Totally slop of the century and to date the most boring and uninspired Atlus RPG. Persona 3 was already the worst game in the franchise with the shitty story and cringe writing. It's full of stuff that's just never explained, as well as stuff that just makes no sense that you are just kind of expected to go along with it and not question it. Normally I don't like to nitpick stories of games I play but lots of people like to slob on this game's knob regarding it's narrative and characters and story beats and whatnot which I just can't get behind imo. I think that out of all the annoying and edgy slop that Katsura Hashino pumps out every time Atlus makes an important game, this is EASILY his worst, even worse than the nothingburger that was Nocturne's story. This game being an Atlus game automatically makes it better than most of the anime slop coming out these days like Tales of Arise and Fire Emblem something.... but I'm not rocking with dating high schoolers anymore like when i was 14 and i know you aren't FORCED to, but it's much harder to avoid in this game, like you can't finish a social link with any woman in the game without being given the option to date them or without them saying some shit like "I love you....something-kun" like hellllll nah I am not trying to go to prison over playing mid... I just find it uncomfortable and cringe whenever they write a forced love confession scene, typical weirdo beach episode or "ahh you pervert!!" hot spring scene into the game. It's messed up man. I am no longer this game's target audience and while that is okay, I am just upset that Atlus can get away with all of this weirdo bullshit and that Persona's strongest soldiers are allowed within 500 feet of any school. And this is just scratching the surface but I'm not really going to get into it. It's boring and way too similar to the original in like every bad way. I got it on gamepass tho so idc i'm cooling...

Low key katsura hashino should never be allowed to write another game ever again. Every character is either edgelord cringe "philosophical" slop or just an anime stereotype in everything he ever writes. This game is still sick because the fighting is really fun and the dungeons get pretty creative but sometimes feel a bit too labyrinthian and copy-pasted around. This game's shortcomings lie mostly in the boring but all around pretty unobtrusive story that you can mash through easily enough to get back to the fun part. I also think that the game funnels you into using certain demons and has other demons be rpetty much useless or fusion fodder which kind of sucks, so you'll be seeing the same demons over and over in your party between playthroughs unlike something like pokemon where you usually have a lot of freedom in how you structure your team. It's also pretty much mandatory that demi fiend is a physical character which i find annoying. They still do this shit in SMT5 where you're at a huge disadvantage if you chose to do a magic build over physical which is annoying and vice versa in SMT4. End of the day this game is not relevant anymore and they won't fix this stuff cause it won't get remade. Maybe if there was more going on dates with high schoolers and cool awesome nippon defender warrior ramen side quests it would get more attention but it's probably better if they leave it.