I agree with most of the points you made in the review, but I personally still think the game is good and fun. The Traitor mechanics could have been done better, and getting the True Ending was extremely frustrating (especially if you want to unlock the True Final Boss as well, which required noth Maxed Bonds AND a No-Traitor run, which generally requires 3 playthroughs unless you're exceptionally lucky), but to me the only thing that really drags the game down are the frequent crashes I encountered.
Out of the three "free moving Strategy RP Gs" I've played (this, Valkyria Chronicles and Codename STEAM, though the last isn't really an RPG), I actually like this game's core gameplay the best. Mostly due to VC's enemy evasion mechanics being a major Scrappy Mechanic for me. (Oh hey, you lined up a flawless shot? TOO BAD, the enemy randomly ducked, your plan is screwed! At least here accuracy is clearly visable and easy to control.)
I actually liked the plot and characters (most characters deconstructed their various cliche'd archetypes, the only ones that gave me a "meh, seen it before" feel were Nagi and George), the main bad point was the very abrupt True Ending. They should've done a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue at least.
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This Game Should Be a Stepping Stone
Like the title implies, this is a game that should inspire someone to make a good game. I say that because this game isn't that good itself. It is okay in some areas and there are some good ideas present. They just weren't used too well.
The pros:
Combat is pretty well thought out with buffs, positioning, assistance, movement and counters, and it makes a nice tactical RPG.
The varied powers of the characters makes them all clearly different, though some just naturally end up being more useful than others even when you can give allies the powers of Erased teammates.
The idea of being forced to keep searching for traitors in your ranks is a good one and one chapter has a good twist in it to make you panic. Additionally the twist about what's going on is the sort of thing that can be done well.
The bonus Gift points in the NG+ let you really explore the characters' powers, even if it's a bit too generous and makes the game too easy.
But we get to the cons:
The story is just bland and not executed nearly as well as it could have been. Along with that many of the characters only have a little development and you see the same character types that have already been done more skillfully elsewhere.
It's easy enough to find traitors once you know how the system works and overall the game isn't hard enough to really make you hesitate to expose them, so the only reason would be for the bad end or to have a chance to get their Character mission.
With that said, it's annoying that the only way to get the true end is to max your relationship with everyone when the people you need in the NG+ might turn out to be traitors. I don't really feel conflicted about the character so much as annoyed that I have to put up with them over this.
Most of the bugs are minor but I did run into one headache where a bug stopped a conversation from starting, forcing me to restart the game. Fortunately this only happened once.
The (one) boss battle is sadly short and horribly easy if you just spam Daydream and the boss is really uninteresting in design.
So I hope that somewhere, someone looks at the story and combat and makes a fun and interesting game with those ideas. However Lost Dimension is something I wouldn't recommend getting at full price or prioritizing to play over proven winners like Persona 4 Golden or Dangan Ronpa.