Finally got around to playing it! I heard people go nuts over it and it's 100% justified, just wildly fresh in every aspect. It's so daring that it feels like it shouldn't exist, and the very things that make it so wonderful is probably why it undersold (😥). But yeah if you like VNs or adventure games at all pick it up, it's like thirty different 80s movies all at once.

I went into it fairly blind, I didn't know what I was getting into at all, and I think that's a good way to play it so I won't say too much. The basics: it's half an adventure game where you play 13 interlocking stories, and half a mech RTS where you fight monsters as those 13 characters. It's all very story heavy, and throws a ton of things at you at once, at an extremely fast pace. You can pause the game and check their codex system at any time, and you're supposed to lol. The whole thing is a puzzle that's really fun to figure out, and the mech combat feels really good and has a lot of character.

And yeah, it balances so well between tones, and managing the wild complexity, that it's striking that it doesn't collapse under all it's trying to do. It also has an incredibly good English dub, maybe the best Atlus has ever done, that was all recorded in people's houses. Truly a game that shouldn't exist but here it is and you should play it.