Signalis

OH MY GOD IT'S EVANGELION ALL OVER AGAIN (except that like, the Evangelion fandom has an idea of what it was about at this point) Also love the soundtrack. 10/10

Excellent classic survival-horror, with gameplay very similar to the older Resident Evil episodes and with a visual style and storytelling that reminded me of Tsutomu Nihei's mangas (Blame!). The beginning of the adventure is rather sparse in text. The main character, Elster, a Replika (= synthetic being) wakes up in a spaceship landed on a cold moon. She realizes that her Gestalt partner (= human being), Ariane Yeong is no longer on board. What follows is your adventure in search of Ariane in the mining facility located near the spaceship. Naturally, being a survival-horror game, the mining facility quickly reveals corpses and, more importantly, Replikas corrupted by a mysterious infection. During the adventure, you will also encounter few survivors. And documents scattered around will provide a lot of information about the Signalis universe and I must say that it turned out to be much richer than I imagined at the beginning of the adventure. The story is also more compelling than I expected, though it should be noted it remains open to interpretation. The deeper Elster descends into the lower levels of the facility, the harder it becomes to distinguish the boundary between dream, memory, and reality. Consequently, the story is intentionally challenging to piece together (a bit like the manga Blame!). Yet, the masterfully crafted atmosphere makes the adventure memorable. A sequel or another game in the same universe would be a perfectly concevable possibility. The gameplay is solid, both in terms of fights and puzzles. And it's quite faithful to the old Resident Evil (RE) games in top-down view. The controls follow the same somewhat rigid logic: you move, you reorient yourself to aim, and you fire rather slowly at enemies who are not so slow as they appear. There were one or two times when I had to curse the aiming lock, when several enemies were in the same line of fire, but otherwise no problem. Unlike RE, the inventory consists simply of a set number of slots. Difficulty options at the start of the game allow you to choose between 6, or 8 slots to make things easier. In any case, trips back and forth to store excess items are required, just like in RE. Another notable point is that the progression is divided into independent zones. Once you reach a new zone, you cannot return to the previous one. There are 5 or 6 zones in total. While the puzzles may seem harder than those in RE, the highly detailed mini-map, which shows key items found in each room, greatly simplifies progression. Many puzzles are solved thanks to the variation of the frequency band of your radio, it's a touch of originality that I appreciated. I finished the game on the highest difficulty, but I think that even in normal mode the difficulty remains quite challenging. Staying discreet and avoiding the enemies is often the best strategy. The game features three bosses, the final boss being the most difficult and the longest to defeat. I really enjoyed the unique atmosphere of Signalis and I hope rose-engine will develop a similar game in the same universe.

An absolute masterpiece of a game, the art direction, the ambience, the soundtrack, the story... Definitely amongst my favourite survival horror games, up there with Silent Hill 2. 1000% recommended and I can't recommend it enough.