I was genuinely, really excited to play this game, especially after beating SH2, but god fuck is the first half of this game just unbearable. It feels like that they overcorrected in making the gameplay less easy by just making every single encounter annoying. For one, they're all damage sponges, which isn't bad at all, but worse considering that they put in atleast 3 to 4 at a time in one room, and most of the time they are just faster than you. The first half of this game aswell is also just really really linear, with next to no puzzle solving at all, unless you wanna count different shades of finding keys to open doors so you can find more keys to open more doors puzzle solving. I don't hate the fact that the gameplay is more focused on survival horror, but almost all your weapons suck and you're just forced to not engage with this games combat and run around everything, which isn't a problem that's fine, every survival horror is like that, but it's the fact that there is always so many enemies in every single room, and they're all usually very claustrophobic hallways, and the enemies are faster than you and will stunlock you.
What sucks the most, is the fact the last half of the game is basically near perfect. Albeit, it just reuses the hospital from SH2, and remade the theme park from SH1, but that's not bad at all really, especially with the fact the remade theme park is fantastic. The combat/gameplay just becomes better, there's a lot more puzzle solving which, albeit, isn't as fun as it was in 2 or 1 but is still really enjoyable.
The otherworld in this game looks fantastic and I was always glad to see more of it in this game since there was a lack of it in SH2. This game has genuinely frightening moments and scared me a couple times.
The story is also really good, continuing off the ending of SH1, with some really great character writing, Heather I honestly think is the best SH protagonist.

If the entire game was basically just like the last half of it but extended, this would be my favorite, but god is the first half just unbearable.

A disappointingly shallow Hotline Miami-like experience. After about an hour or so the core gameplay begins to feel samey and it goes from being angry at the game but having fun, to being angry at how genuinely poorly designed it is. Enemies who clump up together in very small rooms in the later levels with little variations in tactics or core gameplay other than maybe 2 new enemies types and the levels being much larger, but unlike Hotline Miami, no shift-look feature to look around and zoom out of the level to see them from offscreen. It also doesn't help that the hotline miami styled trial and error gameplay doesn't work here since it's a one-life game. The smash-tv like formula hotline has just doesn't work for a rogue like.

this game used to be my Go-To multiplayer shooter. Back when I still played it, it had some of the most fun gameplay and moments in any shooter that would honestly put all of them to shame. The mix of proper strategizing with your teammates, picking the best operators and gear using their abilities to your teams advantage, while at the same time still requiring good timing and reaction time to get good shots off. There was one time it was a 1v5 and I managed to pull the best fucking clutch-ace that I don't think I'll ever be able to replicate in a video game ever. Every operator was balanced, fun, and played to eachothers strengths.

So what the fuck happened to this game?
Like really, I don't fucking know what happened. I tried playing this game again and it felt like a fake mobile knockoff of itself. The UI is atrocious, there's insane bloat, the artstyle looks like dogshit now, teamplay is basically fucking gone and every new operator looks goofy and plays like a valorant operator.

If this game was in better hands than Ubisoft, or if instead they just made a Siege 2 instead of continuing to update this game, that would've been for the best, but here we are.

Fuck this game.

At first I didn't really get it, I was imaging how I would word this out and describe my thoughts of this game and how, while I do like some parts of the game I feel like don't really reach those same heights as when I played Somnium 1 (granted yeah I'm playing these games in reverse I know but still). The puzzles from what I played were fantastic admittedly but there was something about this game that didn't land with me.
And then I kept getting the rest of the endings and this game just kept throwing the fucking hits one after another, and then the true ending route is pure unfiltered kino throwing out twists I literally could not fucking believe.
This game is actually insane, I don't know how you could come up with this, apart of me feels like I should be mad and say it makes no sense but it's so fucking insane and crazy that it loops back to being the most well thought out and kino thing ever. Especially since this game foreshadows the twist in the first frame of the first room.
I get it now. I understand now, I know what kino is like.

This is the most conflicted I've ever been on in a game in my life.

On one hand, this has the least enjoyable gameplay out of any single puzzle//adventure game/visual novel I've experienced, or just any game in general.
Some of the puzzles are genuinely downright fucking retarded. Some shit that nobody would ever even think to guess in their life, or sometimes they will be somewhat easy to understand, but the process to complete the puzzle is annoying and tedious as shit to actually do, because it's constant back and forth out of the menu (I know it's probably better on the DS but I do not care). Admittedly, I am not the smartest person when it comes to puzzle games, I tend to stutter on my thought process a lot, but for 999, I only really had to use a guide once and that was because I had a brainfart at the very final puzzle because it was like, 3 in the morning. In this game I had to constantly look one up because some of them just aren't conveyed to you well at all or just make no sense to actually do. One of the puzzles I thought bugged out entirely, so I reloaded my save from an hour ago, only to fucking learn I had the numbers correct, but the dice weren't facing the correct direction, so I spent an hour thinking my game bugged out four fucking times just to learn I had it, just not well enough.

And due to the story of this game, the pacing is total fucking shit, you are constantly jumping back and forth from path to path so you can see all the routes, get all the answers unlock all the locked routes, and get every single ending done which makes the game feel like it's the longest fucking game ever, which realistically speaking, it's not! This game took me about as long to be as both Somnium 1 and 2, and a little longer to beat than 999. But because of how YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO PLAY THIS GAME, it feels like actually the longest and most exhausting game ever created, it's fucking obnoxious.

On the other hand though, this game has quite literally the most interesting and insane stories I've ever experienced in a game. All the characters from the get-go are more interesting than the ones from 999 (barring Clover since she is from 999), much more development with them in general, much better written dialogue, and in a lot of aspects better writing in general. Playing this remaster and hearing that Sigma DIDN'T have a voice saved a lot of faith for me because I couldn't imagine having to hear Junpei's VA in a game like this. The general story to this game and plot is actual utter fucking insanity, and had me genuinely enthralled with how cool and crazy it got. This had me guessing more than 999 did that's for sure. But the problem is, just when the game is about to get somewhere, just when it's about to get interesting... the TRUE ENDING of this game, of all things, ends on fucking nothing. Looked up to see if I was missing something when I got it, no, that is just how the game ends. Like what the fuck?

There is a lot of parts to this game that are really good, like the writing, some of the puzzles are fun, music is fantastic, and largely most of the story is fantastic. But it's let down by so much shit that just makes it so exhausting and unbearable, and by the end I just didn't get what I wanted, which was simply a satisfying ending. This game feels like a general step down from 999, which sucks because I was hearing beforehand that this game was better. Oh well.

Schrodinger's video game. It's either dogshit, or kino. You decide.