23.6 hours and 30% of the wiki later and alas, here we are
Fear and Hunger was kinda intimidating at first, but most of it came down the to publicity of it. I don't think I could call it "cruel" or "brutal", it just has a different gameplay loop than the games most usually play. Hell, I don't wanna speak too soon but it really feels like Dark Souls all over again, except in this case F&H is good. What I'm saying is that if you make YouTube essays you should die
To make it simple: the game's core philosophy is "bash your head against a ball until it cracks before your heads does". Death does not matter much as runs (to Le'garde) aren't supposed to last more than half an hour, and each death does not reward you with any items or permanent progression stuff but knowledge, which sounds corny as shit and I hate agreeing with youtubers but it's true. Died to a certain enemy? Avoid them next time. Fell down a toilet and had to commit suicide? Don't!. Pulled off a sword from some rubble and got crushed by debree? Avoid it or try something else!
Slowly but surely you start developing your own route, you can get to places that took you an hour in mere minutes, you know what areas to visit and which aren't worth it, which items you want, and most importantly: How to cheese every encounter and every moment of the game
On a lore level I still don't think I'm qualified to talk, I've read as many books as possible but I still have some doubts here and there. What I can say however is that, as a sucker of Lovecraftian horror, the way the dungeon works, look, and feels was, put simply, my shit, same thing applies to most inhabitants of the dungeon as well
And that's the real golden detail of Fear & Hunger, the "feel". I hate words because I really don't know how to describe a "feel" other than by just, idk shove an electric rod in my brain and analyze the neuron connections to see what I mean. To put it as best as I can: The mechanics of the game really feel "fitting" to the atmosphere. Even when you're overpowered you still don't have fights guaranteed, you can always lose a limb or fail a cointoss and guess what no amount of Eastern Sword crits are gonna save you now. The dungeons feel heavy and dark, every new enemy is a terrifying learning experience, a question of "is he just a normal grunt or does he-" and the Lizardman raises his shield and now D'arce killer herself like an idiot; and once again, it's your knowledge that will defeat the dungeons, not your Strength stat
There's only one moment where I feel the game was bullshit and that was the room right before the very final boss, there's a mage there that constantly casts hurting and tears your limbs, and there's a good chance you won't find him in time before both your arms and legs are gone, so yea that's a good 15 minutes of progress lost to pretty much a quicktime event where you have to guess the inputs, now you need another 15 minutes of walking and avoiding stuff just for another chance of finding that fucker. It's less than 1% of the game but when everything else felt near perfect it really annoyed me that it was at the very last moment where something had to go wrong
But other than that, game's good, gave me a type of brainrot I haven't felt in a long long while. Would recommend if you thought Saya from Saya no Uta was cute
(this post was written in a notepad and proofread exactly 0 times)
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