First, the premise is solid, I really like how the NPC’s are conditioned to behave certain ways for the benefit of the player, even if the inner dialogue of the MC points out the cognitive dissonance, but then the conditioning steps in. There’s some fun elements, about the play eating random herbs to learn their effect, even thought they’re poisonous and he has to get cleansed.
That’s the good things…
The way the game-world is described, how the NPC’s will question wording or phrazing from the player, even having obvious censoring. But at the same time can’t adapt the least, I think the best illustration is the “twist” in chapter 7, Supposedly it should be a classic hero motivation, someone dies which adds a personal element to the hero’s struggle, but due to a glitch/exploit can’t kill, but proceed to cut empty air, kick empty air, pick nothing up to prevent resurrection… Then the killed but not killed NPC becomes invisible to the game for no reason, the npc’s have already reacted to visual inputs, like staring at the player as he walks on a table, exchanging glances with each other, yet the MC is just invisible now…
Add to that a point a little later, someone guards a grate by standing on it, the player sprints/runs into the NPC, and instead of getting angry, or reacting, the npc gets pushed to the side…
I could go on, but I think my point is made, there’s just huge gaps everywhere between what we’re told, and what happens, it goes from a interesting plot with annoying elements, to an annoying story, annoying hero, and the MC not using her newfound freedom from conditioning to call out the idiot hero, and somewhere is the buried plot.