Excellent! A well made, enjoyable, fun game. Worth every penny.
And what a ride it was from that day.
The game immediately grabbed my attention with the unique art style and game design in the opening title scene. The introduction of the main character and who he is as a person was good in that I could identify with him from the get-go. The way the game eased me into the mechanics of combat was well done so that I never felt overwhelmed with trying out something new that I was unfamiliar with. After I got the feel for the combat system, about 5 or so hours into the game, which might seem like a long time, but thats when I really started to stop worrying about what I was doing and more on how I can improve my character's abilities and how I can integrate those into the system, the game felt smooth and very well polished. The whole way to improve your characters, from the pins, stickers, and clothes, to the food, brands, and exp multipliers, was seamlessly incorporated into the game that it all felt right. Nothing was ever unused, except for the excess of pins that come at the end of the game from defeating monsters.
The story was also very well told. Even with most of it being text and only a few words spoken by the characters every once in a while, the interactions between characters was very good during the cut scenes. I won't give any spoilers, but the ending was a fitting one to the story. The character arc was very well managed and paced out, and the characters themselves had personalities that came across very easily and I could really feel like I knew these people. The twists were well placed and fitting for the moment in the story.
My only criticisms of the game are very minor. The money pins, which you throw away to get money, could have been automatically sold off instead of you having to do it manually, but its no biggie. Whenever you start running out of funds, just go to the pins and do a massive sell-off to refill the coffers. The other complaint is the cut scenes before certain repeatable battles became monotonous after the 3rd time or so. Again, I just dealt with it by paying attention to something else for the few seconds that the repeated cut scene lasted, then back to the game once the fight started.
The difficulty was never too hard or too easy, with the ability to adjust on the fly. The harder the fight, the more loot and exp you get, but you always have the option to balance things out so you get stuff, but can still manage the battles so you don't die within the first five minutes. I found the happy balance that suited me, and the game was much more enjoyable as a result. If the difficulty was fixed, it would've felt too easy for me, but with the ability to change things up a bit, I never had that problem.
All in all, the game was superbly designed, well crafted, fine tuned, and exceptionally executed. Most definitely recommend it for a buy, or at least a long rent. You'll be coming back to this game for a long time to come.