This is gonna be a tough one. To be honest, this game forced me to re-organize my backloggd notation and create "4stars : very good in its genre"

Because I believe it's exactly what Dread is: really good in its genre. I cannot honestly state it is bad or things aren't well done, with the notable exception of music, which isn't not as as good as I think it might have been considering the production level, the production owner (Nintendo), the licence the game belongs to (Metroid) and the genre the game belongs to (Metroid-vania). Yet, can I say I consider it a good Metroid-vania? That's a good question.

To be fair, that's the first Metroid game I ever payed if we consider wandering arround completely lost in a 1st person metroid on the Wii at the age of 6 isn't something we can call a game experience. Nontheless, I know what metroid-vania are: I'm used to Castlevnias (Dawn of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia, Bloodstained, Super IV) and I certainly know or/have played other games in the genre. About Castlevania: i consider the games I've played masterpieces. I frequently listen to their killer soundtrack.

Considering all things said above, my expectations were to discover a pinacle of the genre featuring a great soundtrack. As stated, soundtrack isn't great, but what's about gameplay?

Well, the 1st hour is... Beyond all expectations. It is carefuly crafted, it's in my opinion a near perfect 1st time user experience. You learn how to move, then how to fight. You're then introduced to simple rules establishing the world, its concepts, enemis and levels. Then you encounter the deadliest enemies and your introduced to the counter-attack system. You fight this enemi in a simplified boss fight. Then you're forced into a scary survival horror phase leading to a pursuit in which you have to run for your life.
This is as brilliant as stressful and exhausting. It voluntarly doesn't give you enough time to get confident with controls and mecanics. This is all for pace, and as I state in many of my reviews: pace is 90% of games pleasure.

If this boiling hot pace was maintained throughout all the adventure this game would have been one of the best ever made. Unfortunately, strange design choices lower the interest of the cat-and-mouse game between you and EMMIs (I think of the invisibility feature, which in my opinion is available too soon). That being said, the game's globaly well paced thanks to two major things: bosses and upgrades.

Bosses are very good in their vast majority. I have no complain about them. I'll even remember the magma core boss for a while considering how clear and joyous its patterns were. I also want to point out the submarine boss, which was more of a puzzle, which constituted a nice (nintendo) switch of pace. Unfortunately there are two things I found not-so-good about bosses. The first one is the final boss, which is interesting, but waaaaaaaay too long and difficult. The second one is something I honestly struggle to understand considering nintendo funded this game. The game's flooded with really poor designed sub-bosses you'll fight counteless times. Neither chozo soldiers nor Mawkin warriors are fun to fight. Even if I was convinced it was something of the past, the game spams two of them in a small area to create "novelty, challenge" -> this only create a urge to pull-out the cartridge and sell it to the nearest videogame shop.

Upgrades are, I think, the issue I have with this game. There are two types of uprgades: the ones that actually are upgrades that unlock gameplay, and the ones that aren't upgrades. The first one are cool: walking on the wall, running very fast, charging your shots... All this unlocks new possibilities and empowers both the character and the player. The second one are smokescreen that actually change nothing to the game except allowing you to open a door : piercing shots are just shots, stronger missiles are just missiles, ice missiles are just missiles.

All of this is very disturbing considering upgrades are at the core of metroid-vania designs. I mean, when you unlock something in castlevania, you either use it till the very end (i.e : double jump), either you CAN you use it if you want: most of the time, it's a new weapon with a new pattern, which mean you can use it outside of its straight mandatory use of opening a door. Metroid doesn't feature that, which mean skillset strangely appear... Weak, in comparison of a Castlevania. From the begining to the end of Dread, all you do is shooting and walking, which isn't the same in Castlevania. This bother me, because i'm scared i'm in a "I knew Castlevania when I was a kid so I love it and cannot consider it inferior to other things" mood. But I honnestly think castlevania is much more interesting on this point than Metroid is.

This is a much bigger issue than it first seem because here's the catch: why would you lock a door with a key you've unlocked on level 2 (let's say, invisibility) during level 8? There's no point in it: the devs know it, that's why they didn't do so. But this creates the following issue: upgrade are perishable. If the level designer doesn't specifically design a puzzle arround the running ability, then there's no point to run. That's exaclty what happens. As a consequence, the running ability becomes useless since the 4th level is done. This is a pity.

I must also point out what I'll call "lame" upgrades, like "infinite jump, but only on a horizontal line under water when the moon is half and it's 4am". This seems like... Useless. This seems like exactly what it is after i talked to a friend who knows the serie: legacy. Dread is drowned under the serie's legacy: it is too scared of disappointing to try something new. As a matter of fact, it is even too scared of its legacy to try NOT to put somehting in the game. What's the point of infinite jump in an horizontal line under water? None. But if we don't implement it, Jean-Michel-fan-of-Metroid will complain. So we do. This leads to difficult to use mecanics, like infinite jumps you have to time on who knows what (even the game says "you have to execute it on a precise timing" but doesn't tells you what timing it is lol).

So yeah. A very, very good action game. Very difficult too: in fact I think it's too hard as I think nearly all metroid-vanias are too hard and I don't know why we keep setting their difficulty like this. In my opinion, a game that use less smartly and with less diversity it's "action" side compared to Castlevanias. It trades it for horror sequences that are wonderful at the beginning of the game, better plateform sequences and very cool high-speed chase phases.

Not an absolute must have on Switch, but definitly a good pick.

But yeah, musics are disappointing.

A very audacious concept I would have never bet on. Oddly, It works very well.

This game turns the survival horror, which is by essence THE solo game genre by excellence, into a multiplayer game. IMHO, This is done by:

- Creating a very simple core gameplay: simples moves and a single very simple objective (gather stuff)
This create space for other aspects to thrive. Fortunately, that's exactly what happens. You have to do and focus on very very very simple things, and you must do them by very very very simple means. This establish a routine. Fortunately, as anybody know, breaking routine is one the basis of horror: that's why even though glasses are safe places in The Evil Within, I was always moving forward aiming when I was hearing Debussy's Clair de Lune.

- Isolating players spatialy and relatively to each others
This is due to the objective: searching for stuff in labyrinth. This is served by four level design ideas.
1 - Randomness, that even though it sometimes creates really bad level design, it most of the time creates decent situations that keep us on our toes as they are strangely made and unknown.
2 - "Mischievous things", such as very dense fogs leading to deadly cliffs, near-invisible quicksands, plateform sequences in a game clearly not made for plateforms, Flooded areas...
3 - "Evolving design" such as the said flooded areas, that are near empty in the morning and near uncrossable in the evening. Enemi spawn is also determined by how much time you've spent on the level.
4 - "Two zones design" that put the player's progession in sequence: first you have to reach the lootable area, then you have to loot it, then you have to find your way backward, eventually you have to reach your starting point. This constitute juste as much chances for the game to separate you from your comrades, whom you don't know where they are nor what they are doing nor if they're even still alive (like Glados).

- Relying on efficient horror mechanics
I speak of game design: it's very efficient. As for pure gameplay mecanics and horror esthetics, I must say the game benefits from a conderful treatment of lights and darkness. Each enemi is unique in their behaviour, which is wonderful in two ways. First you have to understand their behaviour, which implies a lot of risks and mistakes. Then, you have to play arround these enemies, which isn't always possible. Some enemies are based on the sound you make, othesr on if they are or not on your sight, others on if you move or not. Eventually, this is a vast and complexe imbricated web of behaviours players and enemies have in a constrainted level design.

- Designing the game's specificity arround communications
This is the game's key mecanics. It's very good. Your mic is always active. Your comrades can hear you within a certain distance, as does the rest of world, hostile creatures included. This is a wonderful way of distracting each other, as conversations go on through routine, which is a chance for mistakes to happen. I addition, everything does a sound in Lethal Company: I must say the sound design is good. Some things tend to do noise, so you use them to reassure yourself, break the monotony and eventually distract everybody (i.e: horns). Some other things do really creepy horror sounds from various sub-horror genres: turrets and mines remind me of Half-Life despair while blob are as slow as inlectuable and more traditional monsters make more traditional screams, swallows, scrapings and tumblings. The game gains a new dimension since you unlock walkie talkies, which mean one operaator can stay at the base and "supervise" the team the best he can. If so, you hurt another fun wall: humans are incapable of communicating efficiently with each other with limited context. I.E: "go on your right, but not exactly your right, like the diagonal right from your current position... Oh ok, you've turned your head... Right."

- Making the game accessible tone-wise, by adding a lot of comedy in it
This makes the game appealing for social groups: nobody wants to live a bad evening, especially when gathered with friends. Considering this and some members of the party might be in a lower mood, multiplayer games have to be softer and more easy to take than solo games. It appears comedy is a powerful tool to do so.
Overall accessibility and benevolence is also really great in lethal Company. For instance, it features a setting adapted for arachnophobes players. Plus, failure isn't a pain, as it either allow to win as a team, either to restart doing pretty much the same thing you were doing before your failure.

- Focusing on small game sessions
This is great to free pressure and leading the players in a "1 more then I'll go to bed" loop, especially considering there will always be this one guy on the back who doesn't want to stop playing and will encourage the group not to leave him alone.

Bonus point: I do like its visuals. I'm glad it takes a lot of inspiration from both cell-shading and the PS1 era.

What a game what a game what a GAME!

I played the first Valkyria Chronicles in 2016 without ending it because of highschool exams at that time. Nonetheless, I never forget it: Alicia was my desktop wallpaper for years and I considered this game the pinacle of the genre waaaaaaaaay ahead of Xcom for instance.

I bought this game before my switch and fell instantly in love with it. I mean, there's a shiba with a cap on the box, how could I resist? I started it on august 2022 and finished it, 70+ hours later, the 1st march of 2024.

Where do I start? I'm kidding, the only thing that matters is gameplay. It is... Tasteful. Extatic. Carefully crafted. Polished. Subtle.
The game's a TPS-Tactical-RPG. You control a squad during an alternative WWII leading its way through axis troops using two weapons: guns and minds. At the beginning of your round your given action points. You can spend one to control one of your squad member. If you do so, the game stop being turn based to become real-time based until your character has done an action (disarming a bomb, firing its rifle, launching a grenade, healing its wounds...) and/or is exhausted.

This. This smart, subtle game design tweaks, in which actions aren't solely random based (as they are in most Tactical games) but are also skill based (you have to aim before shooting, carefully watch for your step to not be seen/ to not walk on a mine...) is -there I say it- one of the best idea of game design I have ever seen in my life. It brings a ton of dynamism to the fights, as well as a massive amount of tactical depth. For instance, moving your sniper to the top of a building makes a lot more sense than it does in Xcom, because in Valkyria, doing so actually CHANGES the perspective from which your soldier sees the enemies, which means it changes the actions your soldier can do (aiming for the head instead of the belly, aiming for a contextualized action like shooting an explosive barrel, retreating because you discover 5 more enemies that were hidden before...)

So, this is the basis of the franchise. It was fun in 2008, believe me it is still fun nowaday. So what's new gameplay-wise? Well, aside from new characters (I'll speak about that below), the main novelty is... Mortars! Yay! Litteraly a brand new dimension: now, placing your soldiers under roofs is crucial. Interceptions, which are automatic counterattacks of soldiers during real time phases, are totally changed: you don't want to go through a field covered by mortars. Mortars can also attack tanks, neutralizing their tracks and dealing them moderate to major damages. Eventually, mortars redefine the role of snipers, that are now either more short-range semi-shocktrooper capable of picking key units, either very long range pickers very useful to counter enemy mortars.

This is tasty. But that's not all. Because you know, sega can be generous. Now, every class (there are 6 of them) can equip three different weapons slightly modifying the specialty of the soldier. In addition, mid game, you receive a brand new side weapon for each class that redefine the way they're played. Scouts become semi long range soldier capable of destroying covers with their grenade launcher. Shoctroopers gain the ability to clean very large areas thanks to flame throwers. Anti-tank units can become less specialized in anti-tank job and much more deadly for infantry troops.

Did I talk about tanks? I didn't talk about tanks. Some units are tanks. Tanks are armoured: They're essenstial to protect your unit and charge strong enemi units. Unfortunatley, they're large: there are areas they canno't reach, and you must watch for anti tank mines as they are deadly for your tracks and healthpoints. This 4th episode adds 2 mores tanks to the game. One of them is capable of transporting troop, which is again the best idea they could have had. It redefines your game plan between small squads: the scout squad going forward in a light armoured tank and the big guns following as fast as they can.

A lead and promotion system is included. you can define which caracter of your squad is a leader, and then you can use leaders to move several units in a single move. This again is very pleasant and subtle.

All this wonderful gameplay is deserved by top-tier level design. Objectives are varied. Maps are great. They're re-used a ton of times in very clever ways. The pace is MAMA WAHOU I LIKE IT. Really, this is a wonderful action experience...

...Deserved by a wonderful RPG experience! Each of your soldier is actually someone. That is great storywise (I'll get to it better), but that's also great gameplay-wise. Because people are people. They aren't perfect. Some people are distracted for instance. That mean they can loose their ammo on the battlefield. Some other people are racist. That means if you put them at the immediate proximity of darcsen (the quivalent of real life jewish people), they'll be debuffed. Some people like to tchi-tchat, which lower their precision.

But of course people also have qualities. Being daredevil is quality on the battlefield: it allows you to play with your life in the worst circustances. Being sadistic, or full of hatred toward the enemy can also be a wonderful quality (I think you begin to see why this game is also perfect narratively-wise). The consequence of all of it is that my favourite soldier is a nazi. This is morally interesting. I love you Viola. Yeah, i love you too Vancey. Yeah, I love you too Lily. I love you all.

All these gameplay traits are served by wonderful chara-design, which lead to a wonderful progression system. Honnestly, it is one of if not the best chara design I have seen in... There again certainly my entire life. It is Kojima-tiers. For instance, a sniper is bald. Being bald reflects light: I know it, I'm bald myself depsite being 25. This character has a debuff in discretion because of its chara design. It is as clever as funny. A girl wears an iron mask and helmet. Consequences: she barely cannot see. Consequences bis: she is immuned to critical hits on headshots. A french girl is -what else- a professionnal swordwoman. It increases its damage in close quarter combat, but decreases its precision overall. My personnal favorite "little story between the gameplay" is the following one. A female character has the following trait: Unintentional flirt. What does it do? It lowers its avoidance when she crouches. Translation: she has a very nice butt. Let's be honnest, it is funny and smart.

As stated before, this also features a wonderful progression system. If you play enough with your favourite soldier, he'll rank up. Once he reaches the grade of caporal, you unlock his "squad story". A squad story is a dedicated story and level, aside the main quest, that explores a part of the character's background aswell as the friends he teams with. Of course, everything is very well written, using characters personalities to establish interesting situation varied by their tone and objectives. Once you've beat the situation, characters learn from their defaults and mistakes. As a consequences, their affinities with other squad member change, as well as their traits. For instance, a japan undercover spy that cannot hold its secret anymore (and is addicted to men's pheromons but that's another sotry) is much more relaxed once its secret is discovered: its debuffs change for buffs. Another example is a constantly drunk shocktrooper that remembers she's actually a former elite soldier, which unlock its inner potential in combat (instead of simply getting in a etyl comat in the middle of a fight lmao)

The main story and main character are great. I think they're a little bit, but just a little bit under Valkyria Chronicles 1 characters (I mean, there was a massive sergent weighting 200kg who was fond of vegetables in the 1st game), which actually means they're above pretty much any game in the industry. Story wise, I think it's a little bit under the 1st game aswell, which showed harsh things such as concentration camps in a very japanese way of talking about war (which mean a way of talking about war as it really is: a catastrophe), but it nonetheless is very appealing. It namely deals with the military AND civilian use of nuclear technology in a way I'll never forget. There are very smart twists in the human relations, as well as a full development of the world. Antagonists are, imho, very human, which makes them waaaay more terrifying and interesting. I really want to talk more on this, but this imply spoiling so I won't : go play this game, we'll talk later.

Did I mention both graphics and sounds are 10/10? They are.

There are virutaly no reason why you should'nt play this game if your just a bit into videogames, japanese games and/or tactical RPGs. As for myself, I consider it the pincale of the genre. It is a masterpiece beyond the materpieces. It has earned the temporary spot on my favourite games list on backloggd, taking the place of Katamari Damacy (which you should play aswell).

Have a nice day, and play Valkyria

Gun mecanics are simply WONDERFUL. The bullet time is straight on point, and the level design is precise enough to create an action game in which you feel endangered. Guns are varied, so are the situations and objectives. One mission is an escort mission, another one is a sniper assist mission, another one features a lot of plateforming, another one is a giant ghost train featuring small puzzles, another one is a race to find back your weaponery...

Characters are iconic and quite well written. It is as goofy as parodistic as... I don't know, serious? Sam Lake does seem to be serious about it... Boss fights are great, mise-en-scène is inspired. The pace is 20/20, the game length is ideal. Art direction is strong even nowadays.

I see no reason for you not to play except the PC version is, apparently, bad. Like really bad.

This game is super addictive. That's a fact. I surprised myself not wiling to let the controller down when it was 2am because I had to water my vegetables. I HAD TO.

IMHO, this addictive force is due to 5 factors:
- Routine: You know what you have to do tomorrow when you go to sleep, and you know the convenience store will be oppenned at 9am. Pace-wise, it's wonderful.
- Very good small feedbacks: The fishing sounds, the sound when you gather things, the colors of sprites... All of this is well done and polished. It makes playing the game without purpose a fun time on its own.
- Indicated hard-reward: You want a henhouse? Please bring 6000 coins, 400 wood and 200 stone. If you do so, you'll have your henhouse. Beleive me this encourage a lot mining stone and chopping wood.
- Fishing: It features a fun mini-game and can be done whenever your near water. Considering the level design places very smartly rivers, seas and lakes, you find yourself able to fish whenver you want to fill a gap in your schedule. This again, is brilliant pace-wise.
- There is no failure

Unfortunately, in my eyes, all this seem... Way too big. Pointless. I found myself walking, walking and walking again to do what? Gather shells? I Gather a TON of ressources to... To do what? Gaining access to cows, whom I'll milk, to do whoever knows what with this milk... What is the point of planting a tree that need 28 days to grow (which is an entire season) and gives fruits in spring while you already are in spring? The point is to benefit from it next year? Seriously? That means you'll harvest fruits in at least 32 real-world-hours!!!

I question myself: is it fun? I mean, it looks like work. I don't want to water my plants. I want to harvest them. I don't want to go in the mine. I want to have copper ingot to upgrade my tools. Eventually: I simply don't want to go to the convenience store because it takes me 1h in game to reach it, which is way too much.

Too much to do, so little time to do so. I wonder how a game advocating a peaceful return to what's important, to a quiet pace of life can be so stressful. Timetables are the worst idea this game might have had. It feels like this game... Doesn't care about the player. I mean yes, it is 17h10 and you end your day at 17h00. I get it. But guess what? Your a robot constituted of 0 and 1, I'm a player. Let me in, I have garbage to sell. Many many times I get to places to do a precise thing, I did other thing there, left, and totally forget about the thing I was supposed to do until I reached my house and it's 18h, which means in my eyes I wasted my day. This is one of the most frustrating feeling I ever had in a videogame.

I must point out the combat system isn't good. That's cool, because we're not here for a combat system. But here's what impressed me: you spend winter in the mine, using the combat system. This is... Audacious at least. Unseen and mad considering this is a farming game. Kudos to the devs for believing this much in the game's combats.

I must point out I played it in split-screen. This imply two major flaws:
- We can't see nothing
- The time continues to fly during cutscenes, dialogs, inventory managment, which believe me is a HUGE waste. As a consequence, I skipped every piece of narration because I wanted to not waste my day.

I get why it is the favorite game of a lot of people, but this isn't for me.

It begins like... A level I have already done in COD 1. Ok, you have a passe on this one game. What do you have to offer? An oudated control assignation (it's near awful, for real). What else? Very dark environments... Well, this isn't good. What? You say you want me to play a "hold the train station" phase, fighting an army on my own with my sole sniper rifle? Will do. But rassure me, when you say "Hold the ground for 15 minutes", you don't mean 15 real minutes don't you?

You do. And when I die afterwards, I have to redo the 15 minutes sniping phase. Alright you beat me game.

Good point: There is an important female soldier. It is rare for a COD game.

Tetris is one of the most famous game in history. It has many children, some of them had great destiny, like Puyo Puyo or all the match-3 genre.

Suika is based on Tetris, but twist its core essence in a clever way. In suika, you don't manipulate tetrominos. You manipulate spheres. If two spheres of the size touch each other, they merge into a bigger one. Simple and smart. The biggest size you sphere can reach is the size of a watermelon (suika in japanese).

I must say, due to the very cute look of the game and its juicy sound desing: this game is fairly addictive. The brilliant idea of the game is using round-shaped puzzle piece. This lead to a lot of rythm variation. On time, you drop fruits as fast as you can to transform a fruit just before it falls on a pit. Another time, you precisely point the very specific location you want your fruit to fall on for it to stay in place.

But there are a low of small flaws that, added to each other, lead to a not-so-good game experience. For instance, you will loose. This is mandatory. Of course: fruits add on top of each other without being deleted in any way. All they do is gaining in size. This mandatory deafeat isn't pushing you to play, and displayed highscore look like an absolute unreachable limit. Another default are collisions, which aren't great at all. Sometime fruits touch each other and do not merge. Sometime fruits are displayed on onto another, which leads to strange physics beahviour. Fall location detection isn't precise, which might be frustrating.

A very smart way to polish a ludum dare game.

It is simple: you have a gun, you fire it.

Unfortunately, there is no enemy. You aim for your own head.

So what will you do to survive? Will you buy a helmet? Will you improve your dodging abilities? Will you improve your luck so the barrel jams more regularly? Will you buy a bigger revolver featuring more bullets in the cylinder? Will you buy regeneration items that provide you health and mana on shots that don't hit? Because yes, there are also magic spells as well as an xp system.

Very clever, very well design. Unfortunately, relies a bit too much on the first shots.

Soleil Studios is made of former Team Ninja member. You probably know Team Ninja for Ninja Gaiden and/or Dead or Alive. Their way to do games is the following one : go all in a CQC combat system, mix it up with great chara design, spicy mise en scène, not so good technique and hardecoreness at every level of the game. Honestly, even finishing one of these games is hard. They know it : I unlocked the "Hard japanese" difficulty mode when I finished Wanted Dead.

In my opinion, Team Ninja is misunderstood in the western world. Most people simply see DDDDD breasts and stop it there. But what's behind those breasts is a deep combat system, actually deeper than most combat systems.

You've understood that I like Team Ninja. That's why I follow Soleil's work with attention since its birth. I was offered Valkyrie Elysium by my sister and didn't take the time to play it (my lover finished it and she's fond of action RPGs so I guess it's quite good). Then, my lover offered me Wanted Dead. I didn't want to let it unplayed for long: that's a question of respect at this point.

So I played it. And oh pal what a game! A very controversial one at least. Why is that? Well, it's actually a very good game. But nowaday, people tend to, quite rightly, seriously dislike technical issues. This and difficulty spikes. And old school linear structure. Wanted Dead has all the three of them.

So why do I consider Wanted Dead a good game? Let's have a look at its 3Cs.
- Camera : Nothing special here. Camera is never an issue. The game uses genres standards to counter the camera's weaknesses: it zooms when you look at something and your character automatically choose a target when attacking with your sword, wether or not this target is out of frame.
- Character : A military police lieutenant expert in both gunfights and swordfights.
- Controls : A clever assignation, in which shooting gameplay relies on sticks + circle + triggers + RB and fighting gameplay relies on sticks + LB + cross + square + triangle. Really, the only thing wrong with controls is you pickup items with R3.

That's it. The game is BOTH a TPS and an Hack-n-slash. And none of these aspects are neglected. Now don't get me wrong : the shooting part isn't as good as Gears of War and the hack-n-slash part isn't as good as Bayonetta. But both parts are good, and more important : they're smartly articulated together. For instance : long range enemies are weak to katana whereas CQC enemies are weak to bullets. This leads to a constant high-risk-high-reward decision making, in which you have to choose between charging and exposing yourself to enemy fire or force retreating the best you can to create space between you and the short range enemies.

This high-risk-high-reward mentality of design is applicated to every aspect of the game. Upgrading your weapon is much more about personalizing your weapon. Each thing you buff in a hand leads to another thing nerfed in the other hand: increasing your clip size decreases your reload time. Healing yourself is also a high-risk-high-reward move, considering it slows you hard making you ultra vulnerable, and can be interrupted.

Ammo managment is also high-risk-high-reward based. Basically, you have... Very few clips for both your main weapon and your secondary one. This forces you to switch between your main weapon and the other one, because enemies drop weapons for one or the other, not for both. Considering you can change your secondary weapon for more funky weapons, like greandes launcher or shotguns, considering the higher damages a weapons deals, the less ammo it has, this lead to interessting gunfights, in which switching weapons is common and the order in which you switch weapon is essential.

A parry system similar to the souls' one is implemented. It works very well, provinding you either a low-risk-low-reward permanent protection in the detriment of your speed either a high-risk-high-reward timing parry system. Unfortunately, mastering this system, paired with the counter attack binded on triangle, is necessary (I mean it: NECESSARY) to finish the game. This would not have been an issue if this system was necessary as well to reach the final boss, which it isn't.

Wonderful transition to bosses, characters and narration. In ne word for each of them: unequal, nice and surprising. Bosses are overall interessting, with many patterns and a good variety in their move set and the one you have to assume to deal with them. Some of them even have very clever design, like the rain one, vanishing into invisibility, which lead to a stressful deadly hide and seek game, or Tom Cruise, or should I say Tom CruiseS because there are two of them, which double the patterns you have to watch for and leads to interessting decision making about whom to down first. Unfortunately, there are the second boss and the last one, whom are very harsh difficulty spike, forcing you to learn things you didn't had to learn before (like perfect parrying), and relying and what can be seen as unfair design: insta-kill moves and arenas flooded with henchmen.

Characters rely on objections. Herzog is both popular and upopular, is both an ass and a nice dude. Doc does surgery while being drunk. Cortez is silent, which makes you over attentive to his moves and animation. Gunsmith is -you get it- a gunsmith, but also a former idol fan of cats. Captain lectures you and your team, but eventually asks for a kiss at the end of the meeting to forgive you (the meeting was about how many people you killed and how much it cost). Bad guys are really cool : I talked earlier of the invisible girl and Tom ruise, but Richter and the club owner are wonderful too. Eventually, Hannah, the main character, is a brutal yet soft abandonned mother, very empathic, whilst being a true killing machine, hurt by wars that aren't her's.

All these people are brilliantly mise-en-scène in a Kojima's way. There a huge attention to futile details, like how gelly is their gelly (spoiler: anti-gravity tiers). The switch between art style is wonderful and well-thought: outside the club is realistic, inside it's anime. Shoutout to this level by the way, which is by far the best one featuring the best enemies and level design.

The world and story told are a post-80 pro capitalist society that killed public services and destroyed many lives in its insatiable appetice for profit. Pretty much our world, just a little bit more fascist. Private armies tend to destroy police to conquier this last market. Girls with no family and a kid have no futur: there are no social services to help them. They'll, as shown in a cutscene, marry a douch that'll eventually come home drunk and kill them. Not gonna lie, it can be harsh. This is very nicely constrasted to the colorful sound and visual design, which is based on the 80s culture, quite happy-go-lucky and egocentric.

Wanted Dead isn't a perfect game in any way. But, as the other Team Ninja (in this case, their child Soleil) games, it focuses on things it considers important and delivers a 20/20 game on these things. If you want a well told anticaptilistic game, based on mixed combat system, featuring great sword AND gun fights, Wanted Dead is for you. If you want a game that runs perfectly on a PS4, that has no difficulty spikes nor linear level design, this isn't for you.

Between 3, 4, and 5, Persona 3 was always my least favourite. Tartarus was a tedious slog, you didn't get to delve very far into your relationships with the people you were closest to, there were bizarrely no option to just be friends with any of the love interests meaning you just didn't get to finish Social Links, and above all there was simply no definitive version of the game with FES and Portable both having features the others lacked. But what Persona 3 did always have was a strong story, a well-defined message, a great main party, and of course, a tremendous soundtrack. While Persona 3 Reload disappointingly lacks a FeMC route, I am happy to say that it features everything else I could want from the game and more, and (unless you want to experience the better main character), the easiest version of the game to point to and say yes, you should play Persona 3.

For the most part, visually it is a stunning upgrade. There are new mo-capped(?) 3D cutscenes for certain moments that feel incredible, and in general the game is also a lot more vibrant while still retaining the colour palette of the original game with lots of blues and greys. You can tell they wanted to adapt a sort of similar style to Persona 5 and it works, with the exception of losing some of the personality in the old character portraits for a more "clean" look.

The soundtrack as expected is fantastic. While many of the less prominent songs are retained in their original version, there are a ton of new remixes. Lotus Juice returns on many of the vocal tracks this time with Azumi Takahashi in place of Yumi Kawamura. It's Going Down Now is introduced as the new advantage battle theme in Tartarus, and Colour Your Night is the new night time theme as Moon's Reaching Out to the Stars is shifted to be only in the day. Colour Your Night in particular is one of my new favourite Persona tracks, I ran around outside at night a bit just to hear it more. While long time fans of P3 might find the new remixes a little hard to adjust to, by the end of the game I definitely loved all of them. Takahashi's voice brings a softer vibe in contrast to Kawamura's, but it is in no way a replacement - they both fit just right.

Similarly, perhaps the thing I was most excited to hear going in was the new voice cast. Many of them feel very similar to their old actors and actresses, while others feel entirely new. Junpei and Akihiko in particular really killed it for me, with the former elevating the character far above what they were previously in my mind. All of the other social links are fully voiced now too, with Yuko and Bebe being big standouts.

P3 Reload also introduces a number of new ways to interact with your party members with new Link Episodes where you spend time with and get to know your male party members better. There's also new activities in the dorm at night that not only are fun little events, but also contribute to their capabilities in battle via their Characteristics. As an example, you can cook or watch DVDs with Yukari enough times, and SP costs of her healing spells are halved, then quartered. These events ALSO will increase your social stats or give you an extra useful consumable, so they do not feel like a struggle to fit into a game with an already tight schedule. It really goes a long way to help them feel like a group of friends who live and fight together, which was sorely missing in the original games.

And finally, we come to Tartarus. It's really hard to make a 200+ floor dungeon feel engaging, and admittedly it still felt a bit rough going in the home stretch, but the new improvements made a world of difference. First off is the visual style. Each block feels wildly different with striking aesthetics so it really feels more like 5-6 different dungeons at times instead of one big tower. Party members have a new theurgy meter which functions as a super and you gain meter for doing something particular to that character (Akihiko having buffs on, Mitsuru inflicting debuffs/ailments, etc.). They are absolutely overpowered and can invalidate a lot of fights, but they look flashy and damn cool so all is forgiven (such is the way in Persona). The Monad depths that used to serve as an end game optional dungeon are now sprinked throughout Tartarus via random doors and fixed passages, offering harder boss fights for reliable major tarot cards in shuffle time and greater rewards/chests. The major tarot cards you can now draw offer a lot of one-time or same-night bonuses in Tartarus such as greater fusion bonuses or getting to draw extra in Shuffle Time. They also even added a catch-up mechanic, where once per-excursion (or maybe Tartarus segment?) you have a chance of having a clock show up after opening special chests. When you touch the clock, you pick two party members that will level up to the MC's current level in the next battle. Something like this is SORELY needed in Persona where most of the time party members will just stay on the bench once they are placed there to avoid grinding. By the end of my playthrough, every single party member was in the mid-70s and I could freely select them as I saw fit for each battle. I remember one full moon fight in particular, I screwed up my team composition and died but that was cool, because I had the freedom to pick a different set of characters in the same night without feeling under-leveled. I really hope we continue to get mechanics like this, because for games with such a good cast as these, it's such a shame to not use more than 3 of them in battle.

There's a lot more I didn't talk about in this massive review of Persona 3 Reload, but above all I can now happily say I consider it one of my favourite Persona experiences alongside Golden and Royal. I'm sure it'll still get a re-release down the road as is the way with Atlus, but for now anyone looking to try out Persona 3 - this is the one to go for. You won't be disappointed.