I personally separate my life to pre-Amphoreus and post-Amphoreus periods, as playing it has completely changed how I view the world.
My life has been an ongoing quest to discover life-changing works of fiction, and despite having gone through thousands of books, movies, games and the like, I have yet to find anything to even rival Amphoreus. I’m honestly getting goosebumps just remembering it.
Shaoji is easily the most erudite writer in gachage realm, if not contemporary fiction in general. Reading his works you’ll be introduced to a plethora of other literary fiction, philosophy, science, and his own original ideas.
The only other writer that gave me a similar vibe was Umberto Eco, and even he wasn’t as good at teaching difficult concepts to his readers.
Don’t be scared away by the brief first four patches as they were intentionally written to be bad to prove a point later.