I enjoyed this game a lot. Some aspects were rough around the edges, but overall it was very good. Right until the very end. It has been a long time since I've been disappointed so much by a game ending.
Heavy spoilers follow

So at the very end you literally get to "hack the MainFrame" and get almost god-like powers. I even made it so that the main villain is repeatedly zapped and "corrupted". Didn't stop her from killing me. There is literally no good ending to this story. You either die or the resistance has failed to stop the villain. The whole journey ends up being pointless.
The programming (and hacking) aspect is actually rather interesting and enjoyable. The problem is it might take you a while to get to it and you will most likely feel utterly lost for couple of hours. The first time I played I had to read the spoiler-free guide and restart the game after like an hour of being lost.
Another unique point of this game is that it doesn't hold your hand like most modern games. This might not be for everyone, but if you like the classics where you're not constantly reminded by 3 pieces of UI where you're supposed to go next then you will probably enjoy this aspect. You actually have to immerse yourself in the game and even take notes. I had a text editor opened for more than half of the game to manually track my "quests" and make other notes. The game is very real-time though, so I had to press Esc several times just to pause the game so I could take notes from the dialog.
Overall maybe get it on sale or something and set yourself up for a very disappointing ending but rather unique and interesting, although sometimes annoying, journey there.

The game is solidly build, but I couldn't get over the liminal space feel. It might be intended, but it's just not fun to play. And with people asking you to do things at specific times or you'll need to look for them somewhere else, it feels like a job, not something for fun.

I really wanted to love this game.
I am a software engineer, this should be my wheelhouse.
The scripting in this game is fun, can be expansive, and was a wonderful idea.
The game has it's fair share of Ah-hah! moments.

I've just been soft-locked too many times.
Events don't trigger if they don't happen in the right order.
The game begs for you to break it and then fully breaks in un-fun and unseen ways.
Way to early into the game everything becomes accessible and then falls apart.

I want to like this game. I want to play this game. But I'm simply not patient nor smart enough. The graphics are unique and eye catching, the music is nice, but the gameplay... I came for the programming but only got a slow life sim.
Tldr; I didn't get far because the game starts out similarly to Kingdom Hearts 2 but way worse.

The start is incredibly slow. You are Seb, a young adult still living at home. Seb has a birthday dinner with his parents - a scene that nicely shows the family dynamic. The phone rings - you got a job! The first little thing that bugs me happens here: I can't put the receiver back. But maybe it's a me problem, so I continue playing. The camera controls are a bit weird but manageable.
Now Seb needs to travel to a new town. When he arrives, he has to figure out where his hotel is. There's several ways to go about this, you can ask around, get a map at the tourist info (Seb's position is not tracked on there) or try to find it on your own by wandering around and following street signs. This can be pretty confusing depending on how good you are with directions. I'm pretty horrible at it and I notice it's getting dark - time actually passes in this game. Eventually I arrive at the hotel around midnight.
This is where something interesting happens. When Seb goes to his room, it's a derelict bathroom. A technician comes to fix the door, he does something, colours flash, and the door now leads into the correct room. What was that, what happened? This got me hooked on the story!
However the next ingame day is a huge slog. Seb is told someone is looking for him. The player isn't told who t was, how they looked, what they wanted, where they went. "Check the cafe, it's popular", is what the hotel staff advises. At the cafe I talk to everyone there (which for some reason makes me feel my irl social anxiety haha). Nobody could help me other than "oh maybe he will be at the bar tonight! come over!" Thus I go to the bar, wait all night, talk to everyone but still no luck. Instead Seb meets a girl and seems to have a crush on her right away judging by his reaction to the revelation that she has a boyfriend. Some other girl invites Seb to an after party. I even manage to find the location but nothing interesting happens, looks like all the girls there just drink alcohol and do drugs.
I spend a chunk of the next day wandering around aimlessly, then decide to reload. After looking it up on the internet this time around I find the man I was supposed to find. By then not much of my curiosity was left, I just kept wondering when the game would pick up the pace.
But I gave up soon after. The job as soda salesman isn't exactly engaging.

Maybe one day in the future I'll pick this game up again and follow one of the guides to get a hacking device right away. Then I might be able to enjoy the game. But for now I'd rather play a game that hooks me right away and takes less effort to get into.

I'm very much attracted to the *idea* of this game - explore, hack, modify, reprogram the core of it.

However, I can't get myself to look past the atrocious graphics and controls. Call it art all you want - it's ugly, the interface is clunky, and the frustration from dealing with clumsy dialogue systems and half baked controls is way too high.

Click on a person? Maybe it will work. Want to move? You can only click yourself there, in increments as your mouse can reach. Bonus points if you can click the destination every time while moving.

And I've played many 8 bit games, on the original hardware. This isn't a tribute, it's an excuse. What a shame.

I didn't buy it for the story and the socialization in this game, only for the programming. I should have informed myself better on the game rather than thinking "open world with cool graphics in which I can tinker with any computer".
What I got was a game telling me to get a job, take a boat, find the hotel. No direction to the hotel, I have to read the signs. Well, I got lost before I figured I really just have to find my way to that place. I finally find a sign showing me hotel devochka, I have no idea if I'm actually at the right place because no building seem to state their purposes. Uuuuugh. I came here to code and instead I get lost. I suck at orientation, I get lost in metro/train station IRL. Why are you doing this to me? 😭

Also I was very disappointed at the ambiance of the game, seems pretty dull. I really didn't expect that.

Now for the technical aspects of the game. Well, it runs very well inside of buildings and when I step outside I get 11-15fps for some reason.
The camera is also terrible, I went inside of a back alley and almost could not get out of it because I couldn't orient the camera in a way that would let me move out of it. Tried zooming, dezooming, nope.
Then I went inside of a house, tried to talk to a guy, it wouldn't let me, somehow ended up standing on his desk and trapped there not being able to step down.

Clearly not a game for me. I have to work on my impulsiveness when I buy games. I'll try to find a coding game more straight to the point.

So, as someone that admittedly has to be lead by the nose through games, this game doesn't do that.

Else Heart.Break gives very vague instructions as to your next objective marker. Sometimes that objective will be there and sometimes it won't You must pay attention to the in game clock as to what time it is. Also, if you arrange to meet people in places at a certain time, you have to remember to do that. The game in no way helps you track anything like that.

So you're given vague instructions to head over to x location, but you have to pay attention to the game clock and that npc may or may not be there. If they're not there, you end up chasing your tail trying to work out where they might be in a fairly large city. It's like hide and seek but the whole time you're wondering why you should care.

I picked up this game for the "hacking" element of it. I liked the idea of achieving in-game objectives by altering "code" to meet your ends. What I got was The Sims crossed with what felt like a dating sim. I didn't play this game to worry about social interaction, or even being particularly social at all. As someone who finds social interaction taxing, I played it as an escape from that drudgery. I wanted to use my skills as a hacker/script-monkey to alter the course of in-game events. Not a virtual social calendar.

I wouldn't have minded so much if the game had waypoints, a discernible map, a clear idea of when an individual would be at a certain location or anything.

I know it's trying to replicate the "new person in new town", a bit lost vibe but in all honesty, I find the game isn't respecting my time. "Go vaguely in this direction where the person you are looking for might or might not be there, HEY have you seen my hamster? I take him out in public for some reason and I lost him. I'm such a quirky dunce". No. That's not why I'm here. An objective would be nice and clear instructions on how to achieve it. If I then decide to go off those rails to explore - that's my choice.

Presenting this kind of situation is fine if the game has had time to bed in with the player - who is already aware of its systems, mechanics and has invested time in it already. Don't cast your player adrift in your detailed world and expect them just to work it out. I end up wondering around wondering what I'm doing, whether I'm doing something wrong and wondering why I should care.

This game has good reviews so others clearly see it differently. For me, as a hacker that was looking forward to a little light coding to influence the game world in interesting ways, it isn't for me. Show me the cool hook first (hacking) or at least dangle that power tantalizingly in front of me before you make me wonder around and socialise,

I was hoping for a game that took more brains than say, Watchdogs but wasn't Unity/Hacknet where you just stare at a terminal the entire time. I do that already. What I got was The Sims. Too much talk talk, not enough tak tak.

I bought this after C418 (the guy who did the Minecraft soundtrack) recommended it on Twitter. Extermely boring and a waste of money.

My opinions on this game are conflicted. I've had it since 2018 but not played it in full until approximately 2 days ago, and I completed it in that time.

Conceptually, the game claims to be an interesting puzzle game about reprogramming the physical world - and in gameplay, it does deliver, at least once you get your hands on a Modifier (or two) which, while there are about a dozen strewn around in the world, the "plot-intended" ones can take a good few hours to get to.

Narratively, the game disappoints somewhat; the plot kicks off when Sebastian develops an impromptu crush on a girl named Pixie, and inadvertently ends up at her workplace (either by coincidence tailing a terrorist or by deliberately stalking her), and from there it becomes a "run a few jobs to get the hang of your Modifier". Unfortunately, there's very few such jobs, the leadup to the finale is questionably related to it all, and the finale itself, while implementing the titular in an intriguing way, lacks a proper climactic finish.

Engaging with the programming aspect of in-universe language SPRAK is fun, and the language is taught and tutorialized incredibly well; the game offers pointers to characters who can teach newbies some intricacies of the language, but also offers a full in-game collectible manual for professionals, and generally leaves it up to the player to either experiment or seek out concrete guidance. Some may find this a negative aspect of the game, but personally I quite enjoyed taking the language and code apart, even as a novice programmer at best.

While music doesn't play in most circumstances in the game, when it does play, it's pretty solid. That's kind of all I can say...

The characters in the game sadly lack much life; their dialogues convey more information than character, and once a character's present dialogue is exhausted, they simply refuse to speak with you until either their pool refreshes due to story progress, or until the end of the game. Subplots are tied to single characters at most, when they are present.

The UI and controls in the game definitely take the most getting used to - Sebastian is controlled in point-and-click adventure game style, while the right mouse button rotates the camera... unless he has a Modifier, in which case attempting to turn the camera while hovering over any interactable object prompts him to attempt to hack it. The game's camera is not capable of handling occlusion, and certain camera angles can obscure the entire room while still having Sebastian attempt to interact "through" the offending blockade. Worse yet, the game keeps no objective list, and certain in-game events are tied to NPC schedules, so if you don't show up to a scheduled event (though you are told beforehand), plot may very well progress without your presence.

Overall: Interesting idea, delivers on the premise - but simply not enough for the price. Not enough stakes, not enough life, not enough time or story, not enough quality of life. Deserves updates or a do-over; then we'll talk.
Putting the Heart into my inventory is a fun pastime, though.

Else Heart.Break() is not for everyone.

While the world and themes are interesting, the progress is not fast or interesting enough to keep me going. The game basically gives us a hint of the next objetive and we have to look for it. There are lot of stages to explore, what results in a waste of time, the progress is extremelly slow and feels like a chore.

This is where the game fails to me, if exploring was more interesting, I would not mind how slow it is.