Five years ago, IMGN.PRO release KHOLAT for the PC, and the game has since come out on other platforms. The port to the Nintendo Switch didn’t happen until only about a month ago, though. Way back when it first came out, I reviewed the game, scoring it an 8/10. Due to the ravages of time and server failures, the review isn’t quite as presentable as it used to be, but the key text is still available. Given that the Switch version is the exact same game and nearly the exact same user experience, and also seeing as how late I am in getting this review together due to personal obligations, I strongly advise reading my original review for more substance.
That said, revisiting KHOLAT on the Switch has been an okay trip down memory lane. This was never an exceptional game and time hasn’t been the kindest to it. Graphically, the Switch version looks more washed out and less potent than it did back on the PC five years ago. Yeah, it’s convenient being able to play the game in handheld mode, and it’s short enough that a few hour session will see you through to the end, but there’s a strong case to be made for just playing it on PC. There’s really no compelling reason to play the game again, and if you’re like me you have a lot more storage space on your PC than your Switch. KHOLAT weighs in at 5.4GB on Switch, somewhat on the heftier side.
As alluded to earlier, the game is the same as it was originally. You play a character who is investigating the whereabouts of a real life mystery that occurred in January of 1959. Nine students from a Russian technical institute went on an exhibition and all died. Investigations have found a lot of strange occurrences, and the truth of what really happened is still unknown to this day. The game explains this true backstory with a simple opening cutscene and a nicely done voiceover that explains the history of the mystery. Then, players are dropped into a desolate town and left to their own devices to figure out how to get the expedition started.
As mentioned in my original review from five years ago, there is a lot of open exploration to KHOLAT, requiring some spatial awareness and memory as well as compass and map use. At its core, it is basically a ‘walking sim,’ though I don’t mean that in a negative connotation, but that’s essentially what it is. You can die in the game, but not all that often. The sense of exploration and roaming does the game good, as I also mentioned in the old review.
In effort to get to the bottomline seeing as this is the same game as it was five years ago, the Switch version of KHOLAT is essentially an ‘okay’ port of a ‘pretty good’ game. This was a more compelling experience five years ago. However, if you enjoy the genre, and can appreciate that it’s based on a real, tragic, mysterious event, it gives the game an intangible intrigue that might latch onto you. It’s pretty short, easy, and worth going through once, the question you might have to really consider is if it’s worth playing on the Switch, or if playing the graphically superior version on PC is a better route to take.
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