I have had this game wishlisted for almost 3 years and I really wanted more out of it. While I do give the game an overall positive recommendation, there are some extremely easily fixable things with the game that could make the experience significantly more enjoyable for the average player.

POSITIVES: The overall story, while obviously very Silent Hill inspired, had its own take and felt they made it their own. Very beautiful and well crafted environments. The use of the hospital and train station and subsequent mix of the two was a fun well thought out continuation for the story. All of the characters within the game are distinct and have very clear personalities. Most of the puzzles were fun, unique, and were enjoyable to do.


NEGATIVES: First of all, knowing the game was delayed multiple times and still seeing the issues it had are the primary reasons for my disappointment, as many of them could have been solved in QA. Subtitles were oddly timed or just incorrect entirely. Had a few bug issues regarding screen loading, interactions, and swapping items in the menu. I had a few issues with camera clipping and going into areas I wasn't supposed to have access to and almost soft locking myself. We weren't given the time to get to know or appreciate the characters we were introduced to and as such, we didn't care about the outcome of what happens to them. This game, despite the delays, ultimately feels unfinished.

I would still recommend it as something that is relatively inexpensive and overall pleasant to play, but I REALLY hope the developers spend some time and update and patch the largest impacts to the player experience and make the game run smoothly.

Post Trauma is a sad case of a game that makes strong first impression but completely loses steam shortly after. There are aspects of the game that are absolutely worthy of praise, the visual design for majority of the game creates fun looking environments, small changes that occur as you hit certain triggers are a great touch, i.e. randomly appearing and moving mannequins. The music has big ups and downs, there are tracks that are unique and feel like they fit really well into this world and style but then some tracks shift and you end up listening to ''Yamaoka at home''. Puzzles much like music have great moments but also some feel almost abhorrently lazy, much like the game as a whole, some of the most fun horror game puzzles occur in the first hour or so and then, it seems like the team gave up, ran out of time/money, combination of the two.

The game is fairly short, my 4.3 hours is including going off to grab a drink or some food. It's not difficult (at least on the ''normal''/intended difficulty) and the puzzles are well presented in good number of cases, and the ones that are almost too vague are fairly easy to brute force if you at least understand some of the idea behind the design of it. Combat is never really all that good, or even fun, even being gimped by having a stamina system Roman runs faster than most enemies and can easily juke those that catch up. I've had to use two medkits, accidentally used third when I was absentmindedly flicking through weapon shortcuts while walking around the maze towards the end of the game. None of the enemies pose any challenge from moment one they appear, bosses have obvious blind spots where you can stand and poke them to death without taking a single point of damage. Navigating the environments can be annoying with some of the camera angles being weirdly broken, not switching to the next one until you're almost another screen away, this is alleviated slightly by all the levels being only a fraction in size when compared to the levels the games Post Trauma claims to be inspired by were, you'd think it'd be cutting down on dead air, even if there are still some more or less empty rooms that don't do much for you.

I think my biggest sore point with Post Trauma is how it handles its story, characters and the obvious admiration the dev team has for Silent Hill 2, and don't get me wrong I do love me some Quiet Mountain 2: Electric Boogaloo Sad White Boi Adventures, but also Team Silent knew how to handle the themes, weave a narrative to make sure all characters embody a specific aspect of the story, you as the player, experience leading you towards an ending the game deems to be appropriate for the way you engaged with the story and gameplay. I still go back to my PS2 and play the game, even with the remake out, but that's the thing I can just go back and do that. Post Trauma seems to be wanting to deal with the themes of trauma, guilt and sorrow, but never really does, it doesn't give the characters any quiet moments to contemplate or really challenge their personal biases, or that of the player. The game several times shifts in POV to that of a different character, the brief school bit was probably the least obnoxious one, the police department ones on the other hand were unintentionally hilarious, mainly due to the internal dialogue from the character, channelling Shadow The Hedgehog so hard, you'd think you can hear Chris Chan singing in the background, while giving you only the vaguest idea about this character, genuinely just making them extremely funny and hard to take seriously.

The story does try, but we never really get any proper insight into the world, backstory of any character. Complete lack of any major text logs, diaries, memos, notes...the staple of any PS2 horror game is baffling, it's the laziest but also the simplest way to bulk up your world building, make people get invested into characters they'll likely to never encounter or foreshadow future story events/combat encounters. So the way it ends up feeling is bland mix of a few interesting ideas and a summary of Silent Hill 2 breakdown video on YT. I hate saying that about something obviously had a good amount of effort and care put into it. Post Trauma is a game that goes with style over substance, I'd love to see the studio take another jab at the genre, just have them do it without the attempts to ape something even a major studio with full backing could not completely capture in a remake of the said game.

I'll paraphrase one of my favourite random internet quotes ''Silent Hill 2 is the best and the worst thing to happen to the survival horror genre.''

Couple notes on the game that I couldn't fit anywhere:
- subtitles don't match the voice over, either subtitle script is missing words or the lines don't match completely
- the map on the wall in school segment I'm pretty sure doesn't show the player position correctly (the ''you're here'' arrow is in the wrong position on that map
- sometimes the game just randomly spits out an error message loading your save, crashing desktop
- the weapon shortcuts sometimes don't work with the weapon you get in the chapel after the fight
- the dodge almost feels like it has no place in the game, Roman's pretty unfit and functionally it'll get you hurt more often than not, and strafing around enemies is just way more effective

Post Trauma est un véritable chef d'oeuvre ! Les plans sont magnifiques, l'histoire aussi. Les énigmes sont corsés mais on prend plaisir à déchiffrer cela.

Des imperfections techniques et des combats qui ne sont pas optimisés du tout.

Post Trauma reste néanmoins l'un de mes coups de coeur de ce printemps.

Soluce, guide et possibilité de mettre le jeu en français sur ma playlist : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BuW-PduEik&list=PLCVr-5rGEshNop1wXe_zjNVScjfJ5f4QH&pp=gAQB