3/5 ★ – PigParty's review of Inscryption.

Beaten: 1/17/2025 Playtime: 10 hours I judge games by two primary factors: the heights the game achieves, and the bullshit I have to endure to get there. Inscryption doesn't reach great heights and it has its fair share of bullshit. The story, meta, and card gameplay is fine. None of it stands out and the card mechanics vanish as fast as they're introduced so there's no way to fall into the complexity of the game. It kept me entertained enough to keep playing but I was never enthralled. There's some moments of bullshit where the game is obtuse in what it wants you to do. It's not a lot of bullshit but the little bullshit there is is certainly some of the worst, smelliest bullshit I've ever encountered. The game is an interesting concept played out but unfortunately the result is a very disjointed feel to an incohesive game. So much of Inscryption's iterations on the card game mechanics feel half assed. The first act is very good but (slight spoilers) resets you and throws you into an entirely new card game with so much going on that 90% of it feels useless. Then the third act does it again and at the very last minute introduces a new tool but it's only available for a couple fights and the cards that benefit from the new mechanic aren't part of the current deck so I found myself sacrificing the couple I was forced to get any time a sacrifice became necessary. There's no way to get deep into the mechanics of these card games because Inscryption keeps hitting the reset button on you constantly. These meta games seem to be an industry favorite. They don't really do anything for me. It's a novelty that wears off fast and leaves me asking: what else does the game have to offer me? I can see the potential in Inscryption if it weren't so caught up in its own cleverness that it had to throw a wrench in the gameplay every time I started having a little fun with it. Overall Inscryption is a very middling game with not enough focus on any one thing and instead relying on throwing the kitchen sink at the player and hoping enough of it sticks.