I really enjoyed this one and sunk about 50 hours into it as I played through it again and again. As with most rogue-likes, my first run was pretty poor because I didn't have a good understanding of the mechanics, but I played through it about 7 times and was still learning new things by the end (like when you cycle through the enemies who have a Heal action lined up, you can see who they're going to target with it, and THAT's the one you want to inflict with the Zombie status to negate their healing). The voice acting was cheesy but loveable, the music was cool but not incredible, and the Devil Power mechanic was one that I hadn't encountered before that added a huge amount of strategy if facing a loss that could be prevented with a very precise and careful application of cheating. There were a few bugs, including some that made for very difficult battles that I barely scraped by, and some achievements that weren't saved to my PlayStation account despite unlocking them in-game, but nothing that bothered me enough to stop playing.

What I liked most about this is that each character seemed viable as a lead. Every run I focussed on specialising one character in particular and going all-in on a particular strategy. I cannot overstate how incredibly satisfying it was to collect the perfect (or near-perfect) synergy of skills and relics to make an unbeatable strategy.

• Dracula's very cool Unleash the Beast ability essentially meant double-damage, and giving him Split Spirit meant he was never at risk of dying.
• Bloody Mary was incredible at putting out huge amounts of physical damage with her free/cheap skills that kept refreshing.
• The White Lady could do hundreds of SP damage per turn with her upgraded Mask that was empowered by absorbing statuses the longer a battle went on.
• Baron Semedi had a fun Depression mechanic that made for longer and more dangerous battles, but could cripple all of the enemies on the field and whittle them down eventually.
• Doctor Frankenstein and The Creature had an interesting equivalent for Physical Damage, and their unique relationship made them increasingly strong as their enemies waned. They had an excellent mechanic for playing skills for free.
• But my favourite of all was Hecate, who had a handful of skills that could nullify all damage and statuses for 0-1 Action Points. When I defeated Van Helsing, he could not do any damage to me, so his unique boss abilities were never something I had worry about.

And I have to say, this game nailed it in terms of hijacking my brain's reward centres and luring me to keep going "just one more" into the early hours of the morning. I was always looking ahead, always planning my routes and trying to hold in my head very complex strategies. Rather than risk forgetting any of them, I often played on much longer than I intended, and wouldn't allow my concentration to break for hours at a time. Eventually I started writing down my strategies so I could disengage and get some hecking sleep. These notes to myself were absurdly detailed, but absolutely necessary because I'd forget some of the details by the next day.

I'd write about what resources I wanted, why I wanted them, and bonus ways I could get them (e.g. need to unlock skills via Combat encounters, or by visiting the Shop so prioritise gathering Souls to spend which you can do by using x character to pass social encounters or visit going to y events because of that bonus relic that grants extra souls when gaining z resource...), detailed plans for my combat strategies (e.g. start with character's a ability, then follow up with b to set up a free move for c, then make sure to apply a condition with d, then that will allow you to chain it with e's ability, so you can power up f...) and highly considered routes that I'd often need to modify due to random events or opportunity that would change my strategy as it unfolded.

It's a freaking fantastic game for me to play an entire run in one sitting, which I did more often than not due to my limited self-control in the face of such a compelling and addictive formula. After beating the game, I was tempted to replay it to chase the last few achievements and unlock the remaining relics and skills, but ultimately I decided it wasn't worth it. Iiiiiiiiii've uninstalled it and won't risk losing another 20+ hours of my life to it. I'm okay with that though, that last run was near-perfect and scratched the itch pretty thoroughly.