I checked and I've been playing it for 24 hours for on average about 45 minutes per day. HowLongToBeat.com lists it as between 23-32 depending on how much you do so I must be nearing the end? It's difficult to gauge where I'm actually at other than a) I'm about to enter the 5th day of the investigation, so I hope something new happens because b) I seem to be pretty much out of places to explore and people to talk to. Not sure how long you were expecting, but I can describe the game as very....thick.

I'm working on getting PS1 games to 50 and then beyond. Only problem is 41-49 are JRPG's so it might take a couple years.

I did peek at the site remake and said "yep, that's a different layout" and had no other thoughts. Feel free to message me on PSN if this place ever goes belly up.~

ISCO: I, uh, sorta played it for like 6 hours today and got to the end. Let me back up though and give you a full review:

This game was obviously not made for consoles. The interface and controls are very clunky, and took me a while to get the hang of. Additionally, I had a jarring first impression - this is really more of an adventure game but one that is mostly controlled by tabletop-RPG skill checks instead of item puzzles. You might think there wouldn't be a fail state, but there are two, and your health pools can be deducted from failing those checks or even just choosing particular conversational branches. I Game Over'd unexpectedly and got returned to a save 20 minutes ago, having to redo some talking again. Old-school quicksaving is a good idea.

I also seemingly got stuck later where I had failed all the available (at the time) checks and there was nowhere else to explore or people to talk to. In Googling for help, I accidentally saw some spoilers, though thankfully not endgame ones. Still. Turns out the problem was I hadn't technically done something in my quest log and that was holding everything up. Once I got that figured out, I was off and running.

Also, so you know, this game is extremely political in nature. Everyone has an opinion about the commies or the liberals or the government etc etc, and you are expected to frequently engage. So if you're trying to escape into a fictional world to get away from our current environment, this is not the game for you.

I would still probably recommend it, but things could have been better, both the game itself and my playthrough of it. It was part of my subscription, so no harm no foul.

Deus Ex and Panzer Dragoon - the new pb&j???

I did get to see some of the original game footage and I do have it as an unlockable on Orta so I’ll get to give it a go one day. The art in the OGs credits, you’re right, is very striking and this remake just isn’t on that level of craft and unified art concept/direction.

I am big on the tunes so totally understandable from your end! For me I got a lot out of both OSTs, definitely going in my all-time queue/rotation.

In the end thanks for asking me to try this out and being cool with letting our pages comments section get blasted with Panzer Dragoon deets. I enjoyed researching a lot of the background and sharing my thoughts with you and getting your thoughts back. Halloween-times sounds good - we’ll see what we both have still unbeaten. Cheers m8

I feel my experience now is pretty comprehensive so here's the breakdown - beat it on Normal three times, twice w/ the new OST bumping and on my last jaunt it was also my 1CC run, also beat it on Hard once. I am going to do one final run tonight I think on Hard in Performance mode (hadn't tried that yet) with the OG OST and that should close out my experience. Will give it a go to 1CC there but if I don't, no big.
Your feeling that it has a 'lost in translation' feeling is something I agree strongly with. It feels like what it is, having looked into a bit of it's dev/release history - a game that was released incomplete and the dev team tried to, literally, 'patch' the holes along the way so you get these piecemeal options to enable/disable on what should be a simple experience.
On the copy I have there is a small booklet with an essay written by someone at Limited Run where he talks about how the game was basically built from the ground up - just looking at the original (I think the team had the original art?) and trying to reproduce the game effectively with a fresh coat of paint to honor the originals vision. One interesting thing I learned along the way is the influence of the French artist Moebius on the Saturn originals art direction to the degree that he did the Japanese box art and contributed to future games as well. I don't feel too much of that coming through in this remake, so those influences don't really shine - but I still think we get a bright, vivid world that honestly I like, albeit a different way than the originals intent. As I mentioned, it feels like a upscaled late-PS2 game, and I think it works for what it is.
I would alternate d-pad (to replicate a Saturn experience) and thumbstick just to see how targeting was effected. On handheld the Switch thumbstick is a superior choice but I actually liked how it felt playing the d-pad on the big screen and I thought targeting was comparable there. Still, there's plenty of moments where you feel there's no rhyme r reason why u got an enemy in one moment but not the next. Just gotta keep moving til you pick em up. I was OK with it in the end.
I referenced the OSTs a bit already but I have to say - the OG does have some special 'out-of-time' nostalgic feel to it and I do prefer it but people really undersell the new tracks. I think they've both been nice to listen to.
Lastly, I could not deal with 'modern' control setting, the game just doesn't seem built for it. Will leave it there for now!