A highly story-driven tactical turn-based strategy game with intense story beats, challenging boss fights, and a compelling cast of characters. I found myself really digging into what was going on and trying to unravel the mystery that hovered over our characters throughout the game.

It does blunder a bit, namely in an over-use of stealth-based missions. I think they designed them really well, however it kind of falls out of the power-fantasy of the genre which is typically marked by displaying advanced strategic thinking and being rewarded for it. The stealth missions really kind of remove that from the game and operate more like puzzles to be solved. A good number of them do allow you to optionally just go guns blazing, but some do not (failure condition on being spotted) and that can be frustrating for some people. Luckily, I don't think any of the stealth missions were really all that hard, but getting an S-Rank might involve trial-and-error or just looking up a guide on Youtube or something.

Also some dialogue cutscenes can be quite lengthy (with one being almost absurdly long. They warn you ahead of time for it but it still defied my expectations) which breaks up the flow of gameplay quite a bit. The acting performances were really high quality so I didn't mind too much but it got to a point where I considered re-labeling it as a full blown Visual Novel in my mind.

But overall the game felt really good to play. Very tight turn-based gameplay with some simple but meaningful upgrade mechanics across equipment, gear, and characters that felt impactful. The story leaves off on a bit of a cliffhanger though. Not in like, a super bad way of cutting off in the middle of a climactic scene or anything. More like they just really set up for a sequel game and now I am left wondering if it will ever exist and give me closure.

Some technical things about the game I really enjoyed:

Artstyle was really good. Very serious looking anime-style. Comparisons that come to mind are things like 86 or Steins;Gate. The gameplay sprite characters are chibi-fied, true, but it plays it straight and there's not any nonsense.

Voice acting was superb. Not only was it well directed, but they had some serious A-lister talent on the project as well. Standing ovation to the performances given in this game.

Sound design was really good. I feel like they could have added some more ambient sounds to some of the narration scenes but outside of that it sounded great. Sometimes the combat music duplicated on itself and I'm not sure what caused it.

Overall I highly recommend this game!

There are some missions that are extremely tedious and frustrating (also jesus christ, missions and cutscenes are long as HELL)... but it's such a fun game. If you like complex turn based strategy combat and lore, you will like this game. Music on some missions slaps too.

Surprisingly good