Great in so many places but bad in others
The game itself is fantastic. I waited for this game since the announcement and it is perfect for horror fans and fans of the hellraiser movies and comics. It even reminded me of evil within at points, which is my favorite horror game.
The main issue I had with this game that truly held me back from fully enjoying the game is just how horribly unbalanced it is. I played on easy so that I could just relax and enjoy the game as is, but still it felt like I was stressed out the whole time. There are WAY too many enemies, especially right before boss fights. It felt like the game just wants you to waste your bullets most of the time, this wouldn’t be so much of an issue if you weren’t so restricted to the amount of ammo you can carry at once because it all takes up four slots in your inventory. The hoards of enemies are ridiculous as well, sometimes it feels like they’re not gonna stop coming and every fight ended with me having to use my basic knife at some point.
It could be limited because they are encouraging you to use the configuration but even the configuration has limited power that only builds when you hurt an enemy (and the easiest way to do that is by shooting them). Towards the end of the game, I was really just waiting for it to be over and so annoyed every time I heard an enemy coming.
We are also given stealth kills to use, but their is never just one enemy in a room and using a stealth kill will always alert the other enemies.
I did find a lot about it to love despite all of this, the labyrinth saved the entire game for me, it had perfect atmosphere and felt like it was made perfectly for the franchise. It’s confusing in a good way, puzzling in ways that don’t rob the enjoyment of the games. The genesis configuration, I found was great too, even with its limited power, it’s such a fun mechanic to use. The boss battle with Charlotte was honestly one of my favorite boss battles so far. It was challenging but once you figure out her patterns, it’s a good challenge that works well with the game itself.
I did enjoy most of the game and it’s clear a lot of care went into it, it’s just the small balancing issues that is keeping it from its full potential.