Reviews - Darkfires

After my initial playthrough, I gave this a positive review on Steam, also giving it a 7/10. Now that I have cooled down, I must say that Rebirth was too disappointing for such a rating.

As much as I wanted to love this game, I just can't *not* notice how much it falls apart in many aspects.

Asides from a single area or two, the horror is alright, but fails to impress me. Definitely didn't become a horror masterpiece, as the advertising suggested. The monsters are functional, but the main enemy being a generic Rake monster was just lame. The other of the 2 enemies was fine, but the design didn't really stick with me like Dark Descent monsters, or anything designed by FromSoftware. To give the credit though, for that one map (the Fort living quarters), the FG magic was back at full force. It was super tense and I wish the entire game was like that portion. Although it wasn't without its issues, because for some reason there are 2 safe-rooms in there that are in no way separated from the dangerous areas. It's oddly jarring, I'm quite confused as to why they did that.

The fear mechanic that this game uses (a replacement for both health and sanity from the first Amnesia) punishes being in darkness way too fast, and because your light sources are ridiculously short-lasting, this system just distracted me from being scared. I had to focus on it too much to notice a lot of the scares. And the lantern was a joke with its short range and super narrow light. The fact that they made many areas of the game completely unlit for this kind of gameplay is embarassing. Making the screen pitch black without any lighting whatsoever is throwing the baby out with the bath water when it comes to horror.

The other 3 mechanics that this game introduces just make me sad. The laying prone mechanic can be completely missed. "Press X to touch belly" sounds like a joke, but it's real. I had no idea what it did for most of the game. The locket mechanic looks awesome but it's terribly underutilised. It's basically "press C to open door".

The game is also really linear, asides from one hub area. It often makes the progression feel artifical, as if you were being led by hand. I can't say it helped the horror aspect.

To throw out a bunch of positives; I loved the designs in many areas of the game. The alien world looks awesome. The voice actress of Tasi is just lovely and her work is probably one of my favourite parts about this game. Throwbacks to Dark Descent made me really happy and were super engaging and intriguing. Unfortunately, that can't be said about the rest.

The story of this game is a huge miss. In the second map, you get a huge exposition dump, after which I had pretty much the entire story figured out. From that point on, unlike in Dark Descent, I wasn't learning what happened, but HOW it happened. The game basically spoils 2 out of 3 most imporant aspects of its story right at the beginning.

Worst yet, all characters are cardboard cut-outs. Even the protagonist can be boiled down to a single sentence: "I am Tasi I must birth baby". The main antagonist is cartoonish and her motivations can be summarised as "I can't have baby I must steal baby". Since the game focuses on these two characters, you can imagine how engaging the story is. Furthermore, the baby is a textbook case of a MacGuffin. The fact that the game revolves around it was a stupid decision, because being concerned about a baby isn't something that will scare people who don't have children. The game can't make you care about it (or any other character, for that matter), so the whole plot falls flat as a result.
The only parts of the story I actually enjoyed were the alien lore and bits which expanded on Dark Descent's story.

Oh also notice how the game is title "Amnesia: Rebirth"? Well, Tasi's amnesia is mostly irrelevant to the story. Unlike in Dark Descent, it's just a cheap way of kicking off the plot. Furthermore, there's no rebirth in here. The game should be called just "Birth". I was expecting some sort of a grizzly story similar to "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". But no, the story is basically about Tasi having a baby in bad circumstances.

The endings are all crushing once you think about what they imply, but I can't say that they didn't feel lackluster anyway. The game just kinda stops and that's it.

I wanted to love this game, I really did. But ultimately it's a disappointment. It is also not a bad game, but I can't say that it's better than "fine".