I really wanted to love this, and I truly did the first 4h or so. Part of that was that the mechanics clicked together perfectly and the introduction to the world was truly interesting, even though the prose is nothing to write home about. After those 4h I was already thinking about how I would shape my next playthrough. Well, I didn't need to do that, since the game becomes so easy after you upgrade 4 or 5 times that you can pretty much achieve anything you want during your first playthrough.

It's a shame those mechanics fell apart about midway through my run. The further you advance in the story, the storylines, the daily actions you take and how they relate to the themes of the game grow further apart, making the actions feel empty and what started as a tense resource management game became a boring (but kinda cozy) slog.

Anyway, the exploration of it's main themes is pretty on the nose, which is fine (it is also very on the nose in Disco Elysium, since everyone is comparing these too), but here it's so much more shallow. If it wasn't, I don't think I would have minded the cozyness, it would be a great reward, even.

The game needed more work on ironing out these things, because the foundation is pretty good. Hope the sequel learns from these mistakes, although I don't think it will since the game was pretty universally aclaimed.