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1 PREPARATIONS
Nice, simple and atmospheric

The first mission of Memoirs is pretty basic. That is, if you play on Normal or Hard. Normally, I play on Expert, but the forced ghosting element (exclusive to Expert) made me go to Hard this time. You have to case the place, finding four secrets (on Expert, it's eight) and map out three quarters of the map. The atmosphere is strong. The music is especially creepy, and the areas are very dark (sometimes even too dark to be able to really see much). The manor is pretty basic, but it's still fun to play through the level.

Atmosphere: 8
Gameplay: 7
Story: 7
OVERALL RATING: 7
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2 REVELATIONS
A complete mess, albeit an atmospheric one

The second mission is pure chaos. It's not fun to play through. You have no way of defending yourself of the hordes of Apebeasts that roam the tight corridors of the mansion. The worst part is that the mansion has turned all weird. This makes for a really cool setting, but insanely poor gameplay. You get stuck in floating geometry. There's literal invisible walls standing in the middle of rooms. There's teleporters that activate without warning. Luckily, you can get some help from your trusty Mechanist robot friends. Unfortunately, they spawn in to "help" you at the worst possible places (in tight corridors inside the manor), making them much more of a hindrance even if they do attack the Apebeasts. Of course they attack you too.

The messed-up mansion layout makes it so that it's near-impossible to truly get your bearings while exploring the place. Oftentimes you just end up being chased by an unexpectedly appearing Apebeast walking around some corner. You have no idea where to go, or which teleporter to take. It's horrid.

Even then, I still consider this worth playing, because the end of the mission shows you some really cool sights. The atmosphere is very, very strong, and the story is pretty fun too. Save scumming is highly recommended for this one.

Atmosphere: 9
Gameplay: 2
Story: 7
OVERALL RATING: 5
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