Really refreshing to have what I'll just call a "youth culture" JRPG come out that actually feels like it has its finger on the pulse of things like this. It doesn't feel like it was made by an old vampire (not in a cool way) who's putting on a pretty little doll show where imperfections only exist when they're convenient or where they "make sense" and pretending it's empowering to the audience it was aimed at. The characters in this game hit the "realness" threshold frame 0. I hesitate to compliment it for "realness" because that sounds like normie cringe hyperbole, but I say that to refer to how multi-faceted the characters are, often in very unappealing ways. It's not afraid to let these characters be a little messed up in a really down to earth sort of way. The game is so dedicated to allowing these characters to exist with their problems as they would that it dedicates a few lines to directly shooting down the idea of magical MC fixing these people just because they chose the right lines. Their problems thoroughly inform these people thoroughly, unapologetically in self ways often times, which is rad. From the Voca-P conception, to its fashion/aesthetic sense, and subject matters, I feel like it really does get us shaky youth

This is a bit of a super vague spoiler, but on the note of addressing audience expectations in a meta way with good ass dialogue: They dedicated a line to addressing a certain missteps in regard to a subject on their part in the first game in a way I can't help but read as meta. Like they were looking straight at the camera and acknowledging that in the time since then, they've done their research and have learned a lot since then. I guess that sort of thing would be cheesy to some, but the sort of juice shown in that moment is just what sets this apart from a lot of its contemporaries in terms of consciousness. Like I said earlier, it's cool that it feels like it wasn't made by a walking corpse kept alive by ancient mobster money and figure sales

Anyways the combat is interesting and satisfying, and has a cool 3D Valkyrie Profile but more unga to it, and it heavily incentivizes bullying, so that's cool. The dungeons are only okay, but Persona (I'll namedrop it only once) dungeons have been shit for about 15 years so they've got time. There's a character who's a propagandist and I've listened to her song for a few months now so that music can't be understated. Games for the soul don't have to look like money

You have to go underground to find things made by people that actually souls. That's it

they saw all that netcode talk over the past few years and were like "hey wait we have that rollback thing too" and then they spruced up the menus and made it so you don't have to look in the game directory folder to see your character's moves anymore (debatable as to whether that's an improvement)

i don't need to talk about the actual game. if your friends don't have this in their steam library fix them. it goes on sale for actual peanuts prices all the time. i will become a mysterious donor who will make sure every gamer in the population has this in their library

i would become a youtube influencer for this game