This will be the only game I ever give a star rating to, purely because of what it means to me. I'm honestly not gonna rant on Akiba's Beat too long, since I'd be here forever and I know it would turn into gushing, but I do still feel my judgement is valid having played the game several times and watching a relative play through another recently.
The main point I want to state with this review is that this game is NOT soulless, and I still can't understand where this reputation emerged from. Everything from the dialogue to the item descriptions to the narrative to the voice acting... this game is absolutely a work of passion. I definitely respect that the story isn't for everyone, but the love that was poured into this game both by the original team and the western localisation team shines through no matter what. Regardless of anything else, I'd absolutely recommend Beat on heart alone, with its somewhat satirical yet genuine core narrative about escapism and isolation. I've talked with a couple of people who worked on the game, and the one apparent thing every time is how much passion they put into it.
With that out of the way, all I can really say is this game was pivotal to me in more ways than I can describe. Its characters and themes were and still are a huge comfort to me, and the core theme of moving into the future while carrying memories of the past has helped me time and time again. It lets you know that it's okay to fantasise and escape every now and again, since it's those daydreams that motivate us to catch our goals in reality, and that's always been really powerful imo. To quit my emotional stuff for a moment, the plot straight up bangs and the characters are brilliant. Regardless of if you find them predictable or not, there's some really cool and compelling concepts in here that are grounded well by the setting and characters.
Beat definitely shows some indie roughness in a few QoL aspects but nothing will ever stop me from loving it, even now I find new reasons to appreciate it. It just saddens me that people could call it heartless.
To make one last comment: As someone who has played the first portion of Persona 5, they are nothing alike. This isn't to do with quality or my opinion, just objectively, the story themes are completely unrelated, the gameplay isn't the same genre, even the structure of the narrative is completely different. I can confidently say that people who compared this game to P5 did so because of the similar release dates and/or not playing enough games with mindscapes for environments. I have the same things to say about P4 too. A much more apt comparison would be Tokyo Xanadu eX+, another game I greatly enjoyed, and I can confidently say that if you enjoy one then it's highly likely you'll also enjoy the other.
The main point I want to state with this review is that this game is NOT soulless, and I still can't understand where this reputation emerged from. Everything from the dialogue to the item descriptions to the narrative to the voice acting... this game is absolutely a work of passion. I definitely respect that the story isn't for everyone, but the love that was poured into this game both by the original team and the western localisation team shines through no matter what. Regardless of anything else, I'd absolutely recommend Beat on heart alone, with its somewhat satirical yet genuine core narrative about escapism and isolation. I've talked with a couple of people who worked on the game, and the one apparent thing every time is how much passion they put into it.
With that out of the way, all I can really say is this game was pivotal to me in more ways than I can describe. Its characters and themes were and still are a huge comfort to me, and the core theme of moving into the future while carrying memories of the past has helped me time and time again. It lets you know that it's okay to fantasise and escape every now and again, since it's those daydreams that motivate us to catch our goals in reality, and that's always been really powerful imo. To quit my emotional stuff for a moment, the plot straight up bangs and the characters are brilliant. Regardless of if you find them predictable or not, there's some really cool and compelling concepts in here that are grounded well by the setting and characters.
Beat definitely shows some indie roughness in a few QoL aspects but nothing will ever stop me from loving it, even now I find new reasons to appreciate it. It just saddens me that people could call it heartless.
To make one last comment: As someone who has played the first portion of Persona 5, they are nothing alike. This isn't to do with quality or my opinion, just objectively, the story themes are completely unrelated, the gameplay isn't the same genre, even the structure of the narrative is completely different. I can confidently say that people who compared this game to P5 did so because of the similar release dates and/or not playing enough games with mindscapes for environments. I have the same things to say about P4 too. A much more apt comparison would be Tokyo Xanadu eX+, another game I greatly enjoyed, and I can confidently say that if you enjoy one then it's highly likely you'll also enjoy the other.