To be frank, this is veering on "not recommended," at least in its current state. I can see myself recommending it without reservation, even in its janky state, with a few bug fixes and maybe some adjustments to the enemy AI, which is just too easy to bamboozle right now.
As a handy guide, if there's a minus side I consider it a negative, and if there's a plus sign it's a positive. More minus/plus signs mean that I'm expounding on or adding to the original point.
-There's a dearth of enemy types (I can think of maybe five - your basic zombies, who offer the most complexity when encountered in groups, which isn't often enough, and a few others I won't spoil. All I'll say is that *most of the time* they appear in singular instances, which makes them relatively easy to deal with). This leads to a lot of "sameyness" in encounters, which often become rote.
++I'll give the game its flowers in that, some of the time, the player is given the opportunity to create stage hazards that can kill enemies instantly -- and the player, if they're not careful. However, it's usually easier to just shoot your way out of every situation, since ammo is plentiful and enemies aren't very smart of durable.
++The "one-two-punch" mechanic of staggering enemies and then lining up a more damaging shot is quite fun and satisfying when you get the hang of it.
++A certain late-game section upends the familiar formula you'll likely fall into, taking away your items and forcing you to engage with mechanics you might have otherwise ignored. This ended up being my favorite part of the game.
+The reloading mechanic for certain guns is very fun, albeit occasionally buggy or unresponsive. It seems precision-designed to heighten stress during combat, and I like that in a horror game. That said, you'll eventually start to favor guns that are easier to handle and reload out of sheer convenience. I would have liked having to spend more time with the jankier guns.
+There are also weapon attachments, some of which are fun and legitimate game-changers, such as a magazine for a pump-action shotgun (reloading is much faster), while others are a bit less important, such as an extended magazine for a submachine gun (the submachine gun is absurdly powerful and it takes barely a handful of bullets to kill most enemies).
-In addition, the game has an RE4-esque weapon upgrade system that's both easy to miss and, unfortunately, somewhat vestigial. You can tune up values like reload time, fire rate, recoil, etc., but the only ones I found worth bothering with were damage and clip size. You'll be able to deal with enemies just fine without even touching the upgrade system. (Note that this system is probably way more useful on the recently released hard mode.)
-To call the game janky is to somewhat undersell how buggy it is. The entire map is simulated all at once, so bodies and objects are persistent, and I presume everything is being processed simultaneously. This probably leads to issues.
--Enemies sometimes randomly appear out of nowhere, or fall through the floor/clip through walls. This can sometimes affect the player.
--There are two elevator puzzles where you have to find new buttons. After installing said buttons --in both puzzles-- they disappeared when I reloaded the game. Thankfully I had backup saves, or had reached the point where I didn't have to worry about the puzzle anymore, but I can see some players getting softlocked.
--There are sliding doors in certain spoilery locations that don't fully open all the way, requiring the player to press a corresponding button roughly a billion times to get them to fully open. I believe the latest patch claims to fix this, but I was still having the issue this morning.
--Sequence breaking is very, very easy to do, either by sliding down (or climbing up) hills, and by using physics props to climb up to places where the game clearly doesn't expect you to be. I managed to access a mining facility well before I was supposed to in this manner, and made it quite far before running into a firm roadblock. I also circumvented a fairly critical puzzle and still managed to beat the game. The developer should consider using more invisible walls and instant death falls, much as it pains me to say it.
++Sometimes the game is fine with you sequence breaking, cause it's got immersive sim DNA (the first code you're likely to find is 0451, btw). Experimenting led to me find a powerful weapon pretty early, which was great, but sometimes the sequence breaking is clearly not supposed to happen.
-The story is a little simplistic. More critically, the in-game narrative text is *riddled* with typos, poor grammar, and spelling errors. These issues never obscure the intended meaning of any text, however, so your mileage may vary as to whether this is a big deal.
++The prose is generally serviceable and even genuinely emotional at times. There are no big ideas here that you haven't seen before, but I ended up liking the sci fi horror trajectory the story took. The big twist is fairly easy to guess early on, however.
-The gameplay loop eventually devolves into a collectathon that involves a lot of backtracking, with a sprint meter that drains *very* quickly, and a game world that's all-too reminiscent of a Garry's Mod darkrp map (this can be a good thing, if you're into that. I began to find it a little drab, but I can see liminal horror fans liking the vibe).
++However, I like that there's minimal hand-holding, and the game requires you to take honest-to-god notes a lot of the time (there's no mechanic for this, other than a robust, if messy "rumors" tab that logs any lore and hints you pick up - a lot of the time it's simply ideal to have your phone or a notepad handy to scrawl a code or puzzle solution. I enjoy that.)
++There's a lot of puzzles, none of which are impossible to solve if you're perceptive or clever enough.
--... but many of them fall into gonzo Resident Evil/Silent Hill-ish logic, such as collecting emblems to get into locations that should be easy to access. Again, this may not bother you, and I suppose it generally supports the weirdness of the setting.
I finished this earlier today and started playing the recently-released hard mode afterward, and I have to say - I think hard mode is much more satisfying to play. You're frequently at a disadvantage against enemies, being short on ammo (and enemies being much tougher in general - so tough that i think a stealth mechanic may be warranted), and you are forced to engage in more hit-and-run tactics, as well as traps. The "normal mode" should probably be tuned a bit more in this direction.
Overall, I'm pretty torn on this. It's a very ambitious game for what I think is a first effort on the part of the developer, and it's clear they poured a lot of themselves into it. I just dealt with a lot of frustration while playing, which leaves a slightly bitter taste, despite the bones of a decent Silent Hill/Deus Ex lovechild being in there.
However, I appreciate that the developer is clearly invested in improving the game post-launch. They're highly responsive on Reddit, and have been nothing but helpful when I've reached out to them. Bravo to that.
Solid 6/10. For now.
