I'd been looking forward to playing this for a very long time, being a big fan of the period and intensely interested in the politics involved. Starting the game up and the first act (out of three) or so of the game was interesting, it built up an anticipation of what was to come, but it all rapidly turned very unsatisfying towards the end. The plot took an incredible turn to intensely bizarre and off-putting territory. I had been wary of such a turn coming, but even with this anticipation in mind it was surprisingly awful. Instead of a game to explore actions in the period, the choices to be made, trying to survive the factional struggles, trying to find justice, you had something _completely different_, something completely disjointed and fantastic or imaginary. It is on par with the weirdness of the first Assassin's Creed game but even weirder and more alienating, and yet somehow flat and unimaginative. The plot, to put it bluntly, is awful. Do not get this game for the plot. It will disappoint you. You will hate it if you were looking to immerse yourself in the history of the revolution. The gameplay itself is mediocre. It's not very engaging at all. The visual art is very good, even beautiful. The art is wasted on this game.
The game looks and sounds great, and the themes are really interesting, the plot is intriguing and the story engaging. By the end of it, I had felt all sorts of things with Senua, from rage to grief, and maybe even a little joy. The way the game approaches mental illness isn't pitch-perfect. Rather than accepting mental illness as an illness, it at least seemingly takes the stance that psychosis is just another beautiful thing, a different way of seeing the world. Maybe I've misinterpreted the game, but that's what I got out of it. That said, the game does pin the blame correctly on the people who stigmatize and torment the mentally ill, and that is one of the most engaging things in the game. The combat system is good enough for my needs - it is really simple, but there's depth to it regardless, and enough depth for at least my own playthrough to have not delved right to the bottom of it, I kept being surprised by different attack combinations right through the final scenes.
