This review contains spoilers
lowkey feel like im never gonna beat this game im only halfway in Except itsn ot even halfway bc i need to reset anyway GRAHHH
edit: ok i think my spirit has been finally destroyed so i will stop now and watch the rest of the story elsewhere
it was somewhat fun for a while? it Is unfair and i think it's funny that even mechanics like cosmetic changes to your employees cost precious LOB points, and a lot of other mechanics are just out there to get you. like getting abnormalities is a blind guess, then figuring out what work the abnormality responds to is more trial and error, and it's just like that throughout for everything. but figuring it out and improving your agents and unlocking more and more features to deal with issues is fun!
there are also some features against the frustration, you can roll back to day 1 (this keeps your progress with missions and abnormalities, though it does reset your employees) or, every 5 days, the game saves your status so if you fucked up big time you can always reroll back. but the sense of being against shitty odds stays there until mid-game at least... Then you get used to it and becomes pretty tedious and annoying... but eh
the creepiness factor is also great, i like the designs and stories of the abnormalities!
everything else is... mixed bag. sound design is... okay. some of the sound levels seem a bit odd, but maybe it's on purpose? mostly just abnormality / weapon sound clips vs the rest of the music and ambience clashing. artstyle... it's good for abnormality designs, but the map is so colorful and my eyes would start hurting after a while, which is made even worse with one particular suppression level. and i don't like the goofy artstyle for the AIs. but oh god the worst part of everything is the TINY font that there is NO way to fix even if you want to mod the game. i eventually adjusted but if you don't have 10/10 vision good fucking luck
but most of my beef is ofc gameplay-related. like i said, at some point the difficulty levels out and then it just becomes boring loop of researching once you get a hang of all your little guys. gebura's missions threw in some entertainment for that eventually like trying to suppress 3 ALEPHs was fun? but oh my god waiting for a midnight ordeal is like pulling teeth and the ordeals themselves are such a mess even with good agents... and i'm sure it gets even worse with whatever else is in store for the remaining 2 weeks and i don't want to find out. the difficulty is generally balanced-ish, but some stuff just feels unnecessary. i think i can forgive clerks walking into death traps and the facility apparently not having a function to just close off corridors to stop them from doing that and pissing off the Clerk Rights Activists. it's funny that you have to evaporate them from existence with execution bullets instead of installing doors like a normal person. but not being able to properly control your agents in fights when kiting is an important skill with some enemies is just unnecessary jank and feels frustrating instead of difficult but fun. also i don't get why seeing how much agents are getting from working on abnos is not the default option. that mod is like my default recommendation. i don't mind HP/SP bars not being visible until you do specific research since you can work around that, but this is just stupid
spoiler territory:
another thing i liked is that the time rerolling is clearly not just a gameplay feature to reduce frustration but part of the story. who doesn't love a good meta-connection between a story game is trying to tell and the actual game mechanics! i don't know all the details yet but i will catch up nowwww hehe. also i figured that the manager and A were probs somehow related bc angela gets cryptic barely 2 weeks in lmao, but i thought it would be some tomato-in-the-mirror final reveal, and i am glad it wasn't? idk where exactly the plot leads and i'm not really a fan of the whole carmen subplot for now but eh i hope i'll enjoy it
edit: ok i think my spirit has been finally destroyed so i will stop now and watch the rest of the story elsewhere
it was somewhat fun for a while? it Is unfair and i think it's funny that even mechanics like cosmetic changes to your employees cost precious LOB points, and a lot of other mechanics are just out there to get you. like getting abnormalities is a blind guess, then figuring out what work the abnormality responds to is more trial and error, and it's just like that throughout for everything. but figuring it out and improving your agents and unlocking more and more features to deal with issues is fun!
there are also some features against the frustration, you can roll back to day 1 (this keeps your progress with missions and abnormalities, though it does reset your employees) or, every 5 days, the game saves your status so if you fucked up big time you can always reroll back. but the sense of being against shitty odds stays there until mid-game at least... Then you get used to it and becomes pretty tedious and annoying... but eh
the creepiness factor is also great, i like the designs and stories of the abnormalities!
everything else is... mixed bag. sound design is... okay. some of the sound levels seem a bit odd, but maybe it's on purpose? mostly just abnormality / weapon sound clips vs the rest of the music and ambience clashing. artstyle... it's good for abnormality designs, but the map is so colorful and my eyes would start hurting after a while, which is made even worse with one particular suppression level. and i don't like the goofy artstyle for the AIs. but oh god the worst part of everything is the TINY font that there is NO way to fix even if you want to mod the game. i eventually adjusted but if you don't have 10/10 vision good fucking luck
but most of my beef is ofc gameplay-related. like i said, at some point the difficulty levels out and then it just becomes boring loop of researching once you get a hang of all your little guys. gebura's missions threw in some entertainment for that eventually like trying to suppress 3 ALEPHs was fun? but oh my god waiting for a midnight ordeal is like pulling teeth and the ordeals themselves are such a mess even with good agents... and i'm sure it gets even worse with whatever else is in store for the remaining 2 weeks and i don't want to find out. the difficulty is generally balanced-ish, but some stuff just feels unnecessary. i think i can forgive clerks walking into death traps and the facility apparently not having a function to just close off corridors to stop them from doing that and pissing off the Clerk Rights Activists. it's funny that you have to evaporate them from existence with execution bullets instead of installing doors like a normal person. but not being able to properly control your agents in fights when kiting is an important skill with some enemies is just unnecessary jank and feels frustrating instead of difficult but fun. also i don't get why seeing how much agents are getting from working on abnos is not the default option. that mod is like my default recommendation. i don't mind HP/SP bars not being visible until you do specific research since you can work around that, but this is just stupid
spoiler territory:
another thing i liked is that the time rerolling is clearly not just a gameplay feature to reduce frustration but part of the story. who doesn't love a good meta-connection between a story game is trying to tell and the actual game mechanics! i don't know all the details yet but i will catch up nowwww hehe. also i figured that the manager and A were probs somehow related bc angela gets cryptic barely 2 weeks in lmao, but i thought it would be some tomato-in-the-mirror final reveal, and i am glad it wasn't? idk where exactly the plot leads and i'm not really a fan of the whole carmen subplot for now but eh i hope i'll enjoy it