I heard that when Resident Evil effectively codified the survival horror genre a lot of its flaws became deliberate inclusions because those limitations were what made RE's atmosphere and gameplay so memorably scary.
And if that doesn't work as a lead-in for Song of Horror I don't know what would. The game has so many ideas that make me go "why" at their inclusion but fuck me if they don't fulfil their purpose of making the game feel legitimately stressful to play. Like, for example, I don't exactly think "maze with walls you can only see via still, oddly angled images right at the beginning of the gauntlet and also if you touch the walls three times you're permakilled" is exactly fair or fun, but it's certainly scary in a way that goes beyond just the story or presentation of the game. If something bad gets included as a method of successfully achieving what the game wants to achieve, does that make that inclusion good, ultimately?
What helps make considering this game a whole lot less complicated, though, is that it's largely pretty good otherwise. The game goes like this: you are trying to solve the mystery of a being hunting you down called 'The Presence,' and trying to find traces of those who have previously encountered it. You and your group of closest confidants and also random people who stumble onto the scene must head into an archetypal horror environment, solve puzzles and achieve your objectives fixed-camera-survival-horror style all while The Presence hunts you down and makes you play minigames, lest the character you play as get killed forever. In this vein, the core gameplay really works. Environments are large and explorable but condensed enough that it's unlikely that you'll find yourself lost or in a room that doesn't serve a greater purpose. The many characters you can choose from are distinct in how they react to the environment — while I really think there could've been room for divergence for how the level changes based on the character you play (why does Erika, for example, need to get the components for a puzzle box which she then needs to solve to get the keys for her own apartment), the differing motivations and reactions of each character give a bit of value to going through episodes multiple times. The minigames themselves really help add tension even to otherwise quiet segments, as the fact that they're effectively randomly deployed means that you're never sure whether you're safe or what's going to happen just around the corner.
There are unconditional problems though, too. Episode 2 as a whole really brings the whole game down. While all the other levels have simple, one-word descriptions which tell you exactly what they are and are good prompts for puzzles endemic to those sorts of biomes, Episode 2 is... an antique shop which is connected to a series of apartments which is also connected to a storage facility which is a fucking labyrinth, and I think that lack of identity really leads into its problems: its more generic puzzles, the huge amount of areas and things that don't do anything and the horrid storage maze that functions as the climax. The game also doesn't do a great job at tutorializing certain mechanics: the stats that define each character never get explained at all (I still don't know what "Stealth" does) and the tutorials the game gives really do not do a good job of indicating what the player has to do — I almost failed the breathing minigame the first time because of this and I never really figured out how exactly the door minigame was actually supposed to work. The jank definitely does contribute to the atmosphere, but I did get frustrated from dying/nearly dying from things I felt could've been avoidable had the game taught me better.
Ultimately, though, the game is complicated... but also good, I think. It falls wayyyyyy short of 'great' given how as a game a lot of its mechanics and setpieces set out to frustrate the player, but as a horror experience, I can't deny that it worked exactly as intended. 7/10. If you wanna try it out for yourself I'm reasonably sure Episode 1 is out there for free so, like, check it out. At the very least, you won't regret it.
And if that doesn't work as a lead-in for Song of Horror I don't know what would. The game has so many ideas that make me go "why" at their inclusion but fuck me if they don't fulfil their purpose of making the game feel legitimately stressful to play. Like, for example, I don't exactly think "maze with walls you can only see via still, oddly angled images right at the beginning of the gauntlet and also if you touch the walls three times you're permakilled" is exactly fair or fun, but it's certainly scary in a way that goes beyond just the story or presentation of the game. If something bad gets included as a method of successfully achieving what the game wants to achieve, does that make that inclusion good, ultimately?
What helps make considering this game a whole lot less complicated, though, is that it's largely pretty good otherwise. The game goes like this: you are trying to solve the mystery of a being hunting you down called 'The Presence,' and trying to find traces of those who have previously encountered it. You and your group of closest confidants and also random people who stumble onto the scene must head into an archetypal horror environment, solve puzzles and achieve your objectives fixed-camera-survival-horror style all while The Presence hunts you down and makes you play minigames, lest the character you play as get killed forever. In this vein, the core gameplay really works. Environments are large and explorable but condensed enough that it's unlikely that you'll find yourself lost or in a room that doesn't serve a greater purpose. The many characters you can choose from are distinct in how they react to the environment — while I really think there could've been room for divergence for how the level changes based on the character you play (why does Erika, for example, need to get the components for a puzzle box which she then needs to solve to get the keys for her own apartment), the differing motivations and reactions of each character give a bit of value to going through episodes multiple times. The minigames themselves really help add tension even to otherwise quiet segments, as the fact that they're effectively randomly deployed means that you're never sure whether you're safe or what's going to happen just around the corner.
There are unconditional problems though, too. Episode 2 as a whole really brings the whole game down. While all the other levels have simple, one-word descriptions which tell you exactly what they are and are good prompts for puzzles endemic to those sorts of biomes, Episode 2 is... an antique shop which is connected to a series of apartments which is also connected to a storage facility which is a fucking labyrinth, and I think that lack of identity really leads into its problems: its more generic puzzles, the huge amount of areas and things that don't do anything and the horrid storage maze that functions as the climax. The game also doesn't do a great job at tutorializing certain mechanics: the stats that define each character never get explained at all (I still don't know what "Stealth" does) and the tutorials the game gives really do not do a good job of indicating what the player has to do — I almost failed the breathing minigame the first time because of this and I never really figured out how exactly the door minigame was actually supposed to work. The jank definitely does contribute to the atmosphere, but I did get frustrated from dying/nearly dying from things I felt could've been avoidable had the game taught me better.
Ultimately, though, the game is complicated... but also good, I think. It falls wayyyyyy short of 'great' given how as a game a lot of its mechanics and setpieces set out to frustrate the player, but as a horror experience, I can't deny that it worked exactly as intended. 7/10. If you wanna try it out for yourself I'm reasonably sure Episode 1 is out there for free so, like, check it out. At the very least, you won't regret it.