Will post impressions soon. Gonna' go dig in now.
Also, check out
the Gametrailers video review.
EDIT - Put a couple hours into it. First impressions are both good and bad.
The good - holyshitartdesignzomg. Seriously, this game is stylistic as you could want. The opening is beautiful, the beginning of starting a new game is beautiful... it's great. I love it. Also, the sound design is... quirky, but fitting. Very mordern soundtrack, very poppy, even occasionally tries (and possibly sometimes fails) to be hip. Still, it seems appropriate and it's unique and I like it. Game is dark and moody and the plot seems to be unfolding convincingly enough into something enjoyable. Also, the English voice acting is good.
The bad? Well... the English voice acting sucks. What I mean to say is that some of the characters are voiced really, really unconvincingly. The guy from the velvet room and the school board president are what I'm mostly thinking. Most of the actual characters in your group don't seem half bad, though. Mitsuru and Yukari are competent and enjoyable despite occasionally stilted delivery (mostly awkward pauses that are more the fault of the dialogue than the actresses), and despite some localization cheese, Junpei is actually good as well. The first teacher you come across is also pleasant. Akihiko's voice is competent, but the delivery seems to have more considerable problems with him. It's just overdone and doesn't always seem to quite match the intended sentiment. I don't know if this will all improve as things go on, but I *sincerely* wish this game included the option for the original Japanese audio. The reading here is serviceable, and some actors are fine, but the consistency just isn't there. In addition, the game's opening is a bit too long. Well, for what it is. The problem isn't that it's long, because long cinematic openings are okay in my book, it's just that it tries to involve you by getting you to do things now and again, but nothing it has you do is interesting. So it feels more like a chore to do it when they could have just done it for you. They should have either taken that control away from you at those points instead of making you do it, or they should have stretched it out a bit further and given your early actions more substance.
Other than that... no complaints. Despite some uneven elements going in thus far, the high points have been pretty high. I'm really looking forward to actually playing the game for real next time. I do greatly enjoy the way school is meshed with the fantastic stuff.
EDIT x2 - Updated impressions ahoy!
So I'm a few game days in now (about 5 actual hours), and I'm really, really enjoying the game. The sort of uneven English presentation is still a little bothersome, but everything else has smoothed out nicely for me. I love the way the school thing works, and have built a few friendships now and spent some time raising stats, and I've also spent some time in the tower battling the nasties, which turns out to be pretty good fun as well.
Combat works thusly - check your stats (your characters can be tired or well rested depending on school and town-based events, and how often they've been smacking demons around in the tower), head into tower, wander around tower killing things and finding stuff and heading up higher until everybody is exhausted and your combat efficiency starts to drop. Or at least that's the idea. I got to the first "boss" level, or what I gather is the first boss level, and everyone was tired, so I headed back out to fight another day. But I don't know how necessary this was, as even though all 3 of my characters were exhausted at that point, they were still thoroughly kicking ass. But I didn't want to risk it, so I didn't. I should be able to teleport back to that level now anyway, so there was little point.
I love the way the combat works in relation to the other stuff. My first "optional" Tartarus visit was great. I plowed through 4 levels despite everyone's insistence that I should call it a night, and it actually started to feel like I was really a high school student out doing something late at night and was going to pay for it the next day. It was true, too, as when I got back to the main floor of the tower, my mates all ditched me due to their exhaustion. But I went back for another round, and realized quickly that this was stupid... because I couldn't just walk back out if I wanted to, I had to find a portal thing to take me back. Had some relatively tense battles all by my lonesome, but fortunately found a portal on the 2nd floor that took me back after I made a little extra yen. Then, of course, it took several game days for my character to get battle-ready again, so I spent some time going to bed early, then checking stuff out around the school, doing some stuff with friends, and doing a little studying before taking advantage of the Dark Hour again and using demons as punching bags.
It's weird that you don't have lots of control over your other characters, and this is sure to be off-putting for some JRPG vets, but it's actually not too far off from what we had with
FFXII. And the individuality of the other characters is emphasized because of this. They aren't you, you have to talk to them. Want to change their equipment? Talk to them, change it, and then listen to them actually thank you for the cool new stuff you gave them. Want healing? Ask for it from the healing character. You get to understand the AI a bit and realize what it likes to do in certain situations, and thus far it seems that this gives characters even greater personality, because the standard archetypes they correspond to also come out when they fight... which is cooler than you might think.
The design has grown on me as well. It's seeming almost more along the lines of Jet Grind Radio on DC, just without skates and with horrible bloodthirsty demons. In any case, it's weird and oddball and maybe even silly, but it works.
So yeah, those considering taking the plunge... may well be worth the trouble as gpw said. I'm having a great time so far, despite a few bumps in the road.
