The game is beautiful, but that's where the good points pretty much end. The combat is incredibly repetitive, which might have something to do with there being about half a dozen kinds of enemies in the game, with stronger variations, and the limited number of options you have for fighting them. There's one big random event, the Hyakki Yako, which doesn't seem to happen often enough. For 100% completion I still need to find it about 4 more times, I've done it 4 times through the entire game, and have been hunting it for hours now with everything else that I can do in the game complete, including all the other collection and finding things quests that you get in games anymore to add on time - playtime that gets this tedious isn't a good thing.

Even in the art and world there was a lot of misses - The city that makes up the game world is supposed to feel dead, but suddenly so. There's not enough cars on the streets, not enough clothing piles in the game world, it feels like it was already all but empty before the story started.

Update:
Revisiting this game years later, it did get better, but not enough to change things. The Spider's Thread Update made things better, it added new enemy types, and not just new versions of the same "person with umbrella", "highschool student", "Trenchcoat woman" or "society lady", that made up about 3⁄4 of every fight in the game. That said it doesn't use them enough in the game, I've fought two new enemies twice so far and I'm probably over half way through the game's story content again.

The big problems are still there, the city feels architecturally crowded, but like it was half abandoned when everything started, not enough vehicles and life littering the streets, combat still feels basic wind can handle most fights, water against the umbrella guys to destroy the umbrella, fire against groups or strong enemies, have only used the bow when forced, though may for achievement hunting, I can't even remember HOW to block, and this is even with sinking my upgrade points almost exclusively into traversal skills, very little into combat. Just like my first impression, it feels like a good idea where they cut so many corners they turned a square into an almost perfect circle.

The game is beautiful, but that's where the good points pretty much end. The combat is incredibly repetitive, which might have something to do with there being about half a dozen kinds of enemies in the game, with stronger variations, and the limited number of options you have for fighting them. There's one big random event, [spoiler]the Hyakki Yako[/spoiler], which doesn't seem to happen often enough. For 100% completion I still need to find it about 4 more times, I've done it 4 times through the entire game, and have been hunting it for hours now with everything else that I can do in the game complete, including all the other collection and finding things quests that you get in games anymore to add on time - playtime that gets this tedious isn't a good thing. Even in the art and world there was a lot of misses - The city that makes up the game world is supposed to feel dead, but suddenly so. There's not enough cars on the streets, not enough clothing piles in the game world, it feels like it was already all but empty before the story started. Update: Revisiting this game years later, it did get better, but not enough to change things. The Spider's Thread Update made things better, it added new enemy types, and not just new versions of the same "person with umbrella", "highschool student", "Trenchcoat woman" or "society lady", that made up about 3⁄4 of every fight in the game. That said it doesn't use them enough in the game, I've fought two new enemies twice so far and I'm probably over half way through the game's story content again. The big problems are still there, the city feels architecturally crowded, but like it was half abandoned when everything started, not enough vehicles and life littering the streets, combat still feels basic [spoiler]wind can handle most fights, water against the umbrella guys to destroy the umbrella, fire against groups or strong enemies, have only used the bow when forced, though may for achievement hunting, I can't even remember HOW to block[/spoiler], and this is even with sinking my upgrade points almost exclusively into traversal skills, very little into combat. Just like my first impression, it feels like a good idea where they cut so many corners they turned a square into an almost perfect circle.