Repetitive combat, uninspired level design, and a sluggish narrative that doesn’t have nearly as much to say about mental illness as the breathless advertising and media coverage of this game would lead you to believe. It does some interesting visualization of nightmare PTSD scenarios, but that too quickly grows repetitive (get ready for lots of tall sword dudes in demonic armor. And fire.). There’s close to zero accuracy in its depiction of schizophrenia according to a bunch of mental health professionals and actual schizophrenic people out there, so strip that away and I’m not sure what you’re left with but a dull action game with a thick layer of mud caked over its otherwise lovely visuals.

By the end of the first two hours it hasn’t communicated as much as even a mediocre genre film, which is pretty much my metric for a badly paced video game. It’s also just plain not “fun” to play, though you could probably have guessed that going in.