It took me many months, but I finally managed to complete this game with many great ideas but for the most part poor execution. Levels are massive with samey rooms and corridors you'll definitely get lost in without a guide. There are little to no visual cues to guide you around them either, and the map you're given is borderline useless since you cannot see your own position in it. Progression in them is also often very obtuse even if you ignore all the aforementioned complaints; Some times you have to use some item you might not even have at that point in time, some times there is one room that has a switch you need to push which is hidden like Waldo, other times you better pray you have an item at your disposal. Some levels can't be finished without rope arrows in your inventory at crucial points.

In spite of this being a stealth game, there are numerous times you are forced in to combat, and that part has perhaps aged even worse. Janky doesn't even begin to describe it, feels like it's just RNG whether you can avoid taking damage or not. Thank goodness for save scumming otherwise this game would be completely unplayable in my book. And then there are the zombie levels. The less said about them, the better.

This game came out the same year as classics like Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid and Panzer Dragoon Saga. This game is the milk to their wine in terms of aging.

Maybe there’s a decent game in here somewhere, perhaps buried under hours of firing yourself at an immovable brick wall or just bending the knee to wiki guides or YouTubers telling you how good the game eventually gets, but I doubt I’ll ever see it. Maybe it’d be one thing if Fear & Hunger made any attempt to sell any central hook for it’s oppressive world beyond an opening text crawl to lure me along, or present any spark of intrigue in its mechanics for me to want to interface with the game on any meaningful level, but I truly feel like there’s just not a whole lot here for me. Is it possible this is spurred on by preconceptions of the JRPG foundation this game is laid upon? Or maybe it’s just a skill issue and I should get good? Sure, Man. On one hand I gotta respect the level of challenge this game presents, but even a version of F&H with a steadier on-ramp still wouldn’t erase all the nasty set-dressing that’s honestly impossible for me to look past. No censor patch in the world is gonna change the fact that maybe conveying the long-lasting horror of SA through an RPG status effect is in poor taste. I tried, and initially I planned on going back for one more shot, but the more I think about this game the less I fuck with it, so I guess I gotta throw in the towel. If you clicked with this that’s dope and I’m glad you have something you want others to experience, but I felt genuinely kinda gross while playing this and i just wanna move on. Here’s to Fear & Hunger 2, I guess