SPOILERS The first act opens up with intrigue and a genuinely well crafted virtual card game, a card game so good I wish it were real or was available as it's own stand-alone multiplayer package. As you play this creepy card game in a creepy cabin you can stand up from the table and explore the room, solving puzzles within it as a story slowly unfolds and I was itching to play the other acts! The game should've stopped here after you had gotten the new game card. After that amazing first act the game becomes so pointlessly meta, throwing away everything established up to that point, including the rouge-like elements, to give you the most generic found footage nonsense imaginable complete with hokey acting, and it suddenly revolves around cursed video game disk you had dug up in the forest (you can probably guess the entire remaining story from that alone). The game progresses not out of intrigue but because the main character, a sort of a B-tier YouTuber, is a dumbass. If a secret agent acting shady is knocking on your door asking for the game disk back, then just give them the disk since you stand to loose nothing from it; he doesn't do that. If the disk is doing weird spooky things that are concerning, then just take the disk out of the drive and snap it in half; he doesn't do that. Likewise, if the "old_data" is so upsetting that it can collapse a company and kill people then why did the company bury it in the forest instead of just erasing the damn floppy disk? The gameplay in these sections is also not great and is nowhere near as fully realised. Act 2 was budget pokemon and dull, Act 3 against P03 was similar to Act 1 but the mechanics were changed for the worse, and Act 4 with it's gratuitous Yu-Gi-Oh battle was just poor. This game really needed to end after you had gotten the New Game Card.
I've been looking forward to this game for a long time since the first demo, and for the majority of the game you have this beautifully written story, beautiful music, sympathetic characters and gorgeous visuals, but between chapters three and four there is a LEAP in tone and it suddenly goes from noir to soft sci-fi with absolutely no forewarning. The ending is so bitter and hateful, but if anything I think that's just testimony to how much I loved Howard as a character. I'm not angry, but saddened, but that sadness is making me angry. A big part of me wants to give this game three stars, but it's so deeply fascinating from beginning to end that I can't help but recommend you play it. Every other aspect of the game is beautiful and a feast for the sense, but be prepared for the transition into chapter 4 and try not to die inside at the ending. Maybe once my shock has worn off I'll be more warming to it, but as of right now I'm upset and bewildered by the ending sequence.
