While the game is absolutely filled to the brim with soul from its atmospheric cutscenes and artstyle to its cheesy-yet-cool dialogue, I just don't find myself enjoying actually playing it. The bizarre genre mix of racing and JRPG is really interesting but in my experience the JRPG aspect doesn't really do much but drag down the game for me. It's crazy that there's an overworld map with random encounters in a racing game..but I much prefer full-length races and it's annoying to find what you're looking for on the map. It's cool how much you can customize your car with parts won from races and level it up with exp...but it's annoying not knowing if my car is underleveled or if I'm just not racing well enough and you can't directly compare enemy parts to your own before buying them. On top of it all, it's hard not to compare the actual handling to other racing games like ridge racer type 4 and find it pretty stiff. Cool game, wish I liked it more than I do.