An interesting high concept of course, but it feels hard to be content with much of the results. The style of the game most reminds me of last year's Paradise Killer except while the core area is nice to look at there's no further aesthetic elements to appreciate after your first run through of the city. Gameplay almost always boils down to running to one part of the city to talk to someone to unlock another conversation with someone else in a different part of the city. I find this cathartic and enjoyable to an extent but it's checklist-like charm wears off after a couple of hours. Perhaps this is why they introduced combat though I really wish they didn't. This says nothing for the bugs and extended loading screens that all feel like a vestigial structure of the game's Skyrim roots, but in some of the most disruptive and unenjoyable ways especially towards the end of the game when you simply want to travel quickly from A to B to finish the game.

As for the meat and potatoes of the narrative, the meandering exploration works really well for a while. The concepts of critiquing moral relativism and the ideas that cultures build morals and lore upon themselves are really well explored and explained through multiple smaller conflicts that occur throughout the city. This makes exploration and questing feel like it's truly adding something to your experience with the text... until the main narrative really kicks in. Once most of the core conflicts are resolved and you've learned all you can about the Romans, the Greeks, the Christians, the Egyptians and how all their cultures intersect and build upon one another, all you've got left is abjectly evil characters and Ancient Aliens shenanigans. The game fails to cement any of it's ideas by actively cheapening the idea of using religion as a method of cultural transmission with the statement that Evil Aliens have been behind the conflict the whole time. Beyond that multiple characters commit heinous actions such as unjustified imprisonment and swindling people out of their money leading to them going into indentured servitude. I managed to defeat Pluto by threatening to kill his wife for Christ's sake!
I never got the impression that the team of 3 behind this has any faith in humanity or the good in them. It seems that the only things humans are capable of is avoiding sin, not doing good. This makes reflecting on the game hard to stomach, no real antithesis to these ideas ever comes up even though the narrative hinges on having likable/good characters. On of the most villainous characters becomes tortured for eternity in the true ending and the best counter to that the game gives is a good ol' "agree to disagree".

At the end of the day there are ideas here that will stick with me for a while and transform how I think about how culture changes and adapts. There's a good flavor here that revels in growing knowledge through gameplay that I love. However, between the overwhelming pessimism and the massive amounts of technical issues, there permeates a stench around this game I feel is hard to shake.