That old Terminal Reality Horror Game Nocturne uses the same engine as this game, before I installed the GOG version that fixes some issues that was released this year, Nocturne ran with isssues for me (Long pauses whenever I opened the pause menu for instance) that made me put the game down for a while, after altering the game no further with fan patches after installing the 2018 Version of this game, these problems vanished.

Not sure if this is DEFINITELY the reason, but I'm putting it here so if anyone else encounters this then I guess the GOG Version somehow fixes these issues due to whatever witchcraft GOG uses to get this game running on windows 8.