This game man..

Whenever I hear or read about it or see it somewhere, be it watching my friend's playthrough or an analysis/essay on Youtube, I can't help but fall in love over and over again.

Starting with the superficial, the game looks and sounds amazing. The art style is so incredibly stylized and effective. Everything looks like a painting, in some cases really grotesque ones (I'm looking a you, thought cabinet).
Sound design is also masterfully done. The simple act of picking up little objects like money and bottles and hearing those sweet, satisfying sound effects makes me fill with joy.
This applies to the music as well: it's a banger soundtrack by Sea Power which perfectly encapsulates the mood at every corner, be it light-hearted and uplifting when waking up with the worst hangover you've ever had or dark and mysterious when inspecting a decaying corpse next to two little vicious goblins.
Voice acting is top notch. The narrator with his deep, jazzy-voice always sends shivers down my spine. The rest of the cast is excellent too. They breathe so much life into each and every character.

Speaking of characters, there are a lot of those in this game. And you talk to them a lot because that is basically all there is to do here. And it's all you need to keep you engaged because the characters and the dialogue are written outstandingly well. And funny too. The game has made me genuinely laugh multiple times. Every single person (or feeling, yes you talk to those too, in fact they are characters as well) has their story and their little quirk which makes them memorable and intriguing. Even objects. I can confidently say I have a stronger emotional connection to a heavily vandalized mail box in this game than I have to any character that was written by the hand of David "emotions" Cage.

This also ties in incredibly well with the unique progression system this game has. The "skills" you can level up in this game are certain character traits of your protagonist. And they talk to you, and with each other. Meaning that once you have reached a certain point threshold in a particular skill they will start reacting and acting with the environment. And they all have their different opinions and voice different statements. This leads to situations where two or more parts of you might contradict each other to reach their goals. The skill governing your desire for drugs and party will voice itself if you stumble upon such things, whereas your skill which represents your physical health might interject and say "you know maybe we should not do that if we wanna keep living". This all plays a role in interacting with characters and you can choose on which emotion to act on. The whole system is genius and very unique.
In addition to that is the sheer amount of reactivity and choice freedom. Every little thing you do or don't do has an impact somewhere. Even if it just means a slight change in dialogue, this game recognizes your choices and shows you the outcomes no matter the size or importance of that initial choice.

Now, the themes this game handles are very broad. Political and philosophical subjects are omnipresent. As are very personal topics like loss, self-destructive behavior, any form of abuse and many more. Especially political matters will be presented to you nearly everywhere you go and as someone who is not as deeply interested in such topics I thought I was missing out. But I didn't want to miss out. I wanted to understand exactly what was talked about and so I informed myself, that's how invested I was. And I think that is very special for a work of art to achieve.

So do yourself a favor and play this game. It will grip you like no other piece of media has before and will probably never let you go again. I know it did for me.

Edit: Considering the current legal dispute between the creative heads behind the game and the new CEO, you may want to opt for good old piracy rather than shoving more money down the company's throat.