Turned the difficulty down from Hard to Normal to make the enemies feel less like bullet-sponges. The change made a drastic difference, and I'm having a lot more fun. I actually feel like a badass now, weaving my abilities and pulling out cores at a more fluid rate than before. There also still feels like there's enough of a challenge to warrant some level self-regard.

Being that I was having a lot more fun, I played a decent amount and finished a bunch of side-quests and a few of the main story missions. I'm hoping to have this game completed some time next week, as I have no plans on major trophy hunting.

Did a couple of side missions and one of the main missions. I'm becoming more familiar with the combat, but the enemies feel like absolute bullet sponges (spell sponges?), so much so that it feels slightly frustrating to enter combat. I may try lowering the difficulty from Hard to Normal, to see if that makes combat feel better.

One thing I'm noticing is that the open-world aspect, along with the different objectives and side missions is very much derivative of games like Assassin's Creed, Batman Arkham, Spider-Man, etc. However, getting around the world in those games feels a lot more fluid and enjoyable than this game, thus making those tasks feel a bit more tedious -- at least with my current set of abilities.

Adjusted some controls and performance settings to make the game feel less clunky. Overall movement still feels kind of slow, but it's much better. Spent most of my time doing side objectives/missions. Still getting used to the controls and combat.

Started the game. First impressions: The game is more spooky than I anticipated. I thought it would be more action-oriented, but it's a bit slower paced with a bit of horror-esque atmosphere. Movement and aiming feels a slight bit slow and clunky.