I went into this hoping for something between an isometric dungeon crawler and Slay the Spire and was disappointed on both counts. In each level, there is a grid of paths that your character can walk on. If you're near an enemy your character will auto-attack, a bit like Vampire Survivors, but you'll want to click on them to speed things up. Move your mouse cursor over piles of cash to collect them. Occasionally you'll pick up cards: either spells which make monsters die a bit faster or artefacts which make you die a bit slower. They're not played like cards in a deck builder but equipped in spell slots and can be used whenever you have enough mana, but in the time I played there was no reason to use spells so long as you keep clicking on the baddies (or remaining in the same general area as them). As ARPGs go it's more threadbare than the original Diablo, which is nearly 30 years old now. As deck builders go, well, it just isn't one. Sigh.
So, at the moment I'm reading Crime and Punishment. It only took me thirty-something years to get around to it. In that book the main character, who is struggling to get by in a cold and cruel world, is pushed this way and that by drives within himself which he is powerless against and which he refuses to even admit exist. The story does not go well for him. I mention this because I've never played an RPG before in which your character seems unable to stand against the worst sides of himself - and to deny that these sides, this weight of memory, exists. There is every chance that this guy's story won't go well, either. For all this game's other strengths (the bloomin' excellent writing; the humour; the existential bleakness; the karaoke) and weaknesses (the relatively small patch of city it takes place in; the currency which never feels quite as useful as I'd like it to; the slow pace of the story), I think it's this aspect of the main character which will stick with me. That, and a scene where he's dialling random phone numbers out of boredom and makes one call too many. Studio Zaum have created a protagonist whom you have an enormous amount of power to shape and, simultaneously, very little power to shape - because he doesn't have the insight and the power to shape himself. And, for all his many faults, I ended up really feeling for him. It's a fascinating gaming experience, in a looking-through-your-fingers kind of way, and I'm sure I'll be back to play through it again once I've stopped aching from my first go around.
This game is a romp, no two ways about it. Yes, it's a linear campaign, but it's a fun, well-told and occasionally tongue-in-cheek story with a great atmosphere. Combat (of which there is lots) is absorbing and fast-moving for a turn-based game. The checkpoint-save thing is no longer an issue: an update has given us quicksave/load keys, which should stop you gnawing your arm off in frustration. And there is a certain satisfaction that comes from playing as a lightning-hurling, mainframe-bothering dwarf in combat gear.
You've read the other reviews on here, so I assume you know that this game is good. What the reviews can't tell you, though, is how attached you can get to the characters. The time and care which went into creating dialogues with your party members in this game really set it apart from every other cRPG I've played. Thinking about it, if you come away from a game in which you can settle an old bar tab by popping your eye out - in which you can bring somebody into being by consistently lying about your name - and the most memorable thing is the strength of characterisation, then surely that speaks volumes. Twelve years later, and I still feel sorry for Deionarra...
