Putting a pin in this one for now because I'm honestly just not enjoying it at all.

Going straight from Lobotomy Corp and Library Of Ruina to this might be the biggest downgrade I've ever seen.

Limbus Company feels like a demented theme park version of Project Moon's setting. LoR was a funny game when it wanted to be but there was a nice blend of humor and actual dialogue. The jokes flowed naturally, but here... I never thought I'd accuse a game of being too funny, yet here I am.
I don't inherently think the idea of "slightly more lighthearted LoR" is a bad thing, especially since the last two games were BLEAK despite their hopeful mission statements, but in making this a gacha game and thus trying to give it mainstream appeal, I feel a lot of the edge has been sanded off. LoR's city is this grimy, nightmarish place that wears the veneer of a functional place but in reality is basically a series of holding pens for a city-state that practices systemic human sacrifice. In simpler terms, a slaughterhouse.
But Limbus is so obnoxiously clean and civil. Even the nastier parts of the backstreets look like they'd be positively scenic in Cyberpunk 2077.

It seeps into the characters too. Not to harp on the LoR comparisons too much, but it's a bit weird going from a game where your two leads are suffocatingly and hauntingly human to a game where characters' "flaws" are very... Battle shonen.
I sort of knew I'd be in for a bad time when I exited my self-imposed Library of Ruina isolation bubble and realized the fanbase had turned Limbus characters into these funny whacky woohoo people that wouldn't be out of place in a Mihoyo game.
I've been told that there are better moments in later Cantos, 5 and 6 especially, but I'm halfway through Canto 3 and I just can't stand these people dude. Hokma is a more engaging character and half of his dialogue in Ruina is "shut the fuck up, good god".
They're not explicitly bad characters but in a setting where even a lot of single-appearance characters are infinitely memorable and have enough character to write a thesis on, I'm actually a little appalled that the Limbus cast are so boring. When they're not boring, they're at best 'fun.

I think, and this might be me being very ornery, a lot of the boredom I feel re: Limbus' cast is from how obvious and controlling the literary influences are. Meursault is a stoic man who only speaks when it's important? Don Quixote is a delusional nutjob? Heathcliff is a roughcast byronic lad? Sinclair is a sad little man that needs an older figure to guide him? Gregor is a bug? Dante is there and being guided through the suspiciously circular City by Vergilius?
It's childish, and I really hate to say that because Project Moon's work tends to be distinctly adult in a way that I often don't associate with the medium of videogames (not due to the medium's fault ofc), and Limbus is so very much divorced from what makes their games great in spirit.
I'm aware that later Cantos allegedly deconstruct their patron Sinner's source material, but...

In the middle of writing this I decided to read up on the story and proceedings of the subsequent Cantos, and while my initial indicator was Shelved I think I'm gonna switch over to Abandoned. To say I'm not very enthused is an understatement, and while a certain facet of Canto 6 had my lean forward in my chair it probably says a lot that I only cared because it was a continuation of a work that isn't this one.

According to Project Moon this is the money vacuum they need to make to fund future games, so I can only hope that maybe that Distortion Detective game has more of their signature sauce, because this is Big Mac sauce and I can get that elsewhere.

As an aside: It is darkly hilarious that this is a followup to two games where the core conceit is "Capitalism really fucking sucks and makes everything worse". If Limbus being mid is diegetic, Project Moon really are the greatest of our time.

...Also the combat is bad. It looks nicer than Ruina on a technical level and the return of familiar sfx is nice on the ears, but ONCE AGAIN; as a gacha, it's massively toned down and there's no deckbuilding or passive swapping or any of the mechanics that caused Ruina to hook its claws into me and start injecting raw joy straight into my faggy little veins.
LoR allegedly once had autobattle combat in the original stages of its development and I am so fantastically glad that they never went through with it because if Limbus is a window into that reality then I'm closing the fucking curtains.
Most fights barring abnormalities/bosses are fought by drawing lines through coins to trigger effects and start combat and god it's just so mindnumbingly boring that I'd actually pay money for them to release this as a visual novel. The other type of battle is essentially diet LoR but with the ability to target boss fights. It'd be fun in a better game which is probably all I need to say to make my malice known.

Really, if you want to experience this game you'd be better off grabbing some .epub files of the books it rips from and digging into them. They're called classics for a reason, folks.

Oh and uh, the gacha elements are fine I guess? There's a permanent currency you can stockpile to trade for whatever Identity/EGO you want, which gives it an edge over the competition, but good gacha elements in a mediocre game are meaningless to me. It also has the usual live service crust one expects from these games (a battle pass, endless monthly/weekly mtx discounts, a really annoying file integrity check at startup, Seasons, etc etc) and doesn't really do anything cool within its confines either.

Shoutout to Heathmael Abortion.