So, I've just finished it, and it says 21 hours. The first four hours are probably the best. You're learning ins and outs, the archive usage and map location finding is satisfying, you don't know what to expect from the combat and it's scary (you only have two shitty pistols), the infested zones are cool... But then it all breaks somewhere in the 4-6 hours range because you realize the game won't offer anything new. You can run away from any combat (triggering the patheticness of AI - I've looked it up, it's an actual word btw), the infested zones can be looted pretty easily by running or just ignored, you can't clear them, you don't need to go in them except one case. The loot respawns (imho that is a
very bad idea in a supposedly survival game but it's 2021 and this is something that desperately wants to play in the big boys league), you learn all the basic gameplay formulas by heart and it all becomes one big exercise in tedium. Finding locations on map for 20 hours is not fun if there's no evolution to the mechanic, same with the archives. The side quests are formulaic as well, you're rewarded by loot, a readable or two, and stories sketched in a few voiced sentences at best. Joy's side quest was cool and admittedly I've had like ten of those left hanging around in the end because I started to ignore them somewhere in that 4-6 hours range.
The plot... well, it's an incoherent mess. You run around doing tasks for people appearing literally out of nowhere to complicate your life and present you with "hard choices". Like that
voodoo Mayan priestess, for example, there's no mention of her anywhere in the story until she appears near the end being very-very important to the plot. Or that "Hey, go here, there's a dude there, he's important, btw everything before now was just a test to see how well you do, tee-hee" - literal words by an important character (likely Nyarlathotep or some such) before you meet her. In games like these, the main story content at least has some variety in the set pieces with the side content being bad filler. Here it's all the same and one of the following: find location/investigation+loot+combat/bland diving section followed by the cave investigation+loot+combat/visions cutscene/important NPC dialogue. That's just lacking any imagination, or maybe funds. I caught myself feeling a bit drained near the end and now that I'm thinking about it's the same feeling I have after playing any of modern AAA games if I do that at all. They're way too long for the amount of variety they have and exploit the basic gamer desire to Finish The Game to the fullest.
Combat is with the same three monster types with the occasional big daddy or whatever is their name. There are supposedly different stories but we only got these three monsters and sometimes humans if we're lucky, sorry. There's one scene vaguely resembling a boss fight. All the houses are the same inside Ubisoft-style. There's the mansion layout and like maybe three apartment buildings layout and you start to hate them maybe 8 hours in. Again, not enough variety for the amount of playtime they were aiming for. The best thing they could do with this approach is cut the length in twice so that the player would get bored much closer to the end. Note how I said nothing about the connecting dots in the dream palace so far. Well, it's there (shrugs). It's more of a... plot summary mechanism than an active investigation part. Their own Sherlock Holmes games have the ability to fail in the conclusions and I guess they've decided to test how does it feel when you can't. Now it's like visualizing the plot for children :D Well, at least they tried. I like the visual look of the game, very atmospheric and I'll put some of these cool ambient tracks into my work playlist. Damn, the best track in the game is 12 seconds
But there are at least couple that are greater than a minute:
Btw, I'm really liking the basics of the archive usage. I'm gonna lift it for one of my projects when I get to it and expand on it.
