(As someone who likes to go into games blind, if you're reading this, this isn't spoilers, trust me I'm doing you a favor)

After 100+ hours I can only say I feel frustrated such a beautiful game is ruined by terrible QOL designs.

No autosave.

Locking 20% of the game behind a optional character.

No ability to skip straight to dungeon bosses in NG+

It's like the people at ATLUS want to represent the unpredictability of loss and waste in reality with their game. I don't know what game designer thinks a player who just spent 100 hours on their game should feel when they find out the "true" ending is locked behind a character that was optional to interact with, and there's no option to go to the true ending except to play ~20 hours (WITH FAST FORWARDING) to make it back to that point.

There's over 20 confidants in this game, and by chance I didn't talk to the ONE I was least interested in. I haven't played the original, so I didn't know Maruki was a new confidant. He was boring. The fact he was leaving early and to make sure we "took care of any unfinished business" hint made me *less* interested in him, as I LITERALLY thought "who would lock an essential game mechanic behind a character that leaves early?"

My goal in a time management game is to get the most progress (Confidant ranks, social stats, etc) for every time slot. And I FREQUENTLY was not ready to improve my relationship with Maruki, even when I checked. The game's feedback loop suggests spending time on a Confidant who will rank up. When Maruki frequently gives the "not ready" message, a player will obviously pivot to a Confidant who offers an immediate rank-up or more beneficial skill.

The game community rubs salt in the wound as defenders will claim you're a bad gamer or stupid to have missed all the hints. I've been playing games for 25 years, and this isn't good game design.

The "you deserve it" argument they give implies that you should have been inefficient and ignored the game's immediate feedback to take a blind risk on a perceived optional character which goes against the core strategy of time management games.

The entirety of it is just soul-sucking. So no, I do not recommend this game UNLESS YOU LEVEL UP MARUKI'S CONFIDANT LEVEL TO 9 BEFORE HE LEAVES IN NOVEMBER. Anyone who considers this spoilers, get mad, I don't care. It's nothing compared to how I have to spend 20 hours skipping dialogue and redoing dungeons to go back to what should be a core game mechanic.

Well I found out the hard way there's no autosave. Lost hours of progress and I can't remember all the decisions I made....I was maybe 15% of the way in. I don't want to play the game anymore. That should be disheartening for the developers to hear. It sucks, as I was liking the game but can't bring myself to do it again.

What if I lost power or the game crashed? The game is fun but I can't recommend it unless you are on top of your manual saves.

The game even features a rewind mechanic which is essentially an autosave feature, but to actually save your game to resume later it has to be manual. It's just wild that a contemporary release, a remake even, doesn't have autosave.