I'm some 4-5 hours into SOMA, gifted to me by some awesome friends at another gaming forum. So far really enjoying it, with intriguing story and atmospheric setting.
That being said, I think it suffers from a few big design flaws:
* There's a good chunk of moments (particularly in beginning) when you're in a new area and need to do something, without any clear indication of what it actually is. So you end up arbitrarily running around, flipping random switches, looking at items, until SOMETHING™ happens. Recent example - I was trying to activate a program on a computer but it wasn't working; the screen said I needed an extra "module" but no idea where it is, or what it even looks like. Turned out I had to run around the crew areas which I've already explore before to trigger an audio transmission that moved the plot forward. Ugh.
* On that, I am not a fan of the controls physics-puzzles. Some are logical, some just feel like arbitrarily twisting knobs and flipping switches until, again, SOMETHING happens. Occasionally they give no hint at all either, so it's just a matter of tediously running through all the possible permutations until you see an effect.
* As pretty as the game is, the environments can get just similar and repetitive enough to occasionally get lost. Particularly bad was the 3-level underwater station where you try to find a submarine. Many twisty corridors with tons of dead-ends, slowed down movement, blurred vision, no map, AND monsters lurking around. At the end there's also an unavoidable "monster chases you and you must RUN" section that took me like 10 tries cause I kept getting lost. I actually had to pre-plan my route and write down each turn to get through it. (Yes I know there's numbers on the walls but they weren't much help).
* This is more of a personal issue: I hate, hate, hate all the monster sections. Sneaky around unkillable foes is made worse by the obnoxious "don't look at the monster" mentality Frictional Games seems to adore. When you do, your whole screen messes up and glitches out. It's really damn hard to sneak by monsters you can't look at, especially with the aforementioned confusing layouts.
It kinda boggles me Frictional is still doing the same "mistakes" after all their games. But I guess their sales are going strong, so there is an audience for it. Might be just my taste (or impatience). For me, I feel the game would've been so much more enjoyable as a monster-less walking sim with some map or objective list at least.
Nonetheless I am enjoying it and the story is good, so glad I'm plowing through it. Just got to Omicron, and the plot thickens! Still finding the monster sections tedious but I think I've gotten better at em, managed to lure a monster away with some noises and ran past him.