Welp, finished the game at ~100 hours. It was quite a blast, I'll say.
There was kind of a pretty dry phase between the third and sixth palace, where even if things happened, it just felt incredibly slow, but I really liked how the game picked back up on the pace later in.
That being said, I've gotta say that even though there were tons and tons of potential in a lot of ways, many of them were also used very poorly. Applies to a lot of things like character development, confidant leveling (and its inconsistency with the story), time management (regarding who you can hang out with when etc), dating restrictions and some other stuff.
They definitely tried a lot of things, and a lot turned out great, while some other stuff was just...lacking. Unnecessary. I think my greatest nitpick are the stereotypical anime character traits, which heavily collide with how cool the characters could actually be. Whenever they seem to grow, it's somehow buried under dumb anime stereotypes. It even actually ruined one of my otherwise favorite scenes for me (Ryuji finally getting a chance to prove he's a star runner again while escaping the ship palace, only to be beat up by the girls afterwards because [I]haha isn't it hilarious to beat up the main character's side kick haha violence on men is so funny[/I] NO ITS NOT). Even so, most of the characters had a lot of potential and I like some of them a damn lot.
I'm currently trying to rush through NG+, although I don't know if being part-way into the second palace at ~9 hours can be considered rushing. I just want my platinum....
Anyway, it was fun!
There was kind of a pretty dry phase between the third and sixth palace, where even if things happened, it just felt incredibly slow, but I really liked how the game picked back up on the pace later in.
That being said, I've gotta say that even though there were tons and tons of potential in a lot of ways, many of them were also used very poorly. Applies to a lot of things like character development, confidant leveling (and its inconsistency with the story), time management (regarding who you can hang out with when etc), dating restrictions and some other stuff.
They definitely tried a lot of things, and a lot turned out great, while some other stuff was just...lacking. Unnecessary. I think my greatest nitpick are the stereotypical anime character traits, which heavily collide with how cool the characters could actually be. Whenever they seem to grow, it's somehow buried under dumb anime stereotypes. It even actually ruined one of my otherwise favorite scenes for me (Ryuji finally getting a chance to prove he's a star runner again while escaping the ship palace, only to be beat up by the girls afterwards because [I]haha isn't it hilarious to beat up the main character's side kick haha violence on men is so funny[/I] NO ITS NOT). Even so, most of the characters had a lot of potential and I like some of them a damn lot.
I'm currently trying to rush through NG+, although I don't know if being part-way into the second palace at ~9 hours can be considered rushing. I just want my platinum....
Anyway, it was fun!