This is easily one of the best DLCs I have played in a long while. Ignoring the obvious fixes that the update accompanying this made, such as the skill trees not being a bunch of fucking dart boards anymore, it feels like a more compact and clearer version of the game. For example, the added map has a lot more happening in it, and side missions feel more fulfilling.
Most importantly, the main campaign is more varied, doesn't waste your time anywhere as much, and has a lot of twists and turns that make it feel a lot like modern Bonds film (with a Casino Royale reference to boot!)
It makes me wish the rest of the game was more like this.

It's one of the greatest RPG that has been made, in my opinion. The gameplay loop, the characters, the plot and it's overall charm are all tied up together so well that it ended up almost being perfect in my eyes.
The style in both the UI and the game itself need to be commended. The UI is so snappy as well as integral to everything with both the gameplay and story. It makes looking through stats and confidants so more fun. The battle's UI is also intuitive and not complicated, and all the information is all there for you to see. The anime style of the graphics are presented well and mixes perfectly with the UI.
The music is fantastic, there's so many earworms that dig into your mind. The casino is a banger, so is all of the battle music, and the nighttime jams are all so catchy and matches the mood they were going for. Mix this with everything i said before and it makes for a firework show full of style, and it's very welcoming.
The main cast are smartly written and well liked. The inclusion of the new cast for Royal blends in very well with the OG crew. Getting to see all the confidants unfold and see all of their issues resolve in a meaningful way was also a treat! I would probably say that this is my favorite cast in any RPG!
All of the boss fights were also (mostly) excellent and each one tries to do something a little different from the other and makes for a good surprise each time as well, and the royale content is also thought provoking in what happens during that whole thing.
Overall what drive's the game home to being one of the best is it's overall charm, and that charm ties together in all aspects, making it unforgettable. It deserves all the accolades and gets my highest recommendation!

"Persona 5 Royal" es más que un simple juego, es una obra maestra que cautiva desde el primer momento y te sumerge en un mundo repleto de intriga, emoción y amistad. Desde su impresionante estilo visual hasta su profunda narrativa, cada aspecto del juego está meticulosamente diseñado para ofrecer una experiencia inolvidable.

Destaco su estilo artístico único. Cada detalle, desde los vibrantes colores hasta los elegantes diseños de personajes, crea un universo visualmente deslumbrante que te atrapa desde el principio. Los escenarios, que van desde los bulliciosos pasillos de la escuela hasta los oscuros callejones de Tokio, están llenos de vida y personalidad, transportándote a un mundo donde la estética es tan importante como la misma historia.

La trama está llena de giros sorprendentes, momentos emotivos y personajes inolvidables que te mantienen enganchado hasta el final.

Además de su cautivadora historia principal, Persona 5 Royal ofrece una amplia gama de actividades secundarias que te permiten sumergirte aún más en su mundo. Desde fortalecer lazos con tus compañeros hasta participar en una alta variedad de actividades. Siempre hay algo nuevo por descubrir y experimentar. Esta variedad de contenido no solo aumenta la rejugabilidad del juego, sino que también te permite desarrollar una conexión más profunda con los personajes y el mundo que te rodea.

A través de sus temas de rebelión contra la opresión y la lucha por un futuro mejor, el juego inspira a los jugadores a enfrentarse a los desafíos de la vida con valentía y determinación. Es un recordatorio poderoso de que, incluso en los momentos más oscuros, siempre hay luz al final del túnel si tienes el coraje de seguir adelante.

Es una experiencia que perdurará mucho después de haber apagado la consola. Es un viaje inolvidable que te dejará con recuerdos duraderos y un profundo aprecio por el poder del juego para tocar nuestras vidas de maneras que nunca imaginamos.

Minstrel Song is an old skool rpg where you get into lots of fights with monsters to level up and learn techniques for your characters weapons as well as entirely new game mechanics, killing monsters is also the only way to advance the in game timer, the monsters will be replaced with stronger monsters at a rate faster than you will improve, on top that it will cause quests to time out, and new quests to become available, so actually you want to avoid combat as much as possible to keep the timer from moving forward and instead to focus on quests for character progression, only carefully incrementing it when you run out of things to do but monsters in the overworld spawn in huge numbers and are highly aggressive, so you can't totally avoid combat, but if you get into a fight you can just retreat to avoid advancing the timer, but retreating costs crucial resources so actually you need to run around like scooby doo with a trail of monsters chasing you while trying to progress quests, but the locations where you can find new quests are unmarked, and where you need to go to progress quests is unstated, so you need to run around the overworld getting chased by monsters like scooby doo so you can find quests to level up because there's no main quest, and you don't even know if you've done everything you can do before making the call to kill some monsters to advance the game clock, eventually you'll do this enough to get multiple quests that specifically tell you to go out and kill shitloads of monsters and they're really important so to do the most important quests you need to ignore everything you've learned about playing the game and potentially time out dozens of quests that you don't know how to do because they don't tell you where to go or what to do never mind the quests that you don't know about because they could be handed out by any of the dozens of NPCs who had nothing to say to you an hour ago, who are potentially in locations you haven't discovered because the only way to discover locations is either to talk to people or to recruit new party members, but you can only have a limited party size so to see if a new party member will give you a location (which they may not) you need to kick out an existing party member first if you are full, the removed party member will later reappear in potentially any one of the many pubs, one per city, scattered around the dozens of cities in the game, including ones you haven't discovered, after doing all that for a while the final boss shows up and you are probably not strong enough to kill him even with all that effort. This anti-lesson on game design could only be enjoyed by criminally deranged perverts.

A game that I have waited decades to play. Did it live up to the hype?

Yes.

This masterpiece of a game, which I only dreamed about playing while looking at the pages of the Strategy Guide I bought years ago, is a beautiful and quirky saga brought to us by Shoji Masuda, the same one who also impacted us with "Tengai Makyō II: Manjimaru", which is another solid jRPG.

Linda Cube goes against most of the odds and conventions of its time and presents a more mature, down-to-earth journey of broken characters, alongside AMAZING art and gaming design, with a focus on surviving the perilous wilderness while completing the given task than anything else.

If you like quirky, charming jRPGs from the 90s, you MUST play this one!

[Like Dating Someone Unafraid of Being Themselves]

"'[Linda] has this combination, this dangerous combination, of being an anime girl with capable skills who also knows exactly how hot she is. That is not- uh, that is just not a good scenario for any mediocre dude to get himself into." - Tim Rogers [1]

There is no one perfect, attractive person that can attract every other single person. And yet, for every person, there does exist a match, somewhere out there in this universe. What might be considered a physically attractive feature to one person might be an absolute turn off for another. But what matters is that for a given human, there exists someone out there on this weird, strange, wacky planet of ours that will be a compatible match, someone who loves every single little imperfection and curious trait owned by another, that makes a complete pair. They just have to be found.

Linda Cube Again defies genre both in story and in gameplay. Its story is broken up into three primary Scenarios, each with its own story beats and retellings of potential events that could take place. Scenario A involves rescuing Linda from Ken's evil twin brother, Nek who is clad in a Santa suit, Scenario B, features an unfortunately designed mad scientist who really really wants you to like his daughter, and Scenario C throws all of that character-driven drama to the wayside and tells you the tales of the planet of Neo Kenya (yes, the planet is called Neo Kenya) itself. By the end of Scenario C, you'll be rolling at just how many self-indulgent reference the game makes at its own stories. The gameplay is also one that that defies classification. At points it's an animal collecting game with an open world (eat your heart out Palworld and Pokemon), the point of the game after all is to collect a certain number of animals (one of each sex) on a giant Ark that can travel the cosmos sent by GOD HIMSELF. At other points it's a traditional turn-based menu-focused, Dragon Quest-y-Shin Megami Tensei-y puzzle role playing game with a half baked set of attacks. Yet still it is a psychological horror game with thrilling moments of suspense, disgusting body horror, considerations of life in the shadow of a looming apocalypse, and traumatic themes and events that constantly leave the player on their toes. But in full, this game is about Linda.

Linda! Linda! Linda!

Linda Cube Again is not a game for everyone in the same way that Linda herself is not for everyone. Linda is zany and crude, but utterly confident in herself and her ability to do what must be done. Likewise, Linda Cube Again is a game that wears its own quirks and design decisions with such confidence, that one cannot help but be attracted to it even if only for a moment. Linda defies a classification of a person. She is a wholly deep, fascinating human character, with her fair share of flaws.

The player's relationship with Linda over the three story scenarios is one of a blossoming relationship. While Ken knows Linda from their childhood experiences, the player has no context of who this "Linda" character is, or what she's supposed to mean. Therefore, her amnesia in Scenario A allows us, the player, to develop a more organic relationship with her. By the end of the scenario when we rescue her from Nek, the Santa Claus costume-garbed antagonist of the scenario, the player and Linda have had the opportunities to each mutually write upon their otherwise blank slates. In Scenario B, now Linda is your (read Ken's) fiancee, complete with a simulated marriage ceremony. But again Linda is taken away by intruders, and is physically deformed. In parallel, the game and the antagonist of the scenario introduces a second, more submissive and traditionally appealing, lady, Sachiko. Sachiko is a temptation for the player, but the player quickly realizes that Sachiko, both in the story and in combat, pales in comparison to Linda. The scenario continues on with Ken and Linda reaffirming their relationship to fix Linda by whatever means necessary, and continue their promises made as children to be together. By the third Scenario, Ken and Linda are married (albeit with some slipping-on-banana-peel-blacking-out-and-entering-a-coma-and-getting-married-during-this-period hijinks), and the gameplay reflects this union through a consistently powerful party both in combat, and through playful and friendly dialogue options throughout various gameplay circumstances. You're supposed to fall in love with Linda.

But maybe you don't like Linda that much. Maybe she doesn't appeal to you. Maybe her bombastic declarations of emotion and passion are a bit too much for you. That's okay, she appeals to Ken at the very least. But at the very least, Linda is a reliable party member in whom you can place your trust over the course of the gameplay. You can trust her to be exciting, yet rational when it counts. You can trust her to hit you on the back of the head with a two-by-four by then nurse you back to health.

Linda Cube Again is a lot like Linda. Linda cube Again is a wholly deep, fascinating game with its fair share of flaws.

The process of collecting animals takes on a variety of forms which range from mindlessly mashing the O button to do a basic attack to chip down an animal's HP to under 10% of its maximum HP to capture it, to carefully executing a plan so as to not do damage that exceeds 150% of an animals health, lest you destroy the animal, fail to capture it and gain no experience points. This mechanic of essentially destroying the enemy is unique to Linda Cube Again, and forces the player to be considerate of their strength and how it compares to the world around them. For example, animals like Monkeys might chase after you in the first hour of play and pose a significant threat, but after Ken's level surpasses 7, these monkeys will now pose minimal threat, and by level 15 the player has to take care that Ken doesn't just annihilate these monkeys with a basic slash of a weapon. While there are no other mechanical changes from what is otherwise a pretty standard turn-based RPG, the game presents a constantly changing gameplay loop on a micro level that forces that player to think about what they want to do on an encounter-to-encounter basis. Remember: the goal of the game is to RESCUE animals, not kill them. The game is about preserving life. If you want to kill the animals, just leave; there's a giant meteor coming to wipe out any forms of life in about eight years. But hey, if you find this gameplay loop of hunting down animals boring, I don't blame you. The game is essentially turning grinding into its core gameplay focus.

But that diminishes one of Linda Cube Again's greatest strengths: its unpredictability. I promise no spoilers in this review, but the quantity and quality of depth of exploration I've encountered in this game rivals almost no game I've played before. Capturing each animal is its own puzzle: some animals are basic and found on the overworld, but others are a bit more tricky. One species of animal only appears when Ken's HP is below half of its maximum. another only shows up once you've exterminated 20 different from of a different species during a specific season. Even more complex, one species of animal is thought to be extinct , but as it turns out there's an old man who collects endangered species and has them cryogenically frozen but he's also on his deathbed and craves turtle egg soup to recover, and then will also ask you to somehow find eggs of a protected species, and then after that will accidentally BOIL the animals, forcing you to find a flower that revives any animal, but can only be obtained from completing a DIFFERENT sidequest which involves finding "Hot Dung" (not Warm Dung, mind you), yes HOT DUNG to act as a fertilizer to revive a garden of wilted Cherry Blossoms so that a young girl can help convince her grandpa that he should leave the planet with her and not die alone on the planet when the meteor crashes in eight years. Then, and only then, can you obtain this species of animal (assuming you can't find it anywhere else on the planet), oh and by the way you'll need to somehow find a second set of this specific species to unlock access to ANOTHER HIDDEN ANIMAL. For what its worth, you can figure all of this out just from talking to NPCs and playing with every skill in Ken's arsenal, but hoo boy. Let me tell you, 100% completing this game is not for the faint of heart. But this all returns to the idea of exploration and unpredictability. It is the player's duty to explore the world placed before them to save the lives of at least a pair of every animal, no matter how big, small, useful, dangerous, cute, or ugly, and the game has to make this process feel exciting and surprising when and where possible so as to not make a task of this magnitude not feel overwhelming nor boring. And really, it's best to play this game without guide, as scary as that might seem in the year 2024. You're supposed to fall in love with Linda Cube Again.

(also it's important to note that there is a dogfighting area but actually doing dog fights is entirely optional and I did not partake in any myself. If dogfighting is against your morals even in video games, the game respectfully allows you to abstain, thanks Linda Cube Again, very cool).

I'd be remiss if I did not compliment the fan-translation team for their efforts on adapting everything in this game into English. It is clear from my near fifty hours in my initial playthrough that Cargodin, Esperkinght, Mr. Nobody, Mono, Gwendolyn, MatatabiMitsu and Radicaldreamerr but an incredible amount of care into translating presenting the game's absolutely bananas textual presentation. NPCs are as informative as they are hilarious to talk with (that is to say they actually made me have to pause the game from regular fits of laughter), and that's not something that any uncaring translation team could dream of accomplishing. Beyond the work of the original creators, this team's efforts help propel an otherwise menial game about collecting animals to new unhinged heights, and I must applaud everyone involved.

So take Linda out on date, see if you're compatible. Play Scenario A, it takes no more than 10 to 12 hours to play if you play with intention (you might even want to take notes while you play). See if it's for you, and if it is, play through Scenario B and C while keeping track of what you find in the world, and where you found it. And if you decide the game's not for you, that's okay. There is no truly perfect game that will appeal to every single gamer on the planet, so it falls to the gamers of the world to find the right game for them. If you're not compatible with a game or a person, it's better not to force it. I know this game will not appeal to everyone, but it doesn't need to. But with all of its inspired design choices and imperfections, I found myself absolutely obsessed with and devoted to this game. And to that end, I'm lucky enough to declare I've found a new favorite game.

Linda! Linda! Linda!

______
[1]: This is where I'd link to the source of the quote, but Mr. Action Button said he'd yell at me if he ever saw me if I did link the source and I don't want that to happen. So I'll just say that this comes from a Patreon-specific backer reward and leave it at that. Maybe you can make like Ken and go exploring for yourself, maybe see what you can find.

America, America, Chicago to Missouri. When i think of the USA's depiction in video games produced within it's own borders, my mental state is assaulted by images of heroic patriotism, defenders of the glorious nation and it's allies repelling evil invaders and bringing honor to the fatherland. The parallel domestic depiction of the nation would of course be the titles that revolve around the mindless violence and larceny that civilians feel compelled to commit, the equally-popular crime game that represents the nation in a simultaneously similar and opposite way.

The foreign idea of the USA has only ever been critical from my experience. Games like Wolfenstein criticize the torrid history of racism and oppression, while games like Dead Rising are simply extended hitpieces on the for-profit medical and general media calousness.

One would then consider Japanese developers when it comes to making American games. The seemingly apolitical hyper-reality action game that's fueled by nothing but pure adreneline and admiration for the American-made tales of military might and superheroism in ordinary soldiers.

Sakura Wars V falls somewhere outside all of them. A game released in 2005 that attempts to romanticize The Big Apple in the way the previous games had done for the settings of Tokyo and Paris. So Long, My Love is a game about New York created through the perspective of a Japanese developer writing a story about a japanese immigrant living life in the city. It's a simple game about learning to live with the hustle and bustle of the greatest in the city in the world.

What strikes me so hard about the game is just how positive it is about the USA, in all aspects, and how it attempts to blend american cultural values and rhetoric together with the usual themes associated with this kind of story. At a certain point in the second half of the game, The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and the two-party system are cited as examples of americans putting aside their differences to work for the greater good, the typical "power of freindship" story being compared to these concepts. There is a certain knee-jerk reaction when to be had when the game beats you over the head with narrative of New York being a city of hard-work and dreams, a cultural melting pot of people that accept each other. Since stories usually have this little thing called "conflict" things aren't peaceful and just 100% of time, the game delves into the topics of racism, organized crime, class divide, gentrification, poverty, and homelessness with only slightly more intricacy than you would expect from a game about a theater troupe fighting demons with giant robots.

As for things like gameplay i felt somewhat lukewarm while playing it, but was ultimately satisfied by the unique semi-real time strategy combat, and the heavily unique usage of setpieces. No two levels in this game felt the same, but that could also be a flaw since it means that you have to spend your first attempt at basically every map just figuring out what you were doing. I find the concept of trial and error to be antithecial to a good strategy game, a strategic victory should be brought by proper thinking, not brute force. I did strongly admire the overwhelmingly variaty between the 6 playable characters, all having their own types of attack, move range, super attacks, even their animations have so personality in them, it's the kind of attention to meaningful detail that is rarely seen in modern games.

Not being able to skip animations is always a bummer, and it's not any different in this game. I was playing this on an emulator and making frequemt use of the speed-up function, but even then the tedium was palpable by the end. It's a thorough mixed bag in terms of combat.

As for the VN elements, Sakura Wars has always been the series that i felt accomplished this sort of non-gameplay the best, the high points of this game are all the dialogue and QTE segmants, due in no small part to the genuinely excellent character writing. Even when certain characters aren't the focus in the story they still really stand out, this is one of those stories where the smaller moments are going to stick with you the most.

Choice in Sakura Wars falls inbetween the two pillars of "nothing you do matters" and "every route is a different story entirely", there's more than a few moments in which you make a choice only for it to essentially be erased in order for the narrative to proceed as planned. Your choices will never matter in the grander scheme of things but i found myself making plenty of decisions that felt like they actually affected my enjoyement of the game, again, some of the best parts of this game are entirely optional.

The one thing i genuinely HATED about this game are the technical aspects, the atrocious audio mixing that makes the (often bad) voice acting borderline inaudible at times, the slow-ass UI, unintuitive button assigments, etc. Most of this is probably just the fact that it's an old game.

Overall, i can't name a batter japanese game about america, nor can i name a better dating sim/strategy hybrid video game. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love left a fairly large impression on me by the end, to the point where i was thinking about going back to it several different times over the 6 years it took me to complete it. It's the black sheep of the series, and the game that some might say put the franchise on hiatus for nearly 15 years, but i never once felt that this game was anything other than stellar.

Rhapsody III is a very different game from the first two games in the trilogy. It reminds me a lot of Sky the Third (to those Trails fans) and one part even reminds me of Trails to Reverie. The game consists of multiple separate side stories. Most of them aren't particularly relevant, but add a little extra to the lore and world.

The highlight stories are the 2nd which continues from where Rhapsody II's epilogue left off, the 5th which follows the MVP of the trilogy through multiple periods of their life and the 6th which sort of ties everything together.

Despite the minor relevancy of some of them, they are all humorous and at times, emotional which is expected for a Rhapsody game. Most are on the short side at just about 1-2 hours of actual story.

The combat have also changed. It takes the simple turn-based combat from Rhapsody II, but adds 4 rows of party members. Each row has a leader and they get a stat boost from the other three in their squad. You can potentially bring 16 party members into battle at the same time and they will all attack.

This brings me to a major issue that I had with the game. It has a strong dungeon crawling and combat emphasis and with the large party size, there's a lot of grinding needed to get everybody geared up and to an appropriate level. Straight grinding was pretty much optional for the first two games so having it here kind of drags down my experience.

The game took me 18 hours to complete even though there isn't a lot of story and the dungeons aren't that long.

Overall, Rhapsody III does have some important stories to tell here and does provide a good conclusion to the trilogy. While I'm not a fan of how some of the gameplay execution was here, it's another entry worth playing even if the game's structure is pretty different from the first two games.