The stunlocking and unavoidable grabs started getting to me after the 7th-8th playthrough. Most of the damage you'll take is by being stuck in an animation you can't cancel.
Also some enemies can only stagger when they've finished certain animations (like picking ashley up), if you shoot them before you've wasted a bullet. much of the movement feels stiff and unrewarding.

Some specific ganados 100% ignoring you and running for ashley feels stupid and scripted, that behavior should be passed around during combat rather than assigned to only one of them.

Forcing the player to hold the the crosshair still during combat to focus looks and feels dumb, they could have made the crosshair get smaller if you stood still or aimed at weak points rather than staring towards a fixed random point.

[pre 1.0 release review]
The game is 100% doable solo, even Program X.
Definitely better for those who want to focus more on gameplay.
Multiplayer is either too chaotic or too easy, while running solo lets you have more freedom and control of the match.
Definitely feels pointless after the first few reborns you do, since nothing changes besides cosmetics.

My comment on the itch.io game page:
"Really great experience, I love the textures, general ambience and shadows, not too dark but dark enough where it needs to be.

As some said, the work loop flows really well and keeps the player engaged, it's nice to interact with the lab appliances and do the little things that commonly are scripted actions/animations in most games.

Now this point here is maybe really personal, but it took me a while to notice the anesthesia lever, sometimes those things that are right in your face you end up missing/not seeing, thinking it's something else you're doing wrong by tunnelvisioning something else, in my case i thought I was not understanding the buttons, mainly because of the way the instructions were displayed, with the X indicating the button position, I misunderstood it and thought it was some sort of puzzle lol

Nice dream sequences, really liked the blue sky, contrasted by the ugly ceiling upon waking up, it's very relatable.

Thanks for the game, has really fun overral"

link: https://mikeklubnika.itch.io/carbon-steel

Keeps getting better and better with continued support from devs, there's much more to the game now than there was in the last 2 years.
The game overflows with great art and animations (not just the Witch that everyone focuses on like neanderthals, many characters in the roster have an animated intro and really likeable art overral) , everything feels fluid and great to interact with.
Takes a while to get used to the verticality, but when you do combat feels really good too.
I feel really warm seeing newgrounds in this day and age uniting talents from various people and giving way to projects like this one.

Almost all the movement and inventory elements from Penumbra: Overture are present in this demo, which did a good job of presenting the HPL engine 3d interactive capabilities.
It has a nice atmosphere, no wonder people liked it and it went to become the series we all know and love.
It's pretty short, and has some interesting puzzles, but the roach enemy looks like a flying turd, and has little to no presence in the duration of the demo, leaving more focus to the puzzles and map traversal.
if you're a fan of Penumbra, it's worth playing to see where and how it all started.

When finally trying to revive this franchise the devs opted to trade the thought out and deliberate approach that earlier games had with their enemy placements and variations that forced the player calculate shots and prioritize targets, and instead decided to throw horde after horde of the same bland, uninspired grey zombies that swarm the screen in the dozens.

Just because you CAN put 50 enemies on screen because of new graphics capabilities does not mean that is the best for a game with a reputation for unique enemies types made to diversify the already restricted gameplay of rail shooters.

Seeing chariot and hangedman on the Unreal Engine was pretty satisfying.
However, Moon was one of the most unsatisfying boss encounters in the entire franchise. While all games have a reputation for bad voice acting, they actually had a interesting and unique way of placing dialogues in the games. Moon's voice acting on the other hand just feels abnormally bland, without any personality or even goofyness to it, it's just bad and that's it. His animations are also horrible, he feels weightless for his size and when he moves on water you can see the clipping all over and no response, no splash, no nothing coming from the water. It just clashes so much with the whole UE rendering and feel.

Also, they developed various gore effects and responses to shots on the creatures, but then scrapped it all due to censorship, effectively putting the last nail in the coffin on the most uninteresting game of this franchise.

Feels bad knowing that for some reason they think this is the best path for this franchise and future games will follow this same path seeing no one is pointing out these flaws and just acting happy that the game got attention