This game starts as a succession story and turns into a political road trip across Euchronia. You’re rallying support for your campaign while dealing with a kingdom falling apart. I wasn’t expecting to love this as much as I did.
Atlus is doing their Persona time management thing but with more freedom. You plan campaign tours, negotiate with guilds, and pick which Archetype mentors to work with. The combat mixes timeline stuff with elemental weaknesses. Archetypes are basically job classes - I ran Singer for buffs, Tactician for debuffs, and Fencer up front. Assault Shift lets you swap to your backup party mid-fight which is handy, and bosses make you experiment with Guard, Chase, and Break states to find openings.
The Persona time management thing works better here than it ever did in Persona. The combat system has enough depth to stay interesting for 70 hours, and everything just clicks.
The story deals with politics, identity, and leadership. It gets heavy, and side quests matter - especially the Beastfolk stuff and the Rival Prince arc. The writing is genuinely good. Characters have actual depth, and I cared about what happened to them.
The game looks great. It has a painterly UI, Meguro’s soundtrack is perfect, nice cutscenes, and each area has its own look. The PC version ran smooth on my aging desktop with an RTX 2060.
This is my Game of the Year for 2024. It’s the best thing Atlus has made, and I say that as someone who loves Persona. The game took everything I thought I wanted from a JRPG and delivered on it. I was hooked from start to finish. If you like this genre at all, play this.