I don't know if this was done on purpose but this just feels tonally .... off? compared to the prologue. It reminded me more of games like Undertale or OneShot where you just have this large zany cast of characters in a super vast, bright world. Which again, is fine, but there doesn't really seem to be a balance between this and the horror segments, and it's often times very hard to take the game seriously when it wants to be.
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I don't really think its the environments. there are plenty of good environments in this game they just never let it rock long enough for it to mean anything before shuffling you onto the next thing. Like the whole illusion house segment is great but then just tossing you into a weird bullet hell sort of gimmick to climax the whole thing brought it down too much IMO. There were so many instances where I was thinking "That can't be right" because everything was over right after it just started picking up.