Obviously it's a beautiful game. And I don't agree with those suggesting that the gameplay is not equally as good. It's not Celeste, but it's not supposed to be. It's not a game where you beat your head against a wall trying to pull off a particularly challenging platforming section or solving a brain-burning puzzle. Instead, there is a really good sense of progression and exploration as the world opens up at the pace that you gain abilities and use them. You will ask yourself "can I get there?" and through exploration you will and the world will reveal itself some more. So the gameplay is part of the zen-like experience, and I think it's a mistake to think that hard = good. This game is good and satisfying. The controls are solid. Music is amazing. And playing it (as opposed to watching someone else play it on youtube...) is integral to the experience IMO
This game is fantastic. Not only is the idea solid (rouge-lite deck builder) but the execution is on point. The card variety and rate of gaining new cards is on point. Enemy/encounter variety is great. Each run is the right amount of anticipation/unpredictability. However, I will say that after you learn the game, the end game ends up being kind of limited/frustrating. This is sort of inevitable because as the game gets harder (or you try to go farther) there are naturally fewer and fewer viable strategies.
This game is as good now and it was then. Contemporary games could learn something from this kind of pure design.
Ironically, these games that emphasize how "choices matter" often make me feel even more railroaded. Let me translate what "choices matter" really means for this game: Sometimes in the game a dialogue choice you make will lock your character into a certain path, and block off others. Don't worry, you can play through a second time to make a different key choice! Cool, I guess. What would be really cool is if how you actually conducted yourself in the game really gave you different options throughout the game. Like, OK you made one alliance based on a past choice but you could maybe convince some other faction to work with you through dialogue or proving yourself to them? Nope, not in this game, that area is greyed out and you can't go there or you just have to kill them all (even though you didn't even know anything about them when you made that fateful choice, btw). It's hard to explain without spoilers but at the end of the day, there are basically 4 paths. So it's really a very linear game you have to play 4 times. But that's fine because the story is... OK. It's OK. It's not a masterpiece but it's interesting and I was having fun learning more about the world but it was frustrating how little autonomy I actually had in that story and being forced to be the bad guy got kind of old. I played for like 25 hours but I think I'm basically done because the gameplay loop is just not interesting. The combat is kind of samey after a while and the tactics are limited. At first, making spells is fun but that gets old too. The loot system is... a mess. You collect an endless amount of straight garbage (and it all seems to be heavy armor that you will never use because the companions are, also a mess...). So I had a decent 25 hours, which isn't bad for the 8 bucks or whatever I paid (GOG sent me a steep discount) but in the end, I am pretty disappointed. New Vegas this is not.
