Obviously, if you've played the game, you know what the deal is and why there's spoiler text.
While I was ultimately quite surprised by the game's major twists, I did know that there was going to be a twist and it would be along these lines for two main reasons. One, the fact that everyone has to be hush-hush about the game kind of already means the jig is up, much like some other games in this vein that you might be thinking of right now. Two, more importantly, I played one of this dev's previous games, Pony Island. It didn't make my top 100 games of the decade list but it was a pretty interesting little experience; I found a lot of the horror elements to be extremely trite, but the fourth-wall breaking mixed media experience was really something else, and very much directly prepared me for the kind of thing Inscryption would do. Nontheless, Inscryption still found a way to surprise me, which is commendable - I did not foresee the entire game completely changing from Slay the Spire to Pokemon Trading Card Game. Unfortunately, this is where the game started to go off the rails, in my opinion.
The first few hours of this game were absolutely sublime, for me. The initial Spire-esque mechanics really hooked me and made for an extremely fun game that was exciting to play at every turn, and Leshy as the "dungeon master" so to speak is such a menacing yet also fun character that you can't help but develop a sort of stockholm syndrome for him. Everything about the atmosphere and the environment, how the card game plays out in an actual physical location that you're in instead of in an abstract UI, is genius. I love that you can get up and explore the room and discover things. The only problem I had with act 1 was using the knife to get the eyeball. I had already used the dagger once before and it did not produce this effect, either because I wasn't at the trigger point yet or because I was in the final battle, I'm not sure; but when I got the hint for the portrait of the dagger it didn't really mean anything to me and I got stuck for a while until someone in twitch chat told me the answer. Minor quibble though - it could have just been my dumb ass.
I was excited for the switch to act 2, although I was sad to leave act 1 and its fun mechanics behind, and sadly, act 2 is where I realized that this isn't really a roguelike deckbuilder game to be played and enjoyed over and over; it's a narrative experience where the card game mechanics are part of the set dressing. The Pokemon TCG send-up here is cute, but mechanically it's not very fun to play. It's not the type of game where you're gonna settle in for 20 hours, collecting cards and tweaking your deck to build something with great synergy - all you can really do in most fights is hope for a good draw and try to win as fast as possible, otherwise you'll just lose. It's more like a puzzle game, but not a very good one. I lost a lot here and started to get really frustrated, feeling like the mechanics of the game are too unfairly stacked against you, but I eventually squeezed through somehow.
At the start of act 3, I thought I was about to enjoy this game a lot more - the twist of going back to the 'real world' but with P03 in charge now, with all of the mechanics of the game changed once again and with act 2 serving as a tutorial for many of them, was brilliant. Unfortunately, I also found this part of the game to be too frustrating at times; there were some fights where I felt like I didn't have a good enough deck, but because it's no longer a roguelike I couldn't start over and try again, and as a result I really banged my head against the wall for a good while. I actually dropped the game and didn't twitch stream (which I was doing because I had friends that wanted to see the game) the rest of it as a result because I just wasn't having fun and I had to put it aside and come back to it on my own time. I did eventually break through, only to discover that all of the boss fights I hadn't yet reached were actually super clever and fun, and that the game was waiting to give me a bunch of upgrades I needed to trivialize the rest of the game. It's actually a shame, because act 3 starts to introduce some really cool mechanical concepts that you basically only get to use in one or two more fights before the whole thing's over - there isn't even a final boss (though the game's final segment is certainly memorable to say the least).
Much like I said about Pony Island, I found the game's horror elements a bit trite, at times. I love the characters and their bizarre quirks and motivations, and the surprisingly character-driven nature of this game pushes it forward, but I find all of the stuff that's like - oh, there's a SATANIC CONSPIRACY that's CORRUPTING THE GAME and MAYBE THE ACTUAL SATAN IS IN THE GAME AND IT'S SPOOKY is like, ugh, it was silly in Pony Island and it's silly here, but fortunately the presentation and atmosphere of the whole game makes it pay off anyway, even if I don't really care about the found footage segments where this is some kind of creepypasta game a person in real life found in the woods and even if I don't care about the payoff to it. I feel bad, because I'm sure some people were really blown away by these aspects, but I feel like this meta fourth-wall breaking stuff is passe at this point and it just didn't do much for me.
I was excited to play Kaycee's Mod and come back to the part of the game that was really good - act 1 - but as I did, I discovered that that part of the game wasn't really meant to hold up like Slay the Spire. The mechanics are fun but not super well balanced, and since each run kind of starts the same and there isn't a lot of variation, it really lacks that 'one more run' sort of feeling to it. It's good for exactly as long as it needs to be in the first act, which for me was about... like, four runs or so, the game's not very hard. So I played Kaycee's Mod a small handful of times and dropped the game, probably for good this time. It's not Spire. It's not trying to be Spire. It doesn't need to be Spire.
So it's a mixed bag, overall. Act 1 was great, the other acts were a bit overindulgent and annoying. The horror elements were beautifully made, but also sometimes kind of ridiculous. Brilliant at times, frustrating at times, but overall a game that I'll remember for a very, very long time, and that counts for something.
Next up: This is the only game on the list that I do not own or have downloaded. I don't have a physical or digital copy of it, and it isn't in any of my friends' shared libraries either. I cannot play this game at will.