Darril Arts and Modus Games did it again and hooked me up with a copy of the sequel to Remothered: Tormented Fathers (you can see my review for it HERE) how does it compare with the first? Well let’s check our bags at the front desk of the Ashmann Inn and rent a room for the night, let’s take a look at Remothered: Broken Porcelain.
It should be noted first that if you have not played the first game, there are a lot of spoilers in this game as the main story takes place before the events of the first game and a side story takes place after the events of the first game.
Remothered: Broken Porcelain follows Jenifer, a troubled teen who works as a housekeeper at the Ashmann Inn as a form of rehabilitation along with Lin, another rebellious youth. Jenifer realizes that things are not right at the inn as over the loudspeakers the sound of a metronome turns some of the staff at the inn into crazed killers. The dangers don’t stop there, as throughout the Inn the sound of whistling can be heard, the calling card of the resident haunt, Porcelain, a tall shadowy figure with a porcelain mask.
Onto the game itself! I’ll start off with the negatives about the game as I’ll admit that at the time of writing this review, the Devs are working on patches for all systems the game is available on right now as there are a lot of bugs in the game. It should be noted that the developers are located in countries in the EU that were hit really hard by Covid-19 forcing them to pause production on projects or continue them with limited staff.
There are quite a few graphical glitches along with glitches with animations. Some of the art for the characters don’t render properly. At times there are animation bugs where Jenifer is stuck going through the healing animation, and at times some mechanics like crouching don’t work.
There are moments in the game where the dialogue between characters doesn’t match previous events making moments very confusing and at times feels like the scenes were not well thought out or changed at a later time but forgot to go back and redo previous scenes.
This part of the game was unnecessarily dark.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s get to what makes this game enjoyable. Let’s start with the sound. In the last game, there were some issues with sounds of the stalkers being heard no matter where you were, well it was fixed this time, the sound of the stalkers talking to themselves can be heard in the distance, through walls, etc. making it more thrilling to guess their movements. The soundtrack is top tier and fits the moments they are playing through.
Very much like the first game, Broken Porcelain has the same mechanics when it comes to dealing with the enemy. You can pick up items that can be used to lure or distract stalkers as well as finding an item that can be used as a weapon to defend yourself with each time you’re grabbed, just remember that the weapons are one-time use.
Moth POV
A new mechanic was introduced and that’s the use of having the power to control a moth to act like Jenifer’s eyes and can interact with stalkers and certain objects. The controls for the moth are confusing at first but then it’s like flying a drone. Pain in the ass to learn but once you get the handle of it, it becomes a unique trick to have up your sleeve.
enemies can be seen through walls after you see them in your moth vision.
The gameplay is very much like the first one where combat focuses more on defense rather than offense. There’s plenty of places to hide and plenty of hazards that can give away your location to the stalkers. Going over every room with a fine-tooth comb is strongly suggested as there are many things you can find to aide you such as crafting items and moth keys that can be used to upgrade your abilities, you may even find collectibles like lore and little snow globes that have statues of characters in them, the only way to collect them is if you throw something at them, I think just having a “Pick up” option would be better.
a Jennifer collectible
Overall, my experience with Remotherd: Broken Porcelain was…interesting. I really loved the first one and was really excited to play this one but unfortunately, I was left disappointed due to the overwhelming amounts of bugs and glitches in the game that ruined the play experience as I found myself constantly having to reload the game hoping the glitches went away. Though there was more to do in this game than the predecessor, because of the lack of care that went into this game, it really disappointed me. If or when they do have patches for the game I don’t know if it will remove the stain made by this one unless they just completely remake it. Seeing that this is the second in a trilogy, let us pray the third learns from the mistake of this one.
On my scale of 1-10 stars, the story, good jump scares, and though rank high BUT because of the overwhelming glitches and bugs shipped with the game, the score was damaged beyond repair, Remothered: Broken Porcelain is a 5/10.
