So I'm a few hours in now. Just met the Black Samurai. Overall, enjoying it much more than I thought I would. A few thoughts:
Doi's character art is wonderful. He's come really far, and whilst he's still not as good as Soejima when it comes to expressions and the like, the portraits are all incredibly polished and technically superb. I also love the way the portraits move forwards and backwards to create a sense of place for each character in a conversation. It's a really, really cool little touch.
The story and characters seem pretty standard fare. The voice acting is about what I'd expect from Atlus and the writing is generally decent. Surprised how much story there is, so far. Much more than Nocturne and DDS. I'm enjoying it a lot.
Gameplay is really solid. Press Turn is still a great system. Seeing enemies on the map is appreciated, as are various other tweaks.
The game over screen is way too long.
The dungeons are fine, but I think I was expecting more based on what people said. Areas feel really small, and there's a lot of "Backtrack through three floors to heal, then walk all the way back again", which is kind of frustrating. The dungeons look nice enough though, particularly considering the low powered hardware.
Honestly, most of the new demon art seems fine. Some of the demons they posted pre-release looked really awful, but most aren't nearly as bad.
Battle presentation is uninteresting, which is a shame, but probably unavoidable.
Don't care for the soundtrack one bit, but it at least fits the mood of the game. It sounds really retro, and completely lacks any punch. It's not something I'd mute the game because of, but I'll never listen to any of this outside of the game, and I often have a podcast playing at the same time as non-story sections.
This post probably sounds more negative than I feel, because it's easier to talk about the things that I dislike than the things I like. So far, it's the best JRPG I've played since Radiant Historia. I'm really, really enjoying it.
Could you give your reasons why? I'm wondering as I have my own reaons to think so too.
I think he probably just feels out of the loop with the new direction Atlus has taken. Doi and Soejima both draw influence really heavily from his art, and I think he probably knows that, and he's kind of passed the torch. Atlus is progressing to bigger and bigger things, but Kaneko's art will always be niche and weird.