Shin Megami Tensei If...

What a catastrophic drop in quality from SMT 1 & 2, with both of those games I had a lot of enjoyment from the simple gameplay and surprises from the story but in this game it's all gone. i'll mention the things i like, for example how the gameplay in battles are faster, the game has great music (even though it's taken from 1 & 2 with some songs having a minor remix here and there), the new demons look really great, no overworlds so there's a greater focus on dungeon crawling and less time wasted looking for where to go on said overworld, along with the look of the game, love this style of early SMT, and that game cover is hard asf. however i almost absolutely despise this game due to the way the balancing is treated, how they made it so the back row of your party can't use regular attacks, the game is somewhat balanced around this but it's such a strange annoying change that almost ruined the combat for me as a whole. how every time you enter a new domain some demons can just kick your ass so hard, and sadly how demon fusions are not really being a huge deal as it was in the past two games due to the length of this game and level you reach at the end of the game cutting off a lot of demon level fusions, for me that's what made the previous two games addicting. with the story, i don't care for any of the characters including the main bad guy whose name i already forgot, there's hardly any dialogue say for a NPC here and there, it's just a start, go to where you need to go, kill the bad guy, really, REALLY boring. the dungeons can range from decent to genuinely the worst experience in not only SMT but video games as a whole no hyperbole and YES im talking about the domain of sloth, an absolute waste of time and padding in the worst way possible, i don't like how you have to purposefully die to get a new guardian, and the final dungeon although kinda short, is the 2nd biggest form of padding this game has to offer, to where you have to grind from, depending on what you fought, level 40 something to near level 60 to even stand a chance against the final bad guy. this game is short, really short for an RPG, i didn't even bother to do akira's route even though the high praises that route gets. this game is longer than it needs to be as a spin off and a prequel to persona, i don't recommend it but if you really want to play it maybe you'll get something out of it i didn't cause goddamn i do NOT get the appeal for this. if you want my opinion play 1 or 2, those are great games