Galleria is a wildly ambitious game, with a story and setting far greater in scale than I could have ever imagined. It recalls titles like YU-NO and Xenogears; it is not afraid to be big, and it is not afraid to be surprising. If you're tired of games with predictable plots, games that advertise every last character and setpiece ahead of time, then look no further -- Galleria has the confidence not to show its cards, and more than enough twists and turns to keep you guessing where things will end up.

But it's easy to squander a plot, because a plot is nothing without its characters. Frankly, I was not on board with the previous games in the Majo series (Hyakkihei and Refrain), largely because the protagonists were, in a word, unlikable. I wasn't invested in the characters, and so I was not invested in the world they inhabited. Thankfully, this shortcoming has been more than just addressed in Galleria; its two protagonists are wonderfully endearing characters, and the strength of their characterization is the narrative's greatest asset. No matter how elaborate the setting gets, no matter how many characters are introduced, it all revolves around Eureka and Natyl in the end. Their relationship provides an emotional core that the previous games in the series lacked. Without them, it wouldn't be half the game it is.

It's fortunate that Galleria has this driving force in the form of Eureka and Natyl, because it is (perhaps unsurprisingly) an absolutely massive game, requiring a great deal of patience and perseverance from the player if they wish to see it through to the end. I can't really imagine anyone finishing it in less than 90 hours. Mechanically, and in terms of dungeon design, I found it to be a huge step up from Refrain. At the same time. there are many parts of the game I can see people finding tedious, if not outright repellent, namely the randomly generated dungeons in the latter half and the item farming and level grinding required for the final boss. And of course, no discussion of Galleria is complete without mentioning its final challenge: a 3651 (not a typo) floor dungeon, entirely randomly generated and designed to test just how far the player is willing to go to see the true ending of the game. I found it to be a fascinating challenge -- it basically creates a roguelike by bending the game's existing mechanics -- and deeply rewarding to complete, not the least of which because of just how brilliant the ending sequence is, but the fact remains that it's a very tall ask.

I don't think Galleria is perfect, either as a narrative or as a game. There are topics I wish the writing had explored more deeply, characters I wish had gotten more screentime (or more comeuppance). I found myself genuinely frustrated by the stupidly difficult final boss, especially after what I had to do to even be able to fight it properly. The postgame dungeon really made me feel like giving up at times, especially when I managed to lose several hundred (!) floors' worth of progress. But in the end, it was all worth it. I can't remember the last time I felt so satisfied completing a game. My complaints all melted away as I watched the hour-long ending sequence go by. In the end, I just loved Eureka and Natyl that much, I guess. I couldn't help but love their game too.

Galleria is one of the greatest JRPGs of all time, and Nippon Ichi's greatest achievement as a company. And that's coming from someone who didn't even like the previous games in the series very much.