While I have a handful of issues with this game and the Septentrione arc felt like a chore at times, I can't bring myself to look into certain endings and say "Yeah this game sucked".
Maybe you just have to sit, remove any expectations and simply let the game do its thing the same way you do when you put on your usual brainless comedy TV series in the background.

The characters weren't handled very well for the most part, but if you take a moment to think and analyze their dialogues, a few actually have interesting motives/backstory/way of thinking. Makoto, Yamato, Anguished One and Fumi are my favorites in that regard. Io and Miyako had a nice arc as well, but I didn't care too much about them.

About the other characters... Despite the game being set in an apocalypse, it's written like a romcom, so yeah...
I can't bring myself to dislike any of them after so many hours played, they're good kids, but also they don't do too much, some are forever squished onto their tropes.

The Fate system is something funny because it both ignores and follows the main story. Depending on your actions and who you've talked to by that point, the Fates can be completely different and/or change a bit to give info you might have missed on previous Fate levels.
But it also suffers from the same problem Persona has with its Social Links. The characters' grow in Fate almost never reflects on the story, there was a point I was like "Why are you two fighting!? You made peace an hour ago!"

Though its still far from perfect, I enjoyed the sequel arc a lot and that's why I'm giving this game 4/5 stars. At least on that one you had various objectives and "mysteries" from the start rather than "Just beat up these guys and we will make up an excuse for a route split later" like in the Septentrione arc.
The way characters already know each other also helped in making things more entertaining.

About the gameplay itself, they improved the battle mechanics a lot (I miss the magnetite system though...), the OST was better than DeSu1's imo and there's a bit of more dialogue variety depending on the time/who you have talked to, so that made re-playing less boring.

(Oh also the fanservice got ranked up by 300% on this game. The MC is pretty much on a perpetual harem with every female character and even some male ones lmao. I personally find these kind of scenes funny, but it can be bothersome to others)

Reading the art book, the devs mentioned that one of their main goals was to make DeSu fun/accessible even for people who have never played strategy RPGs, and man they couldn't have done it better.
I have tried to play a handful of SRPGs before but dropped all of them. DeSu though? It was a blast from start to end, the focus being mostly on your demon's builds rather than on your field movements really helps in making the strategy simple but fun.

Loved the characters and atmosphere to pieces. The game takes a lil' bit to pick up since it's just "Wah wah let's find a way out!!" for around 2 days, but when it picks up it's really good. The way the game used alignments felt very natural as well, same as the time-limit mechanics. Aside from wanting to escape, each character has their own story, strong morals and motives (some carried before the whole thing happened, some appearing during the lockdown itself), so their actions feel more genuine rather than being urns for alignments. Sometimes I feel the real strategy doesn't happen in the battlefield, but in the overworld trying to figure out how to make characters not die or kill each other lol.

The game puts an emphasis on "your choices matter", being that part of the reason on why the DS version only had 1 savefile. They want you to feel the pressure and make you think before doing anything, and even with multiple saves this time around, you will probably have to re-start certain days to do everything correctly if you're aiming for a specific route or dialogue.
Considering DeSu2 is waaaay more forgiving on this regard, the devs may have thought twice about it, but I think that pressure and not being able to re-do adds to the storytelling in a good way. When I played the DS version it didn't affect me too much, so its not too troublesome but still gives sauce.

My only complaints are that the music is kind of repetitive (even if its good), and the replays can feel same-y as well starting your 3rd route or so. But other than that 10/10 game.

The art can be a hit or miss for some, but I personally find it very sharp and stilysh, pretty different than your usual anime SAO style