Slightly unpopular opinion, but I think this might be my personal favorite SMT game. The story is a bit whatever and unrealized which sucks, but it was able to at least keep me intrigued before disappointing me. However, the minimalist story makes it easy to ignore, as 90% of your playtime will be in the game itself, and oh boy, its fucking peak. The accumulation of small changes to press turn over time all culminate together in my personal favorite JRPG battle system of all time, coupled with difficulty that requires you to push it to its maximum potential. No other game will have me contemplating and googling fusions for hours just to create my perfect little demon squad to tear down everything in my way after a little planning and strategy, and I never got bored of it at all during my time. The only minor complaint I can give is regular enemy strength is a little too high imo which caused me to skip a lot of them. If you like turn based RPGs, this is a must play.

A step down from 0 in my opinion, mostly due to what I feel was a little untapped potential for a lot of the characters. I loved that many characters that were more sidelined in 0 got a spotlight in this game, but I feel like their personal arcs and motivations could be more expanded on, especially Shimano and Nishiki's. However, I personally enjoyed Kiryu's development in this game, and I really want to see how his story still develops. Overall solid game, but I wasn't wowed as much compared to 0.