Can’t believe I went through the exact arc described by Sunbusting

So the experience of this- of puzzles spilling out into the real world as I scribbled solutions into a notebook, filling the pages with arcane glyphs and radio frequencies, of stepping away, thinking I’d finished it before realizing there was an additional third of the game to go- probably one my favorite things in a game this year. I’m cooler on the game itself, it feels like a RE-style limitations have been imposed on a Silent Hill framework, so you get a title with a strict item limit, ostensibly to force you to make interesting decision and dangerous trips, but in a game without the bite to make the limitations anything other than an annoyance, so there’s this hyper-awarness that creeps in- of finding to keys to find keys in the hopes of finding: more keys (A lot of the game hovers around the SH2 Apartment Block/Canned Juice territory).

I really appreciate the attempts to unnerve players and keep backtracking tense by having enemies resurrect if not disposed of properly, but it never manages to shock the way realizing some zombie in a far-off corner had transformed into a Crimson Head in the RE Remake, it's enemy roster too insubstantial a threat for one reanimating to send you scurrying to the nearest exit. And maybe this is beyond the scope of the game as is, but I wondered if having a few choice rooms break away from the fixed isometric perspective could’ve helped drive home some of the tension in the game’s final act- or maybe more appropriately, ditch the combat altogether and let the revelations and slow corruption of the world propel you to the finale, in much the same way Silent Hill 2 de-emphasized its combat towards the end, confident enough to drop the veneer of its survival-horror gameplay for a time.

Though I will say, I think Signalis might wear the otherworld imagery better, reality breaking down into flesh and steel and automatons- seeming like the natural reflection of the fascist mindset that’s spread throughout the stars.