Okay, I finally got what I wanted. An open ended area to play. And it really wasn't all that. The gameplay consists mostly of stealth until you get a good weapon, and then combat. Neither is very good.

As a combat game, Siren has a lot of problems. There's no way to differentiate among the weapons without slogging through the archive of all 50 weapons, and even then, they're only rated as poor, average, strong, or excellent. There's no mention of weapon speed, and you have to figure out for yourself things like the sake bottle being good for only a single attack or the strange logic behind why some guns and characters have unlimited ammo. It's not clear how to do fatalities, or how health works, or how I'm supposed to shake the Sixaxis controller. There's nothing that makes me want to quit out of Siren like having to fight yet another flying shibito on a narrow path using a handheld weapon without accidentally attacking my companion.

Spoiler talk after the jump.

So Amana's a bad guy? Miyako and Howard break the four seals that send up some sort of divine flares, and then Amana incapacitates Howard and presumably takes Miyako. Then Seigo shows up to rescue the incapacitated Howard, and Bella tags along. What's the deal with this ritual, and this other power, and why was Seigo intent on the ritual being carried out, but Amana was rescuing Howard after he disrupted the ritual? Because now their roles seemed to be swapped. Or, more likely, I'm just lost.

I didn't find a single archive entry this time around, which is pretty sad. Come on, Siren. At this point, I'm just in it for the story. Throw me a bone.

(Click here for the previous Siren game diary.)
(Click here for the next Siren game diary.)