Four Divine Abidings

For a game about "zen", this may be one of the most frustrating idle games I've played. Some other reviews claim that even if you don't have all the settings properly set, the game will still make forward progress, albeit more slowly. This is provably false. In idle mode, with Auto turned on (when mental/physical deplete, the game returns to Home to recharge them) the abidings that were charging up will now discharge, often faster than they charged. I left the game overnight (12 hours) and it was still trying to complete the same realization, with less completion than it had the day before. You should never be able to lose progress in an idle game as part of a normal game mode. (Yes, in NGU Idle, you can lose progress during certain challenge modes, but the game literally warns you it's going to be mean to you. That doesn't happen in this game.)

Then there are the achievements about completing the game in 25 or fewer rebirths. Unless you're psychic or following the guide (at which point, why play the game if you're just mindlessly playing from a script?), it's totally possible to be in a situation where you have to take an extra rebirth to add karma seeds to a particular item or you can't move forwards at all. I was playing the game in active mode, so I'd never put any karma seeds into the Effortless section that boosts idle gameplay. One task in one chapter required a specific, fairly high level of upgrades in the Effortless section, so I was forced to put karma seeds into it and rebirth again just to make any progress in the game. Super annoying.

Visually, the game looks great. There don't seem to be any obvious bugs like some other idle games. It's just the intentionally mean game mechanics I've got a problem with.

Edit: not sure I should waste my time, but I've got a few more complaints.

There's one late-game task that says "Apply Divine Focus 20 times". I've got multiple levels of this left to get before endgame, but annoyingly, the game throttles how many times you can buy this per rebirth. I literally have 29 million merit, and Divine Focus only costs 2 million or so, but I'm not allowed to buy it. The other task I need to complete is similar: "Seclusion - go to Retreat 20 times (remaining 4)". There are 4 remaining because, again, despite having more than enough merit to buy it, it's capped at 16 per rebirth. Did I mention that there are not 1 but 2 achievements in this game that require you to finish the game in 25 rebirths or less to get them? Even though I'm on rebirth 23 right now, and spent lots of time grinding away previously in the game, trying to avoid rebirths, I'm already in the position where I can't possibly complete the game in under 25 rebirths, guaranteeing I can't 100% this game unless I start all over again.

Look, I like this game. I really do.
But it's only going to be enjoyable to a certain type of idler enjoyer.

It's very obvious that a lot of care and love went into making this. And both thematically and mechanically, there's a lot uniqueness to it.
But that's the problem. You can't really change a lot of what the game is going for without compromising on its core concept - the slow, often arduous path to enlightenment and beyond

The game is very nice to you initially. You start out following something called 'the Path' which is just what it sounds like in the game's context. Through this, the game gives you tasks that both serve initially for easing you into the experience, and later as goals. It's got a very good tutorial experience through this, and it tries its best in the early stages to make you understand this is meant to be a low-stress idler.

But then the tasks quickly get annoying. You MUST progress on the Path to open the game up further. And the tasks the game gives you start alternating between "use this new mechanic" to "do this unrelated thing an arbitrary amount of times."
There's a section that annoyed the hell out of me where after unlocking the game's Tools mechanic and doing its initial task to learn it, I was told to... Click some buttons 30 times manually. And these clicks are on a timer. There's no progression until I sat here an actively did that for a bit. And then after I did THAT, it had another set of tasks I had to completely respec for.
Now, respecing is (almost) entirely free, and it taught me a new mechanic after that. But I was already several hours in and still having to change to suit how the game wanted me to play, not how I want to. And it just keeps doing that for a long time.

And, here's the thing: I wouldn't change that.
It's instrumental to the idea of the experience. It compliments the theme; you can't just do the same thing forever and reach enlightenment. You have to broaden your horizons and try new things, and that may be uncomfortable.
That's a terrific expression of the game's message through the gameplay.
But it's also a complete pain in the ass and I only enjoy it because I'm a nerd about idle games and Eastern Religion.

It's a great game that I just don't recommend to the average person.
Try it, but if it doesn't appeal to you within an hour, it's not much different 20 hours later.




Extra bit:
There's another review complaining about the game having microtransactions. I don't know what that reviewer was on. There is a single DLC you can buy for $5 that gives you 7 'seedlings,' which you can individually apply to 8 different stats to get a 10% boost to them. You start with 1 at the beginning of the game, and as far as I'm aware you can get the other 7 completely for free through gameplay. And to be entirely honestly, that 10% boost has a negligible effect overall, so it's only really good for supporting the devs a single time.

Free idle game that has an ending, it can be completed in a bit less than a month.

This game is rather slow paced, even for an idle game. Overall it is quite relaxing, especially the music.

For those that are achievement hunting there is one which requires you to complete the game in 25 or less rebirth. Which means you should try to rebirth as late as possible. I didn't notice that at first and barely made it.
You need to get all milestones to complete the game, and the bottleneck one was seclusion for me, by a large margin, so be careful to not miss that one during your runs.