IronChef_Kirby posted... How long would you say it takes to get things figured out?
It's been a long time since I played and I really don't remember + it depends a lot on your level of perceptiveness. I suspect it probably took me around 15 hours to beat the game? (there's multiple endings, by beating the game I just mean getting something that wasn't dying)
Thing is, even if you die a few times it's not so bad? Like, you start out the game as some dude, you research weird lore, find various things exploring the city, found a cult, meet some people... and probably eventually die (it's not impossible to win first playthrough but seems unlikely). But then when you start again, you're a different person, who has a different job, so the actions available to you are different, and while you eventually do all those things listed above the progession of the story is different, you probably end up founding a cult worshipping something other than last time, you have different acquaintances, etc etc. So you're not just getting beaten up with nothing to gain from it.
Personally, I think the game does a really good job making you feel like some cultist/conspiracy theorist as you accumulate more and more threads of knowledge while trying to figure out how they all come together. for example it's not even clear how you win the game at all until a decent ways in. but because of this style I'd caution away from directly looking up too much stuff since a lot of tthe game is about the discovery. Oh, and the writing, the game's also about the writing just being extremely satisfying to read on a moment-to-moment basis
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