Signalis is one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever played and not because of the difficulty. It’s because it had an incredible potential that was completely and utterly wasted by some of the most derivative design choices and ostentatious, fragmented story I think I’ve ever seen.

Signalis has a very unique retro-futuristic-space-East German-communist/brutalist aesthetic with Evangelion-like characters and cutscenes, and amazing world building via propaganda posters and documents. It’s an old school survival horror gameplay loop that’s enjoyable for old farts like me (with the exception of the abysmal inventory management forcing the devs to eventually add two options improving the situation). At the same time there is close to no storytelling in its plot. The core narrative is all vague, scattered fragments and implications. There is not even a half decent story hook at the start, you have to ‘find’ (read: assume) it yourself, or wait until 2/3rds of the runtime when it’s finally revealed. Signalis wants you to feel something deep, but does not earn that emotion as you’re too busy trying to piece together what is even happening due to overwhelming ambiguity, and the emotional core being buried beneath layers of artsy abstraction, all to create an illusion of depth. What’s worse, there’s an exposition dump right before the final boss, because of course there is.

What about the rest? It spends so much time emulating classic games, especially Resident Evil and Silent Hill, it completely loses the identity it so meticulously establishes via world building. While I can understand being inspired by mechanics, I cannot accept straight up copying whole scenes, plot points, locations, and even music tracks. An amnesiac unreliable narrator looking for their dead partner while meeting an Angela-like character and fighting enemies to Silent Hill 1 combat music, then saving their game by being blinded by a red light? Are you serious? Even the different ending requirements ape Silent Hill 2.
The most egregious is the entirety of chapter 2:

• A non-euclidean area without a map seemingly built with rust and blood covered metal grates which is called Nowhere by the save system and even includes a classroom (Silent Hill 1),
  
• An Abstract Daddy boss fight in a flesh covered room with the Angela-like cowering in a corner (Silent Hill 2),
  
• A puzzle involving putting rings on a relief’s hands (Silent Hill 2),
  
• A Mandarin looking enemy (Silent Hill 3).

Signalis’ popularity can only be explained by a young audience who never experienced the mentioned games and think it’s a revelatory masterpiece. Silent Hill 2 is considered one not because it was buried neck deep in metaphors (unlike what its fandom claims), but because the core narrative had a simple hook, fairly straightforward storytelling though not without some degree of ambiguity, an emotional payoff twist, and an even more emotional ending building off that twist. It didn’t have flashy, seizure inducing, student film quality cutscenes that tell you close to nothing; it didn’t have pretentious, pointless fake out endings; it didn’t require several hour long YouTube essays just to understand the basic story. The SH essays are there to flesh out minutiae and come up with cool interpretations of side plots. We know very well what happened with James, the story is blatant about that, we want to figure out WHY.

If you really want to create a plot which requires the player to put it together themselves, look at Siren. Its goal isn’t to be emotional (with the exception of one or two smaller scenes), it’s not pretentious, and while it’s fragmented, it gives you a timetable to make it easier to puzzle it together. It also doesn’t copy stuff wholesale from other games.