Great game which borrows a lot from its spiritual predecessor, Dead Space, but stands out as its own take on the horror gaming genre.
Combat is tricky at first. The melee system has a steep learning curve, but when you figure it out and start stringing combos it feels so good. Other reviews have said its broken or boring but its honestly not. You just have to learn some enemy patterns and it will all click. Later on it will get crazier with more enemies thrown at you and you will have to be strategic in how you crowd control. The grip and riot gun are your friends here.
Story is solid. It is the classic horror game trope of, "you must escape this hell." That being said it is done well and delivered by some great acting. Later you will get hints about what is to come for either DLC or sequels.
The game looks and sounds amazing. I really haven't seen anything like it. It runs great on PS5 in performance mode with only a few noticeable slow downs at different segments. I hope SDS follows up and keeps patching to bring the performance up to par with all the other visuals.
If anything I think SDS could borrow from Dead Space some more with the complexity of the levels. It is pretty linear through the first half and it would be cool to see some more intricare layouts that you could spend some time exploring. I als miss some of the puzzles from that series but maybe it makes a bit more sense with Jacob not being an engineer. Still I would love to see some of these added later. Also maybe some larger upgrades paths for weapons and a few new suits would be a nice cherry on top.
Basically I think this game is great. Its not perfect but it scratches that horror itch in its own way and its a great start for what I hope is a long standing series not ruined by EA mucking things up.