Love this game to bits in many ways but so many things hold it back in such a major way. Combat is exciting at first, and fusing new personas or seeing new party members was always a refreshing burst of new content, but because of the nature of randomly generated dungeons, I was typically watching something in the background to keep myself from being bored to death by the 3rd dungeon. When I thought that the game was over, literally the day before you leave Inaba, only to discover that there's ANOTHER dungeon, I nearly didn't play it, the game ground me down so much on its poor encounter design. Combat against tough opponents was cool, but by the end, most enemies had just become health sponges that soak up your attacks like nothing, so defeating them isn't actually all that difficult, just time-consuming.

On the other end of the spectrum, I think the story here is phenomenal, with some good twists that actually kept me engaged all throughout. Towards the end, it throws in some stuff that I think I could have lived without (this game "ends" literally 3 times.) but overall I appreciate that the game kept me in the dark about its biggest secrets, so that I found out with the investigation team, instead of them playing catchup like some moments in Persona 5. The voice acting is also hit or miss with some real winners and other characters whom I dreaded in almost every scene. The social links are all pretty good, I enjoy the overall theme of finding your true self and coming to terms with the parts of your subconscious that you may not like, is really good and can be touching. I like some of the social links a lot (Kou, Fox, Kanji, Hisano, Nanako, Dojima) whereas I think some are poorly paced or miss the mark in some other way (Sayako, Rise, Eri, Chie, Shu.) There are also a lot of scenes that stand out as being particularly homophobic and transphobic, or that sexualize these teenagers a little too much which is likely a product of the times but still leaves a sour taste in one's mouth.

Overall an enjoyable experience, but due to lackluster dungeons and some questionable character choices, I don't see myself revisiting this one soon.