✅ Positives:
• I haven’t played many games with atmosphere quite as oppressive as this felt, almost suffocatingly so. From the get go you’re set off in a town that’s immediately out to get you, with the game getting much worse to manage as a deadly plague starts to set in, supplies run low, and districts fall into disarray. As the town’s doctor, you’ll be tasked to try and keep the people there and yourself alive as long as you can, which gets more miserable with each passing day. While there are difficulty settings to choose from, at the start it’s said to keep it on an “intended” level as a way to really understand the almost unbearable world they’ve made here, and I’d say it does work very well even if it can be exhausting to play after a while
• With the survival systems and timed deadlines you’re pretty much forced to always be doing something, and I liked how the characters, quests and points of interest are structured with a “thoughts” map which made it easy to keep track of things. You’ll rarely be lost cause of this which was appreciated
• The majority of the game is spent talking to the town’s residents, and dialogue is well written. And while he’s not voiced I liked how personified they made the main character’s dialogue options too, endearingly emphasizing his stress with the situation and other characters as he tries to find a cure
• I liked how the barter system works in the game. Ordinarily you can go to stores to buy supplies but that’ll start getting expensive very quickly. Instead you can trade a bunch of general items you have with NPCs for anything they’re carrying to keep you going, like food or medicine. This makes all the random items you find useful when they wouldn’t have much value otherwise
• The music is understated but does a great job making you feel very uneasy as you go around town and things continue to get worse
❎ Negatives:
• Didn’t like the combat. I get that it’s supposed to be avoided as you barely have any means to defend yourself or heal, but in those cases where you have no choice or get overwhelmed by multiple enemies it’s very janky to deal with. On top of this, the game does this thing where you get punished if you die by taking away a piece of your overall health across all your save files, meaning you can’t just reload afterwards from what I could tell. With how fast combat can kill you in general, I felt this wasn’t really necessary on top of everything else
• You will be walking through the same town districts A LOT, there is only a limited way to fast travel with boats and you need finite items to use them (and eventually they’ll ask for more at once too). Didn’t really care for this and felt it just took up more time than anything
• Assuming you play on the intended difficulty, you will constantly be starving. This works as the means to keep you active throughout the game, but at times I felt it was a bit unbalanced as water was comparatively much easier to find and stock up on. Don’t think I ever had a point where I was really in need of that, meanwhile your hunger meter barely lasts a couple hours before having to look for more (and it gets expensive to do so)
• Performance on Steam Deck was okay, but couldn’t really handle it past 30 FPS. Probably should only play this on an SSD also, as it loads every time you enter interiors and I’ve seen it can have extremely long wait times otherwise
• I haven’t played many games with atmosphere quite as oppressive as this felt, almost suffocatingly so. From the get go you’re set off in a town that’s immediately out to get you, with the game getting much worse to manage as a deadly plague starts to set in, supplies run low, and districts fall into disarray. As the town’s doctor, you’ll be tasked to try and keep the people there and yourself alive as long as you can, which gets more miserable with each passing day. While there are difficulty settings to choose from, at the start it’s said to keep it on an “intended” level as a way to really understand the almost unbearable world they’ve made here, and I’d say it does work very well even if it can be exhausting to play after a while
• With the survival systems and timed deadlines you’re pretty much forced to always be doing something, and I liked how the characters, quests and points of interest are structured with a “thoughts” map which made it easy to keep track of things. You’ll rarely be lost cause of this which was appreciated
• The majority of the game is spent talking to the town’s residents, and dialogue is well written. And while he’s not voiced I liked how personified they made the main character’s dialogue options too, endearingly emphasizing his stress with the situation and other characters as he tries to find a cure
• I liked how the barter system works in the game. Ordinarily you can go to stores to buy supplies but that’ll start getting expensive very quickly. Instead you can trade a bunch of general items you have with NPCs for anything they’re carrying to keep you going, like food or medicine. This makes all the random items you find useful when they wouldn’t have much value otherwise
• The music is understated but does a great job making you feel very uneasy as you go around town and things continue to get worse
❎ Negatives:
• Didn’t like the combat. I get that it’s supposed to be avoided as you barely have any means to defend yourself or heal, but in those cases where you have no choice or get overwhelmed by multiple enemies it’s very janky to deal with. On top of this, the game does this thing where you get punished if you die by taking away a piece of your overall health across all your save files, meaning you can’t just reload afterwards from what I could tell. With how fast combat can kill you in general, I felt this wasn’t really necessary on top of everything else
• You will be walking through the same town districts A LOT, there is only a limited way to fast travel with boats and you need finite items to use them (and eventually they’ll ask for more at once too). Didn’t really care for this and felt it just took up more time than anything
• Assuming you play on the intended difficulty, you will constantly be starving. This works as the means to keep you active throughout the game, but at times I felt it was a bit unbalanced as water was comparatively much easier to find and stock up on. Don’t think I ever had a point where I was really in need of that, meanwhile your hunger meter barely lasts a couple hours before having to look for more (and it gets expensive to do so)
• Performance on Steam Deck was okay, but couldn’t really handle it past 30 FPS. Probably should only play this on an SSD also, as it loads every time you enter interiors and I’ve seen it can have extremely long wait times otherwise