Rachel

Where to begin? Like I say in the headline, I can't make sense of the lore. There's a lot I don't want to spoil from the last few doors, so I can't bring up most of the inconsistencies, but let me give an example of the least spoiler-y one. It's established very early on that death in the VR game = death in real life and violating a taboo condition means the Door God will kill you. The Door Gods are (typically) presented as unkillable, and in multiple doors a person is either immediately killed by the Door God after violating the condition, or a supernatural force ensures their death (i.e. the Sunny Dolls door). So when Ling Jiushi accidentally breaks his egg in the Fitcher's Bird door (second door challenge), why does the Door God just give up after one failed attempt at killing him? Two other people have already died in that door for violating the same taboo condition and they are killed minutes after their eggs break, but the Door God doesn't attack Ling Jiushi until he's sleeping (the egg was damaged a while before) and then he just gives up after one attempt at stabbing him?? Huh? Like multiple days pass after Ling Jiushi's egg breaks, and he gets out of that door unscathed. It doesn't make sense to me.

Then there's also the misogyny - the majority of women we meet are Door Gods (aka antagonists) where basically all we know about them is how much they have suffered, and then there are three women who I would consider prominent characters. One of them is Xia Jie, a one dimensional villain who's set up to be this huge threat but then she's following orders from the male antagonist of the show so it's not even like she's the one making these elaborate plans to try to get the upper hand against Obsidian, and while she is ruthless and absolutely willing to sacrifice other players for her goals, we never actually see her use violence which makes it hard for me to view her as an actual danger. Then there's Zhuang Rujiao who mostly exists to be incessantly mocked by Ruan Lanzhu and to pine after Li Dongyuan. And then there's my favorite character Tan Zaozao - when we first meet her, she's there to be comedic relief and throughout the show there are A LOT of jokes at her expense because she's "stupid", but she actually becomes a fairly well rounded character as we see her complete more door challenges, but then episode 60... iykyk. That episode is actually when I basically stopped having fun with the show and I just felt really worn out watching the remaining 18 episodes.

All that being said though, the show doesn't pull punches when it wants to emotionally devastate you. The character dynamics are really good and whenever there's a blow to the team, you feel it. If you care more about a narrative successfully hitting emotional beats than you do about logic, you'll enjoy this. It's also very gay for a censored cdrama, so if that's your main interest, you'll probably enjoy the show in that regard as well.

(Also, I do think the final two episodes fumbled the ending but that also kinda ties into my complaints about inconsistencies.)