It is quite an enjoyable experience once you get past the (good?) old maze-crawling RPG scare. If you can't embrace the 80s... yeah you'll be in for a bumpy ride.
Now if you endure the initial hardships, you will be rewarded with a rather well-flashed-out, creative demon-merging system—the Persona system! The setting and character structure are also really fun (though that's SMT if...'s merit, I guess). And I just loved the whole demon contact thing, though I guess that also comes from other games (this was my first Megaten). I've always found most JRPGs to be way too combat focused, so that was just lovely, though the final reward is still combat-related. One negative takeaway is that the combat encounter rate is way too high, making leveling up Agility on your MC a necessity, hindering your roleplay possibilities. Story wise, I guess I just wish the good ending requirements were clearer and that there were more story options overall.
TL;DR simple, old school, though watered down (yeah you read that right) maze dungeon crawler, with super cool RPG mechanics that set the game apart from others, even from previous Megaten games. Rewards patient players that are willing to overcome the steep learning curve (coming from modern games), though the reward is definitely not that great.
If you're a modern RPG player, this is a scary one. If you're a hard-boiled Ultima/Wizardry/Bard's Tale player, this is one hell of a cakewalk -- you just need to figure the Personas out, and grind a little bit on the Snow Queen route).
Now if you endure the initial hardships, you will be rewarded with a rather well-flashed-out, creative demon-merging system—the Persona system! The setting and character structure are also really fun (though that's SMT if...'s merit, I guess). And I just loved the whole demon contact thing, though I guess that also comes from other games (this was my first Megaten). I've always found most JRPGs to be way too combat focused, so that was just lovely, though the final reward is still combat-related. One negative takeaway is that the combat encounter rate is way too high, making leveling up Agility on your MC a necessity, hindering your roleplay possibilities. Story wise, I guess I just wish the good ending requirements were clearer and that there were more story options overall.
TL;DR simple, old school, though watered down (yeah you read that right) maze dungeon crawler, with super cool RPG mechanics that set the game apart from others, even from previous Megaten games. Rewards patient players that are willing to overcome the steep learning curve (coming from modern games), though the reward is definitely not that great.
If you're a modern RPG player, this is a scary one. If you're a hard-boiled Ultima/Wizardry/Bard's Tale player, this is one hell of a cakewalk -- you just need to figure the Personas out, and grind a little bit on the Snow Queen route).