The inner sanctum – my most precious chamber, Daniel. And it lies well beyond the refinery. In fact... it lies beneath the very stone of Brennenburg.
Have you ever wanted to experience true horror in a horror game? Well my good friend, then you have stumbled upon possibly one of the best horror games. I have played this game more times than you can imagine and there is no horror game out there that has impressed me this much. Amnesia: The Dark Descent was my first ever horror game that I played and it has remained a wonderful classic that I have returned to many times.
With my recent compilation of SOMA, I have decided to try and review all of the Amnesia games in order from the series.
You can never be too careful Daniel
Pros
A mysterious story that will leave you with many questions
Creepy gameplay where monsters are lurking around the areas
Fantastic puzzles that are very fun to complete
Creepy soundtrack that will give you an uneasy feeling
Beautiful graphics that still hold up today
Cons
The issues were so minor that they did not meddle with my experience
Optimism is a most helpless feeling, but I must retain it
Set in the year 1839, you play as Daniel, who has woken up in Brennenburg Castle, with no memory of himself or his past, except his name. He soon finds a note that he wrote himself before, saying that he chose to forget. He tells himself that he must go to the Inner Sanctum and murder a man named Alexander. However, he gives him one final warning that a living nightmare is after him and he must escape at all costs.
The story for Amnesia: The Dark Descent pulls you right in with a lot of mystery as to what is going on. You will have so many questions that you will be asking yourself about what you are doing and why, I honestly love this about the game, it doesn’t pull any punches on what it’s trying to tell, and all your questions will be answered later in the story. There is a lot for you to uncover so I just recommend you go play the game yourself.
There is no telling what horrors await down there!
Amnesia: The Dark Descent will have you go through Brennenburg Castle while solving puzzles and avoiding monsters. One of the big things with the game is the sanity system Daniel suffers from Nyctophobia. So, if he remains in dark places, his sanity will drain, however, witnessing disturbing events will also lead to a decrease in sanity as well. The lower your sanity is, the more disturbing, surreal, and dangerous your environment becomes. There are moments in the game where you will be losing sanity no matter what you do, as they are unavoidable.
Looking at monsters also decreases your sanity as well, so you must avoid looking at them as best as you can. While sanity is lost, your vision becomes blurry and if it continues, then you will collapse on the ground and crawl for seven seconds. You will hear a high-pitched whine, and this will cause enemies that are present to be alerted to you. You can also hear noises sometimes and hallucinate as well. To reduce sanity loss, you can stay in lit-up places, have a light source with you like your lantern, or solve puzzles, so make sure you do these to decrease your sanity.
Along your journey, you will come across tinder boxes and bottles of oil that you can use to light up areas that are dark. These will help you traverse through the dark areas of the game, so your sanity does not decrease.
There is also a hard mode that the game has, which massively reduces the amount of tinder boxes and oil bottles you get. If your sanity reaches zero, you will die and will have to go back to your last save point, as auto saves are disabled. You can only carry a maximum of eight tinder boxes, and you need to use four of them to save your game. I highly recommend not playing on hard mode for first-time players, as the puzzles and the mechanics of the game will cause some accidental deaths for players and may frustrate them. This game is not like Alien Isolation, where you can start on hard and be just fine.
In terms of scares, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the scariest game I have ever played the game puts a lot against the player in terms of what it throws at you. Like you are in a castle with no memory of yourself, you have a shadow chasing you, monsters are lurking everywhere, and you lose your sanity just by looking at anything disturbing. You lose your sanity just by standing in darkness with no light and sometimes you must hide in darkness. Amnesia: The Dark Descent gives you the definition of putting a lot against the player. It says to you, your fucked.
Anytime I play, I always get tensed up when I am dealing with the water monster since it’s invisible and you can only see it when it’s making splashes by moving in the water. Since you don’t know how close it is to you when it’s chasing you.
The puzzles that the game has are wonderful and fun to do, they feel creative. My two favorites would have to be this evaluator puzzle and the puzzle where you made this giant machine move. So you can get access to this room so you can get access to the sewer. Enemies do appear when you are doing puzzles for some reason, they will appear when you are looking for items in certain areas but will leave you alone for puzzles. I find this odd but hey, this means they are more chill than one may seem.
I wish I could ask you how much you remember
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is 14 years old and the graphics for the game still hold up today, the game looks very creepy in some of the areas and the sound design for it is perfect. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I had no issues while I was playing, and it should run on low-end PCs.
Redeem us both Daniel
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is just one of those games that is just perfect to me in every regard, it’s a prime example to me of what horror should be in a horror game. I recommend this to any fan of horror games and for people who want to get into them, I recommend this game at full price. It eases you in and you will just want to continue to play until the end and the thoughts and feelings will be in you for a lifetime.