I've just played this for the first time. Starting with the bad, the tone of the game is completely inconsistent, and I wish it had retained its dark character from the first arc of the story. There are several slumps throughout the game and some areas are dull. The combat mechanics are pretty messed up such that one level can be the difference between you being on par with enemies and you being nearly useless. I once got save state locked into a boss fight that I couldn't possibly win and ended up cheating to get through.

On the positive side, the music is good, some environments are really cool, and the setting, themes, and some of the game's mechanics must have been innovative for the game's time. Some side quests you do actually cause the a town to be further developed and open up new side arcs. There's a major theme of life and death that the story carries in many ways, even discovered when talking to townspeople sometimes. It feels sometimes a little grim, yet there's depth to it and it's really satisfying to experience, especially when it's a SNES game from 1995. The ending is beautiful and caused one of the major songs to go from evoking a comfortable vibe to evoking something like an ambiguous positive melancholy.

I ended up feeling let down by the what the initial arc of the game seemed to promise, but there were enough high points and impressive qualities along the way that I'll remember this fondly. It's possible that had I played it back then, it could have been a personal favorite.

don't care that the frame rate is awful; don't care that the combat is asinine; don't care that the game is unpolished, janky, ugly, and poorly considered in every respect; don't care that it was subject to predatory dlc; don't care that accord's requests are emblematic of some of the worst there is in side quest design; don't care don't care don't care

what i do care about is that this is the ultimate manifestation of YT's disinclination to work in games juxtaposed with his earnest belief in the medium as a vessel for greater things. in his grimmest failure, he finds light at the end of the tunnel. an astonishing exercise in empathy generation, one of the best finales in a game, and the only one of yoko taro's works that makes great use of backwards scripting + sequential playthroughs

This game is honestly unforgivably bad. And it's 50 hours long, the story was so obviously re-written to be a JRPG, this mainly applies to the boss fights which were these scenarios clearly written in the context of an action game. The party members range from one cool dude who doesn't get much story to one chick who's there for an insanely dumb reason if you stop to think about it and the most annoying character in an rgg game period. Not to mention that when the time comes for badass boss fights that is only related to Ichiban, these goobers feel like they don't deserve any place in these boss fights whatsoever.

Yokohama is a very boring map that has places that really just don't have any activities to engage in. The only undeniably good part about this game is the management mini game, which feels like it had more thought put into it in than the core gameplay and main story.

I can only hope RGG's next game is good after the low point that is 6 into Kiwami 2 into 7. This series was so godlike man.