A very similar experience to Cyber Sleuth. Being a midquel allowed them to get away with basically reusing the same areas and characters outside of the new core group. Plus the great soundtrack.

I can't remember much of the original games story, but it definitely feels weird that the stuff in this one went down without it being mentioned back, especially given how much overlap there is between side characters. This game really did feel like it functioned as its own thing until near the end.

Many of the pros and cons of that original game come back here as a result of the almost copy/paste job. I'm not a fan of the aesthetics used for dungeons. It makes them all look the same and just very boring in general.

The ABI system that involves constantly needing to de-digivolve and re-digivolve to get megas is annoying. Especially as it resets them all back to level 1 no matter which way you go. Speaking of which, I think that with all the digivolution paths it's probably possible for any one digimon to turn into any other digimon through a whole bunch of chains. Cool in theory, but it also means any one digimon feels so impersonal. You can very easily lose track of which monster was even your starter in the mess of turning anything into anything else. The only reason I know for a fact which my original starter was is because I got an accessory bonus for having a Cyber Sleuth save file so I attached it to my starter. I started with Tentomon and ended up with Gallantmon CM - those are not 2 digimon who are linked in any way whatsoever.

This method also means it's hard to keep track of which digimon you're planning to turn each member into. You may plan to digivolve into a WarGreymon eventually, but the only way to make sure you keep track of which monster that is would be to either only focus on one partners evolutions at a time, or go back and forth through the "obvious" choices like Agumon > Greymon > Metal Greymon. The issue with the latter is that digimon can hold up to 20 moves in their memory total, so it's often good to go through as many digivolutions as possible to learn as many different moves as you can, so in your journey to WarGreymon, if you stick exclusively to the Agumon line you're going to miss out on coverage. But if you deviate from the Agumon line, you might lose track of which teammate you were planning to turn in to WarGreymon in the first place as you'll likely have multiple members outside the "obvious" path.

Speaking of moves each digimon has their own unique special move, sometimes 2 in the cases of the highest levels, and they'll tend to have more interesting effects. Animations for them are pretty neat too, although they're done in the form of showing the mon using the move in isolation and then cutting to the enemy being hit by some generic flash or something so they never have to worry about showing how every move interacts with every digimon.

The non-special moves are where the game kind of sucks, there's only really a handful of common "normal" moves, and they're all very boring simple versions of "elemental damage", "elemental damage AOE", "(De)Buff/AOE (de)buff", "Status inflictor" and "Heal/AOE Heal". So while trying out multiple digivolutions is important for the moveset variety, you'll never really run across anything interesting because every member will end up with the same basic types of moves, and you just tend to rely on clicking their special move to win most battles anyway.

I kind of like how the battle system uses two separate type weakness variants though. You've got your standard elements like fire, water, grass, but also the digimon special virus, vaccine, data and neutral. It's not super deep or anything, but it just adds a little extra layer. What I don't like from the battle system is how it refuses to show you how many stacks of any given buff or debuff you have.

The games enjoyable enough if you just wanna use some digimon in an RPG. The constantly changing faces on your team can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It is a very dialogue heavy game though, when it really didn't need to be. Cases in the game are like 30 minutes of dialogue for 1 story fight. Side quests are generally better at keeping the dialogue short for them, but there are so many main quests that are basically filler, self-contained stories with one-off characters, but have main quest levels of dialogue. I just wanna play :(

The games pretty much as good (or bad) as the original, just a little better with more digimon and slight QoL stuff added. I can't speak for how the story compares given I forgot so much of the original.

A very similar experience to Cyber Sleuth. Being a midquel allowed them to get away with basically reusing the same areas and characters outside of the new core group. Plus the great soundtrack.

I can't remember much of the original games story, but it definitely feels weird that the stuff in this one went down without it being mentioned back, especially given how much overlap there is between side characters. This game really did feel like it functioned as its own thing until near the end.

Many of the pros and cons of that original game come back here as a result of the almost copy/paste job. I'm not a fan of the aesthetics used for dungeons. It makes them all look the same and just very boring in general.

The ABI system that involves constantly needing to de-digivolve and re-digivolve to get megas is annoying. Especially as it resets them all back to level 1 no matter which way you go. Speaking of which, I think that with all the digivolution paths it's probably possible for any one digimon to turn into any other digimon through a whole bunch of chains. Cool in theory, but it also means any one digimon feels so impersonal. You can very easily lose track of which monster was even your starter in the mess of turning anything into anything else. The only reason I know for a fact which my original starter was is because I got an accessory bonus for having a Cyber Sleuth save file so I attached it to my starter. I started with Tentomon and ended up with Gallantmon CM - those are not 2 digimon who are linked in any way whatsoever.

This method also means it's hard to keep track of which digimon you're planning to turn each member into. You may plan to digivolve into a WarGreymon eventually, but the only way to make sure you keep track of which monster that is would be to either only focus on one partners evolutions at a time, or go back and forth through the "obvious" choices like Agumon > Greymon > Metal Greymon. The issue with the latter is that digimon can hold up to 20 moves in their memory total, so it's often good to go through as many digivolutions as possible to learn as many different moves as you can, so in your journey to WarGreymon, if you stick exclusively to the Agumon line you're going to miss out on coverage. But if you deviate from the Agumon line, you might lose track of which teammate you were planning to turn in to WarGreymon in the first place as you'll likely have multiple members outside the "obvious" path.

Speaking of moves each digimon has their own unique special move, sometimes 2 in the cases of the highest levels, and they'll tend to have more interesting effects. Animations for them are pretty neat too, although they're done in the form of showing the mon using the move in isolation and then cutting to the enemy being hit by some generic flash or something so they never have to worry about showing how every move interacts with every digimon.

The non-special moves are where the game kind of sucks, there's only really a handful of common "normal" moves, and they're all very boring simple versions of "elemental damage", "elemental damage AOE", "(De)Buff/AOE (de)buff", "Status inflictor" and "Heal/AOE Heal". So while trying out multiple digivolutions is important for the moveset variety, you'll never really run across anything interesting because every member will end up with the same basic types of moves, and you just tend to rely on clicking their special move to win most battles anyway.

I kind of like how the battle system uses two separate type weakness variants though. You've got your standard elements like fire, water, grass, but also the digimon special virus, vaccine, data and neutral. It's not super deep or anything, but it just adds a little extra layer. What I don't like from the battle system is how it refuses to show you how many stacks of any given buff or debuff you have.

The games enjoyable enough if you just wanna use some digimon in an RPG. The constantly changing faces on your team can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It is a very dialogue heavy game though, when it really didn't need to be. Cases in the game are like 30 minutes of dialogue for 1 story fight. Side quests are generally better at keeping the dialogue short for them, but there are so many main quests that are basically filler, self-contained stories with one-off characters, but have main quest levels of dialogue. I just wanna play :(

The games pretty much as good (or bad) as the original, just a little better with more digimon and slight QoL stuff added. I can't speak for how the story compares given I forgot so much of the original.

”Get to fuck, and when you come back, fuck off again”

Finally playing a game that isn’t voice-acted by Americans feels like surfacing from water for air.
Enjoyed this so much I played it in one sitting, probably because my favourite genre is “Guy In a Crumbling Facility”, to an extent where I’m certain they copied the homework of not only Infra but the HBO Chernobyl TV show in the game’s opening hours. Easy to bemoan the incredibly 2010’s cat-and-mouse horror gameplay during the moments you’re skirting around an enemy - as well as the fact that the entire game is hyper linear with a constant throughline of the game design yellow paint carrot-on-stick. There were certainly points where I went ah fuck this again when met with another Uncharted climbing sequence, but I felt that the entire game was paced very consistently, and the dialogue was pitch-perfect I love Roy and Caz.

Still Wakes the Deep really is only a short hop away from The Chinese Room’s prior A Machine For Pigs in schema, it feels to me that they were able to put what they learned from that project to task and lean into their strengths to make something that comes across as more whole, even if it took them surrendering A:AMFP’s fun thematics for something closer to a BBC One Original Drama.

Small notes:
-A shame that they couldn’t get Jessica Curry back on the soundtrack, which only ended up kind of middling here if I’m honest!!!!
-The rig was incredibly well-realised, I loved that you could see it bend and warp and shake in the wind and against the waves
-When the Horrific Otherworldly Entity is kind of beautiful to look at I really like dat.
-Maybe it’s just because I got motion sickness a few times, but the game feels like it could have been a VR game? The way the character’s arms respond to the environment was so Boneworks
-Enjoyed seeing real 70’s health and safety posters dotted around, they go so dumb hard
-It's not funny but I find it very funny that oil rigs have a "Mud Handling" facility