I played this like 5 years ago and decided to revisit it after stumbling upon a video which featured this janky ass game and I realized that I didn't unlock the fun stuff. So, I played through the campaign 3 times in 3 days in roughly 35 hours, got the "true" ending, reflected for 1 hour about what the fuck I just played, and then decided to write this because is 5 AM and can't sleep.

When people talk about how fun is this game, they always forget all the grinding you have to pass through to get the fun OP weapons/psi-cyber-powers. Nonetheless, the gunplay in general is fun, OP weapons or not. I tried every weapon and most of them feel distinct and fun to use, largely thanks to their sound. I love the gun sound in this game. If you are patient you can become incredibly overpowered, like jump 15 floors and run at 300 km/h overpowered. Sadly, this is semi-hidden behind so much grinding (or you can be like me and download cm_farm_alpha23) and very obtuse and janky systems (like the research stuff).

The mood of this game is defined by its narrative, and, oh boy, the devs were at least on ketamine when writing the story. It's very inaccesible. The backstory is presented in walls of text in the main hub, the dialogues are not well translated and are kinda broken and, if you really wanna follow the story and discover the "true" ending (you have to get all the "other endings" first), you also have to be on a ketamine trip. The NPCs that somewhat hint what is going on are hidden inside the levels, and the levels are very, very big and confusing. In fact, I invested early on heavily on my cyberlegs, and I suggest you do too, because navigating through these levels without anything boosting your speed is tortuous, to say the least. You can complete the campaign without undestanding jackshit what happened, and that's fine, and expected I think. E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy is a experience, in the same way a fever dream is also a experience.

Despite all its clunkiness, its jank and its inaccessibility, is a fun and certainly unique game. Recommended to try if you like niche games, the Source engine, hard drugs, brouzouf, shooting at things, W40K and above all, have the patience and tolerance to unlock the cool stuff. I heard the game is much more fun if you complete it with friends on coop (which game isn't?), but for better or for worse, I got through all of this alone.
The quintessential schizo game. Maybe.

Reviewed on Mar 25, 2022


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