Stylish (the art style is just lovely) and well-written, with straightforward prose that does a good job at conveying information and a strong specificity of time & place. The tone is grounded and gritty without being miserable, and the central conceit of a card game where everyone knows everyone is cheating is so sharp as a metaphor that the social commentary basically writes itself.
Presentation-wise, there's stuff to nitpick. The single jam-provided sprite sticks out pretty badly, the lack of any kind of transition to the opening scene is kind of jarring, and how the card game is visualized works on a basic level but is really subtle and understated. Making use of more visuals and maybe animations of some sort to emphasize what actions everyone is taking would make a difference in terms of clarity, I think; as of now, the prose has to explain a lot by itself. Besides that, it would just be a cool way to use the medium to go all in on showing the card stuff.
As for the other formal elephant in the room ("Should this video game about a card game be playable?"), I found it all so engaging and so skilled in its use of the premise that the thought didn't really cross my mind. It's clearly a story not only written by someone who enjoys card games but someone who knows how to turn them into compelling drama! The player lacking choices has also felt like a pretty effective literalization of how the narrative portrays the competition in general; turning it into an actual game with strictly defined rules and boundaries would be missing the point, I think. Excited to see how this comes up if the VN does decide to go nonlinear in the future, but if it's entirely kinetic, I'll say the point lands.
While the "to be continued" screen dampens the mood somewhat, Three Aces does feel pretty well thought out as a serialized work – far from being all setup, the first act contains a fun twist and ends on a stinger that teases the continuation perfectly. My only concern is that the story is probably something the reader would want to finish in one go anyway. It's dense with information, and I have probably already forgotten something crucial while typing this.
Definitely a "more than the sum of its parts"-category entry; it all just works so well together, and I'm excited to read the rest.