Fantastic game and great addition to the series.
I have my gripes about the crafting system, and how crafting or upgrading a weapon is too expensive in the lower levels so it doesn't feel worth it, and by the time you have money to upgrade a weapon, it still doesn't feel worth it because they give you better weapons too quick to really hold onto one and upgrade it. Not to mention the amount of materials you get compared to how many characters and classes you have to manage is not nearly enough. By the time I was done grinding to get all the weapons crafted for everyone in my party, I was already way overpowered for endgame and breezed through it, yet I still didn't have enough materials to upgrade any weapon to max level.

Also, why would you give the option to buy really expensive weapons that get crafted into the less powerful endgame weapons when the best endgame weapons are crafted from friendship rewards or random crowned enemies? I felt like I got scammed. I worked so much harder to get all the expensive weapons only to realize that crafting them would be another waste of money and materials.

That said, as someone who doesn't play a lot of turn based RPGs, this was really fun. The combo attacks, back attacks, being able to position yourself for heals or AOEs (even if enemies tend to spread out really quickly), party members assisting in finishers, grapples and knockbacks...it's not something I see very often in these games and I had fun playing with all these systems that work really well in this mashup of genres. It was a blast. Everything else felt just like a regular Like a Dragon game, with all its quirky charms and wacky sidequests, which we all love.

The new map is absolutely massive compared to the other games and was fun to explore. It makes sense they would come up with a slightly faster way to get around for this game. Being able to teleport from the map screen using taxis is a godsend. I played all the mainline games, though only watched a friend play 7, but I was still made aware of all the quality of life improvements to the turn based gameplay as I played and they did seem to learn a lot from LAD.

So yeah, I'd say it's absolutely worth picking up even if turn based is not your cup of tea.

Fantastic game and great addition to the series. I have my gripes about the crafting system, and how crafting or upgrading a weapon is too expensive in the lower levels so it doesn't feel worth it, and by the time you have money to upgrade a weapon, it still doesn't feel worth it because they give you better weapons too quick to really hold onto one and upgrade it. Not to mention the amount of materials you get compared to how many characters and classes you have to manage is not nearly enough. By the time I was done grinding to get all the weapons crafted for everyone in my party, I was already way overpowered for endgame and breezed through it, yet I still didn't have enough materials to upgrade any weapon to max level. Also, why would you give the option to buy really expensive weapons that get crafted into the less powerful endgame weapons when the best endgame weapons are crafted from friendship rewards or random crowned enemies? I felt like I got scammed. I worked so much harder to get all the expensive weapons only to realize that crafting them would be another waste of money and materials. That said, as someone who doesn't play a lot of turn based RPGs, this was really fun. The combo attacks, back attacks, being able to position yourself for heals or AOEs (even if enemies tend to spread out really quickly), party members assisting in finishers, grapples and knockbacks...it's not something I see very often in these games and I had fun playing with all these systems that work really well in this mashup of genres. It was a blast. Everything else felt just like a regular Like a Dragon game, with all its quirky charms and wacky sidequests, which we all love. The new map is absolutely massive compared to the other games and was fun to explore. It makes sense they would come up with a slightly faster way to get around for this game. Being able to teleport from the map screen using taxis is a godsend. I played all the mainline games, though only watched a friend play 7, but I was still made aware of all the quality of life improvements to the turn based gameplay as I played and they did seem to learn a lot from LAD. So yeah, I'd say it's absolutely worth picking up even if turn based is not your cup of tea.