While I don't hate this game, I can't bring myself to actually continue playing it. I actually enjoy the premise a lot, but the gameplay is extremely unenjoyable.

For starters, it was fun re-playing Raging Loop again. Both the looping, the specific humans/wolves killing game, and every single facet of the killing game is present in this game.

As the elements of the killing game are revealed, more and more of your ability to draw inferences based on behavior are eliminated, until eventually there really is no way to draw any useful inferences.

With no ability to draw meaningful inferences, the game ultimately hinges on leveling your RPG stats, as they give you psychic powers like the ability to tell when someone is lying, or boosting your ability to convince people, or your ability to lie persuasively. Because of this, it becomes a grinding game where you loop over and over again in order to unlock these psychic powers.

The first few hours I played, I was enjoying myself. At a specific point, a character unlocks the full game, and it stops being fun. If the grinding took 1/10th as long, I might have stuck through it.

Chrono Cross simply has one of the most convoluted plots of all time.

I distinctly recall playing this game as a child and not understanding what was going on beyond the weird dimensional travel and body swapping.

After playing it again as an adult, I can tell why I don't remember any of the story details.

I Am Setsuna tells a pretty cliche storyline that is particularly overdone in JRPGs -- a maiden is being sacrificed to save the world occasionally. That's fine. As long as they do something good with it, cliches are not always a bad thing.

I Am Setsuna manages to tell a decently interesting story, with decently interesting characters. This is pretty high praise to be honest, as there are not many modern JRPGs that you can say that about. Even though I'm not giving this game a high rating, it's all relative. This is probably one of my higher ratings for a modern JRPG.

The only major failing of this game is every other element other than the story. While the combat is fine in and of itself, the progression system is the dumbest system I've ever seen in a JRPG to date. It's so convoluted, you have to use the built-in prima guide to understand how the hell it works. Being now that it's been some months since I finished this game, I probably won't be able to give a complete explanation of how it works.

Basically, progression is built around random dice rolls. When you use skills, there's a random chance that skill will receive a permanent buff from Spritenite you're wearing. These buffs stack to a maximum amount, meaning you can buff skills to pretty high degrees.

None of that shit matters though, because all you need is Endir and Nidr's combo move "Blowbeat" to beat the entire game. It's one of the first combo skills you get, and you legit can and should use this combo to 1 shot entire encounters for the rest of the game. It also inflicts every good status ailment, which works on many bosses. If you find yourself struggling to beat a boss, you're probably not using Blowbeat enough.

In conclusion, I Am Setsuna is a decent way to waste a few hours listening to a decent story about a rugged mysterious boy trying to save a girl.

Oh, and the atmosphere is very well done. The music and art style lend a very somber tone to the game.

This is the first Dragon Quest game that I enjoyed, and as such, I have a soft spot for it. I have never beaten it, and I doubt I ever will at this point. While it suffers from the same endless trope of dark evil magicians and evil dragon lords in the Dragon Quest series, it was easy to ignore.

The story, characters, and environments are a treat to explore. The progression system is quite unique for a console game of its era, allowing you to assign points to a weapon skillset, unlocking new abilities as you go. I can't really think of a JRPG that exists to this day that has a similar system. It's bordering on experimental, which is impressive on its own.

This one is easy to recommend.

Unfortunately, this is a strategy RPG with a big emphasis on gimmick combat. The gimmick in this one is positioning characters properly around enemy units to deal combination attacks.

Based on my minimal experience with the game, not using these gimmicks is crippling. I wasn't in the mood for gimmicks, and especially not this one.

I might try it again one day, but not today.

Art
Most of the good things I have to say about this game involve the art. I truly believe the best aspect of this game is its art and map design. It's just a really nice game to look at. Unfortunately, that's where most of the praise starts and ends.

Combat (the lock system)
The combat in this game is passable. I don't have much to criticize about it. I've heard a lot of people say the lock system is annoying. I think the only real major flaw with the lock system is that the game introduces locks before it makes sense. On Wraith Island, you start getting poison locks before recruiting the character who does poison damage. I'd imagine this is a design issue, as the enemies themselves have pre-defined locks, and the developers didn't consider or feel like adding different sets of locks depending on what damage types you have access to.

I actually struggled during the early sections of the game to tell what the goal of the lock system was. Intuitively, I assumed the game would only ever give me locks that I could break using the characters I had and the skills they had. However, I would regularly get locks that simply could not be broken. As an example, a lock with 2 fire attacks and a 2 turn timer simply cannot be broken until you get your 4th character, but you regularly see things like that.

Eventually I settled on the idea that not all locks can be broken. You just have to live with the idea of being given a puzzle you can't solve sometimes. It took me about 50% of the game to get comfortable with this idea.

The lock system also kind of forces you to play more conservatively. When there are no locks on the screen, using live mana is generally not a good idea, as you might be throwing away damage types you need for a lock. It's also not advisable to use skills for the same reason.

By the time you get all of your characters, the lock system doesn't introduce much of an obstacle. In fact, using lock-delaying skills, I killed multiple bosses before they got a 2nd or 3rd turn.

Story
The story of this game is embarrassing and disappointing. The plot is occasionally compelling, which is the only reason I ended up finishing the game. However, the game doesn't even deliver on the plot. I can't stress how bad the story ultimately is. The characters in this game are empty husks that occasionally emote as if they aren't, but don't believe them. It's a trick.

The 2 main characters, Zale and Valere, are not 2 distinct characters. They're actually just 1 character. These 2 characters are always doing the same thing at the same time, they never disagree, they don't have different personality traits, they respond to all issues the exact same way. They have nothing going on that distinguishes them as different people.

The first 3 characters in the game, you see every single detail of their existence throughout the course of the game. Essentially from their birth. There's nothing of significance that has happened to any of these 3 major characters off screen. We've seen it all. And it can fill a 1 page book.

A common through-line, all the way up until the end of the game, is that things kinda just happen. The 2 main characters will randomly feel something, or they'll randomly know something, and then they'll win the day. This continues up until the end of the game, resulting in one of the most stupidly disappointing endings I've honestly ever experienced. I don't even know what the ending of this game is, and I don't think anyone else does either. I can't tell if the writers thought we would understand, if it was rushed and they didn't care, or if they're betting on a sequel.

I legitimately can't tell if this game ended on a cliff hanger, because I don't know if the writers think there are questions left to be answered. It doesn't seem like they do, though, considering how much time passes during the ending sequence.

Conclusion
While I enjoyed the game enough to finish it, I genuinely cannot recommend it. Unless you have to play every JRPG, or you need to play a JRPG now and you've played everything else, play something else. I'd recommend I Am Setsuna, an exceptionally mediocre JRPG, over this.

Embarrassingly bad attempt in all regards.

The visual novel elements are a joke due to the pathetic writing, with most of the sequences just being a repeat of the same conversation. But I guess they really need you to know that one character is a dick to his digimon, or that other character is mentally ill. I mean, how can you tell if they don't show you that 50k times in a row?

The SRPG elements are whatever. It offers no difficulty whatsoever, and later battles are honestly just annoyingly time consuming. Capturing digimon is not enjoyable at all.

I played for about 15 hours before realizing I was being insulted and put it on the shelf.

You also can't get the true ending without playing twice, so the devs can fuck off.