I quite like the first 3 games in the House of 1000 Doors series with the 3rd game being my favorite in the franchise, even though the games aren't anything great, they were just fun, simple, short games, and I enjoyed them! However, the 4th game in the series is not very good. While it's certainly not awful, it's definitely the worst of the 4 and the only one I personally don't recommend.

Let's start off with the things I actually like about this game. The gameplay is probably the best in the series, though like the previous entries, it's still not all that excellent. There's tons of new mechanics that adds some diversity in the gameplay. My personal favorite new feature being the cat. However, I do wish some of the mechanics were used more, and I also don't like how the game literally shows you when to use them sometimes. I really hated the 'hidden object scenes' in the first 3 games since they felt like boring time padding, however in this game, while I still find some of them to be pretty bad, they definitely made them more entertaining. And even though I think it has the best gameplay, the puzzles are also way to easy compared to the other games. Also apparently, according to other reviews, there is a lot of glitches in this game, but I never personally ran into any on my playthrough. Overall, the gameplay is the best in the series in my opinion, though it's definitely not perfect. If you liked the gameplay from the first 3 games, then you will probably like this game, I myself don't really like the gameplay in any of the games so I still didn't really care for the playstyle, but it's definitely subjective.

I also quite liked the soundtrack and the visuals. The soundtrack is quite good and it's probably the most consistently good in the series (though the 3rd game still has my favorite soundtrack from the series). The visuals are also pretty great, just like the previous games. Even though I really like this games visuals, it's probably the worst visually of the 4 games, since a lot of the areas all have the same colors and overall look very similar. The previous games all had tons of diversity in the areas visually, but in this game, a lot of the areas blend together. And for some reason, every fully animated cutscene in this game is a WAY lower quality than the rest of the game. But either way, the game still looks pretty solid, and has a decent soundtrack.

Now on to the things I don't like about this game. Starting with the story. The previous games stories weren't necessarily great, but they were atleast interesting, fun and unique. But this games story is the generic "Stop the evil darkness with the power of light!" The story is just downright lazy, boring and uninteresting. And nothing interesting happens throughout the entire game, and it simply ends with Emily defeating the darkness with light and all is saved! Hooray! The only thing even remotely engaging that happens throughout the entire game is the ending of the bonus chapter, where Kate is turned evil by the darkness, it was the only thing even slightly surprising the entire game. Even then it's not all that interesting, since she turns evil in the main game aswell, so we already know that it isn't a huge deal that she was taken by darkness. And it's also probably just setup for a 5th game which is pretty disappointing since that means they'll probably just keep doing this boring darkness storyline. Also the story effectively has absolutely nothing to do with the previous games outside of returning characters, so there's pretty much no point in playing it if you want to know the rest of the story.

Speaking of the characters, I really don't like the characters in this game. In this game, there's a new protagonist, instead of playing as Kate like in the first 3 games, you now play as Emily. And she's in my opinion much better than Kate since she has a lot more personality. I like that she actually talks outside of cutscenes now, it adds more personality to her character. But even then, Emily still isn't an excellent character, but she is definitely the best character in this game, and she's really the only good character in the entire game. One of the main reasons I like the first 3 games much more than this one is because they actually have a unique cast of characters. But in this game, the characters have as much personality as a rock, and trust me, rocks don't have much personality (I have a lot of experience with them). Every character is basically the exact same, just with different designs and voice actors. They all just ask you to help them and that's all they do, they have no other character trait. And the Lancasters have much less personality and are way less interesting in this game then they were in previous entries. And the voice acting in this game is abysmal, the previous games all had bad voice acting, but this one takes it to a whole new level. The Lancasters all have completely new voice actors, I guess they couldn't get the original VA's to come back, for some reason. And the new voice actors are soo much worse than the first 3 games. It sounds like they have absolutely no energy and are just reading the script. And the new characters' voice acting is not much better either.

Overall, House of 1000 Doors: Evil Inside is by far the worst game in the series, and I really don't recommend playing it, unless you really like the gameplay of the first 3, or you are just a diehard fan of the series. Just stick to the first 3.

Well this was longer than I was expecting... Are you still reading this? If you are then i'm impressed, but also sorry that you had to read this really long post. Are you happy? Are you happy that you spent all this time out of your day just to read this really long rant about this game? Are you happy that you will never get this time in your life back? I hope you are happy with your choices.