only technically survival horror. with exception for the first fourth of the game and maybe the last fourth, there's rarely any reason to avoid combat in no small part because combat itself is relatively easy for this supposed genre, and you are given an overabundance of ammo and healing items after the first encounter of the Otherworld to the point of death being a non-issue. combat is still enjoyable enough: the loop of knocking enemies down to stomp them never quite gets old.

since combat is unimpressive, the meat of the game lies in exploration and puzzles: with regards to the former, you're incentivized into exploring even non-mandatory areas to acquire extra resources, and the level design encourages you to investigate every nook and cranny as you often will be unable to find the way forward otherwise. as for the latter, they are generally breaks from the exploration that force you to spend quite a lot of cognitive effort in solving them. the contrast between largely automatic exploration + combat interspersed with puzzles is something one imagines might actually be pretty niche due to the amount of self-direction required for it ("lack of hand-holding"), but for that niche it's pretty engaging, to the point where i question the inclusion of combat at all.

if there is any major flaw, it is the fact that the superficial appearance of an esoteric, obscure, and mysterious game quickly fades in the face of the reality of how dead simple it is: with one exception, the game is dissonantly easy for how bizarre it's atmosphere and narrative is (or at least is trying to be). this is a fundamental issue with any game that has an esoteric atmosphere/narrative and still wants to be largely accessible, but it's worth mentioning since at least a few games have managed to solve the issue.

this game rules, i even consider it one of my favorites, but it has awful game design by conventional standards. that could be excused if it leaned into pure simulation non-game territory like it's big brother Dwarf Fortress, but it's clearly still trying to be a video game. yet it's tedious and repetitive as fuck. it's an open world game with like, less than 20 quests? most of them are apart of the main quest line--which is solid, the writing of this game rules--but being a roguelike, an open world roguelike no less, it's not exactly fun to do the main quest line over and over again with no variation. the game gives you very little ability or incentive to play any differently from just following the main quest in the exact same way every run, and there's very little compelling content outside of it. i would love if this game took cues from like, any other open world game, instead of trying to hang on to its increasingly diminishing influence from more traditional roguelikes. i hope these flaws get rectified, as this game is certainly going to be updated post-release, but they seem so essential to the design of the game that i'm not sure they will be. as of now this game is more fun as a sandbox for modding than it is as an actual video game.

if you enjoy, like, ADOM or NetHack, you'll probably love this. if you enjoy, like, DCSS or Brogue, this probably isn't the game for you. if you've never played any of those games, much less heard of them, you should probably stay away.