DreadOut: Keepers of The Dark (2016)

While this is a standalone title, it seems clear that Keepers of the Dark was meant to be more of a DLC to the first game, and a strange one at that. The graphics and gameplay are identical to the original and it reuses assets and settings from the first game nonstop. While the base game of DreadOut is pretty short, this one is unlikely to take you much longer than 4-5 hours tops. Of the 8 maps you can visit, I believe 6 are just ripped straight from the base game and the new ones are admittedly kind of bland sewer maze map.

But wait, did I say "maps?" That's kind of a weird way to describe DLC to a linear narrative horror game. That's because despite the first game having a complex but consistent linear story, this game is essentially a boss rush mode, though thankfully the bosses you encounter aren't merely recycled from the base game as well. You start in a sort of nexus mirror world Linda visited offscreen during the events of the first game in which an array of doors will lead to the different maps, each with 2 ghosts or monsters to defeat. You can visit these maps in any order, though some will require you to revisit them after uncovering clues in other maps to actually complete them. Most of the maps tend to have a primary boss ghost and a lesser encounter, though the format varies quite a bit. This was one of my favorite things about the game: of the 16 bosses (plus 1 hidden boss...though a different boss appears in 2 different levels so it's kind of still 16), there's a ton of variety in how the encounters go. Some of them are straight-up camera-based combat, but others require solving a puzzle or finding the right item either before starting the fight or in order to avoid a fight altogether. Yet weirdly, the game kind of has a feel of some Dark Souls inspiration, or perhaps more precisely Demon's Souls with the whole nexus format, even down to the iconic victory message.

The nature of the entities you face is far and away one of the best things about the game. One of the things that sold me so hard on DreadOut, despite its flaws, was its unique aesthetics and immersion in Indonesian setting and mythology with a "ghostpedia" straight out of Fatal Frame, the series the game takes its most obvious influence from. The enemies you fight have detailed lore entries detailing their tragic ends and, to some extent, often explaining their disturbing appearance and haunting style. My favorite was Seeing Blind, the spirit of a detective who was investigating a serial killer who took his victims' eyes as trophies. The killer caught on to the detective and as torture, gouged out his eyes and forced him to eat his own eyes and the eyes of the killer's prior victims. This manifests with the detective's ghost, Seeing Blind, having no eyes and swiping at you blindly. He's only vulnerable when he exposes an eye weakpoint in his mouth (and for some reason you only do real damage after you obtain glasses and a scalpel in the level) and several of his attacks involve vomiting a torrent of eyes at you. The myths of the game tend to be this level of absurdly dark that I don't usually care for, but it does work well for the spooky and dim urban legend atmosphere of DreadOut (and again, Fatal Frame similarly errs on the side of gratuitously dark backstory, so it's even less surprising).

The biggest issue with the game is that, with no exaggeration, the gameplay is mostly pretty awful. I still enjoyed DreadOut despite some of the jank of the combat, but it feels like Keepers of the Dark really outdoes it in trying to stress the flaws of the combat system. The first major boss especially almost made me decide to shelve the game as I spent almost the entire time just getting stunlocked while trying to sneak in shots at the boss who seemed to have an absurd amount of health. Thankfully that was probably one of the worst encounters of the game, but despite the variety, there are still several bosses that take entirely too long to kill and feel like their entire strategy centers on abusing your limited mobility that is entirely manufactured by the game's mechanics. The fact I enjoyed this game at all despite the fact the gameplay was just so bad really speaks to the positive points listed above. I mentioned a weird likeness to Dark Souls. This kind of carries through to the combat but whereas some of these enemies feel like a Dark Souls boss, Linda is stuck with the clumsy and slow maneuvering of Fatal Frame.

All in all, I still feel like this isn't a very "good" game. I give it 3 stars simply because (at least after that first boss) I did enjoy it for what it is and I still appreciated that charm that so pulled me into the first game. While I think this game makes more sense as a DLC, I was pleasantly surprised with how engaging the gameplay loop of lore, puzzle, and ghost banishing was. Despite some early frustration, the game had me coming back for more until I quickly finished it. My only other disappointment is that while it filled in A LITTLE BIT, it didn't do much to make the vague-but-intriguing story of the first game any clearer.