For a country bumpkin like me who knows nothing about art, this game is like the Mona Lisa—but painted with ****.
**Clumsy Controls & UI** --No Back Button 19th-century typewriters had a "return lever," but this 2024 game lacks even a basic back button. You can only control direction and press "OK." To "go back," you must move the cursor to [X] and confirm. The devs clearly knew this, yet deliberately designed it this way. "Don’t you think it’s artistic? As modern-day Picassos, we find this profoundly artistic—a design only the god of art could conceive." Once you enter a puzzle panel, there’s no exit; you’re forced to fail intentionally just to quit. --Players Struggle Not with Puzzles, but with "Wait, This Button Works?!" After dozens of hours, I only have one area map. I found all map boxes but had no idea how to open them—until I accidentally discovered the puzzle interface had page-turning (designed to be utterly unnoticeable). Another example: the torn poster puzzle. I tried reassembling it on paper, only to later realize you could move fragments in-game... with zero hints. **Disconnected Puzzles & Narrative**
The core gameplay is number-juggling: turning symbols into digits, adding/subtracting them, visualizing numbers as shapes, digitizing graphics, then using them to unlock things. None of this connects to the game’s artistic style or story. I’d rather solve magazine puzzles—they’re more fun and remind me of childhood joy waiting to validate answers in the next issue. **Puzzles Demand Mind-Reading**
Example: Two movie posters hang on a wall with a "+" between them, and a locked door requires a numeric code. If you "sync brainwaves" with the dev, you’ll know to add the films’ release years. But why? Why not total their runtimes? Or count the "." in their titles? Or sum their character counts? (All actual puzzle logics used elsewhere). No reason—just whether you guessed the dev’s arbitrary whim.**Zero Guidance **The game opens by telling you to "
grab pen and paper," which I foolishly did. My notes now look ridiculous—mostly useless scribbles. In an alien world, how would anyone know which details are keys and which are trash? Stopping to jot things down constantly murders immersion. I spent hours lost because I couldn’t link poker cards to doors. After scouring maps and documents, I caved and checked a guide. Turns out, I’d missed one throwaway line—unrecorded in any log—just like the only truthful ad for GameSpot:"Missing small details can also lead to feeling lost and unsure where to go next, which can be frustrating."
~ If you haven't played the original, there's no need to play this.
~ Despite getting a remake, this nearly 30-year-old RPG still feels outdated because it failed to modernize the experience.
~ The game has a time limit: you must create high-level items within 5 years. Finishing the main story is very easy if that's all you want, but getting the other endings is much harder. The game is packed with tutorials and guidance, but the path to actually reaching any ending is poorly signposted. Because of this, it's hard for new players to tell if they're on the right track for an ending, leading to confusion and anxiety. This uncertainty killed my enthusiasm for exploring the story – I was constantly worried about failing to pass the test.
