I ended up doing three runs in one sitting, reaching the end of the time limit twice. The combat loop gets really repetitive, really quickly, and the characters don't really seem to have strong arcs like they did in The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa — things just sort of happen in response to the player's actions, where the world and characters feel kind of static and as though they lack agency compared to the world-shaping power of the player. In simpler terms, it feels like a combat/monopoly simulator with consequences, and less like a coherent story with characters — case in point, on one of my runs, I did not focus on attacking specific factions and basically no story ended up occuring, despite Seiji spending every day fighting and capturing districts.

Overall, this has Yeo's usual stylistics, good pixel art, and expanded and improved combat system, etc... but it doesn't really leave an impact on me like their first work.