Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Review (Custard Nuts)
With 14 hours in the game and all achievements unlocked, I think it's time I gave it a review.
Short version; is it worth the money and should you get it? I would say Yes to the latter, but I would honestly price this game a little lower, or just pick it up on a sale.
Longer version;
The game play of this is an improvement from the first game, I quite enjoyed it.
Puzzles aren't difficult they're very straight forward if you're stuck it usually involves examining an item or just reading the last document you picked up.
The story isn't the best and there are still things I'm confused about but I can't explain it without spoiling it.
The voice acting is pretty decent however at times their tones don't even match what's happening, and it feels like the characters at certain points have short term memory loss, as they hate people then like them, then hate them again, it's a bit of a messy roller coaster.
The animations on things like characters talking need some tweaking too, it weird not seeing the lips move properly when talking.
Whilst on the subject of talking, PLEASE stop with the *When she talks-she walks*, you'll be running through and you'll have some pretty good momentum, and then out of no where there is some unnecessary communication that will force her to walk and also prevent you from interacting with objectives. I would say that for every 10 to 15 minutes of game play there is a cutscene or one of those boring talks.
There was one instance where you literally enter a cutscene, end up walking and talking, to then get locked into 2 more cutscenes and then another talk, all of this is Back-to-Back.
There's also a part where she's shocked to find out she works for Hexacore, which is weird considering the H in H.A.D.E.S (the team she's a part of) is for Hexacore.
There are moments and areas that look like they were made for boss battles, but it just turns into killing regular things, When you finally do meet the thing that you'd assume to be the boss, you don't get to fight it either.
There is only 1 boss in this game and that is at the end, the design of it is cool, but the boss battle itself is so annoying, you don't kill it, you just shoot it until it leaves you alone to them walk a bit more before it appears again. If it get to close to you, it will teleport you somewhere else leaving you to travel to the final location once more, and if you keep getting teleported, the locked doors that you unlocked become locked again.
There are a total of 4 different enemy models and 2 different variants for 2 of those enemies, so you have Basically a zombie that's blue or red, a monster with a belly again either blue or red. Some flying thing called the sparker and then the end boss. The Red and Blue are the variant I just mentioned... So nothing special.
Ammo consumption is something I had to keep track of, but at the end, they just give you a load for the "Boss battle" and then once you complete the game, you just get infinite ammo, if you want to play it again, if you complete the game without dying you get infinite liquid nitrogen too.
The game setting is kind of bland, it's just all underground, the only areas that I thought looks cool was the Residential Area and the Apartment building which has a cool RE inspired puzzle with the diamond/heart/space and club key.
I want this game to have an area, I know it is it's own game, but build on a place and make it iconic for the series, RE1 has the Mansion, RE2 the Police Station, familiarity with an area is always nice.
All that being said I did enjoy the game, I personally would recommend it especially if you enjoyed the first game.
But please read both positive and negative reviews and decide if you want to buy this or not.