i wanted this to be a 5-star game SO badly

let's start with the obvious: yes, the game is Weird because it is trying to be Weird. the continual shifting of card game genres, the inter-spersed cheesy FMV, and the playful parts of looking through your files and threatening to delete them (and similar things) are playful and fun. it's nothing that Kojima or Taro haven't done, but i still appreciated the working of these into the "CREEPYPASTA REAL!!!! The Tale of Inscyption.exe [NOT CLICKBAIT]" aspects of the game.

unfortunately, the grand arc of the narrative is mostly forgetable. anyone who has spent more than 45 minutes on the internet knows about "ben drowned," so the unnerving aspects of the game mostly come across as a checklist of similar traits. i liked the characters a lot!! (Golly Respecters Rise Up) however, the game would be better without the last 2 minutes after the final button click.

in fact, my biggest problem with the game is its length. i think if you cut the number of required encounters down in the 2nd and 3rd Acts down by 33-50%, the game would flow more smoothly. my main reason for thinking of this is that the game has built-in power creep in order to help players through to the end, so the challenge of the game is easily broken if you know anything close to the basic fundamentals of a card game.

let me give you an example: i was able to break Act 1 very easily by using one cheap trick. i discovered an infinite combo in Act 2 right after defeating my first scribe, which i used to beat every fight after that point (https://youtu.be/wkCMHyXZGWg). i beat Act 3 while never using any of the items (other than the first time to each to see how they worked). my partner yelled at me every time i intentionally passed a spot to add a new card to your deck while i had to respond "trust me, this is better." the game isn't designed to be a tough, roguelite deckbuilder because it is inherently a story-driven game.

this isn't a mark against the game's design, i enjoy that about the game. i think many more people would have fallen off and not gotten to the first "reveal" at the end of Act 1 if the game was any harder. it's just a tricky case, because the game is About secrets that want to be found. however, this presents a conundrum when trying to recommend the game to someone.

starting a recommendation with "it's the crazy game that has all these weird things in it" is a bad thing to do, as it would ruin the suprises and the experience, so you have to No Sell it. you describe it as "a roguelite deckbuilder, in the style of Slay the Spire, mixed with Myst." the issue here is that the game is an incomplete one of those games, but on purpose! each of the games are unfinished versions (for story reasons) filled with exploits that act as secrets of their own that allow you to more easily get through to the end.

overall, i respect ambition and potentially-alienating design decisions a lot more than i respect polished products that offer a worse experience than something that another game already gives me.

(that's why Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective is one of my favorite games ever and why Kingdom Hearts 3 is one of the worst games i've ever played)