"Occult" seems to have been taken off the internal filtering blacklist finally.

The links to "Book of Hours" (base game) don't work.
Here's a working one: https://www.gog.com/en/game/book_of_hours

Book of Horus would be better.

That's because the article for some reason links to the demo...

I played through BOOK OF HOURS recently (thank you once again, Doc!), and enjoyed it tremendously. Scribbling cryptic notes to myself as I was charting a path through my days, uttering mystic phrases which were filled with so much meaning to me and any other oc-cult librarian (@Swedrami: not for me), yet would be utterly incomprehensible to your average mortal. The only flaw I could find was with the pacing at the end of the game, where I needed to wait for a Visitor with a specific language skill. If only there was a way to summon them... And behold - the Hours have listened!

Do you know how long it took you? I find the HowLongToBeat times a bit intimidating, especially since you mention pacing problems.

I think the current figures (32.5 main, 133 completionist) are pretty accurate. You can reach an ending quite swiftly, but the first time through, you won't have any idea how to do so efficiently, and will probably want to fully explore anyway, rather than rushing to the end. (With my current knowledge, I figure I could do it in ~15 hours? Hard to say for certain...) It's also a matter of how much do you enjoy figuring things out for yourself (which is definitely where the game shines; figuring out paths to 'craft' what you need - all the clues are there, but taking notes is essential, and early on you won't know what anything means so can't take useful notes yet), versus how swiftly do you look up things in the wiki.

The thing with the pacing for me was that there are "particular" endings which are good for the back-story of your specific character, and those are gated behind obscure languages, which can only be acquired from visitors. Early on in the game, I acquired very few languages, since I didn't see the point, and had the bad luck that either of the languages I needed for the endings for my particular character took quite a while to show up a second time. Just with the knowledge "get as many languages as you can", you'll probably not run into any issues.

Thank you!

I have BOOK OF HOURS in my library and I'm eager to play it but I'm literally afraid of doing it. Cultist Simulator was so time-consuming for me that it was almost unhealthy (too many sleep hours lost...)
Someday, I'll gather the resolve to start playing this :)
Maybe when the perpetual edition is complete...

I haven't played Cultist Simulator (really should acquire it, I guess), but BOOK OF HOURS has in-game days, where the dawn (when you lose all memories and refresh your soul cards) forms a very natural stopping point for a session. At maximum, those in-game days took me ~4 hours each, but that was during the mid game when I had gathered a large number of soul and skill cards, but not enough notes to efficiently use them, so spent far too long inefficiently investigating all the possible paths forward. For most of the game (both before and after that point), an in-game day took me 1.5 to 2 hours, which made for very pleasant playing sessions.
I mean, there's still the risk of "just one more day" - but it's nowhere-near Civ-like in its danger. :)

Be forewarned that Cultist Simulator plays very different and is also much harder. ;(

On the plus side, provided you play the Anthology Edition, it is also more dynamic. You don't have to create your own backstory - you already start with a specific character background. The Dancer for example can perform at a cabaret, The Priest can perform a sermon...

But it is so hard Book of Hours seems almost casual in comparison! :S