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The more often you get stuck with the same items and abilities, the more redundant and shallow the game feels.
Fire Emblem attains an especially epic, moral grandeur with this game's focus on the interplay between education and religion.
The game isn't really supposed to be about anything, yet in that ambiguity it captures the specific madness of our present.
As the game never really switches up its formula, it's not long before fatigue sets in.
The game's first-person-shooter sequences aren't just dull and familiar, but also clunky, given the touchy VR controls.
It experiments with all the weakest parts of the series and ties them together with a new, tedious progression system.
Its repetitive tasks are like the usual arbitrary gates to reach a cutscene in a mediocre video game.
From the second you power on the game, its entire toy chest is open to you, no strings attached.
The similarities between SolSeraph and ActRaiser are unmistakable, but it's a joyless facsimile that lacks a single spark of innovation.
Where the game goes in-depth, and where it clearly feels most comfortable, is in its omnipresent brawls.
As varied and intriguing as the game can get on a conceptual level, it outdoes itself in the minutiae of traversal and combat.
Worse than the sheer tedium of shooting is the effect it has on the game's atmosphere.
Every shootout is an opportunity to execute a thoroughly balletic performance of sorts.
This is a rare adventure game in which the journey is actually more of a reward than the destination.
Even the few inventive stretches of the game are ultimately driven into the ground by a punishing sense of repetition.
Playing Pathologic 2 feels like suffering, and it's meant to be that way.
The game forsakes worldbuilding as it increasingly gives itself over to making the most digressive of statements.
It fits together disparate genres so perfectly that you wonder how nobody thought to combine them sooner.
It's not greed in this day and age to expect publishers to respect and preserve their history. At this point, it's an artistic responsibility.
The game's first few acts are its finest, particularly for their strong sense of physicality.