Ah yes, now I can completely repel women.
Shin Megami Tensei IV for the Citra Canary 2670 is an amazing game. It just has it all! JPGs with stats, retarded AIs, blue people that scare you more than any horror game after you whiff your attack on them, funny man Walter the fisherman, suicidal tendencies and three consecutive megidolaons given to you by fucking Beelzebub as the cherry on top. What's not to love in this?

On a more serious note, the game is actually amazing.
The plot is seriously good, the way that it shows how human nature will lead us to a loop of repeating the same mistakes over and over again is excellent, and the characters split into their own beliefs in a natural and gradual way, it's beautiful to see.

The combat system is top tier turn-based RPG. The press turns are a simple but versatile mechanic that applies to you and your enemies. In SMT IV the battles can be weirdly easy (the final bosses disappointed me severely) but that's not a major turn-off, the game still punishes you if you do something like being a disappointment to your whole family and nation by turning on auto combat when you're fighting a Girimekhala, clearly that didn't happen to me. Flynn also gets way too strong if you just throw all your stats into magic. It's an easy but really satisfying game.

The sountrack goOD LORD THE SOUNDTRACK. IT'S SO GOOD. The themes for random encounters are way too good, the fiend theme is excellent (the game's way to compensate the cancer it gave you to find the vile creature) and B2 is a classic for a reason, it makes me think twice before hanging myself after leading with walter throwing a silly little Agi to Minotaur, a boss THAT NULLS FIRE. I LOVE THIS GAME'S AI GFJIFSAFFUCKTHTISTUFKCINGGAME

The designs are top notch. I love that SMT has a lot of not conventional designs to represent various mythological beings, beliefs and ideas (not chemtrail). While some are horrendous misses (looking at you Lucifer), most are absolute bangers (Beelzebub, Parvati, Shiva, Metatron, etc.)

The presentation, while being limited do to the console it's in, is also top notch. The 3D environments really sell you on the state that the world you live in is, specially the blue men that give me severe PTSD.
When you enter a battle, you get another presentation, now the enemies are little sprites with idle animations that are really charming, and while the death animations are bugged while emulating, they're still pleasing to look at. The UI is also really well thought out for the console the game was in, porting it to another system will prove difficult but that doesn't affect my judgement.

This is a SMT game, so SMT bullshit will happen, but you can have a good laugh (or a gunshot directly to your skull) when it happens. A very good and unique experience, highly recommend it.

Please ATLUS port this to PC
SIncerily,
A Moh Shuvuu enjoyer

Very good
Still has the base game's problems like the lack of detail and stuff like that, but the new skills, movesets and fights really make it way more fun. Fights like Amatsu and Primordial Malzeno are some of the best fights on the franchise imo, and skills like Bloodlust, Berserk, Heaven-Sent, Dereliction, etc. really change how you build your sets and change the game. The power creep is way too strong, just like iceborne, but there's a huge variety with what you can do.
The story is quite good (to compensate for Rise's), for MH standards of course. The war of attrition between Malzeno and Gaismagorm is really cool and holy shit that quest before Gaismagorm is easily the best quest story-wise in the entire series.
The Afflicted Investigations are a fun system with a few problems. They are way too grindy, it takes way too much to get fun quests (you start up with the lower tier monsters), the monsters are always in their 'delirious' state (but that's an issue with normal rise) and they're a pain to look at sometimes.
The Qurio Augmenting system is way too RNG for my liking. What you get on a charm (I've hated that system since base Rise) or on your armor can make or break your intended set, and the final result is completely out of your control.
Going back on that 'always enraged' issue, I've got to say that this is one of the most annoying things in the game. Rajang being gold stops being special if it's always on that state (really, I've had moments where I got it out of its gold mode, and it went right back into that mode literally 3 seconds after).
Another annoying thing is that the system to join a quest is horrible. Joining someone's quest or getting someone to join yours is harder than most of the fights (when they're not eating your whole health bar just for breathing the wrong way).
Inflation is a bitch, even in the world of Monster Hunter we're not safe from it. Everything robs your wallet and takes your kids. Crafting weapons, upgrading armor or the large number of paid layered armors and weapons that are better than the free ones (thank you capcom, very cool). It also affects the numbers in the fight. Monsters have a shit ton of health and deal way too much damage, and to compensate that, the hunters also started dealing insane amounts of damage and now have way more levels on their armor, but then monsters need to have more health and damage to keep up, but then... oh this is a cycle.
I shit talk a lot but I have a lot of fun, even after losing an account with 200+ hours, I started a new account, passing through the horrible early game to get to the part that i.. dislike less. Jokes aside, very good expansion, some faults but I can overlook those since the rest is just way too good.

I'm gonna be simple, this game is dogshit
It doesn't run that well and i got soflocked about twice or thrice in the span of four hours, how even?
Looking at the game from the outside, the combos may look good, something like DMC, but no, it's just mindless mashing, not cool.
The Story seems to be good though, the majority of the points I give it come from that.
The designs are what you would expect from an anime gacha game, not much to comment here.
Oh, and remember when Genshin was getting accused of copying other games? Yeah that actually happens here, and not in a shy way. The literal first stage in the game has the protagonist fighting some random enemies above a plane that's flying above a city, and the character seems to have some witch time powers, a virgin's bayonetta, bet y'all are wetting your tiny willies at that (also her first form's image is literally a copy paste of DMC 3 Dante's render, amazing).
The gacha kinda sucks, but that's to be expected since it's a gacha, the only good gacha is a dead gacha. Different from Genshin, the difference from a 4 star to a 5 star is way too obvious to be ignored. At least they seem to give away 5 star characters from time to time, that's the way I got my daughter Seele, yay. Another thing they do that is nice is provide the characters' trials to us regularly.
To touch on that first part again. Seriously, how it this mess of a game so badly optimized? The menus are actual cancer to look at, that remind you of those shady websites that you shouldn't be visiting but you still do for some reason. A bunch of unnecessary things screaming at you and an information overload of enormous proportions.
Talking about polish, this game's combat animations and the combat itself have as much polish as an average sonic game (that is to say, none at all) and yeah, I fell out of the map and softlocked on menus, dialogues and missions way too many times for the little time that I wasted my time on this bunch of ugly pixels.
I didn't reach the endgame because I don't want to kill myself yet, but mihoyo hasn't done a good (hell, decent even) endgame system yet, so I doubt this is any different.
I'm not revisiting this one anytime soon, Seele having a new form will not win me over, but it was a good try.

Finished Act 1
Gabriel is such a good fight that it makes me cum
Edit:
Finished Act 2
There are some stages that I don't really like, 5-2 was really cancerous, 4-3... exists...
P-ranked the entire Act 1 on violent, flesh prison can go fuck itself tbh (i had fun but humans are not built for that)

Very good expansion, a lot of new moves and some really cool fights, a shame that it adds a small amount to the cast (really the lack of deviljhos is really strange) and part of that amount is fucking magma almudron. That piece of shit can go suck a dick or two.

The Apex monsters are completely out. The system was really badly implemented in base rise but it's still a weird decision, it was a bummer losing some of them. I don't know how they will substitute them. (EDIT 2: uhh well..)

The endgame is certainly decent (EDIT 2: fucking no KEKW), at least it's not as bad as rise's (it didn't even have one), but it's at the early game that you notice how small the new roster is. The majority of key quests are base game monsters, and some of them are even more annoying, like arzuros.

The lack of detail still hurts, the world just isn't the same as world's (HAHA GET IT "WORLD" I'M SO FUCKING FUNNY), I guess we can blame the switch for this. On top of that, I still don't like the wyvern ride mechanic, every monster encounter outside of the quest target's is scripted to a fault, leading to monsters like bazelgeuse losing all their personality. The monsters' AI is terrible, it's always enraged (it's even worse with the afflicted, god bless that PoS of an endgame), the input reading system is still a bitch to charge blade players (among a series of problems that plagues CB in this game), rathian's tail flip still poisons you even with a cut tail, khezu hasn't been deleted from the game, almudron still sucks, a lot of things from rise that could have been changed in sunbreak. At least they improved the wall running.

I complained for the majority of this review but I end up having fun playing this damned game. I just hope that the title updates add a shit ton of monsters and cool events. (EDIT 2: hahhahahahHAAHAHAHAHA)

Edit 1: The near genshin level of RNG that the armor augmenting system will bring in the first title update might make me lower this game's score actually

Edit 2: They're pushing the paid dlc way too hard, time to lower the score

Edit 3: Now that we know all the game's monsters, I can say that the roster is excellent, but the power creep is terrible and the monsters spend more time enraged than non-enraged

I've already written a review for this game before, but after some time, as an AR52 player, I thought I should rewrite all of it.

I'll be writing about the negatives most of the review, this game has really strong points, like enjoyable and pretty characters, quite a beautiful soundtrack and lore, which is is actually really good (people would understand that if the story-telling wasn't god awful), but it also has some stuff that's really bad, that holds it from being a 10/10.
Before starting, don't be pressured by twitter or by the people you know, once you actually play this game you'll realize that it's not and it never was a BOTW copy, people that say that either hate just to hate and most likely never even touched the game. Don't surrender to peer pressure, you're better than that.

Generally Genshin Impact is easy, the difficulty comes from dumb and enormous incoming damage in higher world levels and dps races in the abyss, which sucks. The balance is awful as well, some characters are braindead while others seem as if they were butchered from the start.

There are some good fights here, the weekly bosses come to mind. A majority of the rest is not good though. Boring, annoying or unfair. I still can't understand how people like Oceanid.

I've always been a F2P, and I tend to have insane luck in this type of gacha. This wasn't an exception but I can't deny that it is ass, the pity system is nice but the rates are bad and the lack of 3 and below characters combined with a dependence on good weapons that also come from gacha is not good. The fact that some late 5 constellations are busted, like Hu Tao C6, doesn't help this game's case. FGO's system wasn't good by any means but good lord.

Once you hit AR45 shit hits the fan, you're now ready to farm artifact domains and get 5* artifacts! Those are essencial to your damage, so you better do it now! Would be a shame if they had 20000 layers of RNG.
This isn't like World's RNG on Safi weapons, nooo, you need 1) The right piece 2) From the right set 3) With a good main stat (except for flowers and feathers) 4) Good substats and 5) Good rolls on 6) The right substats. Sounds appealing doesn't it?
This becomes worse with the amount of sets, there is a lot of diversity, too much in fact, so you have to do it a lot of times for a lot of characters. And it isn't like armor sets in Monster Hunter, certain characters demand certain sets or their damage goes to the ground.

This leads us to the biggest problem of all, resin.
While the amount of RNG on artifacts is still absurd, it becomes the problem that it is because you have limited resin. If you want to raise a character, you need to use resin on leylines, on ascension materials, on talents, on weapon ascension materials and on artifacts, providing you have a decent weapon to begin with. This strips your will to raise a different character.

This game is fun and I honestly enjoy it, but hoyoverse needs to understand that I don't want def% on my yanfei, I really don't. Give me crit cowards.

I may still give this game a 10. However, I'm still not used to the way they completely fucked up the charge blade.
There are some other problems, like some questionable hitboxes, khezu, the climbing can be scuffed, they hired picasso to design some of the maps, and some other stuff they brought over from GU instead of World, but the game is still really fun, a lot of content for a base game, fun gameplay and good fights. It may be easier than every other Monster Hunter, but being hard =/= being fun
Edit: I fuckin' lowered the score kekw
Edit 2: I lowered it again holy shit

This game destroyed me completely on an emotional level, I love it.
There isn't a single character that I don't love (talking about the main group ofc). Basil my beloved, I will protect you.
An OST full of masterful pieces, beautiful visuals, great comedy, simple yet amazing combat, such a perfect plot and a stupidly gigantic attention to detail and foreshadowing, this game has it all. I can't talk about the plot because... spoilers of course. I'll just say that, by the point that the game ended, it ended my soul along with it.
Some people complain about the pacing in certain sections, and while it didn't really affect my experience, I can see where they come from. But if that is enough to bring this masterpiece of a game from a 10 to a 9, then I'm sorry to say that no game will ever be a 10.
I do not recommend you play this unless you want to spend everyday thinking about it and the depression it gave you.