One of the best game storylines in recent history. Utterly compelling. Yet - I did get a little lost with who was who and who did what etc. Maybe, that's just me. I think some sort of diary, or journal entries that get updated when plot details I'm supposed to have garnered are revealed would have helped.

What held me back from this game initially was the fixed camera angle aspect of the game. The game is a combination of fixed camera angles, and a third-person view with no freedom to move the camera yourself. While - I think I get why it was done - ultimately it's the games biggest downfall.

Limited perspective - inability to judge object positions at distance, mean you continually get stuck on environment detail. This when you're trying to run though a maze from a monster - frustrating. I'd cut the fixed camera honestly - and make the game classic third person. Having worked with the classic Third Person with free camera perspective myself - I think this game would have been better served by going this route. Fixing the camera, and then not allowing any camera control while in third person view - steps me *out* of the game world - making it more like a limited control cutscene. A story unfolding largely independently of whatever I do. I'm really just pushing 'play' by making Marianne move. As a PC player - this is too limiting. Too simple. If limited camera control *must* remain for future games, then tone it's use back to certain situations.

The presentation of the spirit world, and material worlds at the same time via splitscreen is just pure genius. I'm guessing doing that had its challenges, as two environments need to be rendered at the same time. But to see Marianne interacting with a spirtit personality in the spirit world - and then gesturing at nothing in the material world - just an awesome idea. The design of the spirit world is also spot on and very convincingly presented. A real highlight of this game.

I played on a modern PC 5900X CPU, RTX 3090, 64gb system memory. It's clear there are optimization issues. I have 100FPS, and I step a little further forward and chunk to 14FPS. Obviously the game is trying to do too much somewhere. Perhaps level-streaming too much into the game at once in these locations. Again - with the spirit world in play as well - even when you don't actually see it presented - I guess it needs to be running in the background in some capacity, so it can appear when needed without a sudden performance hit. Walking across the pool in the resort was one place performance was terrible. Exiting the resort and heading to the old ruins, near the telescope was another place.

However, the visuals are stunning - and I can see a lot of work went into them. At many times, I just took in the views - or stopped to appreciate the environment that had been created. Despite getting a little lost in some story plot points - I did enjoy the gradual realisations of some major plot pieces. Very solid writing. In fact, this story could easily be a film, or a book. I'd not be surprised at all to find out if either of those were true.

I'd certainly recommend this game if you want a great storyline with a compelling mystery to solve.