Ikai

It’s not very often I get sent physical copies of stuff, so you can imagine my joy when I was offered a physical copy of Ikai to review. Having not known anything about it, knowing nothing of its form or function, I was happy to give it a bash. Unfortunately, this is where most of my joy ended.

Ikai is a first-person horror adventure that provides an interesting starting point to understand a little more about the figures we continually encounter in ancient Japanese culture.

Ikai is a horror game with a solid atmosphere and that's its main strength. Unfortunately, its tendency to jumpscare and poorly implemented puzzles cause the game to lose its momentum. Because of this, much of the gameplay feels more like an inconvenience than essential to the experience. Even so, fans of the genre will probably enjoy it a lot.

Ikai fails to utilize its Feudal Japan setting properly and despite the potential, in the end it's just forgettable.

Ikai was a horror title I was actually really looking forward to. A game steeped in Japanese folklore in a self contained location could (and to be fair, should) have made for an absolutely terrifying and unique experience. However, it just didn’t manage to make the cut: its short runtime, generic gameplay loop and complete lack of scares resulted in a really underwhelming and, more often than not, frustrating, horror title you should avoid.

Ikai is a first-person psychological horror game that isn't so much scary as it is confounding. It wastes its effectively chilling setting by simply getting you lost in it. You'll be annoyed more often than frightened, confused more often than entertained.

I couldn't help but keep finding elements and ideas I wished could have been built upon in a better game, which kept my attention enough and gave me a reason to see the story to the finish. Still, there's nothing scary here, and it's just frustrating, tedious, and a major letdown.

An independent horror from feudal Japan offers a view of exotic folklore full of bizarre ghosts. But it doesn't contain anything we haven't encountered many times before in other games.

Even about 3.5 hours in (admittedly, a pretty short length), the ending felt rushed, confusing, and underwhelming. Maybe others will be able to puzzle out some of the finer details in the plot, but there were far too many details left unspoken for and strange plot holes that left me somewhat upset and disappointed. I wanted to love Ikai, and there were some parts of it that I was really fond of, but by the end, I felt cheated. It’s not necessarily a bad game, but I wouldn’t put it up there with any of my top favorites in recent years.

While Ikai’s a missed opportunity, it’s not one that necessarily should be missed. It’s not overlong, has some vivid imagery, and while the puzzles are almost laughable at times for how out of place they are, the actual design of them remains interesting right throughout. I’m glad I played Ikai, but I doubt I’ll play it again.