I'm not trying to convince you to like this deck, but I don't think it's completely "rushed and not well thought of". It's got custom court cards, jokers and AoS. Regardless of whether you appreciate the design or not, you have to say more work has been put into the deck than many decks out there where only the back is redesigned, or simply put together using clip arts.
As for the $10USD price, I personally think we couldn't blame the designer for it. It's the trend of the custom decks nowadays. Most decks don't even start off low like the old days in $6.
I will grant you that some work was put into this deck. But there's a difference between working hard and working smart.
This deck wasn't really designed by someone who is into playing cards, at least based on what I'm seeing. Having solid indices for black cards but outlined ones for red is not conducive to easy use at the card table, nor is it good for magic. The face cards are not all that custom - they're standard Bicycle faces with unusual colorations and patterns in them. Anyone with just a little skill and a fair amount of time could erase sections of a court card and put in those funky patterns. And having a different, darker color face for the Ace of Spades makes it easily spotted within a shuffled deck.
I understand that this is based on some very old Chinese traditional stories, but they could have been much better executed than this. These cards are practical for art, maybe as a collector's piece, and possibly for flourishing - and not much else. I have enough impractical playing cards in my collection, some of which are much better looking that these, and as art they're just not my cup of tea. Sentinels, Artifice, Infinity - those are art to me and as an added bonus they're actually practical.
