Inscryption is tough to talk about without giving away some of its fun secrets so I'd recommend being careful about how much you read prior to giving it a shot. Know that the core gameplay centers around a card battling game in the line of something like Hearthstone but with some very neat mechanics that are simple alone but combine to create some cool complex strategies. As you play you'll be able to build up a deck of cards both by gaining new ones and applying modifications to old ones. The right combo will let you pull off some game-breakingly strong things, which is part of the appeal, personally.
Now I'm not big into digital card games, but I found it very easy to create some really powerful combos. Maybe too easy, even. Early on the game can pose a bit of a challenge but as you progress the story it will only get easier and easier until, if you're like me, even the bosses stop being all that fun because you can steamroll them with little difficulty. And that's a shame because some of the bosses-- particularly the late game ones-- have some really unique tricks up their sleeves. Again, the core card game here is pretty solid. I just didn't find it all that well balanced in the context of the main story.
It's worth mentioning before moving on that I was very disappointed in the lack of proper controller support in the Steam release for this game. I had been looking forward to playing on my Steam Deck and maybe also using a controller at my desktop but the game has you moving a mouse with your joystick if you try to, which just kinda sucks. It plays just fine on the console releases so I can't imagine why it would be impossible to do the same on PC. Very odd decision there.
From here on I want to focus on the story and my thoughts on it. Pretty much anything can be a spoiler, so it's all gonna be tagged. There's a spoiler-free summary of my thoughts at the very end.
It doesn't take long for Inscryption to start doing the kind of fourth wall breaking stuff I'd expect (and greatly appreciate!) from this dev. The idea of a videogame where you're playing a card game while also trying to escape your opponent by solving puzzles inside of the room you're trapped in is fantastic and the early hours handle it very well. The cabin oozes atmosphere as you're slowly fed tidbits of info and hints towards the solutions for puzzles in the objects around you. And most of the rewards for those puzzles loop back into the card game, providing you with strong cards and also progress towards freedom. Brilliant stuff.
When you beat the final boss with the right preparation and the game reveals its second layer or "Act 2," it's initially exciting. It's like a whole other hidden game that plays by similar rules but expands on the mechanics you're familiar with. But I think the game would be a lot stronger if Act 2 were treated more as an optional postgame than just the middle block of a three part story.
For me Act 2 was a drag in spite of all the new toys it gives you to play with. The roguelite element is gone and you can retry battles as you please but this removes a lot of the spice from the game. Now you're expected to build your own deck by hand, which was kind of overwhelming for me with all the unfamiliar cards. Thankfully there's a button to autobuild a deck, which helped acclimate me some. The world of Act 2 lacks the personality of Act 1 and the mysterious escape room story gives way to some fairly generic RPG plot. Defeat the boss in each themed world and you win. It works as a fun nod to classic games like the Pokemon TCG on the Gameboy but that was the extent of my interest.
Unfortunately the third leg, Act 3, was the worst for me. It removes 3 of the 4 primary deck themes from Act 2 and returns to a visual style reminiscent of but not the same as Act 1. The main difference is now your game master is a soulless robot with little idea of what makes a game fun. There's the facade of an escape room again, sorta, but there's not really much to do and you might as well just play the card game laid out for you.
I can appreciate the meta commentary here on how essential the passion of a creator is to making a good game, but is this really a point that had to be made in quite this way? It's just not fun or particularly insightful. And the meta story at this point had devolved into some creepypasta stuff that it was hard to be all that interested in as well. I like a solid cursed videogame cartridge story, but this just didn't work for me. It felt like it strayed a bit far into ARG territory without casting a line to hook me.
So to wrap it up, for me Inscryption starts as a pretty fun little card game with an intriguing story but progressively degrades in quality as you push further in. I'd have appreciated it a lot more if the game ended around the 7-8 hour mark, but there's a good deal more past that that ends up bogging it down. It's worth checking out if you're a fan of card battlers but even then it's flawed and I don't think the story is enough to hold its own if you don't find the card game enticing by itself.
