izigame.me

o jogo do ano está aqui! i have been waiting for this game for nearly two years (small fry compared to the brazilians who have been waiting for over four), and i must admit i became more and more anxious as the launch date approached. would it live up to my expectations? would i understand all of the lore with only two ordem paranormal campaigns under my belt? would i be too stupid to solve even the most basic of the puzzles (which was a big fear of mine after that pre-release arg)?
it cannot be overstated enough how beautiful the art in this game is. from the character sprites and portraits to the backgrounds, everything is so lovingly crafted and finely detailed. the music is haunting. all of the characters i have been introduced to so far are all written in a way that emphasizes their unique thought processes, ways of speaking, goals, and ulterior motives.
yes, there are a multitude of small bugs that range from not that big of a deal for me personally, to annoying, to game-breaking. sometimes the flashlight just doesn't want to change to the uv light. sometimes portraits and dialogue disappear. sometimes the sneak function doesn't work properly and the blood zombies take a chunk out of poor mia's arm when i could've sworn i got the timing right. some phrases and words are inconsistently emphasized throughout the script, as if they could not decide how they wanted to spell "perimeter" or "the unhaunted one." some people on lower-end pcs are still having issues with optimization. and, despite it being promised as a release feature, there is currently no way to toggle spoken language and subtitle language; unfortunate, and disappointing, but not a deal breaker.
i have not yet felt lost or confused about the lore of the universe. whilst i am admittedly not coming in as a blank slate in terms of ordem paranormal lore, i am also not a super fan (yet) and have not seen all of the hundreds of hours of story there, but i felt like there was enough exposition from mia, samuel, and agatha to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. the items the player can walk around and discover in the environment provided the rest of the information i needed to know. would it have been more rewarding to know 100% of the lore of the universe? probably! but i do not feel like it was detrimental to my experience so far.
i still have so much of enigma do medo left to play, and i am so excited to find out the rest of the secrets waiting for me at the perimeter and the other ending. despite the negatives of this review, the dev team has been hard at work day after day releasing patches to fix bugs and glitches, and with each one of them it is becoming the idealized game i have envisioned in my head over the last two years of waiting. it's been such a treat to play and discover every new secret, and i cannot wait to reach the other ending myself.