This is an interesting one. It's one of the most imaginative games I have ever played. The story is fantastic and has some of the hardest hitting dramatic moments. The music is phenomenal and ties into the plot and themes so well.

....Unfortunately it is buried under a mountain of BS. I did not enjoy the combat at all, which was completely unbalanced and poorly paced. The RPG mechanics of it were pretty awful, all the gems and accessories don't feel like they have much of an impact at all...and the worst was some of the questing, it does not respect the players' time at all and it knows it. It even has some of the characters saying how boring it is at one point.

This game leaves the story at the door and focuses on being a good JRPG. To that end it succeeds in making progression feel really good. Catching/fusing all the demons is fun, and pulling from every mythology adds both a sense of familiarity as well as some surprises when encountering certain demons. The difficulty is there too, which is refreshing...too many games are designed to be played with no mental engagement, which I think is poor design.

For the cons; well the story is just sort of there, definitely not up to par with Persona. Some of the systems seem to be there to deliberately frustrate the player. Instakills with light/dark magic can catch you off-guard in a way that feels cheap, and it kicking you back to the main menu with only manual saves counting is not a good mechanic. I don't think anyone is whistle for the days before checkpoints where you would lose chunks of progression because you forgot to save.