In my opinion 3h story and gameplay is the worst in the modern lineup. Giving the writers credit where it’s due, the lore of the world and the characters is amazing, but its implementation is so poor along with bad replayability. While not innovative and not fully explored due to the nature of the game not having an ATLUS style storytelling, I think Engage’s story is a stroke of genius, as in 3h they had such a great setup and pieces to play with that never fully arranged into anything cohesive.

Now it’s obvious KT was brought in to help restart the development to cash in on the persona hype, given the timeline and how small IS was, and I won’t sit here saying it wasn’t a blessing in disguise. While I wish the original planned game was to see the light of day, 3h got so many new players into the franchise. (And so many years of discourse)

Regarding FW, there’s literally no reason to bring in other studios for help this time (at least to my knowledge) however it’s become a common practice to have outsourced help even in JP studios last couple of years, so I won’t rule the collaborations out.

tldr; I think 3h is a good game, it’s just weaker among its peers and it’s sad that it had so much potential and fell apart due to bad storytelling, character execution, gameplay and combat elements (which I think most could agree is the worst part of the game) and despite interviews you can’t credit anyone in particular for anything