SENSEs: Midnight (PC) Review

First things first. Suzaku should not enter the world of 3D. The team - obviously - lacks the budget, and probably the talent to handle 3D design. It's twice as baffling why that happened when the original 2.5D visuals were so darn good, courtesy of Benjamin Widdowson distinctive anime style. The result is a dark (not in a good way) and bland park, where nothing stands out, with the main character being extra immersion-breaking due to her lifeless animation, and even more lifeless expressions. It's never a good thing when the main heroine of a horror story looks unaffected while a scary ghost grabs her seconds before her death…

Sadly, the blandness continues with the actual game, which can be described as a slow, a very slow walking sim with a little bit of survival horror and puzzle-solving throw in. The tiny handful of hours this needs to be completed will mostly be spent on backtracking, going from A to B, and then to A again, while trying to figure out the solution to a problem, and while trying to not fall asleep from watching the protagonist "sprint." What makes backtracking even worse? A super-limited inventory of only four items.

The story portion of the original was something that yours truly didn't like very much, but it's hard not to appreciate what was good about it, and most of all… that there was a story. The one on offer is almost non-existent. It's a bare bones B-movie like premise that can fit in one sentence - just an excuse for the "ghost hunting" that will ensue. Even worse, however, is the lack of any scares. Not that the first one was particularly frightening, but it did have an extremely strong, oppressive atmosphere. This is devoid of all that. Even the ghost enemies tend to be more annoying than scary; ghosts that basically act like semi-transparent zombies. Annoying because the main "tactic" against them is running, which as mentioned earlier, is more like fast walking.

…And then there are the bugs. Like with Suzaku's previous creation, there are lots of those here. The thing is that this was supposed to be a much smaller, and thus more polished product. In reality it is even worse than the original, which, in all honesty feels as if the developer simply didn't care. Generally, SENSEs: Midnight feels like a beta leak, rather than a complete game that's ready to sell - bugs or no bugs. If there is something that's good, or at least original, that's only the chat system. You see the heroine is basically part of an occult club, and this is basically a live stream, story, or whatever youngsters call that nowadays. Her friends drop comments on her current predicament, offer hints, and generally try to make things a bit more interesting. Thumbs up for them.