The art style alone is amazing shorthand: not for everyone, but incredibly compelling if it clicks for you. My first attempt ended within minutes because I turned on the light after waking up with the mother of all hangovers, and the headache from the bright light killed me. Where do you even go from there? The different aspects of your character speaking to you, arguing with each other is a brilliant touch for a character-driven, dialogue-heavy game like this. It's more walking-sim-visual-novel than RPG, but it compells role-playing more strongly than most "real" RPGs I've played. It's the first time I've enjoyed an amnesia premise. It's the first time I've wandered around a map hunting down new dialogue. It's the first time I've been egged on by a facet of my character's subconscious to do something I knew was a bad idea. It's the first time I've bonded to a companion so quickly. It's the first time I've been so invested in an RPG with no combat. It's been out for long enough and has enough youtube think-pieces that you already know whether or not you wanna buy it, let's be honest. But I needed to gush, I fell in love with this game in 2 hours despite expecting to bounce off it like I have so many other games I've picked up because of peer pressure.
Beautiful, atmospheric, tense and crunchy combat, but holy hell where are my frames? CPU completely maxed out, GPU basically idling, choppy 40 FPS at best on low graphics. Gonna shelf it for now until I can upgrade my computer or performance patches get pushed out.
