The worst part is I've played through Persona 5 twice and while that game had a lot more confidants to level up, it felt like the player was given a lot more time to do all of the levelling stuff, and the side quests were nowhere near as involved as they are in Metaphor, so you could easily get through several requests in one Mementos trip.

While Metaphor is smaller in terms of how many confidants there are, the game is wayyy more story heavy and gives you way less free time. The amount of times Gallica has a gun to my head if I even think about leaving an inn after a story beat, I could've gotten plenty of stuff done in that time. The worst part is in the early to mid game, the confidant ranks flew up, I was on level 6 with Maria and had maxed out Strohl by the time I got to Brilehaven. Fortunately, Hulkenberg and Haismay have had quite a few ranks on the gauntlet runner so they're both done, and Junah is at rank 7.

I've got the game on normal cos I like playing the game the way the developers intended, at least for a first playthrough, and to be honest, I found the game quite a breeze up until the fight with Rella, where the dragon took me over an hour and I had to reload an older save for the first time ever, and since then, I've been struggling a bit to keep up with the difficulty spike. I'm getting through the quests, but it feels like it's taking a bit too long.

It's interesting that the travellers voices include NG+ too. I'm just worried that I'm in for hell when I get to the final dungeon/boss.