What do you do in this game?

[Drhankey]

Honestly I tried reading reviews but its filled with (presumably) 12 year olds who spam memes and stuff how "yes its really really good", but no actual explanation of the game itself. The store page also shows only stuff about the story.

I've played games that people could describe as masterpieces but I thought as garbage simply because I didn't like the gameplay. So I get this game is considered good, but how does it play?

Thanks

[Citrea]

This game is mostly about the story. The gameplay is essentially a Hybrid of Action and Turnbased RPG with a special twist; I cannot tell you much more without spoiling the story, other than linking you to a video of the first two sandbox challenges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0eJECTQRp8
These are not part of the story, but show off the combat system pretty well.

[Tim]

MOST of your time spent playing the game is in battle.

You fight by equipping Trace as either attack skills, mods for attack skills, or passive skills. Say, a short-range attack that stuns the enemy/a mod that makes other attacks stun/a passive that makes you resistant to stun.

The main sell is that the game uses a hybrid turn based and real time battle system. The game moves in real time until you activate Turn, which pauses the action and lets you plan out a turn in compressed time that plays out when you end Turn. You're vulnerable outside of Turn as you wait for it to recharge, (usually) unable to use attacks until it refills.

If you win, hurrah! Get EXP and level up when you hit 100%, gain a new skill and unlock more skill slots or MEM to equip more skills at once. Health bar drops to zero? Lose one of your attack skills+all its mods and wait for it to repair after 2 save points. Lose all of your attack skills in a battle? Game over.

The rest is spent walking down corridors with examinable items, locales, and terminals that give you insights on the world. You can have short non-divergent interactions with them, such as voting for a new color for the sky from four options or commenting on a news story. These are often accompanied by narration from the deuteragonist. You also unlock character profiles by using an associated skill once in each configuration: attack/mod/passive. Very little plot, very much flavortext.

You'll probably like the gameplay if you're enchanted by the opportunities for experimentation and self expression of FF7's Materia system, etc. But the game's challenge isn't demanding and, dsepite its almost TRPG-like nature with the Turn system, you can't see an encounter and then re-equip yourself; you can only change your load-out at save points. So, if you like straightforward challenge and problem solving, you might not get much out of it. There are mods that make the game harder for EXP bonuses, but they can be pretty drastic considering their effects (such as: double damage recieved by enemies for +4% EXP) and they didn't excite me much.