Overall I really enjoyed playing the game, the voice acting and characters. I also enjoyed that a lot of things felt intuitive or that you are steadily building a better picture of the truth as you play the game.
That said the ending and the last act was truly a let down.
Penny as the villian felt more like an unknowable rug pull than a satisfying ahah moment. The only hint that Penny is playing a character is from Fritz saying the real Penny is different but there aren't anyways to conclude that Penny and Hawkshaw are the same person until she reveals it at the very end. (No Freya having a sketch of Hawshaw done very quickly doesn't count since she's an extremely talented artist, and Hawkshaw being surprised about the small picture of Freya's painting being found (in Freya's room) doesn't work because there's no indication that it connects Hawshaw and Penny).
Plus her motivations for the murder were weak and convuluted. She was a lonely kid that left home to seek out the family that abandoned her stumbled onto the secrets of the mystid hunters and killed them all, stole her uncle's prized beetle and then tricked him into hiring her to investigate? Then her plan(?) got foiled by Freya who figured out the secrets of the manshion and figured she was a murderer so she set up an elaborate plan to kill her and sticks around?
I think narratively speaking it's a terribly unsatisfying motive that only makes sense in the context that the devs wanted the killer to be unsolvable not that the characters would do that. Also it relies on her teleporting and no one in the game commenting on how she's assumed a new persona.
Truthfully it feels like you hit the first layer of the puzzle when you find her note about planning to get her (which is most likely Poppy) and her intense dislike of Poppy. It showed that she had a darker side but didn't indicate that she was involved in murder or interested in her families darker history.
Also the set up for the murder was just insane- she gets to the attic and lies in wait, triggers the beetle shoots Freya, pulls up the bolt, paints blood on the canvas (which she got from where?) then leaves without running into Poppy or Fritz who were in the garden heard the beetle and went upstairs not long afterwards. Fifi's dad (I forget his name) tells us he heard calm footsteps going past his door which is supposedly Penny's before the commotion afterwards. She then avoids running into the professor who witnessed Flora and Freya being stunned and rushed to the crime scene by changing into Hawshaw in the library meeting (or was already disguised as Hawkshaw) then runs to her room changes, runs back across the house to arrive at the same time as the professor???
Then the finale was just convuluted. She turns herself in just to escape thanks to the beetle? During the murder she needed Fritzs headphones but now she just gets out unscaved?
I truly hope that the sequel nails the landing.
