--- The good --- Amazing Cultivation Simulator (ACS) is has many esoteric and arcane RPG mechanics waiting to be discovered. Experimentation and discovery is at the heart of the game. The game is about self-improvement, both on a lore- and mechanic-wise level. Music is good (not enough variation though). --- The bad --- When you start your first game, you are being set up to fail from the get-go. Usually, I would not necessarily have a problem with this, I like difficulty in games. However, unlike games like Dark Souls and XCOM, both of which have the curtesy showing you that you suck ass from the very start (i.e. you get your ass smacked all the way), and that you should probably improve if you want to succeed, ACS lures you into a false sense of security. You don't have to do anything right in ACS to get far into the game (40-50 hours), only to learn that your strategy, approach and choices have basically all been wrong. ACS creates a hard block in the form of reputation (accumulating more seems like good at first, until you are destroyed by enemies far beyond your ability) and the hard block of the first boss (which is so impossibly hard, you would have to be some kind of 300 IQ genius to beat it on your first try). There is no practically realistic way for you to know or learn all the intrinsic and hidden things that you must do right in order to not loose against these things. If you do not have a pre-existing knowledge of important mechanics and the pros and cons of certain character development approaches, it will be impossible for you to develop your characters enough to overcome these challenges that only occur 30-40 hours into the game. Essentially, the game goes on for a long fucking time, and then tells you "oh you didnt know that you had to follow this exact approach? get fucked and try again from square one". Suggestion: Get the mod that add numerical values from steam. It is essential to be able to make 'more' correct the decisions.
While the game starts out very interestingly, it disappoints by becoming a slog filled with incredibly frustrating mechanics from the middle of the game and until the very end. Invincible enemies that follow you through level stages (and never stop), clunky combat, boring arsenal of weapons, limited inventory system (that attempts to copy Resident Evil but fails miserably). The frustrating mechanics distract from the story, the spookiness and basically everything else, leaving you irritated at everything else that happens, especially the characters which do nothing to improve upon the story. The puzzles involving the room itself work quite well (first person sections), however, and is the strongest/scariest part of the game. It is not enough to save the game from leaving a disappointed taste in your mouth, unfortunately.
