I was looking at some games for reference, and I found Silent Hill f. One thing that stunned me was how bad the game is designed.
The dialogue is bland and boring. Character lines reveal nothing and the conversation is horribly tense for no reason. The characters are young but nothing about them suggests that. It's like they are middle-aged people going through midlife crisis.
The animations are silly. Enemies react far later after being struck and their movement is repetitive. The atmosphere is horrible too. They used too much fog and darkness and blurring, they actually removed details from the game and because of that it looks monochromatic terrible blend.
Hinako has plot armor. Just when she meets her first monster, she conveniently finds a steel pipe right beside her feet to attack it with. There's a lot of reading for instructions in the game.
And the story is junk. Sakuko never said anything about wanting to live in a candy store instead of a shrine. In fact, she dies early in the game very quickly and her relationship to Hinako is shown to be negative further reinforcing you shouldn't care about her. But when Hinako finds her dead, a dramatic cutscene plays and where Hinako is sobbing after she moved Sakuko's body into a candy store, and it's there where she says Sakuko always wanted to live in a candy store. Later in the cutscenes, she clenches her fist in anger and says she will keep her promise to Sakuko. But what promise? Did I miss it? I'm sure there was no promise.
The level design its horrible and extremely linear in a strange fashion. I thought games that put roadblocks in your way to keep to the map are dead but in this one, there's a lot of blocked roads.
Overall I'd rate it:
2/5 – story
4/5 – graphics
1/5 – level design
1/5 – mechanics
In total I'd give 2/5
How did it get the ratings it did in the pic
The story centered around a based feminist rebelling against an arranged marriage in a traditionalist society so of course it was ratings bait for videogame "journalists" who instantly coom when a game plays to their sensibilities.