[h1] *REPLACED* isn’t good, but it isn’t bad either[/h1]—
unfortunately, that leaves it feeling mediocre. “Mundane” shouldn’t describe a game unless you’re talking about something like [u]*The Sims*[/u].
The art style is handled extremely well and perfectly fits the game’s atmosphere. Unfortunately, that’s where most of my praise ends.
The gameplay loop is so repetitive that even the upgrades fail to breathe any real uniqueness into combat. If the button prompts didn’t occasionally remind me that certain abilities existed, I probably would have forgotten about them entirely.
The game also has a unique story to work with, but it doesn’t really tell that story so much as feed it to you. There’s no mystery, no genuine epiphany, and very little meaningful conflict. The player is rarely given anything to discover or piece together because nearly every plot point is explained outright. Ironically, that makes the story almost forgettable.
The side quests don’t add much exploration or insight into the world either. They’re mostly extra steps required to reach a piece of lore, and because nearly all of them are handled through the same location, they don’t make the world feel any larger or more alive. Outside of upgrades, they add very little to the overarching story.
The game’s biggest missed opportunity is its protagonist. He is essentially one man made from both opposing sides of this world: the evil corporation and the victims it preys upon. That conflict exists in his character design, but the game rarely does anything meaningful with it. In a world built around corporate greed, human-organ trafficking, and life being sold to the highest bidder, you never truly interact with those horrors—you mostly arrive afterward and witness the consequences.
For a linear game driven by atmosphere and setting, this is where meaningful choices could have made everything hit harder. The game didn’t need an open world or even a completely revamped combat system, although better combat certainly wouldn’t have hurt. It needed to force the player to confront this world morally and make choices that shaped the story: deciding who receives life-saving medication, choosing between two urgent objectives when only one can be completed, or determining what you do after learning the truth about yourself.
Even subtle choices could have brought the pressure and cruelty of this world out of the background and placed it directly in the player’s hands. Instead, that never happens. The unique setting, striking art style, and serviceable combat simply can’t make up for how little the game allows you to engage with its most interesting ideas.
