It does a ton right when it comes to gamifying detective work, but I can't recommend the overall package. The biggest issue is that it's just way too short in an unsatisfying way. The version I bought was just called "Detective Grimoire" without the "Secret of the Swamp" subtitle, so I had no idea the whole game would just be the one extremely simple (and far too obvious) mystery. I thought this was like the tutorial case where everything is really easy because they are teaching you the mechanics and then the real game would start afterward with a challenging follow-up case, but no, it's just the one way-too-easy mystery.

I liked all of the individual gameplay mechanics but they felt like they were left at the tutorial stage without even a hint of challenge in the puzzles or any real thought required in the deductions. On top of that, I disliked all of the voice acting and thought the music sucked to the point of nearly just muting it. It has its charm though, and I liked the way it gamified detective work enough to consider giving the sequel a shot at some point

It truly is one of the greatest games ever made. It could seem hyperbolic to see people lavishing so much praise on it, but it's all earned. I was constantly in awe at the storytelling and flexibility of the narrative, the characters and vocal performances, the robustness of the combat system, and the design; both in terms of game design and art design. There were so many times where I let a dialogue choice linger on screen just to take in all the detail of the character designs. They went so far above and beyond even for relatively small characters, like the spider guy who carries the moonlantern in act II. They didn't have to go so hard and make that dude the coolest looking anthropomorphic spider character in existence, but they did and they went just as hard on every other character too.

I would have been happy enough to get this complex branching narrative with great characters and performances even if the combat was just middling, but the game has the single best turn-based combat system I've ever played, bar none. You have sooooo many options at your disposal every single step of the way, and the gameplay in both combat and exploration provides more of the malleable table-top goodness of real DnD than I had previously thought possible in video game form. I would love a mode where you can replay certain battles out of context and tweak the variables or even setup your own combat encounters with the toolset that's present. I found the combat seriously addictive, and the larger scale battles are endlessly impressive in how all the pieces click together; the way AoE effects were handled in particular was immensely satisfying to implement and I would love to see other games follow suit (though you could say that about so many individual aspects of the game)

It's not 100% perfect though, mainly just because even though it isn't broken like a lot of modern games are on release, it is still far glitchier than ideal. Combat glitches (like when you clearly have line of sight on an enemy or an enemy is clearly within your attack range but the game insists otherwise, or when a spell just doesn't do what it's supposed to 1 time out of 10) can be frustrating, but the big, persistent glitch that really bothered me applied to dialogue and cutscenes where the game would sporadically jump forward and cut off the second half of a bunch of lines. To not miss what was being said, I would sometimes have to frantically read ahead on the subtitles, which really takes away from the performances and dialogue. None of the big patches as of Feb 2024 have fixed that, but hopefully it gets resolved eventually.

(by the way, I'm blown away by how well this ran on my Mac. It's glitchy, but in terms of performance, I never had any crashes or even frame drops and didn't have to fiddle with the settings at all (unless the dialogue-skipping glitch is a Mac issue, I have no idea))

I prefer the combat of Tactica over 5 Royal by a significant margin, but it still pales in comparison to many turn-based strategy games of the Xcom ilk. The new art style is fine, I suppose, but I consider it a major downgrade from Royal, especially in terms of how static and repetitive the visuals are, gone is much of the style and dynamism of the former. The story isn't all that interesting this time, and most of the things I loved about Royal are stripped away for an experience that is far more gameplay-centric to its detriment.

Took me a full two years to finish, and I absolutely loved so many aspects of this. It was the social/life sim side of things that really connected with me, while the palaces and mementos felt like a bit of a slog to get through to keep the story moving.

I never found the combat particularly enjoyable. It seemed to always be either so easy that it required no thought and basically played itself or crazy difficulty spikes where the entire team gets wiped in a single attack, with nothing in between. And the bulk of the palace content (and all of mementos) just felt tedious to me once the excellent stylization wore off.

But, I loved these characters and spending time with them. Sojiro was my favorite of all people, and his relationship with Futaba was genuinely touching. I mostly enjoyed the story, but it does have a huge problem with exposition, and the one scene where two villains spend several minutes doing nothing other than monologuing their evil plan at each other for no reason is such awful writing that it really took me out of the game. Some of the later plot developments were also a little too "big" for my liking in a jump-the-shark sort of way. I would have preferred for things to wrap up after the Shido arc.

Apparently I'm a speed runner because I rolled credits in about 30 seconds. (The first choice isn't a real choice. )

Story-wise, the game needs a much bigger/better impetus to stop taking the medication if the whole plot hinges on it. It doesn't make sense on a character level to switch so abruptly, and the whole intro sequence is terribly rushed. Where is the sense of pacing? Where is the opening act that sets up the "normal" world? The reality-altering discovery made by the protagonist means nothing if we aren't properly introduced to what he thinks is true beforehand. Way to immediately irrevocably botch what had the potential to be an interesting premise

If you're somebody's dad and also cringe as shit, you'll probably enjoy larping with the other weirdos into this game. Listening to strangers prattle on is not my idea of a good time, and once you mute them, it's just a big empty map where your screen is constantly filled with giant text and dozens of floating icons to the point that you can't even see where you're going, and the gameplay is bog-standard FPS fare, except for a weird bug where trying to aim down makes you aim up and to the right instead. Looks slick but isn't. Boy am I glad I didn't pay for this when it was super hyped up. Half a match on Game Pass was enough for me to let this one loose.