Weeeell it took me nine months but I finally beat this game!!! I started it on my SMT journey last Spring but got interrupted by the release of Tears of the Kingdom and never got back to it until recently. I realized that Persona 3 Reload was coming out soon and I didn't want this game on my backlog anymore while I was playing that so I decided to crank it out.

And boy am I glad I did! Pretty much where I left off was where it was starting to get good. Met the Ring of Gaea and Ashura-Kai and got right to it.

Overall loved the game, it felt like a mix between the best parts of III and Strange Journey, and is very much so a spiritual remake of the very first game, which I really enjoyed.

Characters were kinda meh, the Law and Chaos hero were kinda whatever as characters, pretty much as bare-bones as it gets. In SJ I really sympathized with Jimenez and hated Zelenin and in this one the two dudes kinda melded together to me. I also miss when the Law and Chaos heroes would change form by the end of the game -- I know they technically turn into Makabarah (or whatever) and Lucifer I GUESS but come on, that's not them.

Another complaint is the god awful navigation of this game. When I knew where to go it didn't even matter because I never knew HOW TO GET anywhere. The overworld map is a fucking road system made of spaghetti noodles, roads lead nowhere, there is no sense of direction whatsoever, all the shit looks the same, and the map on the bottom screen doesn't give me any sort of useful information whatsoever. Icons don't pop up telling me what building I'm hovering over or where Shinjiuku is in relation to Shibuya or anything that can help me.

Also, this game is SLOWWWWWWW. Takes me so long to get from one place to the other, and I KNOW I missed the ferry that can take you across Tokyo's map instantly, but even that wouldn't help too much. Flynn walks too slow, you can't skip cutscenes (you can hold X that makes dialogue go faster, doesn't increase the speed of a cutscene though,) Buroughs talks so fucking much... Oh my god! I played the last hours of this game on a time crunch so every second I spent wasted waiting for Buroughs to analyze something or say something like "where do you want to go?" in a Terminal was fucking agonizing.

Now, as for the good, the atmosphere is wonderful. Getting to Tokyo for the first time and seeing the state of it after coming from Mikado was really something else. What a premise for a story, huh? Really super interesting. I especially love the time travel/ alternate dimension type shit they have going on, I love the kind of time loop shenanigans they threw in by the end. Going to different versions of Tokyo was so fucking cool.

This game was also a decent challenge. Wasn't too hard, but it wasn't easy either. Final boss took me a couple of tries but once I got it it was so satisfying to beat, especially after all the time I spent dwelling on this game.

Overall a fantastic game. I can't wait to play IV Apocalypse and continue my SMT journey -- but that's gonna have to wait because Persona 3 Reload comes out this week!!!!!!! I probably rank this one below Strange Journey and III but not by much. Still better than the SNES games. (duh.)

Basically after I play Reload I'm probably going to finally play The Answer while I'm on my Persona kick and then play 4 Arena and 5 Strikers. Then if I'm still up for it I'll try to finish off the mainline SMT games.

Depending on if the translation for NINE is out by then the order will probably be:
Reload > The Answer > 4 Arena/Ultimax > 5 Strikers > NINE /or IV A > V.

Then... that'll be that... Who knows!!