Perfectly balanced, excellently paced. Every aspect of the game is at least a 8/10. aside from perhaps, optimization. What stands out though is how well paced experience it is. Too rarely developers just mush a bunch of elements together and let the player go crazy with it. But then it just feels like running around and "performing actions" without doing anything meaningful. Even when the game shouldn't - it feels "sandboxy" meaning you can do a lot of stuff, but few things carry any weight to them. With "In sound mind" you never lose that cinematic feel to the game. At the same time the game doesn't hold your hand. You figure stuff on your own and have fun doing it. I was going to call it a "walking simulator" but that would be unfair as there's too much action in here. But a funny thought came to mind. This is what Silent Hill should look like. Of course it should be more creepy and so on, but as for how the player is guided through the whole experience, how the story is intervowen into gameplay, how gameplay elements have double meanings, how there are clever hints and nuances - that's just *chef's kiss*. Watch and learn, Konami. in "In sound mind" the whoule journey, it's twists and turns feel hand crafted. The game never gets boring. Nothing feels "samey", I mean I don't see a point in having more than one playthrough, but just one took me about 18 hours so even if you fare better (faster) you still get plenty bang for your buck. Also I really enjoyed the difficulty of both the puzzles and combat. Excellent combination of challenging and enjoyable. My only gripe is probably the optimization, as the game gets a bit janky. Then again I'm not exactly using a high end rig, so there's that. Higly reccomended.
To keep it short: Pros: atmosphere, world, humor visual style combat mechanics Cons: Seemingly minor and not visible at first glance thing that is sort of game breaking. Got to lvl 60 or so and I realized I need to buff up, the map shows a bunch of visited locations, but doesn't tell you where there are still enemies that you previously avoided and left alive. And defeated groups don't respawn. A cleared area stays cleared. So you can't farm. The shop doesn't allow you to sell your items (even for 1% of the price you'd have to pay if you were to buy them) so you end up with 50 smoke grenades you don't need and low on currency. These two are the biggest sins for me. Fixing those would make it a 4,2/5 game. To make it a 5/5 would require adding more characters, more skills, as of now they are repeated between characters. More enemy types. More guns. More stuff. Also a bit more dramatization would do a lot of good - when you encounter a new enemy type a zoom on him or some introduction. But that's just my taste.
