Played the original a couple years ago and found it to be unique and engaging despite its flaws. I then played System Shock 2 and found it to be just okay. The original is an immersive sim, and the second is a shooter with inventory management and survival horror elements. This remake had a difficult development with multiple complete restarts, and the developers settled on being mostly faithful to the original. Some changes are good, some are bad, but the biggest problem is they try to turn it into the second System Shock. The original had you acquire an armory as you explored, and Shodan started escalating her efforts as she realized how much of a threat you were. Ironically, the original (immersive sim) felt better paced than this one (proto-shooter) because now you have an extremely limited inventory and so have to constantly stop to manage it. Weapons take up a large amount of space, and you can only carry a couple at a time. I felt like I was constantly moving backwards to look for supplies, or running back to another floor to refill my health. All the junk that was just for decoration now has a monetary value, so now I need to pick that up and take it to a recycling machine for coins. Coins are either used for two (yes, two) ammo magazines per floor or for weapon mods that actually make your weapons take up more inventory space. The graphics, despite being more realistic, make the lighting all kind of blend together. The original had bright areas and dark areas to set the mood, but this one feels like it has two or three brightness values. Everything blends together so much that items are hard to see - even the bright blue audio logs with a flashing yellow light on them don't stand out. I liked some things. Creature designs look good - I wanted to get up close and see the details. Some of the environments now have details that the original only implied. Diego has more character development. Overall, I prefer the original.
The main character is a biologist that thinks fungus needs sunlight (photosynthesis) to grow. I'm serious, and the rest of the writing is almost as bad. Did I mention the environmental "message" that ignores the fact that we can grab the wildlife and use it as fuel, or that certain organisms can be used as improvised explosives to clear blocked passages? I wish I were joking. There are some good things. The basic story ideas are good (but never developed). I like the aesthetic, and the music and sound is pretty good. And that's about it. Skip this one, or watch it one youtube.
The original Little Inferno was really good, and the gameplay tied into the theme of the game. The DLC feels tacked on. While it has some creepy moments in the new story, the bulk of the new content is finding new combinations of things to burn. Essentially it becomes what the original story was speaking against, time wasting for the sake of wasting time.
The gameplay portion is somehow incredibly complicated, yet simple and bland. There's FIVE PAGES of different skills that your units have, but ultimately don't matter. There's six different classes of units, each with a strength against other types of unit, but enemy groups are almost always mixed. Once you set your squads, the best thing you can do is speed up the combat and set it so you don't have to click after each attack. They do a poor job of explaining things, and everything seems needlessly convoluted. The combat is automated, with only a couple of options once you've decided to attack. The combat is all the same, and is monotonous and boring. It ruins the pacing of the story, and after a couple hours I just wanted it to be over. It took me about 30 hours to finish, and I was rushing. There's multiple endings, and multiple versions of scenes depending on whether you corrupt the goddesses or not. I just... don't care. You can't skip the "combat" if you play again and try for the different scenes, and the combat is 90 percent of the game. Story is pretty good, starts off really strong and finishes well, but meanders during most of the plot. Art is okay, it's the same style as every other visual novel. Hentai is mostly tentacles, has some variety, but suffers from feeling generic. Music is the best part. The tracks are good and set the tone well. The intro song is well done. I think the translator deserves praise, the script is IMMENSE. It must have been a lot of work to translate so much writing. Overall it was really painful to play. I wanted a strategy game, with some occasional hentai. Instead I got a fairly average visual novel that was 90 percent padded with one of those mobile time waster games. If you do play this, choose Easy Mode and use the instant win button for battles.
