Signalis. Definitely the most unique horror game I've ever played this year.

It took me a grand total of 10 hours to finish this, maybe more once I get all the achievements.
But for the relatively short span of 10 hours, this has definitely shot up second in my top 3 best horror titles.

I solemnly swore to myself that I would never spoil the story or the deep meaning it has behind it all in this review, but I *will* say that this has me going by my heartstrings emotionally, which is something I have never gotten since Telltale's Walking Dead S1 and S2.

To say the 8 years of development was worth it is a universal understatement. This game is a pure ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gem.
I look forward to any more games from rose-engine, 10 out of 10.

I'm gonna say my piece for now while I haven't finished the game yet.
THAT BEING SAID: I do NOT recommend this port, and you're better off waiting a couple of years for better specs or patches to release. Either or. Your best bet is to play this on PS5 (if you have one) for now.

As for the video game itself. This might be both my new favourite Final Fantasy in gameplay and story, dethroning XII, and my 2024 Game of the Year. The emphasis of dark fantasy being shown here is humongous, that I'm still surprised that this is in the same mainline series over the likes of V and IX.

I won't comment on the story for now, but I will go over my performance and what I think about the game.

As of now, the performance is really bad. Even post-patch (Ver.1.01). You can probably get away with using AMD FSR 3 and Frame Generation or even using FFXVIFix for frame unlocked cutscenes. But it all falls apart the moment a pre-rendered cutscene shows up, which I'm starting to believe it's not really pre-rendered from what I saw in the discussion forums. I can only assume this has something to do with the code (could be me coping), given that my frame counter is still going, but I'm not alone on that front. Combat and wandering the field is averaging maybe 60-45 frames, which is tolerable for me. But it gets worse when you enter a town full of NPCs, either 25 frames or random freezes when opening the menu, for a division that made FFXIV, the MMORPG that died once and emerged with one of the best comeback stories in gaming, this is BAD.

The gameplay itself might be Ryota Suzuki's best work yet, I never understood the combat of DMC5, but this game digests it in a very simplified matter that it doesn't require command inputs to unleash certain moves, and more so with a press of a button. While switching "styles" in this game is regulated to your left trigger instead of your d-pad which just feels so much more natural than lifting my thumb to press any of Dante's styles. Unlike DMC5, you only run as Clive in the entire game, which could mean as a make it and break it thing, but I personally enjoy it because I don't have to focus playing as multiple characters to progress the story.

Masayoshi Soken still kills the soundtrack for this game. His work on this game still shines through like his previous works on the XIV expansions. Hamartia, Eikonoklasm, Titan Lost, and Away are my favourite tracks so far.

Other than that, this game is *really* good and so much more better than what XV had delivered previously. I just do not recommend the PC port at the current stage until there's more performance QoL mods and patches.