The best movement/arena shooter in recent history. Characters and UI look ugly as ♥♥♥♥ in an incredibly charming way and the music is top tier.

Play this game with the FAR Mod. It allows 144 FPS and easy installation of mods such as HD Textures (highly recommend) and better KB&M controls.

Fantastic, and only gets better the more you keep on playing. The layered themes building on one another, strong main and side characters with interesting development of their front and backstories. The sidequests are generally pretty strong, NPCs almost always have something of note to say, and don't feel like generic models put in to populate a scene.

The pacing can be slow at times, such as the first half of Ending B, but does pick up towards the tail end of it. The game has 5 "Endings", but its best if you treat it as one continuous playthrough and obtain all 5 to fully engage in the story. I can not overstate how much I enjoyed the story and its themes.

3 types of combat: Shoot em up sections, hacking game, and combat that I will cover below. Most of the gameplay is the combat, but there are general sidequests that act as little minigames in their own right, along with an interesting system to modulate your stats, abilities, etc.

General Combat: Fun for the most part, however your attacks don't have a nice weighty feeling to them, particularly when you are fighting any large enemies. There are some abilities (Hammer, Beam, etc.) that feel great when they land, but they are relegated to a short cooldown. The dash evasion is fairly generous, and combat usually isn't anything that difficult you can't overcome.

Hacking Game: Worst part of the game. It halts the flow of combat when you do use it mid fight (granted you don't have to use it), and otherwise feels like it serves to pad out gameplay. It isn't hard by any means, but I can't say I had a fun time doing any of the games. With one exception being the final ending, that part was unique and pretty fun due to the circumstances. With all that said, the time spent being required to play the hacking games are few and far between.

Shoot Em Ups: Pretty enjoyable, despite it being similar to the hacking game in theory. But the diversity of attacks, changing sceneries, and unique fights make it all more enjoyable than the hacking minigame.

Very good, more atmospheric than melodic unlike other RPGs, but the parts that are a bit more melodic are interspersed at key moments to really drive home certain themes, emotions, so on.

Played almost exclusively with HD Textures after about 2 hours in, it really does make the game look much better, particularly affecting the background environments and objects more, recommend than the already pretty detailed main characters, enemies, but even they get a little graphical boost. Scenery is very pretty to look at with a large variety of environments to see.

Yoko Taro is constantly showcasing the games themes/messages through its art, story, and gameplay, and what it reveals is something truly worth experiencing. If you appreciate good games/media, you will have a great time playing.