Amnesia: Rebirth

I had to replay this great game on PC even though I already played it on the Xbox at the start of the year. It has some annoying elements, such as the low number of matches in some areas or the need to quiet down the baby every second, but other than that, it was a fun and intense game. I also really like the character Tasi; you can relate to her during the entire game because she has been through a lot.

It's a nice adventure game and I give it props for the setting and themes. The game frontloads A LOT of notes and flashbacks, and Tasi talks A LOT to herself to guide the player, both of these things can be incredibly frustrating and I understand why this would be unappealing to people. However SOMA and Dark Descent get passes for things this game does not, and I don't feel like that's warranted.
The game has a great setting, it's far more "Lovecraftian" than anything else that relies on slapping Cthulluian themes on designs and moving on. The game goes through a bunch of different environments, has a solid cast of characters and it gets a lot more mileage out of them than I'd expect from a Frictional game. There's a considerable upgrade relative to previous titles when it comes to animations and the scale of levels. The "horror" isn't very exceptional but this is coming from someone who didn't like the horror in Dark Descent much either. Voice acting is very hit or miss depending on the character and this causes a noticeable contrast.
I have give the game some props for having a story with themes that are unusual for games, there's the whole process of motherhood thing of course. But on top of that there's the clash between the running theme of the plane crash's crew (self-sacrifice) and Tasi's selfishness. The "moral choice" the game presents is not complicated from a pragmatic sense, but it's nice to explore it because it's a choice being made by a parent, which is the most biased kind of person one can be.
tldr; I think this game gets unfair flack, it's a fine enough Adventure game, doesn't excel in the horror department but I much prefer Bunker's style of horror over Dark Descent's anyways, and I found the game enjoyable enough for its setting and story.

There’s a particular kind of fear that doesn’t rely on monsters jumping out of the dark. It’s the fear of being alone with your thoughts, of remembering things you’d rather forget, of confronting the parts of yourself you don’t fully understand. That’s the feeling that stayed with me throughout the journey.
At first, the desert felt vast and silent, almost peaceful in its emptiness. But the further I walked, the more that silence became suffocating like a reminder that no matter how much space surrounds you, there are memories that never leave. Every cave, every shadowed corridor, every faint whisper felt like an echo of something buried deep inside. Not all of it was frightening in the traditional sense; some of it was simply uncomfortable in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
Experiencing Tasi’s memories was like looking through a fogged window: glimpses of tenderness, grief, love, and guilt, all tangled together. There was something painfully human in the way her past unfolded, not dramatic, not exaggerated, just fragile. Her fear wasn’t only about survival; it was about responsibility, about the weight of making choices when everything you care about is at stake.
And then there’s the theme of motherhood, woven through the story with a kind of raw vulnerability you rarely see in horror. It shifts the whole experience from “escaping danger” to something quieter but far heavier: protecting something that feels impossibly fragile while the world around you crumbles. Every step forward felt loaded with the anxiety of not being enough, of failing in a way you can’t come back from.
What truly intrigued me wasn’t the supernatural elements, even though they are eerie and beautifully designed, but how the game magnifies the fear of losing yourself. The darkness distorts more than your vision. It distorts your sense of safety, your confidence, even your perception of reality. There were moments where I wasn’t sure whether I was reacting to what was on the screen or to something it made me remember.
When it all ended, there wasn’t the usual rush of relief I get from finishing a horror game. Instead, there was a kind of quiet heaviness, as if I’d just closed a chapter of someone’s diary that I was never meant to read. It made me reflect more than I expected—about memory, about identity, about the fragile threads that keep us moving when everything collapses.
What stayed with me wasn’t the fear, but the way it stirred emotions I usually try to avoid reminding me how easily we overlook what’s fragile inside us when we’re too busy pushing through the world.
What a journey! I recommend it 10/10!

Honestly, it is not bad as people say it is. It has some good horror sequences, puzzles, sound, and story telling. There was some frustrating bits like having to watch long cutscenes when you die.

I did enjoyed this game and I actually can't see where the game deserve its "hate" if I may say so. Well, this said, I even enjoyed A Machine for Pigs eh...
I hardly manage to dislike games anyway. To me a game is a good game if you manage to have good time with it by itself, as simple as that. That's why comparing things to things is the worst way to understand the potential of a single game, and is just a bias of conformism for those unable to exercise discernment. This game is objectively not a bad game, just don't try to find in it something that isn't what it is, obviously. It's not A Dark Descent.

Great game. Received undeserved hate/disappointment from horror fans.
Very strange criticisms.
I would recommend this game. Especially if it is on sale. Just be warned: It is *very* spooky to the average person. Especially since it is relatively modern, and a lot more immersive as a result of the much more modern graphics compared to the older more legendary Amnesia games.
It is as a whole a lot more than it seems.
It took me 15 hours to finish the game - but it felt much longer, and if you are like me: You *literally feel like you are there*.
15 hours of being inside of an awesome and very very thrilling horror movie while being pregnant and not knowing if you're going to make it.
Spoilers below to justify my opinion:
Right so I saw some people (with plenty of upvotes) criticize the story as being not memorable and boring or not scary.
...
You start off as a pregnant woman in a plane crash in the desert, you go looking for your mates, enter a cave, fall deeper into a space-twisting cave, enter the other world (desolate dark windy place), relive memories as if you were there (interactable and spooky) and encounter cool clues, then you enter a fairly realistic moroccan/north african fortress, encounter a nasty, large, and mysterious monster that seems like it won't hurt you - but it will.....
You enter cool mysterious laboratory places and have to do some puzzle solving (with the constant horror element around you) to proceed; and you at one point enter an archeological site.
In the endng parts you enter the otherworld and find that it is being used a place to tortured people endlessly (thousands of people) in brutal fashion for a life-essence juice to keep a goddess alive. Something you are forced to do at some point to proceed, and learn about the process. (Accompanied with the screams of the person being tortured).
And this goddess who runs this world wants your baby - and says you have to give her your baby if you want the baby to survive, and you are forced to make a choice of sacrificing yourself and the baby for the greater good (take the goddess out), escape with the baby, or leave the baby with the goddess.
...
Throughout this you gather clues and learn about the pretty wellmade "mechanics" of the evil around you. (e.g. that the monsters are themselves people who have been twisted into harvesting people to bring them there to be tortured for life-essence juice. Something you are becoming yourself. The ending changes depending on how often you "die" (when you die, you become a monster for a few seconds before regaining your conscious and continuing from where you "died". Very creative solution to immersively dying in a game - instead of respawning, you succumb to the monster in you and recover).
The amazing voice acting etc. all add to the immersion very well. Cute French accent protagonist who is horrified and pregnant and just wants to get out of the nightmare she is in.
Darkness (which is always an effective - and cheap - way to make things more immersive and realistic) is almost always present.
Soo... What I'm trying to get at is that if you have even a sliver of immersion, and don't play games as if they are games (meaning: you try actually to immerse yourself into the story and pretend it is real), you are in for a hell of a ride.
Maybe it doesn't have a fortnite experience or anything like that which modern gamers crave. There's no L dancing unfortunately after you escape the monsters - you just have to proceed quickly because your baby is about to be born and die a horrible death (which if you don't immerse yourself, of course doesn't matter). There is some reading which *feels necessary* for you to understand what the hell is going on. And the game does sometimes take control of your character (which feels like bliss - because it is like a mini safe zone, knowing that you are safe for the duration of the scene - and it gives you a chance to immerse further as you hear some talking and your protagonist's thoughts out loud).
The monsters are "easy" to beat. But this doesn't make them any less scary. Unless you are cringe and literally test them (and die on purpose) multiple times to understand their mechanics. Which is the dumbest imaginable thing a person can do in my opinion when playing a horror game. (What's the point if you are not pretending to be there, and don't avoid danger? If you were there with one life and didn't know if you would survive if you touched the monsters, and you were pregnant, would you really be acting the way you are right now saying *it's not that scary*?).
The story is in my opinion really good (definitely not bad like people say), and the visuals and environment is straight up 10/10.
It set out to tell a story, and it did. And it set out to scare me, it did. And it involved horror elements, gore, and "amnesia" - it did those things very well.
And it surprised me multiple times (pleasantly and unpleasantly - in good ways). Even had messed up moral dilemmas you have to answer and think about. (Is torturing thousands of people good to keep yourself alive for eternity?)
Sorry for repeating myself a few times but to conclude:
I would recommend this game.
The best part to me was the scope of the story. Which I spoiled above. Kinda like Subnautica is where you have no idea that you are about to enter thousand feet deep caves and alien buildings.
In Amnesia Rebirth: You start off thinking you're going to be in a plane crash or maybe a cave, or maybe escape some zombies chasing you, or try to sneak around during night in a castle - but towards the end you enter a literal castle of hell and defeat a goddess.
Immersing yourself into this story is a very cool feeling. If you are capable of that, and can handle horror, I highly recommend this game.

The gameplay was a bit bland and frustrating.. mostly navigating big dark levels, looking for the hidden lever/key/etc. And then frequent "hide in the locker" style scenarios when a spooky enemy shows up.
However, the game is super quirky. The story and the setting.. it's interesting and original. A plane crash survival situation becomes a Lovecraftian nightmare as you're teleported to a Scorn-style shadow realm. Also you're a pregnant woman for the whole thing, and the game dips its toes into the body horror of pregnancy and the emotions of an expectant mother.
It would have been better as a book or a movie, rather than a game. But I enjoyed it. I played it on normal, but this is a rare instance where I'd expect playing on easy/story mode would be the preferred way to enjoy this, keeping the gameplay to a minimum and just enjoy the interesting story and setpieces.