Yes, it's quite good, just like they say. The Battle Royale / Hunger Games / gladiatorial premise seems not to be played out yet, because this "struggle to the death for the sake of entertainment" story has plenty of fun new elements to refresh the concept. The idea of playing lightweight children's games with your life at stake is a clever juxtaposition. The visuals are striking and memorable; they've already launched endless memes and Halloween costumes, and it seems like they'll linger in the pop culture zeitgeist for a while yet.
Where I think Squid Game succeeds best, though, is in actually presenting a number of characters who are compelling to watch, even though we know they're all fated to die in the course of the series. Squid Game is full of flawed but likeable heroes, entertainingly detestable villains, and characters who float in between. I've heard a little bit of "just get to the games" sentiments from a few who watched the series, but I found the "in between parts" very well constructed to invest me in the people before each new game.
Squid Game is not flawless... but I'm also not sure how many of my nitpicks can be chalked up to how I viewed it. I am not usually one to binge a series, no matter what Netflix encourages; I've settled into "opening my presents" at a measured pace. But the outside pressure to get caught up with Squid Game (lest it be spoiled for me), combined with the accelerating pace of the narrative, meant that after starting with one episode every few nights, I watched the last three all back-to-back in a single night. I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't done that. That's important background, I think, before I point out that the weaker aspects of Squid Game all manifested for me in those last three episodes. (I'll try to thread the needle here of being specific enough that those who've seen it will know what I mean, while those who haven't won't be spoiled too much.)
The final "act" of Squid Game attempts to flesh out "the people behind the game" more than I think it should. A not-so-subtle part of the horror here is that faceless elites are forcing the poor to their deaths for... well, frankly, reasons we don't know, though we can probably guess. Well, we don't have to guess, because a lot of time in the final three episodes is devoted to revealing the people behind the game. In the course of this, we get a subplot that artlessly incorporates the contemptible "gay people are evil" trope, some plot twists that are thematically on point while straining logic, and some not-entirely-motivated changes in character behavior. That all wasn't collectively enough for me to say the ending of Squid Game was "bad" (as some have said). But hey, endings are hard, and Act I and II of Squid Game are notably better than Act III.
Of course, episode 9 here is not the end. Regardless of what creator Hwang Dong-hyuk might have originally been thinking, Netflix backed up the money truck the moment the series crushed all their standing records. A season 2 has now been announced -- though scripts haven't even been written yet, so it may be a while before we see it. There are places for the story to go, and I'll certainly be there to watch whatever comes next. But I can't help but feel that some of the "forces behind the game" material that seemed sometimes awkward to me at the end of season 1 would have been better deferred into a season 2 that opened up the world outside the game.
Overall, I'd give Squid Game an A-. It was a lot of fun, delivering plenty of great tension, pathos, and thrills. I guess nearly everyone has watched it already (so says Netflix), but if you haven't: I'd recommend checking it out.
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