I finished an absolutely incredible manga called Usogui, and after that, I was itching to read another gambling manga. Kakegurui is one of the most popular out there, so I gave it a shot.
I was pretty damn disappointed. It's not a terrible manga, but it's overall mediocre, and when it does shine it's mostly through characters that aren't the focus.

Kakegurui follows the rich kiddos attending a school where over-the-top gambling is commonplace, the big losers wind up in lifetime slavery, and pretty much everyone is over-the-top insane. Somehow all the rich people are okay with handing their kids the entire set of assets of their empires, so their kids can gamble it away for the sake of being high caste for a few years of school. The losers get their life in slavery planned out for them, and the world is just kind of whatever on it because it's a manga and the author doesn't care about providing explanations for how the concept even works in-universe.

But, suspension of disbelief, it's fiction, etc. Ignoring all the in-universe stuff and focusing on the core of the manga- psycho characters and gambles- how does Kakegurui stack up?
Not particularly well!

First things first, the characters. Some of them aren't bad- there's a couple that I thought were actually pretty interesting, like Mary or Ririka, who actually have me excited to read Kakegurui: Twin despite not being a big fan of the original. However, for the most part, Kakegurui's characters have no personality besides "insane gambling addict". It's like the author saw other gambling manga that had some nuts characters, and decided it'd be really unique and quirky to just have most characters be absolutely stark raving mad. You have crazy girl who collects fingernails, crazy girl who wants to have bodily harm as a penalty for losing, and the MC, who just kinda feels like tossing life away because yay, gambling addiction! There's also some scenes where the characters are clearly horny and/or flicking it to the thought of gambling, which I suppose is a major plus for some readers but just made me mildly annoyed. It's not even fanservice, it's "hey, look how EDGY and MESSED UP these gambling ADDICTS are!". Queue someone praising the author's subtlety and mature use of philosophical themes. As I said, there are some decent characters, but the characters that are better are essentially the ones that are more low-level superhero comic villain nuts as opposed to psych ward inmates.
There're a lot of psych ward inmates.

Next up, the gambles. Kakegurui's gambles also vary widely in quality. Personally, when I read a gambling manga, I want to see intense back-and-forths and skillful tricks. Kakegurui has a couple of gambles like that, but a lot of them that involve the MC just come down to "she's built different". Notices something about the setup of the gamble that apparently nobody else has the capability to, canonically has extremely good senses and memory, and sometimes just gets lucky. Are there some gambles that have interesting tricks? Yep, but those are mainly ones that the side characters appear in and aren't generally as spotlighted by the story. The pacing of the gambles also makes them feel a bit tepid. The really big thing- for a manga where kids wind up slaves and lose megacorps because they lost a gamble, a lot of Kakegurui's gambles have no real consequence other than some character falling down and sobbing on the floor, Walter White style. Overall, I was disappointed by the gambles.

As for overarching story, Kakegurui has one, which wasn't really in focus until the last arc or two. It's okay. It's also pretty "eh, who cares" and exactly what you'd expect if you'd actually read the first chunk of the manga.
Art is fine. Neither good nor bad, honestly. The character designs are surprisingly laid-back for such an in-your-face, over the top manga, which is appreciated, and the characters are pretty distinct.

Overall, Kakegurui's not an awful manga, but it tries too hard to be edgy and quirky and winds up losing pretty much everything interesting about the characters in the process. Add in the fact that the overarching plot isn't great and the gambles themselves are generally mediocre, and Kakegurui's simply not great. It's not bad enough for me to say it isn't worth reading, and seems like it could be a great manga to some. Still, if you want a gambling manga, I'd highly suggest you go for Usogui instead.