my first mainline SMT game - the desolate atmosphere makes playing this in 2021, a year in which I have often felt like I am living alone on my own barren planet, extremely difficult at times! the game's inciting incident taking place in an empty hospital is very fitting for the cold tone the rest of the experience evokes, which feels sometimes at odds with the world created by the Conception, described in dialogue as one of action where passionately believed philosophies compete with each other by necessity. I've often thought about dropping it and coming back to it later to play something with a brighter view of the world, but the game being so good at just about everything that it does makes it very hard to put down. The turn press system is absolute genius and is executed with the kind of precision that makes this hold up years later while many other JRPGs trying to emulate it have come and gone

the knowledge that the soundtrack exists somewhere else in the world in a form that's not total shit and it isn't included here drives me up the wall