Regarding awards, yeah I was one of those who fell through the enormous cracks for one of them, which I think was even a guaranteed 5-star, but also tbh it probably involved at least a partial choice on my part. Maybe it was when Main Story Part 3 came out and like someone could play through one of the earlier easy prerequisites such as one IDA School Part 1, 2, or 3, or Azure Rebel or some such, or they would have to rush through sth like 30 chapters at the end of Main Story Part 2, leaving behind much content in their wake to have to go back and complete.

I recall I did such a rush for the ending of the first Mythos: I did not know that to access the latter half of that you had to finish Main Story Part 1.5, so after finishing the Mythos chapters 1-5 I then went through all of both acts to that main story part, which also required Two Knights to have been finished (fortunately I had done that or I never would have made it!), and then finished Mythos chapters 6-10. Except lacking grastas and also the Garulea gear at the time and also the singular Meta character I had at the time was AS Tsubame with her random hits - plus I was still working on the Four Tales char ADs iirc and also CC did not exist yet - with just the Persona Five Royale chars and some unfinished Four Tales ones, I did not find that end boss very approachable at all:-P.

And in return for all of that, I only got an extra 10 CS per chapter iirc, so 50 CS total. The experience was not fun - turning it into a headlong sprint just absolutely ruined the enjoyment for me:-(. Later, I went back and did 100 enemy kill achievements for each of the areas, which was a LOT of fun:-). Also, I had breezed through Ogres Spike with AS Tsubame and legit felt cheated out of the experience - who are these enemies, what are they all about? What attacks do they have? Do any inflict statuses? Can they heal? AS Tsubame’s preemptive attack simply wiped every last one of them off the face of existence so that all they were was pictures until I press one button and then they get taken off the screen - it killed any sense of “immersion” or “gameplay” or “fun”, it basically removed the “game” and the “play” parts of the experience, turning it into being forced to take a leisurely stroll through that area just to get to whatever was on the other side. And don’t even get me started on Mimi! I even refused to use Tsubame on her and Violet alone one-shotted her! (well, with help from NS Myunfa’s earth zone + crit dmg buff, which tbf is an enormous boost:-) Worst of all was the end boss Zennon Ogre: I didn’t get to see any of his animations at all, he just flat-out died almost as soon as he appeared, and then I couldn’t even take time to think about that since I had to zoom ahead to finish the last 5 chapters of the first Mythos in time before the event expired:-(.

Later, I went back and beat him (his shadow form) with the now-finished Four Tales cast and it was SO MUCH MORE FUN!!! He still died in sth like ~5 turns and on my first try, but he got to use his animations where he grew into this enormous giant, all large & powerful & menacing - I really enjoyed that battle and it sticks in my memory now even, especially the dichotomy between her brain rot approach (no slight against her: she made alarmed monster hunting without grastas possible for me; it is just that she was “tuned” for a later part of the game) vs. the synergy of a slash team where everyone worked together for the good of all - and the power of friendship prevailed:-).

So since playing slowly & thoroughly enjoying one part of the game was FUN and rushing content just to meet some arbitrary deadline was NOT, I probably decided to give up on even that guaranteed 5-star reward, to be able to actually ENJOY the game. I would have rushed 10 chapters or even 20, but 30 was too much. I really wish this game offered better “balance” in things like that.