This game changed my life as a kid and is still one of my all-time favorites to this day. It was just as I was starting to gain an appreciation for games as a medium but just a few years before I became cynical. The story in this game isn't the best I've ever read but it's delightfully bleak and the atmosphere near the end is incredible. The mechanics require you to respect every enemy and learn to dodge or at least minimize damage and incentivize you to experiment with new guns. It also has a lot of replayability with what you can trade your polar star for and the different endings. Highly recommend to just about anyone.