>>305755
>>305858
Update: I finished 2B's route. For reasons I won't go too much into, this is the first game I've played with the text NOT set to English. I got to say, it's a pretty good way to learn a language, and having the voices stuck to English means you don't really lose the plot. So, best of both worlds.
Anyways, regarding the game, here are my impressions:
Combat
Like I mentioned before, it initially felt very Sonic Frontiers-y. 2B's run cycle just felt satisfying in a way I can't fully describe that reminds me of Sonic's run cycle, and if you've played through a segment already, you can blow through it in a very satisfying way. The dash/dodge mechanic initially made me feel like a God, but towards the end of the campaign, I was essentially just spamming the dash button and combat felt like a meaningless chore-filled joke. Part of this was because I was way overleveled because--
Quests
Some of the quests are timed! Because of this, and because I was paranoid and didn't know which quests would be timed/which would disappear, I would end up finishing quests that were SLOGS, like the parade and monk ones, and therefore I'd be WAAAAY overleveled for the rest of the game. Moreover, some of those quests taught me how monotonous the combat can get. Especially the monk one. I was just repeating the same pattern over and over again bored out of my mind. I think the last monk battle took a good half hour at least? It was an awful grind.
Music
A small note about the music. At one point I was thinking, "DAMMIT, don't I know some French? This sounds like French, why can't I understand a single word?" before I realized the whole "Chaos Language" easter egg. Good troll.
Story
I'm always skeptical of multi-route games. Multi-route games are in practice just "Reuse the game content until you find it WAAY too monotonous to continue!" I've learned from other multi-route games that you don't really miss much by just calling it quits after the first route. So, I'm not sure whether I should go on unless someone convinces me otherwise, but (spoilers for picrel and game)
At first, I was convinced that the aliens were actually going to be humans, and it'd turn out both sides were human combatants fighting each other. Like the plot of picrel Nadesico, only with robots. So, I was actually really surprised when there were robots. I'm still convinced, however, that at least all the humans are dead, which is why you never see any humans in the entire game, which would explain what I think is going on with A2 and the commander. I could see the plotline being, "We didn't want to tell you all that humans died long ago so that way we'd have a reason to keep living." Either that, or the androids secretly were humans all along, which would explain all the mushy stuff. I also suspect that 2B and 9S have been through this cycle like 20 times already, since that's hinted at with that questline of the lady who erases her partner's memory and notes that she's done so repeatedly.
If you think the game has answers to these and I should play through the other routes, just tell me to play through the other routes.
Environment
Otherwise, I'm not...blown away by anything in the plot, I guess. I'm actually kind of surprised there wasn't more scifi. I mean, this is a halcyon of time that's passed, but the tech level seems...kind of basically where we are right now, I guess. The only interesting thought I had was, "Oh yeah, hey, right, we can upload AI and 'teleport' them across different bodies with today's tech right now." But, like...that's modern day tech. Nothing really wowed me or made me all introspective/philosophical or anything.
None of the environments really impressed me too much, either. I guess maybe the carnival place of all things, but that was more because that place made me feel by far the most unnerved. The game world as a whole, in fact, felt really small.