Since I’ve been following the hell out of the game for years, I’ll give something less “diplomatic” than what you (burritossocial) said/the way you put it.

Overall the “game” missed a number of unfortunate marks, but also very much hit one to a degree (as per the top post above) such that it has a small legion of lovers despite the numerous shortfallings or (far) worse.

For those who want to hear my blab on specifics, here ya go (but of course some people disagree with the likes of this):

The combat aspect is atrocious, with numerous things about it almost in the territory of “unbelievable!” to be in place for a work that has such visual fidelity/solidity, and is a product of this day and age of gaming.
A LOT of the planned content was cut in the end, by release, leaving an experience that seems too anemic to the player’s senses when the end is reached, even with this being a purposefully very alien, un-defined, surreal world…
To many people, after a while it turns into a case of the emperor has no clothes. Everyone is super excited when they get the first tastes of the game, the world, but after piles of walking around solving uninspired puzzles, dealing with the same two enemy (types) over and over again — all this adding to the fact that there just doesn’t seem to be any points to the goings-on to latch onto let alone find deeply satisfying from a writing standpoint — all this leaves many players a (non-)experience that feels like “there’s no there there,” is much more like a semi-interactive art exhibit, a frustrating/boring walking simulator than a game.
Even the artistic aspect is hobbled in some ways for those wanting to just walk around to enjoy the world. The (atrocious/lame/repetitive) enemies get in the way, plus there are invisible walls everywhere that keep the player who really wants to just walk around and admire the detail from being able to indulge in that kind of thing as much as should be possible considering the kind of “game” SCORN seems to be. (Additionally on this point, there’s no option to lower your weapon from being wielded, so for those wanting to enjoy the art and snap screen grabs, the weapon is always going to be on screen, leaving people frustratedly puzzled at why the devs can’t be bothered to have a button to lower the weapon in their piece that’s supposed to be largely about looking at the world and admire all the intricate detail.)
Speaking of the “incredible artwork,” this game is obviously very biting off the works of Giger, but also perhaps some other famous other artists to a degree. This undermines the notion that the artistic vision and work behind this game are worthy of being bowed down to, as it could be said that they merely rode on the coattails of — used — other artists’ incredible output in a way that rather integrity-drains the one thing about the game that the makers delivered on (since the writing for the game’s happenings is a disappointing mess or is non-existent depending on the non-SCORN-lover ya talk to).
There was a bit of drama with the devs in the kickstarter about a year before launch that looked very bad. To the showrunners’ credit they did a huge course correction in a nice grand way, which is neat, but especially with how kickstarter had grown a reputation with games that “ya shouldn’t bother funding that kinda stuff there” due to endless vaporware and more, it was pretty shocking to see the very excited backers for SCORN be treated so badly by the devs over mere very reasonable requests…such that even the devs’ attempt to turn that fully around couldn’t fully shake off all the damage they had done.
There’s actually even more what I see as legit criticism that could be listed, but this is long enough, eh? 😃

Despite all of that being complained out, my end take is that it’s better to have this strange and neat-looking “game” out in the landscape to take a peek at for those in the mood to do so (especially since one can just experience it via watching a free playthrough video rather than paying $40 for a “game” that is more art exhibit, and doesn’t even fully nail that) than for it to have been recognized early as something that wasn’t going to fully work and be ditched.

Overall though, it is rather annoying and depressing that so much of the game misses the mark, even in little ways, is so wildly up and down between its (up=)look/world and then (down=)your main enemy is just a headless plucked chicken(thing)!!! But games that bite off this much of the “haven’t seen this kind of thing much before!” pie, very few of them seem to end up 10/10 so perhaps the inspiration wall is as much to blame here as the devs with SCORN? 🤷