Wanted to get into mainline SMT after playing Persona 5, since an occultist setting is way more appealing than a high school setting, so I decided to try the newest game in the series. I'm about 15 hours in and I gotta say, this game is mediocre in every way. The checklist gameplay that makes up 80 or 90% of your gameplay is extremely boring and repetitive, I'm not sure why this type of design has become so common lately but I'm really sick of it. At least other collectathon games are open world so you can enjoy some freedom and sandboxing, this game is a collectathon without the strength collecathon games usually have. Maybe there are dungeons later on in the game but the game really needs them. The story is weird so far, side quests are cool, but all the cutscenes are extremely weird and stilted and pointless so far. The combat is unfortunately extremely easy and repetitive. Every boss can be defeated with the same strategy: 1. die once and use spyglass to figure out it's abilities 2. fuse demons that target it's weaknesses and a support demon that's resistant to it's attacks 3. spam the crit matsuhashi and your best damage skills 4. use the absorb item every time the boss uses it's matsuhashi. Apparently lategame bosses are extremely hard so I assume that changes later on but it's very disappointing that none of the bosses so far have unique strategies or gimmicks. Actually the game would be improved massively by removing the critical matsuhashi, or making it a lategame unlock.
Also fuck the level scaling (is that the correct term?) Having to grind to be within a few levels of every boss so that you won't get fucked by level based damage/defense modifiers is extremely annoying.