I've just wrapped up chapter 2 and here are a few of my general thoughts.
The animation and textures are almost PSP tier for the most part. You can tell this was their first 3D effort. At first I kind of felt ripped off, but I got used to it pretty quickly. Maybe try not to play other, better animated games at the same time, if you care about that sort of stuff. General world/town navigation is the same as Trails, except they added a Persona style quicktravel menu and an extra dimension
Gameplay wise It's just sort of unremarkable and boring (on hard). I like the normal fights well enough. The monsters hit hard, and you do relatively little damage, so the key is to constantly delay enemy turns with certain crafts, and exploit their weaknesses with arts. The battles have a rhythm to them that keeps it tolerable. The monster variety sucks, though. So far there are only a few per area (some of them recolors) and it can get dull just smashing the same guys over and over again. The designs themselves are also nothing to write home about. The mini/boss fights suck, as well. The concept of their design is essentially the same as the normal fights, but they lay the health on thicker than syrup, and they often give them attacks that can utterly annihilate party members. They're mind numbingly boring battles of attrition pitched with occasional moments of intense irritation.
In terms of characters there's so far nothing you've not seen before. Very cliche riddled, although executed well enough that there's at least some depth to them. Be prepared for especially contrived tsundere bullshit, and having to put up with a belligerent hypocritical asshole that you can never call out, due to the fact that the protagonist is a bootlicking pushover with no real agency when it comes to character interactions. Thankfully these both get resolved fairly early on, the former at the beginning of chapter 1 and the latter at the end of chapter 2. The side-missions are mostly uninteresting, and I've been lead to believe that they're mostly less developed retreads from previous games.
The localization is excellent, unsurprisingly. There haven't been any lines that have that "direct translation" feel to them. Very natural, very organic. The voice acting is awful, however. The very first thing I did when I got past the opening cutscene was immediately mute it. The opening, by the way, is one of those terrible JRPG in media res moments, which they of course immediately walk back because JRPG writers don't know how to fucking use the technique.
Anyways, the game also has social links, but I don't think they effect much of anything, and you can only do a batch of three of them at the beginning of each chapter. Also, unlike Persona, you can't max all of them out in a single playthrough, and they're also dependent on where you are in the story, which means that no matter what you'll miss out on scenes. Struck me as a lazy way to add content for a second playthrough. Hate it. Other Persona rip-offs aside from the two already mentioned are: an honest to god one-to-one copy of Tartarus, answering questions in class, a calendar interface/system, funky school music, and the evening/morning/night cycle.
So far the strength of the localization and the fact that the especially groan worthy stuff wasn't given time to fester is keeping me on the path. It's solid, I suppose.
Alright. I think I'll give it a pass for now.
