I should probably rename this my personal "Worst Vacation Ever Simulator" award. The fishing village looks like it was drawn by someone who gave up halfway through and the translation sometimes reads like it went through Google Translate three times then got chewed on by a sea monster. But I kept playing. Not despite the jank, almost because of it? The water doesn't move right and the villagers repeat the same two lines and honestly that wrongness adds something. Makes you feel like the tourist character, disoriented and not sure what's real.

The mermaid herself. God. She's barely in the first hour and yet there's this one scene where you're just staring at the water and her tail breaks the surface and the sound design, just this wet quiet splash, had me holding my breath. The adult content isn't just thrown in, it's woven into this slow corruption of your character's mind. You start out wanting to fish and get a tan and then suddenly you're lying to the old woman at the bait shop because she warned you about the "thing in the cove" and you need more chum. Not for fish. The psychological tag earns its place here. Your journal entries start normal and then... yeah. I won't spoil it but the shift from "vacation diary" to "obsessive manifesto" is uncomfortably good.

The horror elements creep rather than jump. Found a drowned sailor's charm on the beach and when I showed it to the tavern keeper he just stared at me and walked away. No dialogue prompt, nothing. That's either a bug or the most effective storytelling choice in the game and I still don't know which. The explicit scenes with the mermaid are genuinely affecting, all saltwater and desperation and the feeling you're being consumed in ways that have nothing to do with pleasure. There's a dream sequence involving her dragging you down to some kind of underwater... nest? lair? and the things you do there made me need a shower afterwards. Not in a bad way.

The mythology stuff gets tangled. Is she siren, nereid, something older? The game never answers and the village has like four different versions of the truth. I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out if the lighthouse keeper was her father or her first victim and the dialogue tree just looped. Still not sure if that's intentional. The mystery is maybe too obtuse for its own good but I haven't stopped thinking about it for three days so maybe it worked. Just wish the inventory system wasn't such ass. Why does a fishing rod take up the same space as a mystical conch shell? Never resolved that. Anyway the mermaid's voice is described with this broken poetry that's either beautifully translated or accidentally profound and I'll never know which. The way she says "come deeper" not "come closer"... that's going to live in my head rent free.