Character designs and artistic direction throw me off.
I understand Persona walking towards a generic anime direction, even though it wasn't always (generic) as it's a trend and after Persona 5 I all but gave up on the P franchise (if that's the direction it's going)
The rest of the games in the series though... god damn. Art direction reminds me of Rune Factory or some generic Bandai Namco shit on a SMT game that feels like a punch in the gut.
They need to make demons more menacing, characters less like saturday morning cartoon and play more with color and patterns. I know they attempted to do it with the main character but they failed, it only seems like she shops at cyberdog. Style over substance when it should feel cool and unique.
Boomers you say?
I am think a lot of the "disappointment" in the art style this game has is probably down to it looking a bit generic as far as the look is concerned. It does look like Persona or TMS "Vaporwave Edition", rather than that gritty, urban, G I T S/ cyberpunk look of the older games.
Like others have mentioned however this is due in some part to modern anime looking a bit generic in general. In the 80's and 90’s there was a bit more budget around (and certainly better scheduling) that enabled creators to make bolder choices with art direction.
That's not to say this new game looks bad (it certainly doesn't) but even comparing some of the key art designs from this and the older title that have been posted, it does seem to lack some of its own style.
Still looks worth a purchase though, and as an X Box owner it's cool to see a game like this coming to the system.
Cheers!
I don't think they had more budget in the 80's and 90's. A lot of the animation was still and recycled due to that.
But the way it's done today might still be cheaper due to it being digital, I dunno. I think it's more down to normalization (which is happening in every medium) than anything else. What these people don't realize is that normalization is going to inevitably tank their franchises, because differentiation is the way to go. It just gives more work and is more prone to be judged as a mistep, that's a pitty.
Regardless, I don't think there's an excuse to go generic on a videogame. Usually all the assets are done from scratch or at least touched up, what happened here (I guess) apart from them thinking this is what the market wants, was that it was easier to blend with Persona 5 assets by keeping it this way. It's not as bad in SMTV due to the way it uses light (imo). But part of the problem is there too.