[Emu]

I would edit my last post except that firefox has a coniption when I do so

I'm about 3 hours into the game, and so far I'm having a lot of fun with it. The controls are kind of frustrating at times, and it takes a lot of practice to get used to controlling your dog, since you can only give him commands and hope that he does what he's supposed to. You can scold or praise him when he does bad or good. I got separated from him for a really long time while being chased by an enemy and I think that soured my relationship with him pretty badly. He kept disobeying me, so I had to keep scolding him. I think I lost a lot of points and I'm having a hard time regaining them because he disobeys me so much that he does very little that's worthy of praise.

The "panic mode" induced by being cornered by an enemy is really fucking cool. The screen looks like somebody turned degauss or whatever on full blast and everything turns white and strobe light-like. I THINK being panicked makes you run a little faster, but you trip a lot.

I'm not sure if it's my fault for sucking at the game or what, but it seems like I'm encountering enemies a lot more often than I'm supposed to be. I'm spending nearly ALL of my time now running away from a single enemy trapsing about the castle, who has an uncanny knack for fnding me in spite of having minimal IQ, and he seems to find me every time I get anywhere near the viscinity of where I'm supposed to go (even after I've chased him away from that area.)

Most of the "weapons" you get aren't spectacularly effective and the dog can only distract the enemy for so long, and hiding places are few and far between. Most of the savepoint clocks are located too clustered together for my taste, and I hate having to use the same hiding points over and over again, because it makes it easier for the enemies to find you when they do.

Overall though this is the first game I've played in a long, long time that's actually made me panic while playing. It's really difficult, but the sheer ineptitude of the heroine makes encounters genuinely frightening.