I absolutely love the way they implemented a lot of SMT and Persona mechanics in the combat. Rage making you just swing blindly with your weak attack, Drain is actually a thing! I utilized it on that first miniboss fight against a Lamia where I switched to the high level Jack O'Lantern I got from a fusion accident when she was using Maragion and would just absorb it. The mechanic about Rakukaja making you resistant to hitstun is a really good idea.
In case anyone still believes this is a musou game: I can definitively say it NOT a musou game. This is an action RPG, using the framework of musou combat. In musou games there's a lot of the "small fry" enemies, and this game technically has those, but they're few and far between the actual shadows, which there are usually a ton of. Your spells hit areas, and it's best to try to get all the shadows weak to your spell caught in it to go for an All-Out Attack.
The only disappointing factor is the lower number of Personas in the game, but I totally get why they did this as that would be a lot more animations for enemies. However, it's still important to do fusion, just you aren't throwing away Personas as useless. I'm on the second dungeon and actually still sometimes have use for Arsene. Having the right skills and resistances are extremely vital in this game, especially if you're playing on Hard mode.
This game also makes me want an SMT musou, as a war in an SMT setting makes total sense. I would like to see more games do action combat like this. Definitely not replacing Persona mainline's combat, but as spinoffs it's really cool. I need to play the Raidou games, but for those that have played them, how would you compare the combat to Strikers?