I can tell a lot of effort and passion went into this, but it didn't result in something I can bring myself to continue. I got around 6 hours into this (a little after you get your third servant), and it already has a lot of problems.

The most obvious issue is how meandering the game feels; there are so many stretched-out points of nothing happening that I don't know why they made it like this. There are so many weird choices that make this worse, like every day having a scene in front of your house that usually adds nothing but an extra step between you and the overworld map. Speaking of the overworld map; 60% of the time there is only one option on the map, it should just skip it at those points.

The combat in this is slow and bad; it’s like a shitty version of Fate/Grand Order’s combat, which is already only serviceable at best. it’s like they didn’t understand what made it work in FGO. Everything in this takes too long to kill, adding to the meandering feel the game has.

The game has nice art, even if it can look a little wonky at times, but I can give it a pass. All the original monster designs are great of the ones I saw, they could be in SMT games. The sprites in combat are very good too, as I said; you can tell a lot of effort went into this. However, after all that praise I will say; the protagonist looks bad every time you can see him. I don’t know why they went with that design, but it is so fucking bad.

It kind of goes for a Persona-like system with bonding with characters, and it feels kind of flat with the few I did. It is also like Persona 4, where you have to gather information before you can go to the dungeon, but it is so basic and easy that it might as well be automated.

I should also mention the game has voice acting and they do a pretty good job at sounding like the originals of the characters I’ve seen, for the most part. Raikou doesn’t really sound remotely close in my opinion.

The premise of the story really didn’t interest me, to be honest, and learning more didn’t really help. It’s a premise of convenience, so you can have a bunch of servants and not really worry about anything before the start of the game or the consequences of supernatural events in the city. There are a lot of story choices that don’t really jive with me, like Raikou being your wife; it just feels like it's there; maybe more will come from it later, but I don’t care. It feels… pandering? Superficial? Basic? Something like that.

A lot of my problems also come from the protagonist, which I already mentioned as having a bad design. His personality is very unappealing to me as a protagonist, he’s very uninteresting, like a generic insert-type character that they stapled some things onto him to trick you into thinking he’s more than that. His power and how the Servants treat him give him some "OC DO NOT STEAL" energy. The fact that it is called Abyss magic might be a major part of that. Raikou being your wife, Rama being your best friend, and Brynhilder being your student all at the start of the game feels lame to me; it wouldn’t bother me if it was just one of those things, though the Raikou one might still bother me.

The worst thing I can really say is that it just doesn’t feel like Fate; it’s a bad urban fantasy VN-RPG hybrid with vague Fate-shaped things in it.

I might come back to it to give it a fairer shake but not right now.

Yippy yeah, there'll be no wedding bells for today

I've got spurs that jingle, jangel, jingle
As I go riding merrily along
And they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single?
And that song ain't so very far from wrong

Oh, Lillie Belle, oh, Lillie Belle
Though I may have done some fooling
This is why I never fell

I've got spurs that jingle, jangel, jingle
As I go riding merrily along
And they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single?
And that song ain't so very far from wrong

I've got spurs that jingle, jangel, jingle
As I go riding merrily along
And they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single?
And that song ain't so very far from wrong

Oh, Sally Jane, oh, Sally Jane
Though I'd loved to stay forever
This is why I can't remain

I've got spurs that jingle, jangel, jingle
As I go riding merrily along
And they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single?
And that song ain't so very far from wrong

I've got spurs that jingle, jangel, jingle
As I go riding merrily along
And they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single?
And that song ain't so very far from wrong

Oh, Mary Ann, oh, Mary Ann
Though we've done some moonlight walking
This is why I up and ran

I've got spurs that jingle, jangel, jingle
As I go riding merrily along
And they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single?
And that song ain't so very far from wrong
And that song ain't so very far from wrong

So I jingle, jangel, jingle all along

This was more fun than I was expecting; plenty of fun characters, and the combat was enjoyable, even if it was easy. Some characters aren't great gameplay wise and are kind of dull, like Mirai and Haruka but luckily they are in the minority. 

When it comes to the story and characters, I would call it pleasant. I enjoyed it for what it was, the evil shinobi definitely got the better story though. I wouldn't call the characters deep, but they are fun and that's all you really need for something like this. There is one character, however, that is completely awful; Hibari. What an awful character, which is made worse by her being so prominent in the good shinobi story.

This is probably my bar for Hack and Slash Games now, as in you should be at least as good as the booby ninja game. 

Hikage is best girl btw 

Played with PS3 sprites.

This is a really good story with great characters and music. But I do think how they structured the VN causes a lot of problems. It does feels like it being stretch to it's absolute limit. There were many times where I felt like it was being repetitive or conversations were going in circles. Basically me going "I get it already, please move on already." But I think the quality of the characters and music really helped me get through in those parts. I do think there was a little hackery at some points but nothing narrative annihilating.

But who cares about the problems? The ending almost made me cry, so it is at least a 9/10.

The World end with you is a good game but sadly the biggest thing holding this back is the combat, too many times it would think I wanted to use a different pin, also some late bosses being more tedious than anything.

I like the majority of the story and all the characters but I feel it kinda becomes flimsy near the end. Also this game probably could of used a bigger cast. I do like the ability to control your level and it is impressive how many variety of pins there are.

Also some days felt a little too hand-holdy and repetitive. But the music does make up for that, this game could probably be a 10/10 for music alone. 'Emptiness And' slaps so hard.

Oh and Neku is a good character, all the shit I've seen about him over the years shows how brain dead people are.