It's a very solid adventure game. I picked this up in the recent Humble Bundle without having heard of it, but it looked interesting, so it's the first one I tried. It's clearly inspired by Riven, and I'm a sucker for a good puzzle game. I really enjoyed Obduction, but I think it's actually better than Obduction. Obduction had me running aimlessly around a big world trying to figure out what's going on, but Quern is much more focused. The puzzles are smaller in scale, so I didn't spend as much time scratching my head trying to figure out what to do next.

The Good: The puzzles were mostly the right difficulty in my opinion. Nothing was too easy or too obvious, but there weren't many puzzles that made me look up a guide either. Like the Myst series, the game does a show-not-tell approach, letting you discover how the world works on your own without holding your hand. The length was good too. I don't think it overstayed its welcome at all. The first two-thirds of the game were the best part of the game. You're on a small-ish island, but you slowly unlock more as you go on. The space is used really well.

Meh: There was a point toward the end of the island part where I had some issues. There's a certain spot I had to just happen to look up while standing in the right place to see where I needed to go. And then the very next thing I had to do was go back to an old puzzle but with a new object, and this one did have a picture on the island hinting toward it, and I thought the picture looked familiar, but for the life of me I couldn't place it. These kinds of issues are pretty spot-on for the genre, so it's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure other people had issues in spots I didn't. But there was a LITTLE bit of "how the heck was I supposed to figure that out" going on with the game.

The Bad: Nothing really. The game is a bit glitchy, but that's about it.

Excellent game! The Metacritic is far too low (currently 72% on the PS5 I played it on, but the PC version is 75%). It's clearly inspired by Resident Evil 1, but it manages to do its own thing very well.

The good: Almost everything was great in this game. The puzzles felt like the right difficulty for the most part. They weren't too easy, but I could eventually figure them out. There were a couple little things I looked up tips on (google "Tormented Souls tips" and there's a good site that gives away little hints for each puzzle without spoiling the whole thing). The way you can manipulate some of the puzzle items was cool (like the wrench), though it's totally understandable if it left some players scratching their heads. It's sort of a trial by fire thing, and it works in my opinion. Also the good ending was really really cool. I freaked out with excitement when I realized what was happening! And the optional steps to get that good ending were fun too. The monster design was good (with one exception). The story was decent enough, and was on par with Resident Evil and Silent Hill, I think. Nothing mind blowing, but I was engaged. The atmosphere was top notch. Similarly, there were a few early game moments of panic when I had to run around a room trying to find a way to light it up so I could shoot the enemies that were chasing me! The game builds up the dread and it pays off better than most survival horror games. I also like how you could choose between tank controls and normal controls. I don't know who in their right mind would choose the tank controls besides doing a challenge run (is there an achievement for this like there was in the Grim Fandango remaster?), BUT I'm really happy the option was there. Another positive was the limited saving. There were maybe 15 total save tapes in the game? Which was plenty as long as you're trying to conserve them. The difficulty of combat was easy enough that I never even actually died, so I never really felt the scarcity of the tapes. The game itself was a good length and never overstays its welcome. I beat it in maybe 13-14 hours, but if I hadn't gotten stuck a couple of times I probably could have done it in 10. I think one of the best parts is that it does a lot with a little. The entire game takes place in the hospital (which is also a mansion), but you get access to more areas as the game progresses. There's a lot of backtracking, but it was rarely burdensome because you're constantly opening new doors as shortcuts. Doors you run into early on might finally get opened mid or late game, so you slowly see the fruits of your labors.

Meh: One minor complaint is that there wasn't a lot of variation in the enemies. Also, there weren't a lot of weapons to choose from either (maybe this sparsity is an advantage though because other games go overboard). There was one items I had to look up the location because I just couldn't find it, though I guess that's a personal problem (the item was the missing ring on the key mid-game). And then there was one of those puzzles I just couldn't figure out on my own because I thought the logic was a little bit of a stretch (the door with the alien picture on it). This may also be an individual issue, so I wouldn't want to knock down the score just for that.

The bad: There's not a lot, but two things stand out as atrocious. The first is the voice acting and human animations. Bad voice acting is a staple in survival horror games, but the character models were rough. The enemies were actually pretty good design-wise (barring the next bad thing I'm about to say), but the humans were so stiff, especially in cut scenes, which I would expect to be more polished. The other bad thing (and this might be considered by some to be a spoiler, but it's really a minor inconvenience in the plot and imo totally unnecessary to the game) is The Monster. Late game you get a monster reminiscent of RE 3's nemesis or RE 2's Mr. X. It's really more of a mild annoyance than anything, and only tangentially ties into the plot at the end. It's easy to despawn by exiting the room and reentering again. He only appears in some room. Its animation is probably worse than the human's animation. It grabs you from an awkward distance. I think the game would have been much better without it.

Overall a fantastic game. I give it a 9/10. I'd love to see a follow-up. If the game could jump in quality the same way Silent Hill did when the sequel game out, I think the developers could easily create one of the best survival horror games of all time. And much like Silent Hill 1 was, Tormented Souls is already a modern classic.

I'd been waiting for this game for a long time after playing the original (which I played after it was in the Humble Indie Bundle 5 way back when). The original was one of the most inventive games I've ever played in terms of level design, and Psychonauts 2 keeps up that momentum. Most games follow generic video game level tropes (desert level, ice level, underwater level, etc), every level in both mainline Psychonauts games is truly unique, and that's a real testament to the creativity of the developers. My only real gripe (which keeps it from being a full five stars) is that the combat is a bit lackluster. Dodge-rolling feels really sluggish, especially. But that doesn't drag the game down by much. It also seemed a bit easier overall than the original, though it's been about a decade since I played it. Still, I 100% recommend this game to anyone with even a passing interest in platformers, especially if they want something that doesn't fall victim to the typical level tropes.