This game is surprisingly good.
At first glance, the game seems rather simple; the controls are easy to understand, and the mechanics are self explanatory enough that the first time you're dropped on the "overworld" (a.k.a. where you select where to go next) you intuitively know what is going on. What that simplicity hides, however, is an immense amount of depth, both in its content and its mechanics, all tied together by a wonderful aesthetic and soundtrack.
And by that I mean that the game really doesn't show you much unless you dig deeper. When I first played I thought I had a pretty good idea of how much content the game would have, but the game just kept expanding right before my eyes at every turn, again and again, and that feeling of finding things like new playable characters, the end of the world, the negative layers, HER, is simply incredible to experience, and it reached a point where I don't know how much there still is to see. Like, sure, I have three characters, but who's to say there's not a fourth somewhere? That uncertainty is something I absolutely adore. It's comparable to the feeling of just finding new layers and paths in The Binding of Isaac.
Mechanically too, in the sense that your success is entirely dependent on your strategy. Knowing which event is which is vital to survival, but not only that, as you play the game you start noticing some patterns emerging, things like noticing that the same enemy always drops the same things, until eventually picking your battles carefully based on the enemies' moves and rewards becomes a part of your strategy. There is always a risk to everything you do, and sure, there is randomness involved, but it's just enough rng to scratch the itch in both my gambling loving brain and my strategy loving brain. (Besides, what RPG *doesn't* have rng?)
The simple aesthetics makes this much more approachable than most strategy games, like I mentioned before you can usually tell what to do without a tutorial. This simplicity, however, is also a double edged sword, and this is where I'll have to be a little bit more negative in this review, but the early game doesn't have enough of a hook to really make people want to stick around. I mentioned before that at first I thought I had an idea of how much content this game had, and that's not good, because after I've beaten the no-skin man once it took me two days to pick up the game again, and the sole reason I did is because I was bored. I'm glad I did, as I love this game, but if I had something to do I probably wouldn't have.
The point I'm trying to make is, as much as I love how the game hides so much for you to discover, I don't think there is enough of an incentive for you to look for them, if that makes sense. What *really* got me into it was finding root for the first time and triggering the end of the world, which made me realize that maybe this game isn't as linear as I thought. I also really don't like the unexpected events. Like, at all. Sure, it's fun the first two times but after that it just becomes annoying, if there were a lunar upgrade to remove those that would be great.
There are a few things that are noticeably placeholder too, like Trish's memory on the recollection screen, but that's more of a beta thing that I'm expecting to not be in the final release, it's quite jarring going from the genuinely pretty damn good puzzle battles of mary and rugs to "girl why you crying" "DREAMS :sob:". You got me really interested in these suicidal clowns and I wanna learn more about them.
Overall, tho, this game is worth playing, I'll give it a 7/10 on the right track to being a 10/10, keep up the good work!