Holy fucking shit. Can't even begin to express how much my expectations were surpassed with this one. Spending nearly 3 months of my life on this due to work cutting in the way of playing it and wanting to actually shoot for all 4 endings has left me all but satisfied and sated. What this lacks in story (which isn't even bad it's just very minimal and your enjoyment of what's happening is really going to depend on that) it more than makes up for with its depth and difficulty.

While nowhere near as mean as SMT4 or even Nocturne for that matter it readily and quickly reminds you just how important buffs and debuffs are. And god bless it for actually being difficult. Can't even describe the feeling of bringing down Shiva after multiple play-throughs of building my team up specifically to take him down. Really feel if you ever really wanted to sell someone on turn based combat and how it can be genuinely intense it would definitely be this.

Despite everything being a straight banger in the gameplay department it is crusty as fuck with ugly pop in (THANKS UNREAL ENGINE!) and runs like poop due to its hardware, but it sure as hell didn't matter to me the moment that ending credits theme came up after acquiring the true ending. Also, downright obsessed with the cinematography in the cutscenes for this, the zooms and camera tilting constantly is so cool and unique.

So yeah I guess I kinda liked the Dark Souls of Persona 5, but I sure won't be picking it up again for a while after nearly 130 hours of it lmao.

Oh, and do play this one in Japanese. Unlike P5 the dub is not that bueno lol.