I've now beaten the game, and while my opinion has changed it's less of a 180 and more of a 90. This is definitely one of the most solid Atlus games gameplay-wise and one of the most customizable, which is something I adore in an RPG. I also appreciate the music much more now, and the visuals were no longer headache-inducing since they added the brightness slider. Unfortunately, the lows are still low. There's very little area variety; each overworld location is a different colored flavor of "Tokyo but desert," which had long since worn out its welcome even before I went back to play, and while there are dungeons to break up the monotony, there's only two or three in the entire game that are saved for the latter half of the game, for some reason. The story is still garbage too, it's just a big nothing burger that wishes it was Elden Ring — which makes me want to talk about the endings. Unlike Elden Ring, you don't have free will in this game about how you want to reform the world. Instead, you get to pick a side (none of which appealed to me) in a conflict between three different pairs of characters you meet throughout the game. The (already unlikable) character representing the order ending randomly turned into a Very Obviously Evil edgelord psychopath right before the end, like the kind you find at Westboro Baptist Church. I didn't want to side with them for the aforementioned reason. The neutral(?) ending is bland character A and bland character B, who want to create a world where everyone is a god for some reason. I found these characters bland, so I didn't side with them, leaving me with the chaos ending (ironically what I chose in Elden Ring); I felt coerced into this rather than making the decision myself, and I felt like I didn't really do anything to earn it, again, unlike Elden Ring where you very deliberately choose the ending you want depending on which quest lines you pursue. Speaking of characters, I really tried to endear myself to them this time, and I. just. couldn't. You never get to know them well enough for that in the first place, but they don't even show potential, they're just all bland and unlikable. Maybe Vengeance can fix them, but I don't know. I like this game enough now that I might pick that up on sale to try the new content.

I recommend this game now if you like RPGs, just go in for the gameplay and don't expect much from the story and you'll probably have a good time.