izigame.me

TLDR: I'm a sucker for any game with Shibuya, so I enjoyed it. It has its technical shortcomings, and it's pricey for what it offers, but it's a cool experience with a lot of passion behind it and I personally liked it a lot. I haven't played the DLC chapters yet (UPDATE: I did! see below), but did play the TWEWY crossover and otherwise 100% the game. I got 30 hours out of it, including reading all of the reports, enemy bios, and non-voiced dialogue OUT LOUD, so it is short for the price. Some more detailed review below:
Story: Classic (though modern-styled) JRPG, I completely lost the plot at the end but that's to be expected. Think Nomura-levels of "what on Earth is going on", only slightly mitigated by the collectible reports. The more accessible part of the story provided a shockingly non-tropey and semi-realistic view on drugs, the police, and sensationalism of the public (flawed since it's a fantasy universe, but refreshing nonetheless). Otherwise, I enjoyed the messages the cast sent to each other- fleshed out their personalities and grounded the story in the modern day. Some dialogue seemed weird, which I assume was a localization thing. Also, some character motivations were strange, and again towards the end I stopped understanding what most bosses and some main characters were thinking.
Graphics: As everyone says, they're not great graphics for this day and age, but I honestly don't care. IMO it's a bit higher than standard for Switch, and I'm used to a lot worse. Some environments seem flat, but overall they make it work, even if it feels like you went back in time a decade or so. Load times were also fast, and I suspect the graphics contribute to that, so I'm actually grateful. Big exception to this is the TWEWY crossover- those models are, uh, really funny. And short. Couldn't stop laughing. (I love TWEWY. I thought it was really endearing, haha, but those poor models.)
Controls: I played with mouse/keyboard, don't know about controller. I didn't actually know that you were supposed to be able to attack with mouse at all, so I never found that an issue, but I didn't like how some buttons weren't re-assignable. I ended up with a silly setup using mouse outside of battle for mouse camera vs both hands on keyboard (more buttons) for combat. So, little to no camera switching in combat, but it worked fine.
Gameplay: Combat was honestly pretty interesting! The attacking but was pretty standard, but having characters not preemptively dodge but rather right after when suppressed was new. Each character felt unique in combat which is awesome. Combat never was difficult though, and even the final boss was brute force with items that I picked up throughout the game.
For Shibuya navigation, a large part of movement is liberation/combat/faster movement/item detection in populated areas that puts you on a wanted list. It is easily mitigated by just moving to a different area, but besides that I found it was a cool way to do some storytelling through mechanics- I'm sure there's some social commentary about self-defense or the mental toll of publicly being your true self when you're marginalized or something. Should be noted that an end-game item helps with item detection, so don't worry about having to find stuff in large public areas.
Weird that selling items was introduced late in the game, and I do feel like a lot of mechanics weren't super developed (like, the shop mechanic was used for one thing and restaurants just sold different flavors of HP heal). Note that the settings provide an option to remove the confirm dialogue to make selling a lot easier and faster.
Bugs: Post-combat screens let you move while combat results are being displayed unless it was a story event, but there's this weird extra button press you have to make sometimes. Some of the UI transitions are a bit clunky. Also, game thinks I didn't sell a unique item I definitely did when mashing the sell button, so, uh, I wouldn't sell items too quickly? Then there's the mouse attack thing that everyone's talked about, but it didn't affect me.
Music and Sound: Genuinely surprised that music was by Yoko, as it felt very much background to everything that was going on. It worked with the game, but there wasn't any time when I felt like the music stood out or helped make a scene memorable, and that's a shame. There were some scenes where there was no music at all, and while it kind of worked, they could absolutely have put something in there to make it feel less dead.
Characters are semi-voiced and only in Japanese, which is fine with me, but might be a turn-off for some. I learned, like, 2 phrases lol
DLC: By the time combat becomes slightly difficult, the item and wizart DLC isn't necessary, and the costumes- well, I guess get those if you really care about how your character works. Again, haven't played the DLC chapters yet. (EDIT: see next paragraph :) ) Obviously if you're interested in the art/designer commentary or music you can get those respective things. Mini art book is in English, full art book has both Japanese and English versions.
UPDATE: I played the DLC chapters (free, but downloadable content nonetheless). Sari's chapter is fine to play, but I wouldn't recommend playing the post-game ones unless you like being left on a cliffhanger for a few months or potentially forever if it gets cancelled (they're releasing a series of these chapters). The original ending can be satisfying enough, even though it leaves things to the player's imagination, and these chapters ruin that in spades.
CAN YOU PET THE DOG: There are no dogs in this game, but there are cats. Interacting with them (I don't think it's a physical pet, just respectfully distant admiration of feline) removes your stress. meow