Loop8 Summer of Gods has been one of the weirdest jrpgs I've played in a long time, however, just because a game is weird doesn't automatically make it good, that's been my personal case with said game, good ideas but poor execution, but let's start from the beginning. We are facing a -from what I understood-post apocalyptic world, the only habitable region in the world is Japan, people inside of Japan life inside of a space ark, even so, our protagonist decides to live in Japan, so he gives up living in the ark, that's when we start playing.
Loop is played in two sections: visual novel and jrpg. In the visual novel section, well, there is not much to highlight, it´s a visual novel after all, you will read a lot of text and you will interact with the other characters in the game, it will sound strange, but Loop doesn´t have a level system like any other rpg, the strength of our partners will be reflected in the fact of how much time you spend with them, while is true there is no level system, there is a grinding system, where you will have to grind your personal relationships with the other characters in the game, you can do it just by talking to them, there are many options that you can choose, such as taking a walk or simply getting to know each other better.
It´s true that there are different options, but they all end in the same thing, raising your partner's stats or lowering them, it doesn´t help when you see nothing special happens, they just say thank you, the game shows the stats that have gone up or down and that´s it, more than characters or friends, you end up seeing them as simple numbers that can facilitate your adventure. In Persona, each Social Link had something interesting to say, sometimes with a marked personality, and normally, every time you talked to them, you learn more about their context, that doesn't happen here, sometimes a ¨event¨ happens but nothing important.
Your friends have their own stats, however, it´s important to remember that you have stats too, these stats will obviously have to be increased through your adventure, there are different ways, for example, you can go to school, which will increase your intelligence, you can also exercise near said area, so that will increase your stamina or HP I think. You can go around the city, but the city feels pretty empty tho, there are almost no things to do, and whenever you do something the game is like "wow dude, you trained, so your stats increased a little bit". You can go around the city at night but it's even worse because you can't do anything except increase your agility and socialize with other characters, which I wouldn't complain about, but it's not like socializing with other characters is fun.
Well, the combat is weird, it's a turn-based combat system, basically your classic rpg, the thing is that, as I said before, there are no levels, so your strength, skill and stuff will totally depend on how much you've increased your stats, the same apply to your friends, their strength will depend on how much you spent time with them, you have the option to attack your enemy with hate, affection, or...friendship. I like the combat system but it doesn´t have much depth, I am not lying when I say that the only thing I did in these battles was to use the strongest attack I had, there is no strategy or anything like that, I like the idea but tends to be boring. By the way, if one of your friends die in combat, they will die for real, unless you do a time loop.
Japan is destined to be in a temporary loop in august forever, the way to break this time loop is to defeat the bosses of the game, if for some reason, you lose in one of these battles, you will be returned to the first day of august, basically the beginning of your summer vacations, what is not so funny about all this is that you´ll ALL of the progress you made in your stats or in the stats of the other characters, when I saw that for each loop, you lost all your progress , that's when my sanity disappeared, I was on the verge of insanity, about to end my existence, but hey, I stayed strong and finished the game as a chad based sigma that I am (I have no life), the loop sounds terrible (because it is) but it has its trick, basically, after a loop, the points you get for each action increases, if I got 20 points for getting to know a certain character better, in the next run it will be 40 points and so on, this is supposed to be what should give you relief but nah still sucks.
Loop doesn't seem like a bad game to me, I honestly think I'm not the target audience, I probably would have enjoyed it years ago, but right now, I'm a person who enjoys absolutely nothing in life but the sweet dream of the eternal rest, it seems to me that, for a game like Loop, a better story was necessary, because I won't deny that the premise sounds interesting, but everything else is very meh, I won´t deny it has its good points tho. In the game, you meet this adult character, he is a professor, said professor lost all of his loved ones during the apocalypse, he is trapped in his past, so much so that he has managed to create an android that is identical to his deceased sister or something like that, and through the game, while we raise all of his stats, we can see how this conflicts him and how damaged he is as a person, he is the best character in the game since he actually says interesting things and not your classic "I love you oniichan uwu" which let me like that my honest reaction meme.
It's funny if you think about it because besides him, there is another adult character and those two are the best characters in the game, because the others, who are only teenagers, are extremely stereotyped and boring, well, I don't know what else to say, you should play Loop8 Summer of Gods? Well that depends, if you are 12 years old, sure.
All of the screenshots were taken by me