Good game, as someone who has played all the persona spin-offs this game was actually very refreshing in the ways it plays with the formula. If you've played past persona games a lot of these concepts won't be new but the people making it clearly know that and do interesting things with that in mind (the characters even joke about it), in my opinion. A reveal that is usually shown at the end of this kind of game is actually done at the end of the first world, the characters themselves figuring out things quicker than in other similar titles. Not every old concept is played with a ton but enough are to make this a game standout, as well as having a good story centered around the new characters.

The Phantom Thieves, while not having character arcs of their own, do play a part in the story in nice ways. They exist to help the new characters and I thought it was done well, they aren't completely flanderized and are given more to do then repeat their respective bits. They get to express what they went though in pretty touching ways and it's nice seeing them emphasize with the new characters.

The gameplay is a lot of fun, the systems in place give enough to think about to make it enjoyable throughout. It's a very rush down system which fits with the vibe and it's really satisfying to perform as efficiently as possible. Doing a full enemy wipe across the entire map in one move is simply orgasmic. The idea to make each element perfom differently in regards to status effects and movement of the enemies is really cool. Makes every character feel more unique and adds is a fun way to switch out party members depending on the map.

As a persona spin-off, it is one of the better ones if not the best (although I would need it to settle in my mind as I have just beaten it at the time of me writing this).

I came with an open mind and left without one.

This game is interesting, a lot of it in bad ways but I give it credit for taking up space and going over it in my head. Unfortunately, all those thoughts lead to a conclusion of either apathy or frustration. Lots of words have been spilled but what the game wants to be is not presented. There's tons of dialogue describing who these characters are but barely any showing it. Like, Alex is a gamer, right? He talks about it maybe 2 times and never mentions it again. Almost every element is like this, it is gestures to ideas but never meets them. Because this game is a master of communication a lot of discussion on the meaning of the story goes around, my take is that it's a cautionary tale of what not to do. Alex in a roundabout way is a representation of the player and he ends the game telling us not to make the same mistakes as he did and we get absorbed into him. That presumably being a metaphor for finishing the game. Is it good?

The gameplay is monotonous, in a regular menu rpg selecting actions is such a quick and easy process that for me, it is hard to get tired of. However, with yiik almost everything is a mini-game, I did in fact get tired of it. Other than selecting the most optimal attacks there isn't much strategy so all I'm left with is doing the same mini-game from the start of the game to the end of the game.

The game does look nice and the tunes are good sometimes. I appreciate the hustle, the self aggrandizing gets a bit much. That's the name of the game with yiik, isnt it?

Nice little treat. Your millage will very a lot as a lot of my enjoyment was from the lost media aspect of this game. I felt like an archaeologist uncovering secrets from the past. I'm also a huge fan of persona 1 so some extra stuff like this is a big draw. The game itself though isn't anything that special, I will admit a lot of my enjoyment is from factors that exist around it then things it does itself. But art doesn't exist in a vacuum and those factors are very interesting to me. I don't want to sell the game completely short though, as I think it is impressive how much they were able to fit persona 1 into a flip phone, along with that the game loop is enjoyable enough. It's like a mix of persona 1 and 3. Unfortunately, there is no substantial plot and besides a few interesting moments it is mostly nothing. I enjoyed my time regardless.

This is unfortunately the worst game I've ever beaten. You know how critics back in the day would go like "oh this is so painful" and do a bunch of unfunny bits about how agonizing it is to consume a piece of media? I actually felt that exaggerated level of pain when I played this game because of how slow and meaningless it all felt. The gameplay is so ok I can't say much about it (kinda neat that you can summon the same demon a bunch of times if you get them, I think it's the only megaten game where you can do that) but the waiting it forces you to go through is unbearable. Some of the later maps are gigantic, filled with enemies with placement that is designed to waste your time, forcing you to go to each corner of the map to kill every enemy. The enemy turn time is the main problem, the game goes to each enemy unit on the map and determines if it can do anything from where it is, and if it can't it will move 1 or 2 spaces for no reason. That process can go on for like 10 minutes or longer sometimes I swear. It feels like Chinese water torture, the repitition weared away at me something fierce. And when I say meaningless I really mean it because this game has next to no story, read the smt wiki page on it and you will get everything the game tells you, more actually because some of the context from the manuel is in the wiki page write up.

It's a shame because the art and music are good, it sounds very nice and looks really good, very detailed pixel art. The main designs for the hero and heroine are cool and some of the art in the manuel is actually pretty cute and made me want to like them as a couple, but they don't chracterize them enough for me to care or feel anything. I unfortunately can't listen to a lot of the tracks either because I literally get a pit in my stomache when I listen to some of it and feel sick (not a joke, I got pavlov dog-ed into hating it).
This is the worst megaten game to me and I don't think anything will top it.

Pro gamer tip: you can turn of battle animations, it's the first option in settings. Also there is a translated English script of the game provided by AutisticTranslator, use that if you want to play this game.

This game gets a lot of flack for being ugly and that's usually where discussion of it begins and end; which is not only pretty vapid criticism but a shame because there's some neat stuff in it. For one the story is crazy, tons of weird stuff is constantly happening or being revealed, like at one point your fighting the cyborg Japanese military with advanced microwave technology alongside robot Muhammad Ali (who is a party member) and the next moment you have to rescue Joan of Arc from being burned at the stake. The game goes places and for that reason I find it to actually be better then the first 2, which I found pretty boring for the most part. It even does some neat stuff with the mythology it focuses on, that being zoroastrianism (check out AutisticTranslators reddit post for more details on that). Honestly, I like that it's ugly too, there's a certain charm from these horrid early CGI attempts, I can't hate it. Especially with how much effort was put in, there's a lot of models and enviroments they made for one off set pieces, it's clear they put a lot of work into it and I feel like there's a base level of respect it should be given (even if it looks really bad). Like, they even do a Final Fantasy VII and make new character models for the climax, it's neat.

The main problem with the game is how slow it is, even after turning off the battle animations (although somehow still faster than the first 2). Because of that I can't really say the gameplay is good, it's servicable and sometimes I had fun with it but for the most part I was just going through it. A lot of the elements felt tedious but had some intrigue to them. Like the demon contract system is neat but it's a pain to acutally get demons until a certain point in the game where they give you a compendium, until that point demons are kinda usless because of how limited of a resource they are. Demon negotiation does not work like you might think, you have to kill a demon and then there's a chance a negotiation will occur, and only with certain party memebers. It's pretty rare to get one from the field and I got most of mine from fusion and abusing the compedium. Make sure to do demon item fusion by the way, very important, it's where you'll get most of your gear. But once you amass enough resources to engage with the systems in a meaningful way it can actually be neat, demon contracts are similar to demon wispering from 4, where you can get some moves from some the demons.

A lot of people say this is the worst megaten game, and as some one who has actually played a good deal of them I can't agree at all. This game is good, I think. I had fun with it.

Also how can a game that has Lucifer reincarnated into the body of a baby who then becomes a party memeber be bad, huh? Answer me that.