The first time I left an Arkane game just feeling empty. Coming from Prey, which was one of my favorite games in the PS4/Xbox One generation and the Dishonored games, which are equally great, this game now is honestly a disjointed mess. It has a novel idea, with the whole time loop thing going on, but doesn't really do anything with it, contrary even it ends up being the most constricted game from Arkane.
The game starts with a ridiculously long tutorial phase, lasting 4 hours, showing way too many text popups everywhere trying to explain all its systems, through which the game appears overly complicated. It suggests to the player, that there is maybe a complex experience coming up, with lots of player driven choices and urgency, because of the whole loop thing and the finite amount of time the player has to achieve the end goal... yeah no, that's not happening, instead, after that painfully long tutorial, the game funnels the player through a strictly linear wild goose chase, running to one location, being told to find a code of some sort in another location, and then coming back to further progress. Through this approach you end up going through the 4 distinct maps the game has a bunch of times, which ends up getting old fast. They try to diversify the locations through the different times of day, but that always just felt like a color swap applied to the locations, nothing more. This whole process is made worse, because to switch locations, you always have to go back to your home base, which is just a glorified menu, where the player picks their load-out, and which progresses the time of day on the current loop. This static way of handling the central time mechanic seems kinda awkward and always going back to that menu feels like I am preparing for a Call of Duty match, which is really unimmersive and makes that whole experience really disjointed. The game has its reasons though, doing things this way, and the answer to that is the PVP invasion system. Although a nice idea, I think this rather small part of the game just compromises too much of the single player side of things. The game has a lot of the same abilities found in the Dishonored games, but instead of getting progressively more options, the player here is limited to what they have at hand in their current load-out. Another part that was sacrificed are interesting enemy types. There are none, there is only one, I say it again ONE enemy type and their AI is rather limited. Not even the 7 Visionaries you have to kill to break the time loop and finish the game are anything special, they just have a bigger health pool.
And that pretty much is the bulk of the game, running to different parts of the 4 locations, fighting the same enemy over and over again, doing random things to place the 7 Visionaries in such a way, so you can kill all of them in a single day. There is no creative problem-solving to this the game has a specific way laid out for you, you just have to blindly follow it to the end, while playing a game reminiscent of Dishonored, but severely limited in the player freedom found there.
To say something positive, the banter between Colt and Julianna was great, because of excellent voice acting and I liked the soundtrack. The Visionaries were unfortunately really one-note and the story was just a nice backdrop with an unsatisfying ending. And because of the locations being artificially separated by that hub menu, I never developed any sense for the world.
So in conclusion, I wouldn't really recommend this game. If you like the roster of abilities the game has, play the Dishonored series, where you have the same and more. And if you want to creatively kill people, go play the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy, which excels in that regard.
The game starts with a ridiculously long tutorial phase, lasting 4 hours, showing way too many text popups everywhere trying to explain all its systems, through which the game appears overly complicated. It suggests to the player, that there is maybe a complex experience coming up, with lots of player driven choices and urgency, because of the whole loop thing and the finite amount of time the player has to achieve the end goal... yeah no, that's not happening, instead, after that painfully long tutorial, the game funnels the player through a strictly linear wild goose chase, running to one location, being told to find a code of some sort in another location, and then coming back to further progress. Through this approach you end up going through the 4 distinct maps the game has a bunch of times, which ends up getting old fast. They try to diversify the locations through the different times of day, but that always just felt like a color swap applied to the locations, nothing more. This whole process is made worse, because to switch locations, you always have to go back to your home base, which is just a glorified menu, where the player picks their load-out, and which progresses the time of day on the current loop. This static way of handling the central time mechanic seems kinda awkward and always going back to that menu feels like I am preparing for a Call of Duty match, which is really unimmersive and makes that whole experience really disjointed. The game has its reasons though, doing things this way, and the answer to that is the PVP invasion system. Although a nice idea, I think this rather small part of the game just compromises too much of the single player side of things. The game has a lot of the same abilities found in the Dishonored games, but instead of getting progressively more options, the player here is limited to what they have at hand in their current load-out. Another part that was sacrificed are interesting enemy types. There are none, there is only one, I say it again ONE enemy type and their AI is rather limited. Not even the 7 Visionaries you have to kill to break the time loop and finish the game are anything special, they just have a bigger health pool.
And that pretty much is the bulk of the game, running to different parts of the 4 locations, fighting the same enemy over and over again, doing random things to place the 7 Visionaries in such a way, so you can kill all of them in a single day. There is no creative problem-solving to this the game has a specific way laid out for you, you just have to blindly follow it to the end, while playing a game reminiscent of Dishonored, but severely limited in the player freedom found there.
To say something positive, the banter between Colt and Julianna was great, because of excellent voice acting and I liked the soundtrack. The Visionaries were unfortunately really one-note and the story was just a nice backdrop with an unsatisfying ending. And because of the locations being artificially separated by that hub menu, I never developed any sense for the world.
So in conclusion, I wouldn't really recommend this game. If you like the roster of abilities the game has, play the Dishonored series, where you have the same and more. And if you want to creatively kill people, go play the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy, which excels in that regard.
Reviewed on May 28, 2023