Darkwood

I am incredibly conflicted when it comes to this game. The gameplay is so unique and does an amazing job of making things tense. The story is gripping and kept me locked in for 20 hours. The art style has immense personality. I genuinely enjoyed 80% of this game. ….but the night portion of the game is just so boring. The game is broken up into daytime exploring and nighttime defending. The latter of which is genuinely scary and intense for like the first couple hours of the game, and then it loses all intrigue. After you learn that the side-step wack over the head tactic works on 90% of enemies the night becomes me sitting in a corner looking at my phone, and looking up every minute or so to beat a dude to death. It's so unfun that it starts to affect other parts of the game. The exploration is so interesting, but my immersion is destroyed by the fact that every 20 minutes I gotta waddle home and jork it in the corner before I can continue. It's also a core part of the gameplay that obviously never goes away, so if you get sick of it on hour 3 you'll be dealing with it till the game ends. I'm leaving a negative review mostly so people who are back and forth on purchasing the game can see some other points of view. I know that the game prides itself on being extremely difficult, which I signed up for, but this aspect leans into tedious and boring. If you can overlook it then this game has a lot to offer!