Random thought:
A lot of faith has been placed in the fact that there's only one logo on the page. Has anyone considered that that's maybe just because any other logo would completely give away what the announcement is?
This logo completely gives away what it is: a game.
Anyway, I'm four hours into Innocent Sin and I just beat the first dungeon. I figure it's time for some impressions.
The presentation is pretty strong. Kaneko's art is somewhat crude compared to Soejima, but I still like the character designs a lot. The music ranges from good to great. I love the song that plays when you meet Eikichi's dad. The environment art could use more color, but it's consistent within itself so far, so it's fine.
The characters themselves are fantastic so far. Immediately likable, fantastically written. Yeah, I can't imagine how I'll feel about these guys at the end of the game if it manages to keep this up.
The fighting is interesting. I like Fusion Spells and setting the turn order. I'd love to see that in P5. I've spoken about demon negotiation before. It's a wonky system and a holdover from SMT. I don't hate it, it just isn't necessary. The inherent repetition in negotiating is annoying, too. Why do I need to sit there repeating the same action 3-4x for the desired result? That stuff doesn't branch out, so why can't I just do it once, appease the enemy or piss them off, and keep it moving from there?
This and the back and forth you need to do (at least in the first dungeon) are really obvious issues of bloat.
But I like it a lot so far. I don't mean to sound too down on it because I'm really not. So far, I think it's a really cool game and I'm glad I've finally gotten around to it.
