Not to be mean, but I picked this one up on sale and I'm glad. I kept playing until 1:00, clearly I was having fun. You're here for the jokes, folks. And Anglerfish absolutely made me laugh for an hour or two.
But this isn't just "rough around the edges" I might go as far as to call it "unfinished." There's just enough combat to kill you, but not enough to feel like an action game. There's just enough puzzling to pace it, but nothing that feels more rewarding than a Wordle. It's not mean or impenetrable like V*** S*******, but it will take the piss out of ya. Lots of surprise kills and "gotchas!" that might test your sense of humor.
It has something I'm going to call a "Mercy Engine" where certain repeated puzzles and frequent deaths are rewarded with shortcuts. Like, you don't have to navigate a maze more than once, and if a monster kills you more than thrice it's simply removed. This is nice, but feels more like the dev-team papering-over where the game controls and challenges don't work properly. I finally gave up moments before the actual finish (looked it up on YT) because Anglerfish ran out of "fun" jokes before getting though all its "pranks".
I'd call this one streamer bait-- I mean you can just [i]feel[/i] this was the priority in its slap-dash build --but it's about six years too late for that. I don't think Dunkey is going to get on this one if he hasn't by now. This kind of game is a fun little hamburger-priced diversion, but I don't think it makes for a meal. You might enjoy picking it up as a gag-gift for a friend though... come to think of it... >:)
