The Occultist, Review: Becoming Paranormal Investigators

The Occultist is one of those productions we need, or rather, that anyone who loves paranormal mystery tinged with those horror nuances that make everything so incredibly out of the ordinary needs. After a postponement that occurred exactly a year ago, the paranormal investigator has prepared all his equipment (namely a mystical pendulum) and traveled to Godstone Island to shed light on a mystery plaguing his family.

From our side, there has always been a lot of curiosity behind this project which, although drawing inspiration from some exponents of the video game horror genre, demonstrates its own personality and a ludic maturity: as we will see, it is not easy to make the entire gameplay revolve around a pendulum, which also has some peculiarities that any detective would want to make their own.

The Occultist is a fairly long experience in its linearity, seasoned with interesting and well-diversified puzzles. The player will often find themselves using all their acumen to progress through the events, although they may encounter some repetitiveness in certain mechanics and puzzles. Before we start, however, we want to reassure you about one thing: if you love video games with horror undertones, where you will also be helpless in the face of danger, then Daloar's title might really be for you, albeit with some small gameplay compromises. 

A Haunting Island and a Father to Find

We are detectives (but we already knew that), one of those men who know no fear and who have images etched in their minds that would make anyone tremble. But not Alan Rebels, a paranormal investigator who will have to untangle very important knots, heal emotional fractures related to his family: in short, the most important mission of his very existence. And all this will take root when he goes to Godstone in search of his father, a place that had obsessed him and over which a family curse hangs.

Finding the paternal figure is the purpose of our journey, but no less important is shedding light on truths hidden for too long. Helping us in this endeavor is our faithful adventure companion, a mystical pendulum, a particular amulet of unknown origin that has accompanied us in all past paranormal investigations (but which is not mentioned in this journey). 

Think about it for a moment: have you ever seen Sherlock Holmes without his proverbial magnifying glass? Well, in The Occultist, Alan can position his pendulum (which he will hold in his hands throughout the adventure) near his eye and examine any scene that hides, shall we say, paranormal phenomena. With the "Vera Visio" we can therefore find any type of anomaly and reveal hidden objects in the game world, such as postcards, letters, or paintings, and even show echoes of the past of lost objects that are elsewhere. 

Alan, for his part, even if he is not the brave athlete everyone would expect, can run and cross high and unstable passages: from this point of view, The Occultist (re)introduces the infamous motion sensor where the player will be called to skillfully move the controller to avoid unexpected falls (fortunately it is an alternative functionality to classic controls). Even more important will be not to be discovered by the various presences that animate the island, including overly enraged ghosts and explosive dolls animated by some dark presence, hiding carefully and maintaining a stealthy pace. 

In this sense, we would love to tell you that The Occultist is a game where you will face a myriad of adversaries and where running away with your tail between your legs should always be your priority. Alas, this is not always the case: the villains you will see on screen will not be many and sometimes some ghosts will literally remain motionless as you pass. This means that the experience crafted by the Daloar team focuses on a more psychological tension, between sudden jump scares and areas where fear will only be given by the tension impressed for decades by the place. 

With this, we do not mean to say that The Occultist is not a survival game; on the contrary, there will be sections where if you are caught off guard, your health will decrease in no time. Let's put it this way: it is a supernatural survival where cunning plays a more decisive role than brute force. In fact, Alan will never fight, he will not have any pistol in his holster or knife, but will be equipped solely with his special mystical pendulum, the true focal point of this interesting horror experience. 

The latter, in fact, as the journey towards the truth progresses, will acquire new and intriguing powers including the "Tempus Fugit", an ability that will allow him to manipulate time on some anomalies that have left a temporal trace. In practice, we can reconstruct broken statues or tidy up desks to restore them to their past glory (and perhaps even discover some clues). Our faithful artifact will acquire a total of 4 abilities, which we will not reveal in their entirety so as not to spoil the experience for you.

Between Puzzles and a Few Stumbles

The Occultist is therefore a mystical horror adventure where you need to carefully examine each scene to overcome the various locations, which range from a haunted house to a gloomy circus/amusement park, where you can even glimpse some ghost clowns. In each place, somewhat in the vein of Resident Evil, Alan will have to solve various environmental puzzles and collect unique objects, such as keys or ID cards, to use at the right time. 

The solution is not always immediate, and a bit of intuition will be necessary to understand exactly what to do: a feeling we hadn't experienced in a while and that brought us back to those moments when you had to wander around and examine carefully to find a way out. And then, promptly, it turned out to be simpler than expected: in this regard, one must never forget to look at the notebook.

This is to tell you that, despite some slight "frustration," the puzzles are plentiful and not so terrible as to make you literally throw your controller down. Perhaps, where The Occultist stumbles a bit is on the variety of puzzles offered: often and willingly we will have to write names to open doors or enter sequences on specific glyphs. In addition to this, it must also be acknowledged that there wasn't always a perfect balance between exploration and the action component.

Alan will rarely find himself fleeing from adversaries, and the fear experienced, as mentioned, will be more linked to the gloomy environments and strange presences that will appear while we are focused on solving some puzzle. In this, despite all the good ideas and an overall interesting story, a bit of inexperience from the development team is still evident. But, let us say, we don't feel like passing judgment given that The Occultist is an overall convincing experience.

From a graphical point of view, it must be said that a decent job has been done, especially concerning the environments, which appear detailed and decaying just right. For its part, the game suffers on standard PS5 in terms of fluidity, appearing heavier than desired and with several performance drops. It is so evident how The Occultist struggles on console in terms of overall rendering, but nothing that prevents general enjoyment since we will not experience such fast action as to need a 120hz monitor.

The voice acting (in English with Italian subtitles) is also good, especially Alan's, which some might find reminiscent of Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher: in fact, the voice actor is none other than Doug Cockle, a true master at making the protagonist deeper in his monologues. Between iconic environmental changes that leave the player breathless, fairly varied environmental puzzles, and moments of tension, The Occultist could prove to be a convincing exponent for all horror genre lovers.