A bizarre mess of a game. I think it teeters around positive and negative for me, but the latter portion of this game just feels very sloppy and showcases a lot of the flaws where I leave it on a pretty bad feeling.
First, I actually[i] really [/i]like the combat in this one. I think it's a good step up from persona, and you have to think a lot more with the press turn system versus the one more system. It's important to keep a good spread of moves across allies (especially early game) because you can't just keep reusing the same move on everyone. How this all ties into weaknesses works really well. There is a huge grievance I have which is that missing is so brutal. Just being unlucky means you both don't do your action, as well as lose the next turn. I had some frustrating moments where bad timing on a miss cost me a fight in the long run and it's just not something you can super plan for. Notably one happened when I had no debuffs to hit and equipped a passive that gave me extra hit. I understand the extra punish for block/reflect since you should know better but it's so annoying miss does it to. It feels like they sort of expected this to be an issue because they added a restart fight option. But I honestly think it's kind of a detrimental thing to add. Instead of testing things and having to plan for a bad outcome or using abilities to learn weaknesses, you sort of just use a move and turn back time if it was blocked/reflected. It removes a lot of thought and sometimes just means you sort of fish for a decent start and then play. I feel like [i]some[/i] sort of drawback should've been attached so it isn't so easy to spam.
Barring a couple of bosses, I think the game is pretty well balanced. I seemed to be a tad underleveled for some fights reading about them online but I honestly could use good strategy to overcome it. I played on normal just from being not great at these games but I honestly learned a lot of good ideas and how to plan out moves well to the point I think I'd be willing to try hard on some other atlus games. I also will say that bosses with well designed movesets really stand out, though it can be a bit between them.
I do really like the designs of enemies and bosses too. I think in general this was always a strength of atlus but there are some really cool looking bosses in here. One of the earliest being this freaky egg thing with a heart that has a bunch of toys spinning around it and an egg that you have to break was a big stand out I feel.
However, the biggest sticking point to this game is the story. Quite honestly, I think it's pretty bad. Metaphor has a really prevailing issue of wanting to say something but never actually committing. You are told you are one of the worst treated races but you never actually experience this? An early quest has you buy something for another person because the church refuses to sell to his race, and while it's implied you are charged extra it really doesn't feel like it. Everywhere you go any shop sells to you, nowhere excludes you, and the worst you [i]really[/i] experience is just like a vague rudeness.
The game touches on some bigger ideas like corruption in churches and using races as a scapegoat, but a lot of it is so over the top or done in such a messy way it doesn't feel very impactful. Not to mention they just stop actually committing to things after a while. Notably one of the main plot points, the race to become the king, gets sidelined pretty hard. Major spoilers below:
[spoiler] Genuinely, I think the turning point to being a pretty bad story happens around halfway. Your party is determined to kill Louis because they think this will stop the prince's curse. When you do so it turns out that he wasn't actually the one to create the curse so you had killed him in mistake. This is brought up and your party seems to be thinking about the ramifications of their quick and aggressive actions, except it doesn't actually matter. Louis is fine, secretely a guy you assume died earlier actually was alive the whole time and saved Louis. Also louis kills the guy who actually set out to curse the prince. So you actually don't have to worry about any moral questions about continuing to try and find out who caused it. At this point they just streamline abotu 6 different twists that all feel pointless and unearned and I started to really check out of the story. At the end you are in a weird hell world and Louis is going to use a magic rod to turn everyone into giant monsters and it's just like, what are we even doing anymore. Not to mention they blunder a major part of their point. It turned out that you were a part of the prince the whole time (a thing you find out because for some reason everyone is convinced you need to pretend to be the prince to gain supporters, despite being in 4th place or so at that point) and you fused with the prince and are the prince for sure now. Which feeds into the idea that you are the real king because of birthright and not your actual actions? It's genuinely so messy [/spoiler]
I also just felt like it was too long. When I got about 2/3 of the way I just wanted to be done. But every time I had another section to clear of the map or another like 5 minibosses and I was so tired by the end. The actual final boss is completely whatever, by the time you get to it you probably have a good strategy to take out anything. The only actual challenge is if you miss. But it is such a huge health pool that it takes forever to actually beat. I didn't actually feel happy to beat it, just relieved it's over and I can put this game away.
Some people might not have all the issues I did with the story, and if you don't I think it is has really great gameplay, but I just can't recommend this on story merits. A bit disappointing in the end unfortunately, especially with how much time I put in.
