Honestly Im super biased cause I just love CyberConnect2's world building and art style and always have, but its a really fun RPG! Its straight forward and just throws you into the action, and it honestly offers plenty of challenge if you choose to seek it out. The balancing felt good, I never felt overpowered or like I was falling behind the curve (though I was always taking the hardest path for maximum rewards). The game doesnt overstay its welcome either, with a nice roughly 20 hour playthrough just to see the story through, and the pacing felt great.
The time management aspect of the intermissions was fine, it added some depth with deciding what you wanted to do but it definitely felt like your choices were pretty obvious (upgrades -> build character bonds -> maybe a meal/restocking cooking supplies), at least the scenes between characters as their bonds built were cute and definitely gave something to look forward to each intermission
The real focus of the game was definitely the combat and it delivered well on that front, its tight and bombastic, landing stuns on enemies feels great and engaging with mechanics like character swapping and pairing felt plenty of rewarding, and most skills felt like they had their uses. If I had to pick my biggest complaint, I would have liked it more if the game put more pressure on you to use the sacrificial cannon, at least in my playthrough it was super easy to ignore the mechanic entirely and never consider its use at all, which given its story impact was a bit disappointing! Ruins exploration could have been more too, I dont expect them to package an entire side game necessarily but if its going to be a little walking minigame I think some world building would have been cool to include and give me more reason to actually spend SP on it during intermissions
Overall I really enjoyed it as a tight RPG experience with challenging and fair turn based combat with a cute art style and fun juxtaposition with the darker tone of the story, no bugs or crashes in my playtime and load times were snappy
The time management aspect of the intermissions was fine, it added some depth with deciding what you wanted to do but it definitely felt like your choices were pretty obvious (upgrades -> build character bonds -> maybe a meal/restocking cooking supplies), at least the scenes between characters as their bonds built were cute and definitely gave something to look forward to each intermission
The real focus of the game was definitely the combat and it delivered well on that front, its tight and bombastic, landing stuns on enemies feels great and engaging with mechanics like character swapping and pairing felt plenty of rewarding, and most skills felt like they had their uses. If I had to pick my biggest complaint, I would have liked it more if the game put more pressure on you to use the sacrificial cannon, at least in my playthrough it was super easy to ignore the mechanic entirely and never consider its use at all, which given its story impact was a bit disappointing! Ruins exploration could have been more too, I dont expect them to package an entire side game necessarily but if its going to be a little walking minigame I think some world building would have been cool to include and give me more reason to actually spend SP on it during intermissions
Overall I really enjoyed it as a tight RPG experience with challenging and fair turn based combat with a cute art style and fun juxtaposition with the darker tone of the story, no bugs or crashes in my playtime and load times were snappy