the board is super compelling and the gameplay is great. Not nearly enough d20 adaptations attempt turn based combat faithful to the tabletops, and fewer still do it so well.
I think one of the most impressive aspects of the game is its reactivity in the mid and late game. It's a little railroady towards the beginning, and thematically much of the game pushes the player in a Lawful Good direction, but ultimately the choice is yours and I haven't played a game that made being this evil this much fun in a very long time. It might have the best tyrannical undead lord RP I've ever played, full stop. Choices have meaningful consequences in both the dramatic and mechanical sense, with many decisions influencing events far, far into the game in ways you don't always expect, which is just fantastic in a genre plagued with meaningless binary Paragon/Renegade dialogue trees. Even when going for a particular alignment, I found myself making a lot of value judgments based on my feelings because the characters and the plot had me emotionally invested in the goings-on. There aren't a lot of games that truly make me feel rotten and satisfied in equal measure for doing something evil, or so torn over figuring out the right thing to do.
The character writing is (mostly) top notch, with the worst examples just being sort of dull in comparison to the high notes. When the character writing hits the high notes, it REALLY hits the high notes. The companions, especially the neutral or evil-aligned ones, are filled with some real charmers. Daeran, your sassy gay evil aristocrat divine caster, is a treat. He carries a tragic backstory tinged with mystery, but ultimately his alignment is what it is simply because he is a hedonistic dickhead, and he's all too happy to explain this to you, no excuses. Then there's Woljif, tiefling thief and dumbass scoundrel, who's a hoot, but heralds a subplot about confidence and powerlessness that adds depth to the character you wouldn't expect. Camellia, half-elf shaman is... well, she's unforgettable. Wenduag, fucked up bloodthirster and half-spider mutant, is fascinating, seemingly puddle-deep when introduced but later revealing a remarkable complexity behind her backstabbing tendencies and might-makes-right philosophy. Regill, who is essentially Darth Vader in gnome form, might be the coolest companion in an RPG in decades. There are no hidden depths to Regill. He just rules. Even the side characters and antagonists are full of life. Areelu Vorlesh might be one of my favorite RPG villains since Irenicus, and in my opinion rivals the latter for complexity in character and motivation.
When these elements mix, when the themes meet the characters and the characters meet morality, this is where the game's writing really shines. There's a particular young priest, a farm boy of no more than 20, introduced close to the start of the game. For much of the early chapters he is a background character, you hear his story and get a feel for his personality by talking to him - he's meek and ineffectual, but some great courage in him inspired him to drop his plow, pick up a sword, and leave home to come fight the demons in Sarkoris. Later, he transitions to being an important merchant, developing his cleric powers and learning to heal your troops on the march. You get a sense that this boy is finding his wings, that one day he will lead a great and noble legacy as a hero of the crusade. Then chapter 3 happens. In a completely missable sidequest, after investigating the temple he has been put in charge of protecting, you discover that in his cowardice he has been harboring a group of cultists in the basement. Their leader placed a curse on him so that if anyone ventures into their base, a swarm of rats will eat him alive from the inside out. And so he lies to you. Deceives you. Tries to hide the truth from you. It's hard not to sympathize, but the boy's lack of responsibility is quite literally getting dozens, perhaps hundreds of people killed. In a flash, the game demonstrates to you with a moral dilemma just how evil your enemy truly is, how hellish this war and its consequences, how out of his depth this peasant boy has landed, how he should 100%, absolutely never have left his comfortable home and journeyed to this horrible place. After that, the choice is yours. Do you venture into the basement to find clues as to the cultists' whereabouts? Do you take mercy on the poor child and agree to overlook the den, perhaps at the cost of more lives? Maybe you're an evil necromancer and your character chastises the boy, enters the basement without a second thought and resurrects the corpse of a noble warrior from within to serve as your thrall, the only price you pay being a rotten feeling in the pit of your stomach when you come back up the stairs and find the boy devoured.
I have to stress here that at this point you have known this character for, at minimum, a dozen hours. You were given time to grow attached, to dream of his ideal future before the cruel reality of this war rears its head and you are given power over his fate. Wrath of the Righteous is littered with stories like this, great and small, starting early and carrying forward into the heart of the game dozens and dozens of hours in before reaching their conclusions, and every time the power to influence these events lies in your hands - but sometimes the influence you have may not be as great as you like. So you think about them. You think about them hard. You struggle over right and wrong, fair and unfair, and perhaps ultimately go against your own conscience simply to play a role - you roleplay. And then you understand what the term "RPG" truly means.
The game's most glaring flaw, undoubtedly, is the half-baked nature of the Crusade Mode metagame that crops up in chapter 2 and beyond. It's HoMM-inspired, but lacks critical elements that makes those games work and is absurdly poorly balanced. Your first battle with a spellcasting demon general WILL result in entire stacks of units being melted by lightning bolts that do infinite damage for some godforsaken reason. You can turn this off, but you miss out on some useful magical goodies and what I think are some genuinely interesting RP moments that ultimately contribute a whole lot to the fun of picking a mythic path. After all, why would you deliberately skip the part where your undead kingdom begins to annex its neighbors? The solution, universally agreed upon by the playerbase, is to cheat. Just install the toybox mod and cheat through the Crusade layer. You'll miss nothing, as the real meat and potatoes of the game lies in the Pathfinder stuff anyway.
As an aside, it really pisses me off that Backloggd won't let me make this my game of the year even though it's still being updated.
Anyway, great game, highly recommend. Areelu Vorlesh did nothing wrong.
I think one of the most impressive aspects of the game is its reactivity in the mid and late game. It's a little railroady towards the beginning, and thematically much of the game pushes the player in a Lawful Good direction, but ultimately the choice is yours and I haven't played a game that made being this evil this much fun in a very long time. It might have the best tyrannical undead lord RP I've ever played, full stop. Choices have meaningful consequences in both the dramatic and mechanical sense, with many decisions influencing events far, far into the game in ways you don't always expect, which is just fantastic in a genre plagued with meaningless binary Paragon/Renegade dialogue trees. Even when going for a particular alignment, I found myself making a lot of value judgments based on my feelings because the characters and the plot had me emotionally invested in the goings-on. There aren't a lot of games that truly make me feel rotten and satisfied in equal measure for doing something evil, or so torn over figuring out the right thing to do.
The character writing is (mostly) top notch, with the worst examples just being sort of dull in comparison to the high notes. When the character writing hits the high notes, it REALLY hits the high notes. The companions, especially the neutral or evil-aligned ones, are filled with some real charmers. Daeran, your sassy gay evil aristocrat divine caster, is a treat. He carries a tragic backstory tinged with mystery, but ultimately his alignment is what it is simply because he is a hedonistic dickhead, and he's all too happy to explain this to you, no excuses. Then there's Woljif, tiefling thief and dumbass scoundrel, who's a hoot, but heralds a subplot about confidence and powerlessness that adds depth to the character you wouldn't expect. Camellia, half-elf shaman is... well, she's unforgettable. Wenduag, fucked up bloodthirster and half-spider mutant, is fascinating, seemingly puddle-deep when introduced but later revealing a remarkable complexity behind her backstabbing tendencies and might-makes-right philosophy. Regill, who is essentially Darth Vader in gnome form, might be the coolest companion in an RPG in decades. There are no hidden depths to Regill. He just rules. Even the side characters and antagonists are full of life. Areelu Vorlesh might be one of my favorite RPG villains since Irenicus, and in my opinion rivals the latter for complexity in character and motivation.
When these elements mix, when the themes meet the characters and the characters meet morality, this is where the game's writing really shines. There's a particular young priest, a farm boy of no more than 20, introduced close to the start of the game. For much of the early chapters he is a background character, you hear his story and get a feel for his personality by talking to him - he's meek and ineffectual, but some great courage in him inspired him to drop his plow, pick up a sword, and leave home to come fight the demons in Sarkoris. Later, he transitions to being an important merchant, developing his cleric powers and learning to heal your troops on the march. You get a sense that this boy is finding his wings, that one day he will lead a great and noble legacy as a hero of the crusade. Then chapter 3 happens. In a completely missable sidequest, after investigating the temple he has been put in charge of protecting, you discover that in his cowardice he has been harboring a group of cultists in the basement. Their leader placed a curse on him so that if anyone ventures into their base, a swarm of rats will eat him alive from the inside out. And so he lies to you. Deceives you. Tries to hide the truth from you. It's hard not to sympathize, but the boy's lack of responsibility is quite literally getting dozens, perhaps hundreds of people killed. In a flash, the game demonstrates to you with a moral dilemma just how evil your enemy truly is, how hellish this war and its consequences, how out of his depth this peasant boy has landed, how he should 100%, absolutely never have left his comfortable home and journeyed to this horrible place. After that, the choice is yours. Do you venture into the basement to find clues as to the cultists' whereabouts? Do you take mercy on the poor child and agree to overlook the den, perhaps at the cost of more lives? Maybe you're an evil necromancer and your character chastises the boy, enters the basement without a second thought and resurrects the corpse of a noble warrior from within to serve as your thrall, the only price you pay being a rotten feeling in the pit of your stomach when you come back up the stairs and find the boy devoured.
I have to stress here that at this point you have known this character for, at minimum, a dozen hours. You were given time to grow attached, to dream of his ideal future before the cruel reality of this war rears its head and you are given power over his fate. Wrath of the Righteous is littered with stories like this, great and small, starting early and carrying forward into the heart of the game dozens and dozens of hours in before reaching their conclusions, and every time the power to influence these events lies in your hands - but sometimes the influence you have may not be as great as you like. So you think about them. You think about them hard. You struggle over right and wrong, fair and unfair, and perhaps ultimately go against your own conscience simply to play a role - you roleplay. And then you understand what the term "RPG" truly means.
The game's most glaring flaw, undoubtedly, is the half-baked nature of the Crusade Mode metagame that crops up in chapter 2 and beyond. It's HoMM-inspired, but lacks critical elements that makes those games work and is absurdly poorly balanced. Your first battle with a spellcasting demon general WILL result in entire stacks of units being melted by lightning bolts that do infinite damage for some godforsaken reason. You can turn this off, but you miss out on some useful magical goodies and what I think are some genuinely interesting RP moments that ultimately contribute a whole lot to the fun of picking a mythic path. After all, why would you deliberately skip the part where your undead kingdom begins to annex its neighbors? The solution, universally agreed upon by the playerbase, is to cheat. Just install the toybox mod and cheat through the Crusade layer. You'll miss nothing, as the real meat and potatoes of the game lies in the Pathfinder stuff anyway.
As an aside, it really pisses me off that Backloggd won't let me make this my game of the year even though it's still being updated.
Anyway, great game, highly recommend. Areelu Vorlesh did nothing wrong.
Fire Emblem Engage
2023
This review contains spoilers
Fire Emblem Engage draws a lot from different games in the series, which is to be expected from an anniversary title. It has a world map like Sacred Stones or Awakening. It has a central hub area like Fates’ My Castle or Garreg Mach from Three Houses. The shorter supports and more one-note characters are also reminiscent of Awakening and Fates’ approach to writing. Fire Emblem is a series that’s constantly reinventing itself, so it’s no surprise that Engage draws from a lot of different sources and tries to merge all the different mechanics and ideas from past games into one coherent system. Obviously this meant that people who really like one specific type of FE game (people who venerate Kaga as the savior of tactical RPGS, people who just want the GBA games back, people who think a girl who was abused and experimented on by literal mole people, only to be manipulated by said mole people into thinking that the dragon pope is the source of her trauma is actually some kind of communistic girlboss, etc) would be put off by mess of inspirations and mechanics that is Engage. I get that. But since I’m a connoisseur of only the finest chuuni bullshit and been a fan of the series for well over a decade, I fully expected to enjoy the game.
And I did. A lot, actually. The story was pretty simple and a lot of the characters can be boiled down to one defining quirk or character trait, but it did a good enough job of moving Alear and company between cool fights. There were even a few chapters that were really cool intersections of story and gameplay, like the whole chapter 10-11 sequence. The Somniel was an okay hub that didn’t really need to be in the game, but I do need to commend the game for having a much better fishing minigame than Three Houses did. It can get kind of tedious going between activities sometimes for the stat boosts, but I never found them too integral to the game so you could probably just ignore the hub entirely and move between story battles if you wanted to. For a switch title, the game also actually looks really nice. The models are all clean, the colors and environments are all bright and detailed without being too cluttered, and it generally lacks that kind of blurriness that most switch games suffer from. I also liked the music a lot and the soundtrack was (a bit) more varied than just remixes of its vocal theme, which is more than I can for some other FE titles. The place the game really shines, though, is in the gameplay and the systems underlying it. I’m a sucker for games that let you abuse their mechanics, and Engage actively encourages you to use the different emblem rings in increasingly scummy and creative ways. The way it does this is actually really clever, too. You fight enemies that use their own emblems throughout the game, and the best way to counteract their own underhanded tactics and warp-spamming bullshit is with your own. Use Sigurd’s emblem ring to send your archer halfway across the map in one turn, then move them out of danger after they’ve taken out a particularly dangerous wyvern rider. Give Lucina to your thief so they interrupt any battle in a six square radius and poison the enemy, weakening them for the rest of the battle. Use Corrin on a thief, archer, or dragon unit to fart out nine tiles of fog that add a flat +30 evade to every unit within them, and dodge tank entire waves of reinforcements. Give Byleth to anyone that isn’t Seadall so you get a second dancer that can restore turns to four units at once. There are a lot of creative ways to mix and match emblems and units, either to compensate for their weaknesses or to further augment their strengths. And since each character has their own unique traits on top of their class, there’s even more room for customization. It isn’t like Three Houses’ “every character starts off as a trainee so make your own party”, customization, either since each character has a more clearly intended role within your army. Yeah, you can still do things like make an entire army of mages if you wanted to, but unlike 3H where any character could be okay as any class, there are definitely better and worse ways to use each unit in Engage. The maps were also much more varied than in Three Houses, with a few that even had objectives outside of routing the enemy or defeating a boss. There were a few later maps that pitted you against enemies that could alter the terrain through things like launching 3x3 fireballs that leveled boulders, or by triggering avalanches that would push your units back unless they were positioned in front of impassable tiles that were reminiscent of the dragon veins of Fates. The paralogue maps that pull from past FE games also stood out as really good, since they tended to recreate pivotal moments from their source games in creative and sometimes downright funny ways (shoutout to Ike just leveling like ten tiles worth of walls in his paralogue chapter). Yeah a few maps dragged on longer than they should and the choice for Celica’s paralogue was awful, but generally I enjoyed them and nothing was anywhere near as tedious as the Desert Stronghold in Echoes, or as bland as most of Three Houses’ maps. I went into Engage expecting a more gameplay-focused experience than Three Houses, and I ended up pretty satisfied by the whole thing since it really delivered on that front.
The one thing I didn’t expect, however, is that the game would remind me the most of the one Fire Emblem game it was least likely to draw from: Tokyo Mirage Sessions.
In a series as schizophrenic as Fire Emblem, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Engage most closely resembles the spin-off idol RPG, but since I’m like one of the five people that actually like that game, I really wasn’t expecting there to be so many parallels. A fairly light and by the books story about heroes from other worlds granting their power to others in order to stop an evil dragon. Characters fusing with said heroes from other worlds in order to gain new powers. A bright, flashy art style with heavily stylized cast of characters (this is just a nicer way of saying overdesigned since I actually like a lot of the character designs). A combat system that encourages planning in order to exploit enemy weaknesses and chain together attacks from multiple characters (Engage’s backup system in practice is pretty different from TMS’s sessions, but the idea of tagging in other characters to add some extra damage to your attack is pretty similar). An oddly clean presentation for the system they’re on. I could probably list off a few more similarities, but since this is basically just a long joke I didn’t really see the need to. I do actually see a lot of TMS DNA in this game and wanted to point that out, since that’s not something I see talked about a lot (maybe this is just because people either hate that game or forget it exists IDK lol). Maybe it’ll get people to think about Engage a little differently, or maybe me mentioning TMS will just make some people go listen to Reincarnation by Kurono Kiria. Either is a good outcome.
btw the Tsubasa cover of Reincarnation from Encore is better than the original go check it out
And I did. A lot, actually. The story was pretty simple and a lot of the characters can be boiled down to one defining quirk or character trait, but it did a good enough job of moving Alear and company between cool fights. There were even a few chapters that were really cool intersections of story and gameplay, like the whole chapter 10-11 sequence. The Somniel was an okay hub that didn’t really need to be in the game, but I do need to commend the game for having a much better fishing minigame than Three Houses did. It can get kind of tedious going between activities sometimes for the stat boosts, but I never found them too integral to the game so you could probably just ignore the hub entirely and move between story battles if you wanted to. For a switch title, the game also actually looks really nice. The models are all clean, the colors and environments are all bright and detailed without being too cluttered, and it generally lacks that kind of blurriness that most switch games suffer from. I also liked the music a lot and the soundtrack was (a bit) more varied than just remixes of its vocal theme, which is more than I can for some other FE titles. The place the game really shines, though, is in the gameplay and the systems underlying it. I’m a sucker for games that let you abuse their mechanics, and Engage actively encourages you to use the different emblem rings in increasingly scummy and creative ways. The way it does this is actually really clever, too. You fight enemies that use their own emblems throughout the game, and the best way to counteract their own underhanded tactics and warp-spamming bullshit is with your own. Use Sigurd’s emblem ring to send your archer halfway across the map in one turn, then move them out of danger after they’ve taken out a particularly dangerous wyvern rider. Give Lucina to your thief so they interrupt any battle in a six square radius and poison the enemy, weakening them for the rest of the battle. Use Corrin on a thief, archer, or dragon unit to fart out nine tiles of fog that add a flat +30 evade to every unit within them, and dodge tank entire waves of reinforcements. Give Byleth to anyone that isn’t Seadall so you get a second dancer that can restore turns to four units at once. There are a lot of creative ways to mix and match emblems and units, either to compensate for their weaknesses or to further augment their strengths. And since each character has their own unique traits on top of their class, there’s even more room for customization. It isn’t like Three Houses’ “every character starts off as a trainee so make your own party”, customization, either since each character has a more clearly intended role within your army. Yeah, you can still do things like make an entire army of mages if you wanted to, but unlike 3H where any character could be okay as any class, there are definitely better and worse ways to use each unit in Engage. The maps were also much more varied than in Three Houses, with a few that even had objectives outside of routing the enemy or defeating a boss. There were a few later maps that pitted you against enemies that could alter the terrain through things like launching 3x3 fireballs that leveled boulders, or by triggering avalanches that would push your units back unless they were positioned in front of impassable tiles that were reminiscent of the dragon veins of Fates. The paralogue maps that pull from past FE games also stood out as really good, since they tended to recreate pivotal moments from their source games in creative and sometimes downright funny ways (shoutout to Ike just leveling like ten tiles worth of walls in his paralogue chapter). Yeah a few maps dragged on longer than they should and the choice for Celica’s paralogue was awful, but generally I enjoyed them and nothing was anywhere near as tedious as the Desert Stronghold in Echoes, or as bland as most of Three Houses’ maps. I went into Engage expecting a more gameplay-focused experience than Three Houses, and I ended up pretty satisfied by the whole thing since it really delivered on that front.
The one thing I didn’t expect, however, is that the game would remind me the most of the one Fire Emblem game it was least likely to draw from: Tokyo Mirage Sessions.
In a series as schizophrenic as Fire Emblem, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Engage most closely resembles the spin-off idol RPG, but since I’m like one of the five people that actually like that game, I really wasn’t expecting there to be so many parallels. A fairly light and by the books story about heroes from other worlds granting their power to others in order to stop an evil dragon. Characters fusing with said heroes from other worlds in order to gain new powers. A bright, flashy art style with heavily stylized cast of characters (this is just a nicer way of saying overdesigned since I actually like a lot of the character designs). A combat system that encourages planning in order to exploit enemy weaknesses and chain together attacks from multiple characters (Engage’s backup system in practice is pretty different from TMS’s sessions, but the idea of tagging in other characters to add some extra damage to your attack is pretty similar). An oddly clean presentation for the system they’re on. I could probably list off a few more similarities, but since this is basically just a long joke I didn’t really see the need to. I do actually see a lot of TMS DNA in this game and wanted to point that out, since that’s not something I see talked about a lot (maybe this is just because people either hate that game or forget it exists IDK lol). Maybe it’ll get people to think about Engage a little differently, or maybe me mentioning TMS will just make some people go listen to Reincarnation by Kurono Kiria. Either is a good outcome.
btw the Tsubasa cover of Reincarnation from Encore is better than the original go check it out
7'Scarlet
2016
I used to be pretty down on this game, but after listening to Food4Dogs's thoughts on the game, I'm more sympathetic to it even if it's not exactly a great game. The mystery and characters are both just sort of alright, nothing mindblowing or particularly clever, but its focus on people's relationships with deaths is a subject I've always found fascinating, even if the actual execution isn't. There's some unrealized ambition in this game, but as it is, it's just okay.
To sum this game up in one word, it's a janksterpiece.
The game foregoes a lot of established series trends (the removal of the flashlight and radio, you never visit Silent Hill, ect) for better or worse, though I feel most of these changes breathe new life into the series. It allowed for a greater variety of locations and to not confine itself to dark narrow corridoors for a majority of the game.
The biggest issues I need to get out of the way is the combat and camera. To be blunt, they're bad. The combat is about as cack-handed as previous entries,. and the camera is about as handy as the ones in 90s 3D platformers, which they must have been aware of as they have a button dedicated to resetting it for the countless times it'll get stuck on the environment over the game.
The production value isn't up to snuff either, unfortunately. Textures are noticably lower quality over Silent Hill 2 and especially 3, models are worse, facial animations are more rigid, lighting is far poorer. I think some of this can be attributed to the larger environments that previous entries, but it is a shame to see this regardless.
That all being said, the game offers a richly disturbing atmosphere and complex story which more than makes up for its many, many faults.
The game wastes no time, establishing you're trapped in your appartment, locked from the inside and completely cut off from the world. Scream and bang on the door all you want, no-one will here you. They take their themes to their logical conclusions and leave a strong impression. Voyerism, abandonment, motherhood, isolation, all perfectly woven together to create an atmosphere of nightmarish hell, but also uneasy comfort.
Unfortunately the protagonist, Henry, has almost no personality and almost no dialogue. Though this is made up for by the game's antagonist, Walter Sulivan. Surprisingly, he is the main character of this game and he earns it, being an ever present force and a complex personality.
I can't say too much more about the story as people should experience it for themselves, but I will say there's a point roughly halfway into the game that completely changes the way you approach playing, and I'll never forget how helpless I felt in that moment. That moment alone was worth playing the game for.
If you can play past the glaring surface issues, I promise you there's an incredible experience waiting just underneath. Don't overlook this one.
The game foregoes a lot of established series trends (the removal of the flashlight and radio, you never visit Silent Hill, ect) for better or worse, though I feel most of these changes breathe new life into the series. It allowed for a greater variety of locations and to not confine itself to dark narrow corridoors for a majority of the game.
The biggest issues I need to get out of the way is the combat and camera. To be blunt, they're bad. The combat is about as cack-handed as previous entries,. and the camera is about as handy as the ones in 90s 3D platformers, which they must have been aware of as they have a button dedicated to resetting it for the countless times it'll get stuck on the environment over the game.
The production value isn't up to snuff either, unfortunately. Textures are noticably lower quality over Silent Hill 2 and especially 3, models are worse, facial animations are more rigid, lighting is far poorer. I think some of this can be attributed to the larger environments that previous entries, but it is a shame to see this regardless.
That all being said, the game offers a richly disturbing atmosphere and complex story which more than makes up for its many, many faults.
The game wastes no time, establishing you're trapped in your appartment, locked from the inside and completely cut off from the world. Scream and bang on the door all you want, no-one will here you. They take their themes to their logical conclusions and leave a strong impression. Voyerism, abandonment, motherhood, isolation, all perfectly woven together to create an atmosphere of nightmarish hell, but also uneasy comfort.
Unfortunately the protagonist, Henry, has almost no personality and almost no dialogue. Though this is made up for by the game's antagonist, Walter Sulivan. Surprisingly, he is the main character of this game and he earns it, being an ever present force and a complex personality.
I can't say too much more about the story as people should experience it for themselves, but I will say there's a point roughly halfway into the game that completely changes the way you approach playing, and I'll never forget how helpless I felt in that moment. That moment alone was worth playing the game for.
If you can play past the glaring surface issues, I promise you there's an incredible experience waiting just underneath. Don't overlook this one.