rating based on my experience up to chapter 8...which is where i'm putting it down because i feel like i've gotten everything i wanted from the game (and borrowed it anyway)...up to this point, and with no context of any other games in the series, i feel that as a pure survival combat experience this is well-designed and fluid...nothing revelatory but certainly fun and even without playing the original game the mid 00s vibe is palpable and charming

but the primary takeaway, and most valuable to my overall gaming and art journey, is that i'm stopping because i don't really enjoy killing hordes of weird creatures over and over again, however engaging it may be...feels a bit soul-draining and i prefer killing to be a bit more abstracted or light-hearted (or otherwise discouraged i guess)...not that i'm a pacifist (especially in the context of fiction because it aint real) but it's just a taste i've come to accept...i can do this shit but maybe this genre is outside of what i want out of immersive art

that being said, i'm still gonna try other things in what i assume are a similar mode (Bloodborne etc)...but overall i'll be prioritizing other stuff for a while to see where that directs my taste :)