+the combat feels so tactile on a touch-screen in a way that transforms the usual square enix action rpg mashing into something more interesting thanks to the many different gestures involved in each ability you acquire. neku also automatically pulls towards whatever you're attacking (for melee attacks anyway), which makes his movement much more fluid
+I'm not going to pretend like the story makes complete sense but it's really good overall! the characters are relatively nuanced and develop as the game goes on, and the pacing is quick enough that you never feel trapped in a sequence you don't care about. mysteries unfold at a nice clip over the course of the game, up until literally the final minutes
+art design is tremendous overall, both for the characters and the world. I love how shibuya's buildings seem to flex and bend as you move; the whole game has a weird super scaler type feel
+music as well, it almost all has vocals shockingly enough and has a great shibuya-kei bent to it, much like jet set radio. in fact, if there was a "jet set radio" rpg it would probably feel like this
+I went back and forth on how I felt about the top-screen fighter, and ultimately I think it's an overall plus for the game. it knows well enough that in most cases you're just going to ignore the top screen, and so you get a selection of AI choices that get the job done. however, you can attack much faster than the AI can, and the AI tends not to block, so in certain battles it's good to handle some of the inputs yourself while letting neku dash-dodge like crazy on the bottom screen. where the game really succeeds is once you finally get enough moves for the partner to do their own thing while you handle jumping and blocking, as well as certain boss fights that make it clear when to shift your focus between the two screens. effectively pulling off a fight like that feels so good
+obv there's some kingdom hearts-esque grinding at play, but the game handles this rather nicely. you can switch your difficulty in the menu at any time, which effects not only damage output/exp gain/pin point gain but also changes the drop rates for given materials, meaning you can use easy to grind for certain materials you need (while also chaining battles together to speed up the process) and then switch to a harder difficulty to grind levels
+since each shop is persistent in the world, you can grow your relationship with each clerk as the game goes on and expand the shop selections more and more, while also gaining new abilities for your wearables. a couple of them are even involved in the plot
+the reaper design rules, it's def got org xiii similiarities but everyone gets their own costume and you get to fight plenty of them as the game goes on. I also like how the walls to new areas are set up by reapers that you interact with, rather than in chain of memories where accessing new rooms was just a door.
+on that tangent, unlike in chain of memories there's virtually no real grinding to get past doors, since all of the requirements can be met in a matter of minutes easily. by the end of the game there's nothing blocking your progression between areas at all beyond random inescapable battles here and there
+enemy design is excellent. virtually every enemy has a unique set of abilities unshared by the rest that fall squarely outside of the usual archetypes for rpg baddies. it does a great job encouraging diversifying your deck in order to deal with any set of enemies that comes your way. boss design is also nearly uniformly interesting, with multiple making excellent use of the two screens and few of them feeling cookie-cutter in any way

-there's some QoL stuff that really could've been useful. a big one is that when you're buying clothes you're not able to see your stats (or if there was an option, I didn't see it), so it can be difficult to figure out if a particular thing is worth wearing
-the map is not great... like it looks cool but each area is labeled based on what brand is big there and not what the area is actually called. it also gives no indication of how to get to each place, which can be annoying at a few points in the game where you aren't basically on-rails
-I'd say the game is overall pretty evenly fun, but there definitely is a bit of a sag in the middle where you aren't fighting many new bosses and your goals are unclear. it's not that big of a deal, but it made me worry that the game had shoved all of its good ideas in the beginning, up until the back quarter where a lot happens pretty quickly and there's a lot of good boss fights

when I first started playing this I got a sinking feeling in my stomach... it quickly occurred to me that this was in many ways a spiritual successor to kingdom hearts chain of memories, a game I really really don't like. however, so much changed between that game and this one that while there's a lot of KH influence overall, this brings a lot of great ideas to the forefront and discards much of the poor design of those. I could keep listing things I loved playing this; it's such a rich concept for a video game and they really nailed the execution against all odds. I haven't dug into the post-game yet but plan to do so, and I'm really happy I played this in anticipation of the sequel coming out in just a few months.