This game is special. I dropped 150 hours into just one playthrough and couldn't stop thinking about what I would do next time. The combat is truly excellent with many fights requiring me to use every option at my disposal, at least on tactician difficulty. The social aspects and exploration are also top-notch and are setting a new industry standard. I felt really connected to this party and enjoyed getting to know them. However, there are so many little things that irked me throughout. Certain questlines and romance paths have such specific triggers that you have to hit with no way of knowing what you need to do. Like I wanted to romance Karlach, but because I didn't talk to a random NPC in the corner of a large settlement before clearing the goblin camp I was completely locked out, EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN FIND AND TALK TO THAT GUY LATER. Friendly npcs would constantly walk into my area of effect spells or even just terrain effects and then aggro onto me causing me to have to not use some builds just because of the dumb ai. Characters would consistently get caught on random objects when jumping, causing it to end early even though the game told me that the jump would succeed. Some party members were clearly given more things to do in the story and their own personal quests, meaning that some feel a little out of place. There are tons of these little things that were frustrating, but I can't give this game anything lower than a 10. The fact that a 100-hour crunchy number turn-based rpg based on Dungeons and Dragons was able to see mainstream appeal is insane and a true testament to how good this game is. It is a truly special and unique experience.

It's crazy that it took this long for someone other than the Clownporate Overlords from the Triple A underworld to get around to basically aping 1:1 the entire concept of the Call of Booty zombies mode. It's kinda of a shame that it isn't as potent of a hit that I would like it to be.

Up front, if you're coming in for that stuff and just plan on doing rounds, screw everything else, come in and have a ton of fun. It does a serviceable to decent job at scratching that itch if you want a different flavor.

I'm coming at this from the main story goals the game has. First impressions were like "Oh, these are cute, I sure hope these diversify". Those are the first impressions of a fool. All the goals in the game, and I do mean every single one involved a variation of the following:

- Stand in a stupidly small circle and kill enemies to fill a bar. (Some short, some that took rounds to fill. Also some which are in really awkward, claustrophobic positions)

- Kill enemies in a dumb stupid circle.

- Escort something to somewhere. (Mini-escort missions in this type of game are a choice.)

- Do something different for once... To then stand in a circle.

- Find object, charge object by standing in circle.

- Find object and shoot at it or put it somewhere.

There's so many of these per single map that they feel mind-numbingly repetitive even for a style of game that's already lobotomy inducing repetitive.

The mini-boss style enemies are just kinda an annoyance more than a drastic change in gameplay. They come around and you can just make quick work of them with your knife. Which is the opposite problem of something like Tall of Cutie Zombies, in this game, with the right upgrades even some of the bosses will disintegrate with your knife.

The bosses themselves could be super cool if they weren't just the same mini-bosses, but Super Ultra Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX versions of them. And most of them didn't really have enough mechanics going on which is probably why they're infested with a bunch of the normal goons you fight throughout the maps and for some of them that vast majority is compromised of the special goons that could send you crying straight to heaven in a blink of an eye.

What super sucks for that is that those strong gooners can also be absurd damage sponges even with a incredibly upgraded weapon. Which results every single boss fight having you do dumb little circles around the arena and putting your two index fingers together and going "🥺👉👈 pwease doon't hwit me" to the special gooners as you keep shooting at the boss until they're eventually dead.

The perks themselves are just variations of a lot of the stuff you see in Roll of Doobie. Elixir of Life is Juggernog, Stallion Juice is Stamin-Up, etc. But the main difference is that you start off with extremely butchered versions of these perks. And I mean butchered. So for example Elixir of Life starts off at 33% as opposed to Juggernog's more than double. The thing is that they don't stay at that, they have a way where you can actually go and upgrade them through this progression system where you basically get three different variations of skill points and the higher the upgrade tier, the different skill point variation you use.

This to me is a really shallow way to put progression into the game. Where it'd just be infinitely better to have the perks and that's it. Especially when you already have like five? different fake battle passes you can grind for fun if you wanted to go that route for progression and that unlocks a bunch of lil customization things.

The maps were too same-y and a lot of the in-map locations really blended together for me. I ended going around in circles over and over trying to find the single dumb thing that I needed to get. Definitely needed a lot more areas that were like "OH THAT PLACE." but its mostly tunnels and hallways that lead to big circles.

I don't know, it's neat that there's someone out there trying this formula, but other than a neat lil variation that's still fun enough to playthrough, it's kinda eh. If you're a dumb Wall of Nookie Zombies diehard like myself then sure, but if you're more of someone that's somewhat interested or has minimal experience with Paul of Booty, just get Blops the Third on steam with Zambambo Chronicles and rock the hell out of the steam workshop.

This is one of those games where it's better to watch it on Youtube than it is to experience it yourself. I find myself intrigued by the detective-y noir presentation of the story, and the many notes that you find harken back to the vibe of the original Alone in the Dark. Truth being, I mainly tried this game out because its writer was also involved in Soma, and I think they're doing a pretty alright job here. However, these are not strong enough pulls for me to deal with this game's many puzzles, or especially its lackluster combat paired with forgettable enemy design. The attempts at incentivizing stealth alone severely put me off, the protagonist walks so slow that the enemies you're tailing behind are more likely to do an entire loop around the area and catch up behind you before you reach your goal.

It's funny, because putting it into perspective, the original Alone in the Dark is a game with infinitely worse combat and puzzles that are way more obtuse than anything found here. There are so many things in that game that are out to kill you in cheap and unfair ways, there are potential softlocks to run into, and its guns don't work half the time. And yet, I beat that game. I beat it exactly because of this sort of aggressive cruelty and unpredictability it offered, where every individual room felt like its own unique challenge to overcome. It was the game's strongest point, and it's something that the reboot desperately lacks. Trading in the wonder of discovering a huge jellyfish wriggling in a bathtub, or walking out the front door of the mansion only to be consumed by a giant monster, or touching a statue only to summon a poltergeist that violently shakes the screen and relentlessly pursues you... Alone in the Dark (2024) sacrifices all of this in favor of plain and boring predictability. True, you might not know in what sort of place you're going to wind up next, but you'll always know what's going to happen, a bunch of mindless combat against a bunch of mindless zombie-like enemies. This is not a reimagining, it's an unimagining.