For the current price, and especially on sale, I can definitely recommend this. If you like games like this, 5-10hrs fun feels guaranteed as a minimum. I have some complaints, but first, the positives:
-Aesthetics are 11/10. The writing is a bit hammy/melodramatic (not bad at all just super dark), but the art, music, vibes are awesome. Super cool dark sci-fi horror, some really fresh and interesting stuff in the genre too.
-Card game mechanics have great player feedback. A lot of the attacks feel really weighty, there's a lot of good movement and animation.
-Difficulty curve feels pretty fair. Complaint below (final final boss) but it's either somewhat easy, kind of challenging, or pretty tough depending on luck. I like the rifts, although they really can mess up your run, the rewards are a good trade-off for the challenge.
Negatives:
-The different characters disappointed me. I really liked the second character, but they and later ones make the first character useless (I will probably never play them again). More importantly, though, the third (money) character is just... bad? It's like an optional hard mode I guess, which could be cool, but I was expecting a new character and playstyle, not a character that makes the money management harder. There's also very little info on how to unlock them, I had to look online, and one of them totally depends on luck (no spoilers but the unlock condition requires luck, you can't plan for it, and then you have to win also I think after getting that luck). The final character is interesting, I thought I would hate their core mechanic but it's actually a fun added challenge required to fully beat the game and that is interesting.
-However, fully beating the game has what I call the "Slay the Spire Problem". I had a run where I absolutely crushed, little to no challenge the whole way through, and then I didn't even survive half the final final boss. That's a big issue for games like this because then I feel less motivated to play. If I can't win when I'm doing well, what about runs that aren't as lucky? I'll keep trying for a bit but... enh. It's demoralizing.
-There's luck involved to even see the final final boss. I just had a run where I didn't even get a chance to get all 3 keys so... I just don't even get to try to win?
-The decisions on each round of combat are tied to decks and rewards, so for example, it's like, you'll get a card from deck A and money for the shop, or, a reward from deck B and a rift card. Problem is, the second half of the reward is way more important, so I never really feel like I'm in charge of my deck. For example, the rift cards are VERY underwhelming, so I would almost always pick credits or artifacts first, no matter what deck my card will come from. So I sort of end up with a hodge-podge deck every time. Often you will get one card from a different deck mixed in when you choose, so it's not terrible, it just feels a little random every run because I'm not picking a rift card over credits no matter what deck comes with credits. The rift cards come at a cost to use, a lot of them aren't great and/or the randomness of the cost is in competition with the reward, and I just learned you can't even choose them if you have many, you just get a random one or the most recent one? There's one of them that is great, and the rest I don't want at all.
-I hate to say this, cus the music IS good, but I don't really like the "combat won" sting. It's also noticably louder than any of the rest of the music, so I have to either have the music too low all the time and then that sting is ok, or the sting is always too loud because I want to enjoy the rest of the (really good) music. Obviously you want to win every single combat since a loss is game over, so I don't like sort of tensing up like "ok here comes that super loud musical sting I don't love" every single round. Again, I really like the music, so I feel mean even saying this but why is it so loud? It's a real problem since it's supposed to be a reward for winning but it's my least favourite music in the entire game.
-As others have said, having multiple ships quickly becomes a liability in a lot of combat as you only have so much energy and shield cards. Stick with it, later characters feel better in this regard, but like I said above, unlocking character number two shouldn't feel like an undeniable upgrade as compared to character number one. Having one ship is just better in almost every way, especially as you upgrade it in ways you generally can't upgrade when you have a multiple ship character. I've come to appreciate it more with the last character since the starter ships are a bit better but I'd still prefer to play as one, I think, which is a shame since you can only truly beat the game with the last character.
Ultimately, I'm happy with my money spent, and there's a LOT to love here but I can't imagine myself putting 20+ hours into this since I'm already dropping off around 9, which is a shame. Not everyone can be a Monster Train or a SpellRouge though, so like I said, for the cost, this was super cool. I would love to see this music, art and even the very dark melodramatic writing style in another game of the same genre or different.
