An absolutely fantastic experience. A racing game from a company known mostly for their RPGs is a strange proposition but it lead to a unique game that is delightfully different from its contemporaries. As a "High Speed Racing RPG", it takes the best of both worlds, having fun racing action with a stellar, cerebral story tying everything together. The physics can be a bit fiddly with collisions but overall I had a lot of fun gathering different parts, trying out different combinations, and figuring out what worked best for me. Additionally, the prerendered model aesthetic for the CGs and cutscenes is so unique in its style and I can't help but adore it.

As for the story, I don't want to spoil it but it goes into some VERY unexpected territory given the subject matter but I think that very much works in its favor, giving a surreal feeling to the events that I very much enjoyed. Highly recommended for racing game fans and RPG fans alike as it succeeds in being the High Speed Racing RPG it set out to be.

A very basic action RPG based on the Pinky St line of dolls. I have no familiarity with those but it gives the game a cute style which I enjoyed. The gameplay and music are simple almost to an annoying degree (one battle theme is about an 8 second loop), but the story and themes are somehow charming enough to have kept me interested enough to beat it. The premise is that you are trapped in a library due to an evil force that has started corrupting the stories in the books and changing them to not have their rightful happy endings. You play as four girls who must go into these books and fight the evil spirits and follow the main characters of these stories to bring them back on the right track and finish the story as it should be. It was a surprisingly compelling and cute premise. The themes of friendship between the four main characters actually got to me and how it wound up in the end made me really glad I followed what is ostensibly a fairly mediocre game to the end.

A very bizarre game that I very much like. As the game was supposed to be an MMO, everything is in real time, there are some spaces that are just empty that you can tell were meant to be meeting spots, the end-game demons have so much room left in their stats bars for higher numbers, it's a very strange and unique atmosphere.

The gameplay is your standard MegaTen fare despite being in real-time. It's basically if SMT1 ran on a Final Fantasy style ATB, though teams still act all at once rather individually. Negotiation is also real-time but it is very generous and even as a non-native speaker of Japanese I was given plenty of time to read over what the demons were saying. It is actually one of the better written demon negotiation systems from what I have played/remember.

There is also a very strange "RTS" battle system for certain events in the game. It is node based and has surprising depth. With that depth, I get the feeling more was planned for it past the difficulty of the battles appearing in this version of the game. Sadly whatever they had in mind did not come to be.

While the pre-rendered backgrounds of the virtual Tokyo are very fantastic to look at, the dungeons are the exact opposite. All of them are drab-square hallways with literally nothing in them except random encounters, not even chests. Definitely the most disappointing aspect.

The story is actually one of the highlights for me. Taking place in a virtual recreation of Tokyo after a nuclear apocalypse forces the last of humanity underground into bunkers. You play as a debugger/hacker working for the government, essentially taking the role of police in the virtual Tokyo. It is presented very flatly, which while it is not great, does lend to a sort of eerie vibe the game has. It does bring up some interesting concepts near the end and I will say the variance possible in the final dungeon legitimately impressed me. I do not think any other MegaTen game has that many possible ways the final dungeon can play out.

Overall, just an odd experience and it had some dull moments but I am absolutely glad I played it because it was very unique.