Never fade away. Amazing game, what else to say
GK grew out of a pretty original idea - the management sim of running the graveyard and related services. Sadly, the first 5 or so hours of the game have all the fun content the devs could manage - as you play further, the rush to release becomes more and more evident. There are unfinished locations, unobtainable items, useless technologies, and so on. You will also increasingly spend less time tending to your church and the graveyard around it - instead, the game shifts to an endless grind of items/crops to obtain the vast amounts of gold you need to finish the game (the church and the graveyard at this point give pitiful payout). Many features, such as fishing and farming, were obviously "tacked on" last minute to appeal to the Stardew Valley hype - they don't work well and don't feel like they belong in this game. From the devs previous title, Punch Club, and the first few hours, it feels that they really like their games and put the effort in development - in this case, it simply feels that the devs rushed to release. Perhaps they needed the cash flow to keep working, or perhaps it was some sort of deal with Microsoft (the game is on Xbox Game Pass). If this stayed in development for 6-12 months more, it could have been a wonderful game. Will they ever fix it? Will there be additional content to tie all the loose ends? Not sure.
If you played Mass Effect or KOTOR, you would have no trouble getting into this game - all of the time-proven Bioware features are present, including character archetype clichés, plot twists you can see a mile away and moral choices that are presented as deep, but are really the same "help the poor or beat them for laughs". Despite that, the game combat mechanics is fun, and the oriental mythology theme really pulls the atmosphere through. If you like Bioware games with solid narrative and Bruce Lee style head bashing, this is just a medicine for you. I would strongly suggest you check out the modding scene for the game, as its combat-oriented design provides ample opportunities for tweaking. One of those is Jade Empire In Style, which re-hauls some of the vanilla combat styles and adds many more, normally unavailable to your PC. This, along with New Game + implemented in the game, allows quite a bit of replayability.
The original Alone in the Dark games are brilliant, and that's what people expected of this title - a smashing hit. It didn't deliver that, but in its own regard it's a pretty neat game - the atmosphere, the puzzles and the suspense are all there. Reminded me of The Devil Inside a lot. If it didn't have the AitD part in its title, I bet people would receive it more warmly.
