A friend recommended me Signalis, it looked like the type of game that I would enjoy and since is realtively cheap I decided to try it out.
Little did I know that Signalis would end up being one of the pieces of media that I connected with the most.

As a huge fan of Blame! and Evangelion because of the abstract storytelling and cofusing nature of how things are explained I felt right at home with Signalis, and it was one of the main aspects it made me enjoy it.
The game doesn't have that many cutscenes so most of the time you'll be filling the gaps that these leave by exploring the world. You can find hand written notes, books, propaganda posters, documents from the state, and so on, and all these little things help you to understand what is going on.
Every single page that you read is relevant in some form to world building, to flesh out plot details or to help in puzzles so if you want to know as much as you can you must make sure to explore arround and find all these pieces of information.

But even under the confusing plot, you have an extremely solid survival horror experience very inspired by old school Resident Evil and Silent Hill games. The puzzles are amazing, the game gives you just enough information to not be stuck, but at the same time you have enough to make just as much progress as you need to connect the dots, it's a genious way to make your players feel smarter than they are and it's done to perfection throughout the whole campaign, which is quite short. You can finish the game arround 10 hours for the first playthrough but I feel it's a really good lenght because of how cryptic the game is in regards to giving you information about the plot, this way you can replay it more easily with more context and start to realize things that you missed early on.

The combat is what you expect from the genre, is not fun to fight, you don't feel like a super hero and that's intentional, you'll need to keep an eye on your ammo and healing items count so you don't run out of them and you also need to be quick to decide when is worth it to dump a mag on a enemy blocking your path because you might not have enough ammo for the next room.
I played the game with the standart inventory size and mission/key items were a little annoying to carry so if you want a less frustrating experience I advise using the setting that expands your inventory.

The sound design as a whole is way better than you would expect from a pixel art top down survival horror, all the guns sound punchy, the enemies screams and screeches are really well done, even going through menus sound satisfying and sound is even used in puzzles with the radio, which is a genious ideia and really well used.
As for the Soundtrack, I can't talk enough about how good it is. It's NieR Replicant levels of good, is one of those OSTs that you use as a benchmark for other games and for me it's a perfect representation of the game's themes and emotions and I have been listening to it ever since I finished the game a couple of months ago.

If you don't like abstract story telling I can totally understand not liking this game, but for me it's a statement of how great games are as a media when they are made with passion and intent, regardless of budget, graphics or marketing campaigns. I highly recommend playing but be aware that you have a risk of never letting it go from your brain.

Remember our promise.