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Maniac
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Congrats on beating the game before I did.
Gameplay-wise, Apocalypse is a hell of a lot better than IV -- notably, it has a much better difficulty curve where it's not hammering you to death at the beginning, and it's not a complete snooze-fest by the end (or by 5 hours in, if we're talking about IV lol). The typical boss, while probably not too threatening, isn't a complete no-account loser -- pretty much all of them have clear, recognizable strategies, enough HP (generally) to implement their strategies before the die, better equipment to deal with **** that ruined every single boss in IV like reflection spells (read: Tetrakarn and Makarakarn) and buffs/debuffs, and higher damage to put some pressure on an unprepared player. The soft level cap (the point at which EXP starts turning out diminishing returns so small as to be negligible) is pretty damn high too, so a player running into a brick wall has quite a few options to level grind at different parts of the game.
Plot-wise, I dunno if Apocalypse could hold up on its own, but I kinda like how it's set inside Tokyo proper and that it kinda shows how the citizens of Tokyo live, especially after everything has gone to hell after the Expanse had been open by the end of IV. The cast was pretty damn anime, but I liked it more than the personality-less losers from IV who basically just existed as call-backs to the cast of SMT1. I think my only real problem is how the plot really feels like it's shilling the Divine Powers a bit too much by having them break into the setting and just roundly outfox Lucifer and Merkabah with some amateur hour tricks like playing dead, but I don't have enough loyalty to the idea that the main villains always have to represent chaos or law for that to really bug me that much.
Really, the only substantial blemish with the game is just the ending. It just plops it on your lap, it's not actually fun or exciting or climactic, it's just there for the SMT2 callback. Like, keep in mind that I hit the final dungeon over a month before you did and you still beat the game before I did, it's that high on the "I don't give a damn" scale. Like, up until the ending, I was gonna say the game was roundly better than IV, but I kinda don't know now. I mean, it's a fraction of the play time in the grand scheme of things, but a good or bad ending can kinda break a game and it feel like it kinda broke this one. Either way, I enjoyed the game plenty enough for the most part.
EDIT: Persona 5 in April now. Another Valentine's Day alone, then.
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