Take some of the fun aesthetics of the later Persona games and mix them with a bunch of questionable design decisions and a story that's very blah with a deus ex junkina of a reveal toward the end based on so very little reasoning.
Demon fusion feels half-assed, with four skills (upgradable to six EVENTUALLY) making every demon feel rather lackluster in their abilities. Sure, the restriction of choices should teach you to value your demons more, but there's so much overlap between various demons that it hardly feels like the endgame choices matter as much. And if you got yourself a demon you like before you unlocked your sixth skill slot? Well, hope you like teaching stuff to your Mitamas and fusing them with your demons, because that's about the only way you're going to be able to flesh out your skill set further.
I do like the inclusion of flavored Frosts, and I don't really care that much about the fusion system being completely basic (no moon phases to sweat or account for, no accidents, just vanilla fusing). I do take issue with the fact that it's ridiculously expensive to use the compendium and that performing sidequests to lower the cost only drops demon summoning costs by what...15 or 20%? Makes endgame mixing and matching fruitless because you don't want to spend all your money on just trying to hone a demon into something you'd specifically like.
Why? Because of COMP ingredient farming. Seemed like a great idea at first, as it makes all encounters seem fruitful when you're potentially getting ingredients needed for certain upgrades to your COMP system to make you more powerful. Except not every enemy drops an ingredient and ignoring any enemies in an area means you're likely missing out on ingredients necessary for some upgrades. So, why wouldn't you just fight every monster?
Because monster encounter rates are ridiculous to the point of exhaustion. Ringo moves slowly in her "run" and only Treasure Monsters actually try and flee from you, so you will spend most of the game slashing at monsters to knock them down and then fight them or go around them. And when I say most, I mean that in my 50 hours or so of playing, probably around 40-42 was spent slashing at monsters and engaging in combat. It's a genuine slog of the worst caliber. But if the level design is nice, doesn't that mitigate the issues, at least?
Except the level designs are poor. Early on, you're introduced to the Soul Matrix and you learn that you're going to be spending some time there if you want to be remotely equipped for the main areas of the game. There's a soul matrix area for each character with a number of floors that you can reach over time, though I won't get into how you unlock those floors. The floors for the soul matrix all look relatively the same, with some slight variations in how to progress in them that give a mild puzzle-feel to the area, but not in a clever or interesting way.
The actual areas of the game where the story progresses feel even more vanilla, with the exception of the final area of the game, which is a great time if you enjoy load screens and continuously backtracking to make progress.
I'd like to say that the boss fights make all the grinding and slogging worthwhile, but they don't stand out any bit more than previous SMT games do. Without the Press Turn system, there's no pressure on the player to sweat mistakes as hard, and especially no pressure to sweat demon choices, as being weak to something might cause you to take more damage, but does not give enemies more actions, so stress in the big fights is minimal. The Sabboth system seems like something that can be interesting, but it ultimately just culminates into getting all your Press Turn bonuses thrown into a stack that yields extra damage at the end of the turn. The Commander skills you eventually learn are alright, but outside of two particular ones, you can largely skip on most of them without bothering to scour for resources to unlock them.
I'd like to touch on the Soul Level system, but I'm trying to keep this relatively spoiler-free, so I'll just say that in regards to it, you can't really make any wrong choices (including during Hangouts), so go wild and unlock things in the direction that you want (unless you're going for platinum, in which case, go check a guide).
Sidequests are nothingburgers, the music is okay, everyone who isn't Milady is okay (Milady is great once you get past the "I'm a cold badass" bit) -- most of the game is just okay.
A friend I talked to that was also playing the game purchased the DLC (I don't know if she picked up the additional story level) and mentioned to me that regarding the costume DLC -- apparently, it only lets displays your equipped costumes in battle. Not during your constant running around or cutscenes, just battles. That sounds awful and if I recall correctly, it's like 13 USD for that, so even if you're interested in playing this, maybe consider passing on that particular DLC.
For reference, I played this on Normal all the way through. You can change your difficulty at any given point so if I'm being frank about getting the most enjoyment out of this by mitigating some of the frustration, I'd say to just play on Easy until you get to boss fights and then run it on Normal so you can at least get a feel for what the actual experience should be like without having to spend quite as much time grinding the regular demon battles.
Is it worth getting? If you're a diehard SMT fan, you're going to get it anyway. If you're looking at it as a curiosity, it feels closer in nature (to me, at least) to Digital Devil Saga. I'd say to absolutely wait on a sale for it, because the story and the content in general just simply are not worth it. There are so many better SMT games out there. Go play the first Soul Hackers, or any of the Persona games (maybe not the first). Go play NOCTURNE.
You can do better than this, because ATLUS could have done better than this.
Demon fusion feels half-assed, with four skills (upgradable to six EVENTUALLY) making every demon feel rather lackluster in their abilities. Sure, the restriction of choices should teach you to value your demons more, but there's so much overlap between various demons that it hardly feels like the endgame choices matter as much. And if you got yourself a demon you like before you unlocked your sixth skill slot? Well, hope you like teaching stuff to your Mitamas and fusing them with your demons, because that's about the only way you're going to be able to flesh out your skill set further.
I do like the inclusion of flavored Frosts, and I don't really care that much about the fusion system being completely basic (no moon phases to sweat or account for, no accidents, just vanilla fusing). I do take issue with the fact that it's ridiculously expensive to use the compendium and that performing sidequests to lower the cost only drops demon summoning costs by what...15 or 20%? Makes endgame mixing and matching fruitless because you don't want to spend all your money on just trying to hone a demon into something you'd specifically like.
Why? Because of COMP ingredient farming. Seemed like a great idea at first, as it makes all encounters seem fruitful when you're potentially getting ingredients needed for certain upgrades to your COMP system to make you more powerful. Except not every enemy drops an ingredient and ignoring any enemies in an area means you're likely missing out on ingredients necessary for some upgrades. So, why wouldn't you just fight every monster?
Because monster encounter rates are ridiculous to the point of exhaustion. Ringo moves slowly in her "run" and only Treasure Monsters actually try and flee from you, so you will spend most of the game slashing at monsters to knock them down and then fight them or go around them. And when I say most, I mean that in my 50 hours or so of playing, probably around 40-42 was spent slashing at monsters and engaging in combat. It's a genuine slog of the worst caliber. But if the level design is nice, doesn't that mitigate the issues, at least?
Except the level designs are poor. Early on, you're introduced to the Soul Matrix and you learn that you're going to be spending some time there if you want to be remotely equipped for the main areas of the game. There's a soul matrix area for each character with a number of floors that you can reach over time, though I won't get into how you unlock those floors. The floors for the soul matrix all look relatively the same, with some slight variations in how to progress in them that give a mild puzzle-feel to the area, but not in a clever or interesting way.
The actual areas of the game where the story progresses feel even more vanilla, with the exception of the final area of the game, which is a great time if you enjoy load screens and continuously backtracking to make progress.
I'd like to say that the boss fights make all the grinding and slogging worthwhile, but they don't stand out any bit more than previous SMT games do. Without the Press Turn system, there's no pressure on the player to sweat mistakes as hard, and especially no pressure to sweat demon choices, as being weak to something might cause you to take more damage, but does not give enemies more actions, so stress in the big fights is minimal. The Sabboth system seems like something that can be interesting, but it ultimately just culminates into getting all your Press Turn bonuses thrown into a stack that yields extra damage at the end of the turn. The Commander skills you eventually learn are alright, but outside of two particular ones, you can largely skip on most of them without bothering to scour for resources to unlock them.
I'd like to touch on the Soul Level system, but I'm trying to keep this relatively spoiler-free, so I'll just say that in regards to it, you can't really make any wrong choices (including during Hangouts), so go wild and unlock things in the direction that you want (unless you're going for platinum, in which case, go check a guide).
Sidequests are nothingburgers, the music is okay, everyone who isn't Milady is okay (Milady is great once you get past the "I'm a cold badass" bit) -- most of the game is just okay.
A friend I talked to that was also playing the game purchased the DLC (I don't know if she picked up the additional story level) and mentioned to me that regarding the costume DLC -- apparently, it only lets displays your equipped costumes in battle. Not during your constant running around or cutscenes, just battles. That sounds awful and if I recall correctly, it's like 13 USD for that, so even if you're interested in playing this, maybe consider passing on that particular DLC.
For reference, I played this on Normal all the way through. You can change your difficulty at any given point so if I'm being frank about getting the most enjoyment out of this by mitigating some of the frustration, I'd say to just play on Easy until you get to boss fights and then run it on Normal so you can at least get a feel for what the actual experience should be like without having to spend quite as much time grinding the regular demon battles.
Is it worth getting? If you're a diehard SMT fan, you're going to get it anyway. If you're looking at it as a curiosity, it feels closer in nature (to me, at least) to Digital Devil Saga. I'd say to absolutely wait on a sale for it, because the story and the content in general just simply are not worth it. There are so many better SMT games out there. Go play the first Soul Hackers, or any of the Persona games (maybe not the first). Go play NOCTURNE.
You can do better than this, because ATLUS could have done better than this.