izigame.me

This is a perfect example of an uncut diamond. One one hand, you have a cast of characters who all grow on you, are incredibly endearing, paired with a nicely done story and a world with sufficient lore that its genuinely interesting. On the other hand though, you have gameplay that is, in my opinion, shallow and insufficient for a game of this caliber.
Firstly, and this is very important, do not hesitate to make use of the Casual Mode option. You really don't suffer for making the game easier on yourself and it just lets you enjoy the story at a faster pace if that's what you want, which I did.
To be purposely vague and simple, the story is about a set of girls who are essentially brought back to life many thousands of years after the extinction of humanity except they are digitised and can also control mechanical dolls so they can interact with the world around them called Eden, a ship floating around in space acting as the last bastion of humanity.
You are managed by a very cute AI called Enoa, who is of one of eight AI that are all super sophisticated, self aware machines that help manage and look after different parts of Eden, each with different roles. But overall, their purpose to help preserve humanity.
Your goal as Leben, one of the three girls that got revived, is to basically try and become a "real human" by travelling around Eden and collecting literal ExP so that you gain humanity and authority over Eden.
The story and goals changes with twists and turns throughout, so to explain any more without spoiling future events is almost impossible. But believe me, it sinks its fangs into you once you get going. I've seen people liking it to Yoko Taro's works and I agree as I felt like I was getting Drakengard vibes despite having never played them. Sounds stupid, I know.
Aside from the story, the soundtrack is also a massive selling point. It has possibly one of the most well made soundtracks I've heard for a game and its what initially attracted me as I thought surely something with songs like these must be good right? (Its usually not wrong (until it is)). All the tracks are beautiful and sync up with the story beats very well. The lyrics especially on select tracks invoked so many emotions in me when I considered their significance that it literally made me cry. I hope we see Sakuzyo work on more VGM because their previous work, Crystar, and this especially, show that they've got a good knack for it.
Combat wise, like I said, is not that appealing. There's only one combo string you perform where you mash X, launch when prompted, mash again and then finisher. You get shoulder weapons akin to Armored Core but I left them on default because it wasn't intuitive on how they worked as they have multiple functions but I didn't know what triggered what.
Honestly, I just switched it to casual mode to try and get through the story at a better pace instead of being stuck grinding but I ended up having to grind for levels anyways as while it does lower their health bars, you still shatter like glass in the later fights so you need some sort of buffer to make sure you don't at least get one shot.
I loved the game because of the story and world, but mainly because of the characters. Their relationships with each other and watching them become closer made me realise I'm a sucker for nakige-style stories but also how much I wanted them all to be tying knots by the end of it. The main duo, Enoa and Leben, are especially adorable and had me in tears during their impactful moments. The true ending, and the post-credits cutscene especially, was a nice little reward after everything was over, which I cherish because its the only real moment you get to see them not worrying about things around them or going through some sort of existential crisis
Really, if you just take the gameplay for what it is and just eat up the story as it gets given to you, you're in for a treat. It would've been great if it was done as a visual novel instead, but it is what it is.
Despite all its imperfections, a real diamond is lying beneath it all. Its such a shame thought that we will never get to see it refined for what it truly could have been as while better combat and level exploration would've been nice, I would've loved it if the the story & writing was improved even further both in quality and in terms of delivery. You get a few very short pre-rendered cutscenes early on which look fantastic but you never see anything like them again in the latter half.
TL;DR, game is great. Story & characters are fantastic, Combat is not. switch to Casual and just chow down.