i think i like thinking about playing this game way more than i like actually playing this game. it has such a cool base concept: a world where every individual pixel is simulated and a wand system with so many possible combinations of spells that things are still being discovered. the game throws bullshit at you constantly: worms eating through the temple spawning evil skeleton god to kill you every single level, random enemies picking up the most insanely overpowered wands in the world that instagib you, etc. i'm generally a big proponent of bullshit being thrown at the player in roguelites because i think it's fun, but this game takes so much time to learn its core mechanics to feel satisfied enough to continue in spite of its immense difficulty. figuring how to build effective wands and how to search for good wand stats or what the vast majority of spells even do is such a daunting task. a lot of the fun does come from this experimentation and exploration and discovery of how things work, but the game loop you are forced to learn these things in feels actively hostile to this goal at times. it's fun to get an "explosion" spell that literally just blows up your character, so you realize you have to attach it to another spell that will trigger the explosion so you stay out of harms way. that's fun! aggressively teaching mechanics through death is cool sometimes. the main problem for me is the time sink. you can't possibly have a stable enough run to explore and learn a satisfying amount when you see so many new spells each run with no context for what they do. i wish there was a sandbox mode where you could at least try out all of the spells you have already seen in a run before so there could still be the wonder of finding a new spell but not the fear of throwing away everything you have going just to learn about some of the properties of one spell.

i think i just don't have the drive to get really good at this game. with games like nuclear throne, there's a steep diffculty curve, but i could feel myself getting better at the game when i was first starting out. with this game, the sheer amount to learn before you can start getting good without relying on luck with excellent pre-made wands makes the climb of the difficulty "curve" feel more like you're pushing against a difficulty wall. i'm not saying difficult game = bad. that's untrue. all i am saying is that the game doesn't give me the same feeling of growth and learning at a satisfying rate that other difficult games offer me. it's not necessarily that those other games are easier and Noita is flat out harder, it's just that you can feel any amount of improvement with those games while it takes much longer to feel that for the first time with Noita.

this is a good game with large amount of time required to even start enjoying its best aspects. at the same time as all of this, i kinda can't see this game being designed any other way, and i'm sure that those that do put the time in are having a fucking blast.