Good to hear that other people have heard of the game; the only person I showed the demo to (who is an avid Persona fan, though I don't play it) found the innuendo too much for his taste. (His other feedback was that maintaining equipment looked like it was going to be a pain for so many party members.)
I hadn't yet picked up the game, though I've played the demo version (tl;dr money's going other places). Have either of you played the demo, and how is the full game any different, if so? (Well, besides obvious things like the heroines being restricted, etc.)
Sorry about the late reply. I was busy (both work and play).
I assume you're referring to the Vita demo, which has much more content than the 3DS demo. Let me think... I only watched a playthrough of the Vita demo. The demo is limited to the first labyrinth. The actual game is divided up into chapters (you advance to the next one by beating a labyrinth). You can grind if you want, but heroine intimacy levels are capped based on how many chapters you've beaten, and that affects other things. The full game has classes to unlock (I hear there are 20) and facilities that can be unlocked and leveled up.
Those are the obvious differences. As for what makes the game stand out, it's the Star Children. They're adorable; they say funny things when exploring and fighting. They only fight in teams of three, and mixing and matching classes grants access to more powerful skills. Their levels are also capped based on the mother's level, so the earlier ones are essentially obsoleted by newer ones. The game handles this by letting you retire your children to level up the city and build facilities, like the gift shop.
One of the game's most diabolical design decisions is to on rare occasions create special Star Children with no level cap (99). They have better than average stats, which is useful for getting the better classes, and are potentially useful for the entire game. I have three of them and am constantly on the lookout for more. Unfortunately, reloading a save file doesn't seem to affect stats, gender, or default names. Because of this, I sometime lost patience and created level 1 children just to release them. This turned out to be a horrible idea- some facilities rely on your retired children, so having level 1's clogging up the list is causing me grief. I'm a deadbeat parent!
If I have one thing to gripe about, it's that the game dangles advanced classes just out of reach. Sometimes you have enough stats to create them, and sometimes you fall a little short, which is why I burn through Star Children instead of maxing out each one. Because of this, I wind up having to classmate when I want to level and vice-versa. The heroines' stat grids differ wildly, so if you want to create a specific class, you have to interact/classmate with certain heroines. This is a problem if you have a least favorite. I'm pretty happy with the female cast, but the initial presentation is somewhat stilted so it requires some patience before they start to shine.
Dungeon design is randomly generated and simplistic, like Persona 3's Tartarus. I have not taken full advantage of team building yet- I tend to rely on brute force and will continue to do so until I can get more of the interesting team skills. As for the innuendo, sometimes it goes overboard, but I don't dismiss a game just because of that. The game also has some actual plot, though I'm not certain where it's headed from where I am.
