I played Persona 5 Dancing in the Starlight before playing this, and I can see why some people dislike that one compared to this. This has a lot of effort put into it for a spin off rhythm game. Like a full 10 hour, fully voiced story mode? Is the story good? Not really at all, but it’s definitely appreciated. The writing isn't great and feels super fan fiction-ey, and sometimes boarders the line of Kingdom Hearts level of annoying (just replace the word Heart with Bonds). Rise’s and Naouto’s new voice actors are kinda distracting, but they do a decent job imitating the old voices. But compared to 5s story and characters, there is WAY more effort put into this than the dumb confidants way of doing things in that game. And 5s makes me totally hate almost all the characters. The only character in this one that kind of felt like they were written differently and kinda got on my nerves was Nauto, she felt like a stereotype of herself. My one big complaint with the story mode though is how LONG it is. It’s impressive how much dialog they recorded for this game but oh my god does it take forever. Each chapter is basically made up of 3 Dances, and a chapter takes an hour to get through, so your playing the game for about 10 minutes worth of time then listening to people talk for 50 mins. It would be fine if the story was better, but like I said its kinda Fan Fiction lite. If anything, I guess it made me really look forward to when a song was about to come up I guess, because the remixes are pretty good. Otherwise, Atlus may have succeeded in making its most hate able character ever, Kanami, who is scientifically engineered to get on my nerves in almost every possible way, (maybe Mishima’s worse though, idk). Also, I don’t fully understand the special episode. Was it to just demonstrate that the story isn't cannon? Either way, the interviews in that chapter is the best writing in the whole game and felt closest in line to Persona 4’s writing, so I accept that part as cannon.