So I'm near the endgame and feel I can finally talk about this game.
First off, I really like it. I shouldn't. Despite my avatar I'm not terribly fond of the anime trappings the game is wrapped in and once I took my first foray into Red City and started reading everyone's memos I was tempted to just stop there. Compounding my initial kinda apprehension is that I rarely get into these kinds of games. For instance, while I have most of the EO's on the 3DS I never really got far in any of them. But screw it, I payed money for this so I'm going to try and squeeze some amount of enjoyment out of it, at least spend a few hours on it so I didn't waste 40 bucks, you know? And now I'm at the end of the game. May even make this my first platinum!
So what did I end up liking?
Basically everything else. I don't think anyone's going to say the game looks fantastic but I think the artwork fits better than EO, and, believe it or not actually more tasteful despite the game being slightly more juvenile what with panty sniffing, collecting panties, the messages, basically making a demon harem and yet the art's still a tad more tasteful lol. I'm a fan that the map draws itself. That the overworld is just a 2d map that I select instead of a n64 era looking 3d overworld I have to travel around(if only the dungeons weren't sometimes ugly). I like that I'm pretty much funneled along linearly so that I'm not wandering around for hours wondering what to do. The dungeons are short enough that few ever really wore on too much. The demons each adding a perk of sorts to your party is a nice mechanic. And while there is somewhat of a factor of chance in a boss fight I generally felt that just changing an equipped demon for a different tactic made it doable. I never felt like I had to grind so when I was grinding it was because I wanted to. And I always feel I'm making progress.
If there were some things I'd change mechanically I wish I could mark the map like EO, the translation could use a tad bit of work in item descriptions, more character portraits would be cool and, yeah, I think the story and characters could use a bit of work. I'd like to play something else from these guys again.
