I was really hoping I would like this game more. I love the combat and the story is really interesting. The combat in particular is something I respect a lot, because it takes a lot of guts to make weird feeling combat for the sake of backing up your themes. For most games, those two things would be enough to keep my interest for the whole game. However, to me it feels like a solid 70% of this game's gameplay isn't about either of those things, and is instead about wandering around Shibuya. I don't know what it is about the exploration in this game, but I hate it. Maybe it's because I never figured out how to actually read the map. Maybe it's because I keep accidentally walking into and out of shops because the movement is a little weird. Regardless, whenever it came to do the whole "walking around" thing, it always made me want to play something else, and I'm at a point in my life where I don't really have enough time to play something with a bunch of low stretches between high peaks.

Sega seemed to have had a problem determining the balance between making the game fun and making the game hard. Usually I'd say these things can coexist without issue, but in Sonic's case the fun in Sonic is so heavily built around going fast that challenging gameplay actually does go against that philosophy. I'd say there are only a couple levels early on that were genuinely "fast" for me, everything else felt more akin to wandering around. There were actually multiple times I felt lost, especially in late game levels. I realize that this is not an uncommon criticism, in fact it actually feels rather embarrassing to talk badly about Sonic games because you get lumped in with That Crowd, but it did impact my enjoyment of the game pretty heavily.

tl;dr the police standing outside of Yuji Naka's house is a trap designed to prevent him from just walking forward

I did not think I'd like this game. It's about as classic as you can get, there's little in terms of story, and the soundtrack sucks. Despite this, I found myself greatly enjoying the game after some initial discomfort (it is not fun with anything but a full party), and before I knew it, I was finishing the game with almost all the side content complete. (Note: at the time of writing this, I still intend to go and do post-game, but have not yet.)

The character building in this game is really good. Managing equipment and skill trees is very engaging for me, and it really feels like all the decisions you make in regards to building characters matter. The combat is a lot more built around RNG than I thought it'd be, but there's enough room for strategy in there to make it feel like something to work around rather than something to be at the mercy of. Another huge point in the combat's favor is that status effects actually work on bosses. It's not every the time, but it's enough for it to feel like using characters or abilities that are based around status actually feels like something viable, which is more than I can say about a ton of other RPGs. One caveat is that I was playing with the Draconian Quests for Stronger Monsters and Reduced EXP from Easy Fights, and I think the game would've been significantly more boring without those. The game not letting you turn them on after the start is a mistake, I think, when there is no real reason to do so other than to prevent people from getting achievements more easily, I guess.

As for the story, it's barely there. Usually I play RPGs for the story elements but for this one I quickly decided I just wasn't gonna have any expectations for this game's, and I'm glad I didn't. The occasional impactful scene came as a pleasant surprise, where as the rest of the "adventure of the week" type plots stayed mildly entertaining instead of disappointing.

Overall, I think this game is a great JRPG that got me interested in a series that I've been writing off for the last several years.

UPDATE: I played the post game. Note that I do not say finished; combat loses some luster once you get into late game, imo. The plot is actually pretty interesting in the postgame, but the combat and specifically the character building starts devolving. Eventually you get to a point where it stops feeling like making big choices about your new abilities and more like just checking boxes off of the list. Similarly, combat starts getting homogenized down to one-size-fits-all strategies (Magic Burst spam). I don't really hold any of this against the game; after all, it's post game, and I feel bad for punishing the game for having too much content, because I imagine there are people out there who enjoyed having all of it, even if that person wasn't me.