Everyone praises this game for its gameplay but I believe that a lot of people are forgetting that the gameplay is not just the combat, but the entire interactive part of the game. Yes, SMT5 has solid combats and as always, the demon management part is also good but what else does it do well?

The old dungeon crawler style which is simple yet works was replaced by a bland, generic and unbearable 3D world. The game feels jank to walk through and ironically emphasizes exploration to find collectibles, which doesn't make it any more interesting. The combat encounters are no longer random but I can't find any pleasure in going after the overworld enemies and seeing them move like them, randomly agitating themselves in this empty world.

Yes, this was enough to make me drop the game. This is a big chunk of the gameplay and I personally can't ignore it, the whole game feels jank and cheap because of things like this and I'm not enough of a SMT enjoyer to just care about the combat.