Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster

Do NOT play past Kabukicho, the game falls off pretty hard in pacing and tension after this point. the obelisk is salvageable but I wouldnt have felt like I missed anything if the final boss was there on the obelisk, this was the precise point where the game started to overstay its welcome for me. Instead, the game proceeds to DRAG. ON. past this point and it very quickly starts to feel like a long chore. I had to force myself to finish the Amala Temple and the subsequent raid by the bad guys on Fuminashiro felt depressing and unnecessary, then i went through yet another bloody tunnel section that I had to look up to even find because the game does a very poor job at explaining where you should go at around this point, only to then face massive difficulty spikes in the bosses at the Diet building. I had a similar issue with SMT: Strange Journey, the final boss of that game was such concentrated ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and required you to grind so much more than the levels you likely arrived with that I just watched a youtube video for the fight, another for the ending and then I called it good right then and there, im doing a similar thing with this game because while I enjoyed the early game and most of the mid game dungeons, the late game segments are an absolute nightmare chore and since the story already lost all the mystery and tension that kept it interesting I have no real motivation to push forward any further. For context: I beat Surt very easily, then I encountered Mada, got obliterated and then decided that the game had no hook left for me to try over with a different party, im just kinda done with it and while I do not resent the game I do wish I had quit it much earlier so I could remember the experience much more fondly. Finally, my hours played are much higher than the amount of time it actually took me to reach that point in the story, not sure what the actual number would be but its not 43 hours. I just left the computer on with the game running several times so dont assume that i spent much of that time grinding or getting lost.