This ended up getting really long, so here's a TL;DR: Pros: - REALLY awesome story and art, great soundtrack, was fully engaged almost start to finish - Great foreshadowing and twists - Unique gameplay that sets it apart from other visual novels - Great cast of unique and memorable characters Cons: - A lot of really common triggers and hard lines even for horror fans, including a LOT of body horror, bugs n shit, sexual abuse, and animal death. Not a game for everyone - Really weirdly sexual art at weird places, which clashes with the otherwise pretty well-done themes of sexual abuse - Runs like hot trash on steam deck, the green checkmark is lying to you Now for my full review: Before I say anything about the game itself, I have to say, if you're playing on steam deck: THAT GREEN CHECKMARK IS AN ABSOLUTE LIE. While the default controls work and the game looks good, it runs like absolute GARBAGE. On it's base settings, it crashes roughly every fifteen to twenty minutes, which is insane. I'm lucky there's a fast-forward for the dialogue, because you can't save during actual dialogue, and as a mostly visual novel-style game, there are often sections that last WELL over 15 minutes. In these default settings, I was barely able to get into the game because just when I started, it would crash, and then i'd have to speed through a load of stuff to get back to where I was. There's a kind-of workaround if you install a very specific version of Proton Experimental (8.3, specifically 8.3. older AND newer versions didn't work for me), but you have to manually install that AND I still had crashes, they were just actually spaced out enough to actually let me enjoy the game, and gave me a good chance to save. The compatibility indicator should be yellow, because it was INFURIATING. It also often started to have visual, audio, and even gameplay glitches as it approached crash time--character portraits not appearing when they spoke, audio cues not playing. Once I even got fully stuck because the flashlight that acts as your cursor during exploration parts wouldn't trigger. Basically, it's playable on steam deck, but it sure shouldn't be verified. Now, with all that out of the way... I still give this game a positive rating, because i did absolutely LOVE it, and if you, like me, love good horror and have a very high tolerance for it, I would love to say play it. I'll admit I balked a little when I saw the price tag, especially considering this is a visual novel, but I got it on sale and after playing it, I can confidently say it's not actually a ridiculous price. The art is gorgeous, the story is amazing, and overall I had a great time (Steam Deck performance issues not withstanding). That said, I also can't blindly recommend this game to everyone I come across either, because the amount of common triggers in it is...excessive, honestly. MINOR SPOILERS and TRIGGER WARNINGS ahead: If you don't like body horror, this is NOT the game for you, because it has several different flavors: basic gore and mutilation, plants growing out of bodies, insects overtaking bodies (major trypophobia warning), medical experimentation, animal fusion...there are other common triggers as well, including HEAVY themes of sexual abuse, animal torture and death, and spiders. Also, the one and only reason this game isn't one of my all time favorite horror games is because, to be frank, there's a very uncomfortable amount of sexualization of woman's abuse and trauma. Both men and women are victims to this game's monsters, but when the splash art focuses on a corpse or struggling victim that's female, the poses they're drawn in are weirdly sexual and provocative. It reads as especially tone-deaf after chapter 3, where a woman's sexual abuse and the voyeurism of her attackers are the main focus of the story segment . I've learned to deal with the fact that sometimes the horror genre is weird about women. But after Ch3, I was just bewildered. How can a game so decently cover the way women's abuse often doesn't end with the physical act, depict the events that happened as horrific, and then have splash art of a woman with her ass pointed at the camera with a thorn vine arranged between her cheeks and gooch like a thong ? The level of dissonance is so insane it makes me wonder if the artists/art director even read the game's script, and overall ended up knocking the game down from where it was kind of super glowing before then. Still though, all in all, I really REALLY loved Spirit Hunter: Death Mark. The incredible art and story kept me hooked for the entire time I played it, the twists were great, and the gameplay was unique and engaging. The characters all felt like real people, and what you learned about them felt realistic to the amount of time you spent with them and their role in the story. I'll definitely be playing the second one as well.
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