My favourite story ever told in a videogame, and for sure overall top 3 game of all time for me, and I dare say that means something after decades of gaming.
Best way to describe the gameplay would be that you are a detective cop doing detective things, and that you should be prepared for a lot of voice acted reading. And damn, the voice acting is good. It feels like reading a book at times, which does mean it is not for everyone, but it doesn't have to be. I feel like changing anything about this game would ruin the overall experience, like everything was masterfully designed and blended together into this masterpiece.

Anyone I ask has a different story to tell about their first playthrough of this masterpiece. They had different struggles, got stuck in different places, took different routes to objectives... they also found different items/weapons, some missed big locations because the devs were not afraid to hide whole levels behind layers of secrets like fake walls or using random abilities/items in random spots. The game doesn't hold your hand and lets you make mistakes and learn from them, bosses being the most obvious examples of this, with clearly telegraphed attacks that are punishing but, once learned, easily avoidable. The combat is slow and clunky, mistakes costly. The map is interconnected and full of different items that might be useful for different builds, which means exploration feels very rewarding. I would say the game is not for everyone, especially over a decade later when the genre it has started has evolved in more ways than one, mostly thanks to the same developer working on sequels and spiritual successors.