A quick overview of my thoughts on the game, both good and bad. Spoilers abound.
- The time system is brilliantly implemented at first, but the fact that there are several events where you can be too slow early on without anything telling you otherwise isn't fun, especially when many of those scenes feel right out of a traditional RPG.
- Aura is annoying, plain and simple. The constant thud sfxs during conversations and her sometimes inconsistent character are bad enough, but her very nature clashes with the game world. It doesn't help that completing quests out of order can make her come off as stupid (for example, learning about the Sweet Memories drug and their connection to Arwin before visiting his mansion for the first time has her immediately dismiss the refugee's missing wife despite the fact that she has been shown to know that Sweet Memories can mess with somebody's memories). She also refuses to learn that self-sacrifice isn't a good trait despite telling Mammon that her sacrificing her freedom for the prisoners at the begging of the game would have had no guarantee.
- Combat is an RNG nightmare, and save scumming is almost a necessity to make any progress in Hard mode to the point where avoiding enemies is the right thing to do especially seeing as you get no rewards for combat to begin with. Damage rolls, turn order, and enemy targeting have screwed me over more times than I can count.
- Resource management is well done for attack items, but I've constantly been having to experiment with how to ration the extremely limited healing items and complete lack of healing magic.
- Companions quickly fall behind Aura due to their slower level-ups and worse stat gains yet battles with them are designed with them being alive in mind even with the enemies scaling more based on what Aura's stats should be like.
- Willpower slowly going down and needing to be managed is good at first, but the curses you get as you progress through the story begin to feel more and more like you're being punished for using certain mechanics instead of being encouraged to work around the curses. As a side note, I find it annoying that there is nothing telling you that the willpower lost from using an item cannot be regained that day especially due to the fact that Vitality potions are almost a requirement in some scenarios.
- Several high-level foes either require stupid high stats or the Star Knightess to get past on Hard mode despite the game's subtext implying that they will be merely tough. In fact, bosses in general tend to be more frustrating than fun.
- Aura's home world feels underutilized (which is a bit of a good thing seeing how much I dislike her), often only having a single new scene play each time the player spends corruption. The way the first few days work similar to the Persona series but that is quickly dropped.
- The writing is good, the story is not. Nothing particularly interesting happens in Roya and I often found myself holding the Ctrl key even during scenes I hadn't seen before. Me watching a scene in Aura's mind or anywhere in her home world was about three times as rare as me just skipping it entirely, something I normally only do on repeat playthroughs.
- The custom pixel-art i very well made, even if the stock assets clash with it at times.