To preface my review when I first played this game on release I strongly disliked it. I was in the camp of die hard Kaneko fans who felt slighted by the shift in art. I was ignorant of the guest artists so I assumed the mishmash of various styles was some kind of sloppy artistic choice. But after reflecting and talking to less biased people and then replaying this became one of my favorite entries in the series.
Plot
The story from this game is very interesting as it's reflecting concepts first ideated with SMT 1. And being familiar with that narrative and themes it's an interesting juxtaposition. I enjoyed the loving nod to the history of the franchise through innovation. The story provides an early twist that plays on the comfort of using the opening moments to establish it's narrative and structural boundaries which is not necessarily common in Megaten but has been done before in SMT 3 but much less successfully. I found the characters to be somewhat shallow upon first encounter but even NPCs have story arcs that build the world and develop as the plot shifts and changes.
Art:
Like I said in the preamble, I was taken aback by the mixing of a myriad of art styles, some Kaneko, some Doi and some from guest artists it is a little jarring but it works overall.
The visual design and logic of the world is striking and interesting, fertile ground for further exploration (which we did get).
Character design was handled very well, though most are based on real people which is kinda boring in my opinion as a creative decision.
Music
This is the first mainline soundtrack I like. The music is exciting, unique, unforgettable and a great metric I use is that I can enjoy the music in situ and at the gym. I think the creativity of this composer is probably the most interesting thing about the creativity of the game.
Gameplay
This game's gameplay was just fine to me, I couldn't tell you about challenge because after a few bumps the exploitation of smirks and building demons made the game easy. I think the challenge was more to do with going back and rebuilding when something didn't work but that was not very much effort for the player.
Plot
The story from this game is very interesting as it's reflecting concepts first ideated with SMT 1. And being familiar with that narrative and themes it's an interesting juxtaposition. I enjoyed the loving nod to the history of the franchise through innovation. The story provides an early twist that plays on the comfort of using the opening moments to establish it's narrative and structural boundaries which is not necessarily common in Megaten but has been done before in SMT 3 but much less successfully. I found the characters to be somewhat shallow upon first encounter but even NPCs have story arcs that build the world and develop as the plot shifts and changes.
Art:
Like I said in the preamble, I was taken aback by the mixing of a myriad of art styles, some Kaneko, some Doi and some from guest artists it is a little jarring but it works overall.
The visual design and logic of the world is striking and interesting, fertile ground for further exploration (which we did get).
Character design was handled very well, though most are based on real people which is kinda boring in my opinion as a creative decision.
Music
This is the first mainline soundtrack I like. The music is exciting, unique, unforgettable and a great metric I use is that I can enjoy the music in situ and at the gym. I think the creativity of this composer is probably the most interesting thing about the creativity of the game.
Gameplay
This game's gameplay was just fine to me, I couldn't tell you about challenge because after a few bumps the exploitation of smirks and building demons made the game easy. I think the challenge was more to do with going back and rebuilding when something didn't work but that was not very much effort for the player.