I am surprised and thankful to say I got a chance to start it earlier today. I really like the slick UI transitions in battles, especially the turning clock style transfer between enemy and ally turns. The chanting during the standard battle music is really cool too!
I don't have much to say about it plot wise yet, but I noticed the main character actually talks which is a nice change of pace from the Persona and SMT games. Lotsa political struggle told very early on. Rebels taken down by a fantastic general bent on regicide, racism abound, sneaking into the military...Being very fond of Final Fantasy XII for similar political struggle minus the racism I am excited to see where this goes.
I appreciate its fantasy setting, though I must admit other than the fairy I find the fantasy race designs kinda boring. Human but with horns. Human but with pointy ears. Even the MC who just looks like a normal human. Be a little more creative! Give me strange alien looking people or furries or something.
I don't have as much an issue with the graphics as some folks; I'm playing at 1080p with resolution scaling at 200%, so it's basically rendering at 4k and then downsampling to 1080p. Makes it pretty clean. Not perfect, there's still noticeable jaggies, particularly in the city, but it's nbd.
I don't really like how similar the MC's awakening and attack usage is to the Persona awakening scenes in those games, nor did I like that the first "boss" was a 1 v 1 fight which I think is kinda boring.
I love the character designs and boss designs though. Everyone looks rather extravagant.
First hour impressions: It's nice to see Atlus doing a completely new IP and it's definitely a step up from Soul Hackers 2. But I think P3 Reload is a lot better looking visually, and the start is a little boring and too similar to Persona 5. Music, UI design, and character design are peak though and I'm curious to see what this whole job system I'm hearing about is like because FF5's job system rocked and gave a lot of customization options and freedom.