This was a game that at first, I really couldn't see myself having that great of a time with. I found the whole resource management part of the game to be extremely tedious, and the demon loyalty system to be very annoying to play around. And I did really feel this way for a little while.

However there came a point where I realized I was having a lot of fun with it. I don't know if it was whether it finally clicked for me and I fell into a groove, or if I finally accepted it for what it was instead of wishing it played exactly like mainline smt. I think realistically a little bit of both. I also certainly have to give a little bit of leniency to the mechanics designed for a game that originally came out in 1997.

With some practice and some time invested I found the systems which I found annoying at first to work extremely well with the overall gameplay loop that this game was going for. I'm not gonna miss the loyalty system in any other megaten game, but ,I will admit it sort of worked here.

This game also has some absolutely fantastic dungeons. I'm a huge dungeon crawler fan and a lot of the later ones in this game stack right up with some of my favorites. Pair this with the resource management that I found tedious at first and it was always a joy mapping out everything.

I also found the narrative to be pretty good, if not a little cheesy because it was written like 25 years ago about the future of technology, but I cared about the characters a lot .

This game is also really short. I rolled credits at a decent bit under 20 hours and frankly, the fact that this game doesn't overstay it's welcome or even come close to it makes it a little easier to appreciate.

All in all this is probably far from my favorite game in the series but if you're able to appreciate it for what it is, it's a pretty good time.