This game is so much better than every other mainline SMT before it. It's a game that perfects SMT 1 & 2's post-apocalyptic setting and also manages to populate it with really cool characters and story.

The previous three SMT games had this huge issue where even if they had cool ideas and settings, or even really engaging and exciting gameplay, they always fell flat on having little to no plot or really shallow characters, but SMT4 excels in every aspect.

On the first hour of the game alone, your three companions already show off so much character and personality that I personally got attached to them almost immediately, and it was such a treat to have them accompany you for the majority of your journey.

Another thing worthy of mention is how for the first time in the series I actually had a hard time picking which alignment I wanted to follow. Not only were both Jonathan and Walter two characters I really liked and cared about, but the things that both routes would have you do were equally troubling and awful in their own ways. I ended up (accidentally) on the Law route after (also accidentally) triggering the "White" ending, and although I thought I was heading towards Chaos, I actually felt pretty satisfied with the conclusion of the Law route. It was a bittersweet ending but I understood there wasn't going to be an ending where nobody got screwed over so I accepted it.

I think if I had to make a complaint about this game is that I wish it did more with the Kingdom of Mikado. I thought the juxtaposition of Mikado's medieval aesthetic and all the modern, technological stuff from Tokyo, the terminals and the gauntlets was really interesting and I wish Mikado got more development.