Recent reviews by chi

Overall: Overrated IMO. Not much deduction for a detective game.

Positives:
Tells a story where the you and everyone else is still complicit in a heinous and absurd system.
Open world system is pretty neat. I think more detective games should incorporate this.
The writers put a lot of heart and effort in crafting characters.

Negatives:
Basically no deduction at all. Just collect all items by checking every nook and cranny, exhaust all dialogue options, and the game presents to you the truth, because your laptop automatically logs and categorises all evidence and leads.
The finale is just you regurgitating evidence in your laptop.
Open World Map is hard to navigate. Collectibles are scattered and time consuming to reach.
Low-Poly, amateurish, over the top art style, coming from a person who likes vaporwave, cyberpunk, and surreal art.
Characters aren’t very captivating. I didn’t care for the friendly ones, and the others are either unhinged or irredeemable jerks.
No voice acting for most dialogues, only repetitive voice clips.

Though Chris has clearly been slacking on the gym after killing his archnemesis Wesker, he’s still that zombie fisting, boulder puncher himbo we know and love. Never change, Chris.

This game is a really unique take on TRPG and video games. Every dice roll feels risky and thrilling, and every win feels great. It's difficult to makes a balanced RNG-based game, and to let players feel like they've won because of skill. So props to Cosmo D for making this a fair and fun game. I've also learned to love the conditions especially in 4AM mode. One dice and make or break your run.

Music, characters, dialogue, and environment are top-notch as always. The way your character solve problems are very creative and quirky as well. For example,you can merge your consciousness with the security system, you can talk to Big Mo about common ownership, NPCs fly through the ceiling when they ditch their gig, etc. The NPCs are clearly inspired by real life people and have pretty realistic motivations. Every time I play a Cosmo D game, I wish I can visit these places and meet the characters.

Decent replayability because you can choose the difficulty and paths. Fun to play with friends and see how they'd do things differently.

Highly recommend this game for a chill night with friends or for a challenge. Try going into this game blind for the best experience.

nice xqc-adept simulator

Amazing game: interesting dialogue, very fun music, weirdly beautiful architecture. I've watched gameplay of tales from off peak vol.1, but this prequel makes me want to experience that game myself.

If you liked this game, I'd highly recommend watching the dev's commentary on youtube. He delves into lots of his inspirations, experiences, and his passion. It made me want to replay this game and discover all the details I missed.

I bought this game way back in 2018. I really wanted to like this game. And to be fair, everything from the music to the character design to the environment are all very beautiful and jaw-dropping.

The biggest problem I have with this game is the lack of clear objectives and hints. I don't know what I'm suppose to be solving until the puzzle is solved. For example,I had to let the evil monk drink hot water so he will fly away in his spaceship thing. I just can't find the connection between the action and the results. Even when I manage to solve a puzzle, it didn't feel like a win, just felt like I brute-forced the game by clicking everything and anything.

Also, you often get stuck in long animations e.g. hiking up a mountain, and it takes like 15 seconds. You can't cancel it midway. So you can end up wasting like 30 seconds.

I started playing this game in 2018. I'll play it like once a year for a few hours, then get stuck and get bored. Maybe I'm just not the right mindset for this style of games, but I've been trying for 4 years XD I think It'll be a nice chill game if you already know how to solve the puzzles

I've played the first outlast and the whistleblower dlc. Outlast is one of my favourite horror games.
This game was a huge letdown in terms of characters, story, and level design.

Characters
The villains are so over the top. Just maximum levels of evil and craziness.One wants to kill babies and r*pe, the other has a lust for killing and sexually assaulting the protagonist. What a surface level exploration of religions and cults. These are characters written by edgy teenage atheists for themselves to jerk off to how bad religion is. I have first hand experience with cult. Not everything in a cult 100% evil and filled with misery. There are positive things that makes people want to stay. If you've watched interviews with people who escaped, they explain that cult gives people tight-knit community and good memories. The leaders are charismatic and disguise their cult as a regular church. But the game just makes Knoth a crazy villain with no nuance.

The Story
Story wise, there is just no depth. It's just: bad guys are evil and crazy. Documents in original Outlast actually tells a comprehensive and compelling back story. All that the documents in this game conveys is that: bad guys are bad and crazy.12 chapters of Knoth's book that repeats the same thing over and over and over. Yeah, we get it . He's a religious extremist. Sex, sin, cleansing, sacrifice, holy blood, the devil, apocalypse, redemption, yada yada. We already know what Knoth is gonna say because this trope has used so many times. There's like one very hidden document that hints ata link with Murkoff that attempts to tie this game to the original Outlast. Also, I'm pretty sure Knoth's and the cult's origin isn't even explained in the game. You gotta read a comic to know about it. That's just lazy.
The secondary story linewhere Jessica was assaulted and died also has nothing to do with the main plot, nothing to do with the protagonist's motivation and personality. It is predictable and can be told in 10 minutes. Just a failed attempt to add backstory and depth.

Level Design
I actually like the aesthetic of the rural village. But the AIs are really inconsistent and can spot you purely because you're unlucky. It's not that bad unless you're doing Insane Mode/ speedruns.
However, I really dislike the school segments. Some people say that it resembles original Outlast. Some even say they wished the entire game happened inside the school. I think the school segments is a total waste of time and a huge waste of potential. Initially it was thrilling to be at the school. It was claustrophobic and the mysterious shadows are scary. But as you keepfalling back into the hallucination, it gets tedious and all I want is to leave. Your goalevery single time is to find a way to escape. This level design is very much linear. They put you into this huge empty space but don’t allow you to explore it because most places are locked. You keep going back to very similar looking areas. You just have to try opening every door until you find the right one. Rinse and repeat for an hour.

Summary
In summary this game tries to live up and connect to the original but fails in my eyes. I don't know why people like it. Seeing that how many people liked this game, i guess you will be satisfied with this gameplay experience as well. I just want to get people thinking.

I enjoy playing this game. The game is not perfect but it is still a very fun asymm with amazing crossovers like silent hill and resident evil.

Although wesker was bugged at launch, it was quickly fixed. Now this has become one of my favourite chapters. I flippin love wesker. Ada is a badass too. I also love the updated rpd map

This is the game above all games. The atmosphere, the art style, the soundtrack, the character and architectural design: everything is perfect. Playing as a robot in this game, I feel small but content, and curious about every little detail of the world I'm in. When I play this game, sometimes I just pause and soak it all in. What a beautiful experience.