DEADLY PREMONITION SPOILERS
Loved...
The story was just fantastic. I really got deep into the investigation, I ended up filling up about 8-9 pages with notes about the game. I was keeping things like general notes about the case, possible theories, breakdowns of characters likeliness to be involved, etc. This is the best aspect of the game IMO, the game is just all in all a solid crime drama. Most importantly, all the information is there to have a pretty good idea of who the key antagonists are. I absolutely hate games/movies/shows like CSI that make it virtually impossible to play along with the story and try to figure out the crime because they introduce some character or piece of evidence in the last 10 minutes of the show.
In line with my first reason, the characters are great. Honestly I was shocked to see how solid the voice acting and writing was for the characters. There are some characters that are incredibly annoying but it's pretty clearly by intent.
Also, at times the music and the pacing can be so god damn amazing in this game, such as when Becky dies. This is what destroying my brain. The game is so schizophrenic in these respects. The music and pacing of the story can be so great(i.e. traveling to Becky's house, going to Thomas' house, or whenever York is on the typewriter and you get that slow piano), yet it can be so fucking terrible 5 minutes later. I thought that whistling song and the other goofy ass song were hilarious at first, but when the game actually picked up, that shit needed to go.
Hated...
The fucking combat. I cringed just about every time I was dropped into a dungeon. I whole heartedly wish this game was made without combat, or at least 85% less of it. It's just so out of place in this day and age. I don't even need to expand on this because if you played the game you know far too much. It was so much more enjoyable when I started running past the large large majority of the enemies in most of the dungeons. Weirdly enough though, I really kind of enjoyed the boss fights.
The Driving, the sidequests, and almost the entirety of Chapter 4. I was so glad once I did the scrapyard sidequest to make the car go 80 mph. The town is just too big. Any time you have to drive more than 2000 meters, the game just drags so much. This combined with the map that won't zoom out far enough to be useful makes it such a chore. The sidequests were so meaningless to me. The only ones that were worth the time were the ones that let me speed through the horrible parts of the game, like the General's sidequest, and Keith's first two. Otherwise they were just stupid fetch quests or minigames that added nothing really.
90% of chapter 4(I think), jesus christ, the 20 minutes you spend flashing back and forth between chasing Willy and York imprisoned is such a great microcosm of the game, powering through the horrible bits to get to the parts that are interesting.
The Ending
The ending was great. I could have done without the Japanese-ness of Kaysen, but it was crazy without being insane. I was kicking myself for 5 hours after finishing the game because I was so sure George was the killer for the first 10 hours of the game, but I started to back off that once the game started pushing you toward Nick/Thomas/Carol.Anyway, I liked it, I think.
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