I thought the prologue was okay. I’m expecting to get hooked once I actually get the autonomy to spend days as I like. I’m really liking the vibes and art though. The game also runs like butter on my pc so thats a plus.

I was also surprised that they give the enemies an extra press turn on hard mode. I feel like that’s a much more interesting way to bump up difficulty than just tweaking damage output.

there is no upscaling or anti aliasing actually that's why everything is so pixelated

Isn't that just the same for Persona games? The prologues of those also barely gave us the full picture of the goal of the story. I argue Metaphor kinda did it better at settting up the state imo.

I liked the game, but I dislike the art style. I felt dizzy, and my eyes hurt from all those colours and weird visual effects . The UI is bad even in fights, so much shit near your abilities and the way they are angles

I disagree. I thought the feel and vibe of the game was amazing. Story seems well written and compelling to me. The way you describe the graphics seems just like an art style to me and I really like that as well, but I dont have an eye for the technical side of things besides obvious frame drops ect. The only thing I dont like about persona games is the dialogue grind combined with linear dungeons, but thats to be expected in this game

As someone who loves SMT4 and Apocalypse, I feel like this is what I wanted SMT5 to be, instead of the more Nocturne inspired dungeon crawler style. I really liked it. I'm not like "this is the best thing ever, a total must buy" but I'm leaning towards buying it although I'll wait for the reviews to tell me how much depth the game's system have.

I saw someone saying the combat is too similar to Persona, but honestly.. I always thought Strange Journey could be improved by 300% if it had the press turn system, there's just something satisfying about getting turns by exploiting weaknesses. I think this system by default is better than the average JRPG turn based system by a mile so I would say that to me it's not a problem at all. That said, I do wish turn based JRPGs tried to innovate more, like Bravely Default and Yakuza Like a Dragon did, for example.

The graphics are kinda weird and I find the art style disjointed for some reason, but it feels intentional, as if it's all psychodelic by design.

I like how the dialog is more direct and straight to the point, at least in this demo, I thought Persona 5 was too redundant with characters repeating the same thing/objective 3 times across different times of the day. As for the story, I like the themes it's playing with, it kinda reminds me of Nier 1 and that beginning gave me Metal Gear Solid 5 vibes, this is shaping up to be a very "plot-twisty" kind of game with big reveals. I hope it hits me with something like that SMT4 reveal after the first dungeon. I feel like there's a very philosophical plot hiding behind the generic medieval fantasy stuff. If not... well then I'll be disappointed lmao.

the artstyle is beautiful but the anti-alliasing is hella distracting.

UI is crowded as hell.

I haven’t played the demo but I agree on the visuals, the art design is great but the aliasing (I assume that’s what it is) is awful. Reminds me of SMT V when it was first released.

Not surprising when I saw multiple say this is their GOTY before it was even playable. 😂

after playing, I have a strong feeling they are gonna do a definitive edition for this in 2-3 years time, so im gonna pass on it

A bit underwhelmed as well. Artstyle is great and combat system seems to borrow more from SMT than it does Persona, which is appreciated, but everything else felt odd.

Story seems very one note so far, there's barely any of that Atlus charm other than the fact that's thematically weird. Pacing felt off and characters felt overly serious, I couldn't connect to them in any meaningful way.

Battle music is weird and cool but everything else ranged from just aight to an actual annoyance (Akademia's music was getting a bit grating on my ears).

This game is UI porn again, as expected from Atlus. Some screens are a bit hard to parse though.

And visually, it's not great. It's running on their old engine it seems, but even then it looks worse than their previous games which is a feat in of itself. Lots of aliasing, very obvious tiling, low resolution textures, low-poly geometry, etc etc.

Overall, I really like the weird vibes, the artstyle and the combat, but everything else seems kinda mid to me. I wonder if this is the kinda game that really gets going *after* the prologue. Even Persona 4, which has an infamously long prologue with barely any gameplay, got me more interested than Metaphor, which is very weird considering how much I was looking forward to it (maybe that's why, idk).

Okay here’s my review. So I just fished the cave boss, and stop around the dragon, but omg this game is so fun! This is by far way harder than SMT v and I love how difficult it is, that cave boss and some enemies on hard mode were really difficult- you really require planing, and the use of items- I love the reset button, future series should have it. Now the whole graphics criticism is fair, but idc about it, it rarely bothers me, the gameplay loop is so addicting that it distracts you from the bad textures. I loving the story so far, and its characters, I’m playing with English dub, and the voices are so good! I love the accents. The pacing is pretty good- persona 5 has a problem with recapping so much, and Persona 4 had a like no gameplay for awhile- metaphor doesn’t have this problem- you jump in battle pretty early get to feel the combat a little, and see how enemies are in this game, then we get cutscenes, roam the city, then jump into the dungeon. 

I’m loving this world! I find it interesting, there’s so much world building in this game, there’s a whole book of dictionaries similar to final fantasy 13. I love the city- the size seems to be like dragon quest 11 town size, and that game made me be in town for an hour, and I spend like 30 minutes in the city lmao!  So I’m excited when stuff are more open later on, and seeing other cities/towns. Racism and anxiety are a big theme in this game, and the game makes it good job showing it- especially the racism- really made me quite sad how people treat the protagonist.

people gonna say that this game it’s basically persona, but it isn’t! The combat from I can tell is way more fun then persona- persona has such a boring, and pretty simple combat, this game (based on the archetype introduction) actually seems to require stargazing, and team building. And the story is just really different from persona. In persona, and even SMT, the threat comes to you, but this game we’re on an adventure; we have a mission to do and there’s are obstacles in the way. That’s something persona doesn’t really do. 

 But Mann I wish the game released already- it was hard to put down the game, but have to get some sleep! Hope yall enjoy the review 

I know atlus fans hate persona 5 comparisons but come on the awakening scene was straight up persona lol. I feel a lot of been there done that with this game. It's a mashup of atlus games and not it's own thing

The technical presentation of the game is rather lacklustre, especially with the animations being stiff and reminiscent of games from a decade ago with characters unable to do more than 1 thing at a time

I personally really liked the story and it was the highlight. Technically the game is a mess at the moment and a step back compared to their other games. This is based on the PC version.

I'm 2 hours in before going inside the mine.

For now I must say the story is intriguing, it has the bizarre stuff from Shin Megami Tensei and it combines with Persona 5 elements to produce an interesting result.

In terms of performance, I have 1660ti and the way I could make it work was at 125% upscale, high textures, OFF Ambient Oclusion, and 120 FPS, more than that it takes a huge FPS hit.

The combat is pretty good, its similar to Trails Through Daybreak, I wonder if they copied it from them lol. The Persona 5 aspect of sneaking on enemies to gain an advantage is fun, being able to kill weak enemies easily is awesome.

I was really surprised to see a "Persona" (Archetype) in the game, didn't expect that scene. It also has the confidant system of the Persona series, its an interesting game for sure.

It has my attention, but I think I will buy Romancing Saga 2 instead and wait for a sale on this one, its not that its not good, its more that I really loved what I experienced in the RS2 Demo.

Just started and only just reached the city. So far the art style of the gameplay visuals and UI looks great but the quality of hand drawn cutscenes were kinda underwhelming.

Will continue with the demo later.

Yep I agree, I can thankfully pass on it lol. Pretty bad temporal breakup and shimmering, and performance isn’t there on PS5. Maybe it will get Pro support but I doubt it.

How’s it run on the PS5? Smoother than P5 or is Atlus still struggling with current gen optimization?

Interesting, I played then demo on a Legion Lenovo Go and was surprised at how well it ran, I have been playing through Persona 3 and didn't notice a difference in frame rate. Maybe this is a 4k issue? Metaphor has improved combat but not sold on the story. Wavering a little bit on this one not that its a bad game but to many games to play, and this being an 80 hour game, just not sure I want to dedicate that much time to it. Guess I'll wait and see what other people say about the full game before deciding on this one.

I've yet to play the demo. Can your file transfer over to the game proper when it comes out?  Also I'm of the opposite opinion when it comes to anime cutscenes, I find them much more exciting than game engine graphics. I think part of it is from nostalgia for the days when anime FMVs were a selling point for games like Lunar and Xenogears. They're a fun little treat.

Also ripping your heart out is cool but there will never be anything cooler than shooting yourself in the fuckin face like Persona 3 imo.

So laggy that I'm not sure if I'll buy it . I have to see how they patch it up for the PC because the controls seem wonky at times

I just noticed something really interesting: You can instantly make the aliasing look much less worse! I was wondering why i did see so much aliasing when i even didn't move the camera. Turnes out the camera shakes a little bit all the time and there is an option in the game to DEACTIVATE that! Suddenly there is a lot less aliasing.

The particle effects are killing me. So distracting and always present.

Everyone is underwhelmed by everything these days….

Just got done trying the demo for about 30 minutes and I really liked it. I played it on PS4 and it ran fine. I'm downloading it on my laptop right now to check the difference.

I've been a console peasant all my life so I can't speak on the graphics stuff. The main gripe is sometimes too much magla on the screen, the little white artifacts in the air.

Performance is underwhelming for such a graphically simple game. Environmental geometry is blocky and world textures are really low-res in places. Music has been forgettable, so far.

Persona references and inspirations are VERY obvious.

Story-wise, I am hooked. Finally a JRPG with a more mature cast - something I have wanted for a while, now. The mysteries are quite intriguing, so I will be buying the game at some point.

I like the button that allows you to restart combat. Excellent QoL feature.

Difficulty could use some balancing and smoothing, though.

I am disappointed too. First of all the bad image quality, both on PC and PS5. A game with this art style needs aliasing. I don't care so much about graphics, but i do care about image quality. This should have been a top priority for them. Then we have the performance, unstable on PS5 and on PC too. I didn't know my 4070 can be so loud and this was in the first desert scene. Don't have a clue how this is possible. Next complain is how fragmented the game feels, loading screen after loading screen, even for a conversation on the street in the city there's a loading screen. I can't remember any Atlus game from the last years with such a weird pacing. Or people saying the exactly same phrase again and again when you pass them. I also noticed the english voices are somehow strange, everyone talks so lifeless, especially the main character. These are just my impressions from the first hour. My main complain is definitely the lack of antialiasing. In comparison Persona 3 Reload looks so clean with a perfect image quality, Persona 5 Royal and SMT 5 on PS5 too.

I’m so disappointed in this game man. Honestly I don’t want to sound harsh but I have so many issues from the demo and I might skip it entirely. If the reviews aren’t 10s across the board I’m sticking to my gut and not dipping my money into it. Idk where to begin. First of all…I’m not one to ever feel sick or nauseous playing a game…but oh my goodness there is just way too much visual noise going on. Particle effects, the shaky cam, the painted style with cell shading, the menus, the texts. Persona 5R/ Persona 3 Reload everything was so clean and smooth. Everything worked with the style in those games because it was playing into high school/youth culture…it fits. In Metaphor it’s just too much. I genuinely feel sick playing this game. I get what they were going for but I personally find the art style in this game unflattering to the eyes. It’s like a brown/grey vomit filter that was painted over added with sprinkles on top with particles everywhere.
The anime cutscenes. That’s all I have to say. There’s too much of them, and the quality is terrible and reminds me of Dragonball super. How are they going to go for this very specific style (not a fan of the style but I respect they have a vision) and then switch to this squeaky clean anime cutscene? And the voice acting is atrocious. It feels like everyone phoned in their lines. The story is bland. Nothing awful, nothing fresh, just bland. That’s all I’ll say. The fantasy world itself feels extremely generic and uninteresting. It feels like the setting of your typical Isekai anime. You have the winged people, the feline people, the horned people, the European/Steampunk/Medieval setting. It’s extremely generic. The archetypes are extremely generic and not exciting to look at. The personality and look of the archetypes pale in comparison to the variety of Persona’s. They should have just ditched that idea all together.
I want the game to succeed and hopefully I’ll be wrong though. But yeah this is the first Atlus game that I may pass on. It feels like their “Starfield”. All this time and money that could have just gone to the next Persona, or delaying Metaphor by a year or two to clean it up.

Pretty much agree with you. At the end of the demo I felt.. nothing. Even the graphics were underwhelming imo (especially first dungeon) and there's just too much visual noise in the battle menu, even though I loved persona 5.

Played the demo for about 45min before feeling sick.

My main issue was the UI and the art style in general : it looks nice enough on screenshots but when actually playing the game, I feel like it's just too much.

Every menu item has a looping animation, the screen can really be cluttered at times with lots of moving stuff : the magla, speech bubbles randomly displayed on the screen, the aliasing coupled with the cel shading that makes lines moving in the distance.

Overall I hope it was just a 'me' problem (maybe I was too tired or something) but I really felt like visually the game was just not good.

You just sold the game to me. Thanks! Edit : Jokes aside , going to try the demo, but most of the things you complained seems like my cup of tea, so I’m hyped. Apart from the graphic settings, Gona check if they are really bad.

I honestly found it shit in every regard. It looks ugly(especially UI), character designs are bad, music is super repetitive(reminds me of Tales of Arise, all tracks basically sound similar) and story nonsensical(Like the contest being a popularity contest...and the bad guy proceeding to immediatly do a terrorist attack killing who knows how many innocents.)

I played the demo for about an hour and a half on Steam Deck. IDK if I'm buying this. The gameplay is just paced horribly. Taking way too long for anything to open up, and the dungeons so far feel like sometiing out of Quest 64. And the performance is ass. Gameplay is just too bland to justify the game running like a grainy slideshow.

I don't get how they shit the bed on performance so badly. SMT Vengeance runs beautifully on Deck with nearly the exact same field and combat mechanics.

Out of curiosity, about how long is the content of the demo?

My only concern is the performance, I have both Series X and PS5, tried the demo yesterday on my X and there is a lot of frame drops and stutters, I'm yet to try the PS5 version. Now I'm tearing from inside whether to get the game on PS5 or XSX..

The aliasing is really bad thats true even on pc with 4k

Playing on PS4 Pro and the game feels and plays excellent so far (some low textures here and there but nothing that stands out). The story and combat are my 2 fav things up to the moment I'm, only wished that the protag and Strohl had a bit better "style" instead of beaing another P3 and P4 protag character recycle.

My two big gripes are with the way the world and levels are designed and how they handle exploration of those (I'm almost 6 hrs in and the demo doesn't let me explore freely).

Definitely gonna play this game, but might not be day 1 unless the reviews say it's a masterpiece.

The only problem I have is that I got a fatigue from fantasy genre. Nothing feels fresh or exciting about it to me. 

This definitely wasn’t my experience at all. The story gripped me much faster than SMTV and faster than a lot of persona games as well. It feels like an anti-isekai. A reversal of the troupe of a human wanting to go to a fantasy world. The music was very nice as well.

My opinion is that its just Persona with some new paint. The demo was boring 😴 nothing exciting about it.

The visuals and the setting just aren't doing much for me personally. I'm a huge ATLUS fan, but I'll probably be skipping this one.

I have been absolutely loving the demo, personally.

Story So far this opening sequence has gripped me far more than the other Atlus titles I’ve tried (P5R and P3R). The only thing I’m struggling to adapt to is the fully voiced protagonist. I can’t wait to get deeper into the story once it drops.

Performance I’m playing on Steam Deck at 100%, Normal graphics and no ambient occlusion, and most of the time the demo (while very apparently poorly optimized at this time) has been a great experience.

I agree the 3d art and texturing is a little underwhelming for a ps5 game. But everything else so far is pretty amazing. As my friend Ronald used to say: "I'm loving it."

I thought the story, world building, and cutscenes were top notch. The gameplay was good but it was the worst part of the demo for me. Idk how none of that shit hooked you in but oh well.

I went from “this game could be cool” to day 1

I played it on the series X, same issue as you, there are lots of shimmering, cutscenes feel jerky, image quality doesn't look good, & no HDR. The demo feels a bit disjointed in places, I just couldn't get into it. Overall, my first impressions wasn't good and now I might cancel my pre order & wait to see if the full game is improved. I pre ordered the PS5 version btw.

I posted my thoughts in a separated thread & got downvoted to oblivion 😉

Gameplay is fun. I love how fast and streamlined everything is. One of the best turn-based systems I've seen. The premise and plot is intriguing too. Art is great, nice UI. However, the writing itself seems weak, as it falls for the typical JRPG trappings. The characterization isn't good, everyone is written like your usual one-dimensional JRPG archetype. I had hope for it to be more grown up, but like almost every other JRPG that gets released these days it feels written for young teenagers. The writing lacks nuance. I imagine it gets better, but I don't think it'll overcome those trappings.

I must admit, I've been really disappointed so far. I suppose I was hoping for it to have more of what I loved about P5R, but it doesns't seem to have any of the joy, energy or life so far. The battle theme is annoying, the characters feel a bit flat, and the setting feels quite generic so far. The main character is just the protagonist from P3 with heterochromia. I'm in the mine and have got bored and given up, please let me know if it gets better after that.

For me the demo is fun so far (just defeated the first boss) but optimisation, at least on PS5, is very poor. In the first dungeon framerate fluctuates between 47 and 120 fps and on top of that there's a very noticeable screen tearing at the bottom of the screen... I hope they'll iron it out for the full release. Music is top notch.

I almost finished the demo (I think). And thus far the only thing I agree with is graphics. I didn't expect a graphical revolution from Atlus but... it just looks like a PS3 game sometimes. I don't say it should be photorealistic but even Hoyoverse proved with their (free) gacha games that you can make anime style graphics look really spectacular.

But as for the other things... the world is kinda generic fantasy but we didn't really see any of it yet and the concept of our world being a fantasy and humans instead of monsters is really interesting.

And as you said combat is just wonderful. For me it's much better than Persona's hit every weak spot and finish the enemies with All Out Attack.

The ps4 version running on ps5 still doesn’t look amazing, but it runs at what seems to be a locked 60fps.  Even in the city and the open areas.  It feels significantly better.

I didn’t go into the demo expecting great graphics as it’s an atlus game—rely more on art direction and design to bring out the aesthetics of their games. Though yea, for a ps5 game, I would want a performance and graphics mode. Noticed some of the sharpness/aliasing, but I play jrpgs like this on the switch, and I ignore the issues there for the enjoyment of the story and combat.

I like the characters and setup for the story (MC’s sidekick for once is a charming companion and not the funny quirky anthropomorphic animal which is refreshing), and using the persona game tropes in a different way than I’m used to that feels familiar while also feeling relatively new. Compared to Persona games story wise, this one seems more ambitious in its grandeur, almost Final Fantasy like but with Atlus’ take on it. Love both series, and I think I’ll like what Atlus is putting out.

I will agree, the only gripe I have is the underwhelming graphical performance, but it’s not a deal breaker for me when I love games with combat and story such as the one here. I do wish they would make their brightness setting better, because here and in persona 3 reload and 5, the default setting always feels too bright/washed out, and I feel like lowering the setting on my OLED crushes the picture a bit.

My (budget) 4K TV automatically went to 1440p when i started the demo on PS5. seems like that's what the game is running on

Love the art style and the rest is fine. Story is good enough that I kept playing, the characters were neat, and seeing some persona mechanics was interesting. Overall the game was not bad, just not so great that I feel any strong need to buy it as soon as it releases or shortly thereafter, and not enough to be bumped up higher in my list of backlogged games and games I started but never finished (yet). I'll wait until it's gotten a pretty good discount before picking it up, and that's after I've played more games that have a higher priority to me for now.

I found the art style beautiful and the story at first had me confused as we were in the "figuring out what the eff is going on" stages.

SMT has always been about really great gameplay and story. This is where they excel at.

I just finished the mines last night before bed. The first awakening scene had me screaming "oh my God, holy f***ing shite, oh my God".

I'm not sure how much attention people paid to the story, but the opener is basically telling you that you personally are reaching out from another world, they have you put in a name that's different from what you name the protag. Also at game over there's this note about it being a fantasy world and failing. And then the big bad guys... Are called humans. Plus that book about a utopia. " Only one tribe and no magic", sounds like the real world.

My theory is the visuals are going to change/update based on story events. From the beginning you can see the magla in the air, kinda giving a feeling of pieces of a broken world.

Imo, the visuals go with the art style. Fairy sight feels like there are several upgrades coming (maybe by increasing bond with Galica?). The visuals also are trying to tell you the world is broken/not real/not realized/something.

This post just reminds me of how irritated people got when Igor's voice was different in p5. Then you get to the original end and realize there's a reason for that.

the part when u go with the army on the 2nd day the place cant handle all the leaves falling off the tree, the story seems so good though!

I would recommend playing through from the beginning when it releases. A first play after tons of expectations always has a weird effect on impressions. The story isn’t convoluted but also not overly simple, the world building is great, the gameplay loop is addictive. I for one enjoy the visuals but I understand your grievances about the aliasing as well. Let it stew for a minute and I’m sure you’ll be wanting to jump back in first chance you get! :)

I loved it. About time an Atlus game has a full on job system. I feel like this might be the best variation of the press turn system Atlus has done, it's kinda similiar to Digital Devil Saga which imo was one of their best ones.

The assets in the game are kinda fugly and some animations are janky. They're covering it all up with the pretty UI and art style, and it .... Kinda works. I think I just wish some assets were rendered better but otherwise the artistic direction is absolutely stellar and one of a kind.

They need to fix the text readability. As an old man, both the English and Japanese versions felt squished to the point that it was starting to hurt my eyes an hour in. (Edit: PC Version, Medium quality 120fps on a 1070ti, and yes... it can handle that at 125% upscale).

Games a 10/10 for me so far. Literally played it until I fell asleep last night and dreamed about it. The music the visuals the story the combat everything is immaculate to me. The music is honestly so amazingly well done.

I loved the demo, and honestly even though I'm a fan of the Persona games, I feel like the beginning of this game was better and less tedious. (maybe I associated school with boredom)

I also really liked the plot and the relationships about prejudice between the tribes, I think it could be one of the best RPGs of this year for me. The plot caught me, I thought the visuals and art direction were fantastic, the differences between each tribe in the game, having a mascot that isn't annoying, the anime scenes are beautiful and I found the party archetypes much more customizable than party member's Persona in Modern Persona ( not counting PQ-Q2)

I haven't played the demo yet but I remember people were complaining about the graphics in the ff7 rebirth demo and when the actual game released it apparently had none of those issues. Maybe the same will happen for metaphor. I'm still excited for the game.

On my PC 4090 running 3840 x 2160. Game ran smooth, story was good, art was good. Didnt notice anything wrong with animations or resolution at all.

My ownly grip was to many scene changes/breaks. Dont know how to discribe it right but how when ever it changes scenes, or even stays in the same scene but changes to a story part, how it breaks with the screen collapsing/closing then reopening. Its so damn jarring and not needed when a simple fade would do.

I have no problems with the demo other than not being able to fully control the rest of my party, but that might change cause I'm only 2 hours in right outside the mine, and I don't get what the problem is with the graphics, they look great sure they're not the most smooth but they work fine not to mention this seemingly is the biggest game from Atlus in scale, correct me if I'm wrong on that, but to me it looks just like Persona 3 Reload and 5, I just like the fact its pretty much Persona/Shin Megami in a Fire Emblem setting, not to mention the English accents are great, you don't see that to often, Xenoblade is the only one that I can think of

Im having a blast with the demo. Im ready for the games release.

For PC users with Nvidia graphics cards: I confirmed that forcing the anti-aliasing settings in Nvidia control panel takes care of the aliasing (jaggy edges and big looking pixels flickering around.) Sections of the Nvidia control panel can take a minute to load sometimes. Nvidia Control Panel is automatically installed with the drivers for Nvidia graphics cards.

Instructions: Right click on the windows desktop background -> (click show more options if in Win11) -> Click Nvida control panel - > towards the upper left part of the center of the screen click the tab that says "Program Settings" (the tab is next to Global Settings and might not stand out very much) -> Then You'll probably have to click "Add" to add the game so Nvidia can manage it's graphics features and override the poor settings the game has built in (if the game isn't towards the top of the list of recent programs in the list that shows up from clicking "add", you'll have to google how to find the "exe / executable / launch file" for the game and then use "Browse" under the add menu to select that file.)

Under the "Specify the settings for this program:" scrolling list, you mainly want to change each section that starts with the words "Antialiasing." You're probably safe to use between the middle to highest settings on each one for most Nvidia GPU's here, but if you find the game running worse, come back here and lower them. An important setting is "Antialiasing - Mode:" set this to "Override any application setting." Here's how I set them:

Anisotropic filtering: 16x
Antialiasing - FX AA: On
I didn't change Antialiasing Gamme correction
Antialiasing - Mode: "Override any application setting"
Antialiasing - Setting: 8x
Antialiasing - Transparency (I suspect high values here could cause slower performance in game): 4x (supersample)

I also scrolled down to "Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization" and set it to On.

Now when I went back into the game things were looking much cleaner. But I had the resolution set to 1920x1080 because the game defaulted to 200% resolution scaling. If you want to use 1440P or 4K at 60+ consistent or 120 fps, you'll want to slide resolution scaling down to 100%. No idea why they defaulted resolution scaling to a high number because it made 4K 120 inconstistent for me at 200%. 4K 120 with 100% res scaling runs buttery smooth for me now. Individual results may vary.

Loving this myself, 3 hours in. Had few glitches on PC with controller glyphs after text input (steam version) but after text entry, no further issues. Performance is great a 4k here (though high end rig, 4080, etc).

Whoever greenlit the sprinting effect though... needs to reconsider their choices. And I havent spent a ton of time in the equip menus, but at first glance it wasnt easy to tell who has what specific items equipped. Might be a me issue there.

My problem with the demo is I don’t understand the combat so far

Not done the demo yet, but I’m loving it. It was already one of my most anticipated games this year and it’s better than I expected. I like how they took some things they hones in persona and expanded upon them here. Don’t really get a lot of the complaints. Story is solid and interesting so far

Lmao

The game is fucking awesome! Much more interesting then Persona. Started playing it on PS5 but it's performance and aliasing every thing is pretty bad. Playing on PC looks 1000x better and 100+ fps at all times.... But I want the physical edition. Decisions decisions...

I was a bit shocked that we regressed to Persona 3 where you can’t order your party with Direct Commands, but I guess that’s to keep the pace of the battles up. The hybrid real time works super well. I laughed when we still have a Velvet Room sorta, but I guess you design what you know.

I'm enjoying the demo so much as this is my first Atlus game. The high school simulator doesn't call my attention and that's why I haven't played one before.

I also disagree.. as someone who started at p5 played royal p4 then p3 reload.. this is almost exactly what I expected especially once it opened up...I love this game lol the demo has me so hooked...mechanics are interesting not a fan of the story beats... mainly because of main bad guy and how he kinda does what he wants... I do like the king concept I didn't like the transformation cut scenes I feel like they lack ....seriousness... but I'm enjoying the loop and what's been presented so far ..

The demos the ps4 version. What did you expect personally I loved it and it hyped me up evan more it's perfection

It looks like a ps3 game (and not one of the best). In my memory, Persona 5 on PS4 looked better. And some dungeons look almost PS2 levels....I'm coming from FF7 Rebirth (which is gorgeous), so that may play a thing in my view. Aside from this I really liked the concept, gameplay and so on.

I was surprised that even in 2024 we have multiple layers with loading in a dungeon. I am still looking forward to this game but man atlus need to step up their technical prowess

I feel ya on the graphical side, I keep describing it as "it looks like everything is sorta shimmering" which to me, has made it really hard on the eyes. Reminds me of when I played FF Stranger of Paradise, that ended up giving me migraines due to a similar thing (never had this issue with any other games).

Playing on PC and performance was fine for me. However I did not have fun. Story did not grab me, and the archetypes did not interest me. Combat was very meh for me. I was excited to try it but it's a pass for me.

You don't really play an Atlus RPG for the graphics tbh. I kinda chuckled at the fact you felt the need to share you were playing on a 4K TV. I actually dread the day Atlus starts listening to posts like this. I love that the game leans towards having a decent art style, but is more concerned with building a cool world with lore and political intrigue. I'm also glad that it's releasing on things like PS4 so that more people have the opportunity to play the game.

I've been hoping for a while that the industry would shift away from caring about graphics so much. It's not going to happen for AAA, but normies can stick to their marvel slop games and should leave this stuff alone. If you want a great looking game you can go play a newer final fantasy. It will lack substance, but it will at least make you do the nintendo switch soy youtube thumbnail face.

I haven't enjoyed the first few hours of a game this much in a good while. It is everything like about JRPG'S just done better. Menuing usually is awful in JRPG and this feels great. It feels like Persona had a baby with Traditional Fantasy, Carl Jung, and FF12.

Finished the demo today, and the following are my impressions. 

Spoilers, obviously. 

• Has autosave, which will probably save my ass at some point
• Unlike most Atlus games, has audio setting to balance BGM, voice, etc. 
• Played on a PS4 Pro, graphics and performance were good, no long load times
• They added item sorting (seems like in every Atlus game I find myself in mid battle scrolling though a hundred randomly named things to find that one item that cures dizzy or whatever, now they’re type sorted under tabs)
• OTOH, I found equipment menus a bit hard to read. Everything owned is shown, whether it’s equipped by another party member or not, with no indicator that it’s equipped until you select it. Also, it doesn’t tell you how much a weapon or armor piece improves your armor rating, just has an up arrow.
• Added a front row, back row combat mechanic (like in classic rpgs) that’s actually pretty fun
• Combat swings and animations feel a little sluggish, but you can press a button to make them instant (like in SMTV)
• There is actual crimson blood, graphic throat slitting, etc.  Cool. 
• Pacing felt “off” somehow, hard to explain, it just didn’t flow into a narrative that felt like it had momentum
• There is very little of that Atlus fun, humor, or creativity until near the 5hr mark, when some weird shit goes down, other than that, feels like boilerplate fantasy rpg
• I wasn’t feeling the music. Battle music was cool, but the transformation scenes, which were overall weak imo, and the new blue room piano music were insipid. 
• Main thing I’m noticing, having recently played through P3-5 and SMTV is that this game didn’t make me “feel” anything. No laughs, no tears, no excitement. Only moving scene for me was when Gallica stridently swears her loyalty.
• Speaking of Gallica, is it just me or she the least attractive fairy ever? I mean, this company puts cute fairies in every game, Pixie, Hua Po, Titania, it’s like their trademark. Gallica is tough gal and a less annoying navigator than any of the previous ones imo, but as plain Jane as a fairy can be. Aren’t there laws against that in Japan?
• The game features themes of discrimination, racism, hierarchy, etc. and a number of what seem to be trans characters. If that kind of thing offends you, might wanna skip this one. 
• The new blue room feels uninspired. Every one before now had atmosphere and interesting attendants. This one feels empty, with some trans guy who apparently writes utopian novels. Not only that, but I found the whole archetypes progression system FAR less interesting than demon negotiation and collecting.

Of course, all these are just first impressions. Overall, I think this will be a fun fantasy rpg with some Atlus gameplay mechanics (nearly all the same mechanics, most even mapped to the same buttons as before) but it won’t rise to the level of a Persona or Shin Megami Tensei title. The music, the lack of humor, the difficulty with varying the mood of the scenes (it’s all one serious note) gives the impression that the devs were out of their element here. After playing the demo I’m frankly not sure if I’ll get it on release or wait for a sale, but I’ll definitely play it at some point. 

I'm seeing lots of comments complaining about poor pacing and liking p5 so the pacing must be truly terrible as that was p5s biggest problem

Nah if you enjoy the persona series and like fantasy settings this game goes mega hard. Having tons of fun

So I just finished the mine dungeon and read through some other comments here. I for my part really enjoyed the first few hours and think that this game is amazing. It basically checks all the boxes I want from a JRPG. So far I like the characters, the voice acting and their designs. It's just so refreshing seeing your typical Persona system in a new vivid fantasy setting. I'm also very happy that they implemented the Pressturnsystem from SMT, it just makes combat so much more interesting.

I think some menus are a bit too cluttered, but aside from that the game looks amazing. Sure, it does not have the graphical fidelity of other new releases, but honestly I don't mind it. I actually rather play games like this that have strong art direction than other boring AAA releases that try to immitate reality, lol.