AI this AI that, just leave everything and live in a countryside

Eliza is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game.

This E-book was written by a psychologist... no wait, not a psychologist, to handle mental health issues like depression. It's about characters who developer or use an AI driven psychotherapist program to cure mental illness, so thank goodness we have an expert on the subject... no wait, not an expert. The E-book has some choices, but they don't matter, and also just detract from an already awful reading experience. Like if you're reading Fellowship of the Rings and Frodo is deciding whether to go through Moria or Rohan, and Tolkien stopped and added "Write what you think here:", and you write in "Rohan seems like a pretty good idea, Frodo", and he picks Moria anyway. That's how absolutely pointless that is.

Trying to address social issues through the medium of video games (or crap E-books that aren't games) is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. Game developers (or would-be authors) are not professionals in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this can cause far more harm than good. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to push political or social agendas. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get sales by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here.

Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage.

Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book.

One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do.

Eliza didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the E-Book, either. It has achievements (WHY DO BOOKS NEED ACHIVEMENTS???), and they show us a very clear picture that the E-Book didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for playing the solitaire minigame after paying $15 for this e-book, trivial to get, but less than 22 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the E-Book. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the E-Book. Like... imaging writing a book so bad, that 4 out of every 5 people who start reading it abandon it almost immediately. That's "Eliza".

So, should you buy this E-Book? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

Eliza has the ridiculous price of $15 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the E-Book, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $15 asking price for this game could get you games like "Final Fantasy XIV Online", "Rust" or "Metro Exodus". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

You can get better quality books and comics for free online or from public libraries, or from bookstores for a fraction of the price of this "game". Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

Art, music, and voice acting are all great. I particularly appreciated all of the patients' stories--I really felt for all of them. At first I admit I was frustrated that my choices didn't seem to be affecting the actual story, but then the relief I felt when I was able to deviate from the Eliza script was that much more potent. I would suggest playing this game if you want a reminder of how technology can't and shouldn't be seen as the solution for uniquely human problems.