Maybe I just don't vibe with this genre, but I found the game really lacking. Don't get me wrong, the atmosphere and aesthetic are top notch, but the actual gameplay leaves much to be desired. I'm not talking about the controls (besides, they give you the option of modern controls with the stick which is what I used), I'm talking about the puzzle design and world design.
To put it bluntly, most of the puzzles in this game are blatantly obvious to the point of feeling like it insults your intelligence. I made it all the way to what I believe is the final area and only one puzzle has had me stumped, and it rewarded me with a game breakingly good item. The frustrating part is a lot of these puzzles had the potential to be better- there's a few where they want you to make numbers that are multiples of each other, or make a specific number, for example, but instead of letting the player puzzle these things out, there's a note that simply tells you the answer hidden elsewhere in the world. Or for another example, there's one where you have 3 mushrooms you have to eat and 3 you can't eat or you'll die, and they had the potential to do a fun brain teaser through logical deduction, but you just talk to a guy a bunch of times and he eventually just tells you the answer.
The main "challenge" comes from having to figure out where to use rewards you get from puzzles in which areas, which is more annoying than fun. The game also seems to think "putting a safe in one location and the code that unlocks it in another" constitutes a challenge, when in reality it just means you have to take screenshots and interact with every item just in case you missed a combination somewhere.
I also found the ammo management system to be really punishing. Unlike its inspiration the Resident Evil series there is no limited inventory, only a limited capacity for certain items (but not ammo). To make you use your resources, then, the game throws a lot of enemies and "annoyances" at you for lack of a better word that you can choose to get rid of at the cost of spending ammo, or avoid them- an option that isn't feasible for the entire game because you have to backtrack through areas quite frequently, and the amount of enemies is increased as the game goes on and they stack up. I chose to eliminate enemies as I came across them, and now I'm at the point of entering the final area with absolutely no ammo in tightly packed corridoors that require you to have ammo. Faced with the prospect of having to redo 3 hours of gameplay but more annoying this time because I can't just clear out every enemy I see means that I end up having no desire to actually finish the game. I didn't bother mentioning it, but the story is also extremely easy to predict and I can already see what the big twists are going to be a mile away.
Ultimately, this feels like a "Twitter game"- a game that was made to farm viral clips when posted to social media and have a good first 30 minutes to an hour or so, but which is completely lacking of substance the further in you go. I guess if you really want to enjoy the atmosphere there is a peaceful mode where there's no enemies, but again, the idea of having to redo 3 hours of game just to see the ending to a story I'm not even that invested in just doesn't sound worth it to me.
