Gameplay length was 5~ hours for me (mostly because most puzzles and cutscenes make you sit and wait for forever.) For the most part, I enjoyed it but all it really did was hurt me emotionally. I mean, that’s an expected part of something confronting mental health issues, but the resolution didn’t exactly cheer me up and make everything better like I would’ve hoped for in an ending to a game like this either. Can’t explain or it would be spoilers. I liked a lot of things, but I did also have a few problems with the game.
I see it was mentioned before below, but having a character, even a ‘villain’ type character being the manifestation of fears of diseases and plague say ‘autism’ as one of the ‘diseases’ that you should be afraid of isn’t cool at all. Autism is a classification of a spectrum of the way the mind works for some people. It isn’t something you can ‘catch’ like a disease or the plague. For a game centered around the brain, mental health, and ideas of how the mind might work, you’d really expect a little more respect for the neuro-nontypical. It’s like saying ‘ADHD is a disease’ or ‘geniuses are the plague and to be feared because their brains work differently.’ I get that it’s a line in a song, but it’s off-putting, unnecessary, and also gives the wrong idea to people who might be uneducated on the subject. Even if you argue that the characters have ‘differing opinions’ from the creator and are afraid of autism, that doesn’t mean you need to include a line like that in the game itself. If you had included, say, a line about a specific race like it was a disease, you would have been completely canceled. I find it comparable. How people’s brains function is something you can’t change any more than a cultural background or skin color. It’s certainly not a disease.
For the rest of the game- a few of cutscenes are broken, a lot of NPC character path tracing is broken and they won’t cross bridges and the like properly, there are vital clipping issues where you can accidentally get an enemy stuck on an object and no longer hit them- but they can shoot at you. There are aesthetic clipping issues where your follower gets stuck on things sometimes too. There are times you will also get stuck on objects but usually swinging your sword and rolling around a bit will unstick you. Worst case, you can do a ‘soft restart’ through the menu, and it’ll send you to a checkpoint like you died.
The combat mechanics are very chill and there’s no real death penalty aside resetting to an invisible checkpoint immediately. The music is very catchy and great in a lot of parts. I appreciate the plethora of puns. The puzzles are fun and easy. The art is very creative and pretty. It’s a good game for the most part, but it’s not exactly the most polished final product. Far from flawless. It also doesn’t really have any replayability imo.
Sorry for the essay lol