TR-49

I finally had a chance to try this game, and in short, I found trying to play it infuriating. I had to mute the voice acting and turn off subtitles because the constant chattering of the characters continually interrupted my engagement and was driving me crazy. Additionally, I would try to enter a code to navigate to a specific entry, but before I could finish, it would jump to my partially entered code. I also found the general structure of the game too confusing; the entry is a book, but I'm reading a note written on the book, but it's not actually about sed book? Playing this game was not fun and rapidly making me more and more angry. I can't continue. I no longer wish to own this game.

I beat it, but I finished it hating the game. At first, it's super intriguing. I was really pulled in by the story, characters, and mystery. Unfortunately, the farther I got, the worse the experience became. Firstly, the puzzle logic is all over the place and often undersignaled...like you're expected to read the designer's mind rather than follow clues, piece breadcrumbs together, and arrive at a satisfying solution. Additionally, too many clues felt like obscure needles in a haystack for such a short game, especially when the game puts significant emphasis on specific things that are clearly there to throw you off track. It comes off as cheesy and poorly designed. The game also makes brute-forcing codes easier and more tempting than actually solving its puzzles. I was able to avoid the temptation most of the time, but it's a terrible design choice for a game where tiny hints buried in pages of text can be essential to understanding the story and progressing. This can happen by accident as well! The code input device doesn't reset after entering a code, so while typing a new one, the leftover characters can accidentally form another valid code and immediately send you to a page you never intended to open. In a game already this convoluted where taking detailed notes and really following the story is essential, accidentally throwing even more information at you doesn't help. Even worse is a bug I kept encountering. A major part of progression involves assigning codes to specific book titles, but several times I'd assign the correct code to the correct title and nothing would happen. I'd assume I was wrong, waste time searching elsewhere, then come back later, try the exact same combination, and suddenly it would work. In a game built entirely around trusting your deductions, this was genuinely heartbreaking on several occasions. The story and characters were strong enough to keep me going, but eventually the game completely wore me down. When the credits rolled, I wasn't excited to have solved the mystery. I was exhausted, pissed, and just happy it was over.