Got the urge to replay this to understand the experience it wants to share and see how well its executed and the experience is interesting to say.

You don't need me to tell you time management is the main challenge here meaning saving and loading is crucial to find the optimum time used during each month/moon phase. With the variety of things needed to be done it makes it rather engaging to deal with and presenting it in a 2000s Light Novel style story/environment really brings it together.

More to be said on the story later but generally the writing suffers from minor issues (strange scriptwriting, plot holes and so on) I consider these minor since it doesn't directly effect the story or shatter suspension of disbelief. (story is the thematic point of plot in case you don't know)

There's also clear balancing issues but honestly the issues are far from capable of taking you out of the experience to even be considered a problem

It should be cheating to make role-playing games based on already well-acclaimed fantasy novels and writers.

Besides the strong writing, there's genuine engagement in the game that's also unique enough to give the game some of your time at the least; it's solo-player monster hunter to keep it short. Worst thing about this is probably its rather less than stellar UI, could be more suited to the games strengths rather than just dropping a generic open-world UI down but most could argue this is more of a nitpick. (no downtime when travelling in open-world games isn't a flaw)

I've been hesitant to get this game since FromSoft been using Demon Souls mechanics to make pure action games (starting with Bloodborne) which isn't really the ideal utilisation of those mechanics since they're more for dungeon-crawling. Sekiro does remedy the smaller issues that would come from it atleast.

As for its story I'll need more time before I can give a say on it

funny exposition dialogue first 10 minutes but ion think it that big an issue since its not a literal story writing problem

got to the side-quest where the demon andras asked me to collect 5 bicorn horns because he needs it to make a potion. the demon andras in actual lore does not make potions meaning this quest exists to pad out content and means nothing haha.

Yea the games good. A genuinely good, well written story and an intricately built world and atmosphere.

There are points I gotta get off my chest though but aren't really worth making a whole review on:

- The setting is meta play on Sonic (The Video Game Icon) existing in the real world. (e.g. Casinopolis, Super Sonic Transformation scene, setting is literally South America but humans distinctively play no role in the story as they are a backdrop)

- The game is meant to be a playable vacation so ironically it's best to play this slow and look around a lot and play with the environments (Trying to move the camera puts you into a first person mode, not because of jank but to simulate a camera/binocular view)

- The gameplay isn't good but it was never the point so it shouldn't really be criticised for it, at worst the action stages bugging out just takes you out the experience, which is easily SA's biggest flaw.

For the love of God, someone make this an actual RPG I beg of you how has it not been made by fans yet i dont understand why people treat this like its a sonic version of Mario 64 when its actually a Sonic version of Metal Gear Solid

A good game ultimately for having everything be relevant, well-thought through and make sense. Although the game can sometimes be rather bland since every action stage rather feels the same, then again that might be an unfair critique from me since the boost is what they're going with here so variety in level design is a near-impossibility. I'd just like more 'Green Hill' level design for speedrunning rather than 'Chemical Plant'

I've been bugged to hell to play more of this since I've put it down for a bit and after picking it back up I'm bored to tears.

Seeing tons praise this for the gameplay but man imagine praising RPGs, games that are inspired by D&D (the point of D&D isn't how "fun" and complex the mechanics are) and not its story, world and atmosphere than it fails.

This game is made for people who call Nocturne "hard to get into" for its mechanics and ignoring literally everything else about it. But I never finished an SMT game ever so what do I know. (i'll try to finish this eventually might have the best story out of all of the Atlus games so far).

Got an urge to replay this even though I was moments from finishing this only because when I try to collect my thoughts on it, nothing came to mind. Going to go for an hour of playtime a day because binging adventure/story heavy games is never a good idea.

Also with the context of playing the first SMT game, I find it cool this game seems to be a character study but not just of the game characters but the player themselves. Previously the games would tell you to remain balanced but here the game explicitly calls out to the player themselves (player character no longer has backstory + plenty of cutscene direction that have character stare at the screen). It's a matter of who you see yourself in that would influence your choice.

played this instead of going into a uni lecture and was worth it

I've comeback to adventure after doing some research.

I originally saw Sonic Adventure as an Action-Adventure platformer but now it's clear it's actually an Adventure-Action game.

In other words, this is an adventure game with action elements rather than an action game with adventure elements.

It's also extremely campy and I love that.

Reading this with a friend and got about 5 chapters in the ciel(?) route and man, is it common for VNs to just like.. Not be finished? IDK maybe I should read more

Encouraged exploration but act of exploring leaves things to be desires (I notice my brain turning off as I move around) but it's still rewarding to experiment with areas you can go too which was something mostly prominent in IV

Disappointing to see this be so generic considering what came before. In terms of presentation and gameplay. (Pointless/redundant tutorials, aesthetically forgettable presentation) Still more watchable than persona's '90% nothing' visual novel ass cutscenes