What a strange strange game. It sits at 68% positive on Steam, but it still looked so good I had to try it. Immediately, it felt like I was playing a Tormented Souls type game, with its beautiful mansion rendered in Unreal and classic survival horror mechanics with a modern twist. But, the more I played the more the cracks started to show.

First off - the puzzles. The logic behind them completely eludes me. I would say 1/3 of them are logical, simple, inventory-based or deciphering clues. But the rest… complete moon logic. I got stuck SO many times, and had to scour the internet (mainly a Russian language video I found) to get by. Even when finding the answer, I couldn’t tell you why or how. I wrote down manual notes the entire time, every little clue and detail, and still I kept getting stuck.

Besides this issue, there are tons of bugs and translation errors. The lore writing was always just beyond my grasp of understanding. The translation was just so so bad and confusing. I would also constantly be clipping through walls and object. Items would disappear and reappear from my inventory. Entire cutscenes from earlier or later in the game would get triggered at random moments, and just avoiding breaking the game was part of my “survival horror” experience.

Still… it’s beautiful. There’s some really impressive body horror and creature designs, the mansion is wonderful to explore. When things were good, they were GOOD. The game is very long, taking me about 16 hours to finish. I also really liked the story.

There’s a whole second character playthrough, which I’m undecided if I will do. Definitely not any time soon. I’m happy to move on from it, but i very cautiously recommend this one to the true survival horror fanatics like me that can overlook the myriad of issues on display to still experience the nuggets of gold the game can offer.