Scarlet Nexus is a weird game. It starts off as this "brain punk" anime action RPG about fighting "others", which are these weird monsters that humanity has been fighting against for thousands of years - but quickly expands out into this insane story with layers upon layers of twists, turns, and conspiracies. Everything becomes way over the top and pretty much stays that way the whole way through, just like you might expect if you're the kind of person that has ever watched anime. Personally, I enjoyed the hell out of it - yeah, there's a bunch of dumb anime tropes*, but there are also some really cool characters, stories, and adventures to be had in Scarlet Nexus, and I really enjoyed my time with it.

*like conflicts that could easily be resolved if people just opened their mouths for 2 seconds instead of just staying quiet for no reason, and the dumb grubts/gasps that anime characters have to do constantly for some reason.

Gameplay
On the gameplay side, everything is extremely fluid and combat is super flashy and satisfying. Scarlet Nexus does a great job of giving you some basics to play around with (either the sword with Yuito or the floating knives with Kasane + the psychokineses power, dodges, perfect dodges, etc), but then piles on more and more and more and more mechanics throughout the game, but not in a way where you feel overwhelmed. As you level up and progress through the game you unlock things like additional combos, the ability to borrow your party members' abilities, the insanely powerful brain field, and so much more. The key here is really how good of a job they did at giving you access to these things slowly, so you have a good amount of time to get comfortable with what you have available before they throw a bunch more on your plate. I really enjoyed borrowing a bunch of my party members' synergistic abilities at once to dish out insane damage, and the perfect dodge/retaliation system is super satisfying too.

I will say I really don't enjoy the quest system - you have to go out of your way to pick up quests by wandering around areas you'd normally never bother going to, and quest givers usually don't give you any indication of what you're even supposed to do for the quest, so you have to open the menu every time to see what you actually even need to do. Also, the quest requirements 99.9% of the time boil down to "kill x enemy in y specific way" which isn't all that interesting because you often have to backtrack to an old area specifically to pull that off. Quests are pretty pointless unless you're either going for achievements or wanting to give all the gifts to your platoon mates though.

There's this bonds system with your platoon members that's really awesome. You get to do these little bond missions/episodes with everyone in your squad, and some pretty interesting stuff happens sometimes. They're not all super interesting, I admit, but some of them are really cool, and I liked seeing the little side stories play out. Also, investing in this system grows your bonds with your squad mates, which in turn powers them up more and more. It's really satisfying to see how much more powerful you become by doing the bond missions. If you have the DLC, definitely make sure to unlock the nexus drive and crush vision levels (past level 6), they're incredible.

Story
The futuristic dystopia of Seiran, Suoh, and Togetsu is a really awesome setting to have a game in, and I loved all the brain punk stuff too. You get some hints of things early on that play out in a really interesting way later. One of your squad mates early in the game says something along the lines of how thankful they are for government censorship. Yeah. I don't want to spoil anything so I won't talk much more about the story, but I'll just say this. Scarlet Nexus is an anime game and has all the baggage that comes along with that. It's over the top and has probably a few too many twists, and there are some pretty cringey moments to be had. But there's also a lot of cool stuff that I enjoyed seeing. I played both Yuito's and Kasane's route, and watched the DLC Karen episodes - all of which are really worth doing if you're enjoying the story. The two protagonists' stories converge at several points (the ending, for example) - but there are also a lot of differences and independent parts that cover different things going on in the world. It was really neat to see some of the stuff I was a little fuzzy on (why'd that happen? etc) get cleared up when you see the other side.

That being said, I do wonder if they took the "telling a story from multiple angles" thing a little too far in some spots. I really enjoyed it, but a couple of my friends played the game and absolutely hated it, particularly because once you get into all the twists and surprises later on things can seem arbitrary and confusing, and some things won't get explained in much detail unless you commit to playing the entire game again on NG+. Not a problem if you're as into the game as I was, but a real turn-off for anyone on the fence, I'm sure. This goes for the DLC Karen episodes, too. They explain a lot of what was going on behind the scenes throughout the game and I wish we got a little more of that throughout rather than just available to you at the end.

Music/Visual Style
Incredible music and awesome visual style. Fights are fluid and flashy in a really satisfying way. Cutscenes are typically told in an almost comic book-esque manner, which is fine, but it'd have been nice to have them all fully animated instead of just a couple.

In short:
If you're willing to put up with the dumb anime stuff and strap in for a super over the top story with some cool moments and characters, intensely fluid action combat with a lot of abilities at your disposal, high energy music, and that "very anime" visual style, I'd highly recommend picking Scarlet Nexus. It goes on sale pretty frequently for like $20-30 with everything included, which was super worth it in my case. I ended up 100%ing the game and had an awesome time all throughout.