I had a pretty nice time with this :) not only is there the most diversity ive ever seen in a video game(a masc darkskin nb ex, a trans woman, several bisexual characters, sapphic, mlm, you name it)
but it also can be pretty funny sometimes and corny but sweet <3
I don't think its perfect though, the fights do get a little repetitive and really the biggest issue with this game overall is just.... its a short length! and thats not always bad- ITS JUST-

This is a cast with a lot of silliness and some charm too, youre basically out here playin what (At times feels like) a sri lankan/indian mixed ramona flowers reconciling with all her exes and really just people in her life in general she's left shit ruptured with. In a way the game itself also feels like it's physically representative of that with its combat being well timed presses ala QTE/Mario & Luigi timing presses for attacks
You're quite literally usin emotional exploitation and manipulation to win these battles whether you need to flirt to get out of it, say something shocking, impress someone, piss them offfff, break their heartttt
all that
What i dont like about this is how it virtually doesnt have as big of an impact with things as much as I wouldve liked.. it feels like more grave consequences should happen if you choose to Not mend things with one of her exes,. and thats another thing! your choices mostly gear towards what your build is leaning towards when you play this game

sayin curt and crass mean but true shit? major boost modifier to your attack output while everything else is lacking

going for defensiveee and going for the more balanced approach also leads to etc etc, you get that

I still think the combat is silly and fun! It just feels like it could be more

The skating in this game is also something i immediately was like "ohhhhhhhhhhhh nah." when I got my hands onto it for like... 30 seconds..
AND I KNOW THAT SOUNDS HARSH IK BUT IM KEEPING IT REAL WITH YOU, when youve played shit like ANY skate game ANY tony hawk game, jet set radio, hell bombrush cyberfunk came out same year it was Fresh In My Head how those games work and feel and how those physics are suppose to give you a very specific kind of mouthfeel..

This does not do that! It still works! It's mostly just a neat way to traverse instead of just a simple run button, I feel like this totally couldve been utilized in the battle system too SOMEHOW with an alternative equipment system for your bash or maybe amplifying certain emotional manipulation related skills with using the skateboard.. somethin!

The game already has such a strong lean towards all that in the first place with the whole skateboard cult thing that kindof just gets put to the side near the end... and.. I did too really LMAO
i didnt care for the skating challenges because the skating itself never felt like I was gonna be rewarded in tact and experience with anything more than what i could already do at base level.. and that itself wasnt all that
If anything the coolest thing about the skating was totally how you can just PLAY as ANYONE like
ANYONE even at some point like
mild spoilers but, you can play as not even like.. a human enemy type when you skate around its so funny
it has no bearing on the story or anything like that but just somethin tht gets u smirking kindof
I couldnt play as Diya for long bc then i actually would just die for very normal reasons

I think as a whole though this game is cool, i think it couldve been baked longer though and everything comes together PRETTTYYYYYYY clean all things considered.. its not like a miracle ending happens! but good steps in the right directions for most characters that i think are sweet

The cooking side of things actually even educated me on a lot of cuisine that id love to try, its so interesting and refreshing seeing a family supportive of their gay kid but in a way that feels human and not like they automatically just were cool with no prior history or hangups
Like the bits with Jala's dad are really fucking cool and his whole explanation on how he felt so spineless not standing up for Jala's aunt was probably my favorite explanation and conversation in the game to the point where i aint even remember what the fuck we were even cooking when that happened LMAO

Tyler is also obviously one of my favorites ofc, a darkskin goth trans woman VOICED by a trans woman as your MC's the big one style ex? its genius and reason alone for this game being in my good graces

but i do care about this game, and because i care im hammering the things i dont like about it and things i wish were better because I think some bits awkwardly stick out together and couldve benefited for longer runtime and smaller vision with the weight of how many mechanics are going on here.. because all in all i think i just wanted.. More rlly !

In the end you can try this game on gamepass if you like, its not too terribly long( a little to its detriment), the humor isnt TOTALLY my speed but it got a couple giggles out of me and cracked a smile here and there.. but there's heart going on here, its just not everyone's dancing to its beat

side things i liked:
-the grandma is hot as fuck
-actually some nice little commentary on how masc nonbinary people are treated
-i think the skating is a really good idea in General even though i didnt warm up to it at all
-theres a move where you can summon jala's mom to chancla crush nearly anybody in the game and i think thts so peak
-jala confronting herself in a kinda cool way
-this game has a "fuck it" toggle with the difficulty if you just wanna see what happens next in the story but i feel like doing this youre stripping away the most directly engaging gameplay form In This Game so.. i guess only do it for something annoying or if you dont like grinding out the ingame equivalent of suitor Goombas
-this also has some family trauma commentary going on which may hit for south asian players especially, im not that but i could still get the points and they spell it out for you a lot and ive had friends that Are that go through a lotta fuckshit so there's some of that that may be pleasing

not to end it on a bitter note but i also think this game suffers from a lot of these conflicts with her exes ultimately being such old news that its in the bulk of fucking middle school adn the start of highschool BUT LIKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE thats why some of it gets squished so quick anyway i suppose
just some more show instead of tell wouldve been nice

if i was jala and i fumbled both tyler and diya i woulda killed m-

that's not fucking fair mannnnnnnnnnnn........ fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck okay ive tied up all the loose ends, seen the conclusions to some of the social links i didnt finish in time.. and i fully beat the game and started a Little of the new game plus for the first time ever...

I THINK i can type my thoughts in good conscience now

warning this review in particular in your eyes will have me getting sappy and sentimental, but ive never played this game before:

This was the first persona game i had ever even Seen or heard about. When I was a kid watching mat and pat from two best friends play this, i retained almost Nothing about it aside from the two being at each other's throats and Mat may or may not actually deleting Pat's 300 plus hour save file
In sophomore year of highschool i had a really good friend that'd show me the openings for both persona 4 golden and persona 3 portable alike, this was almost comically insane timing because it wasnt often id even have the opportunity to get a new game.. hell i didnt even have a ps4 still, my crappy laptop, wii u and my 3ds for the bulk of the 2010s were what i relied on for video games. It was about 2017 when Persona 5 dropped, and Id actually be able to TRY one of these.. id get it for ps3(while just the Existence of this version of this game being released for such an old console was laughed at.. to Me it was another very lucky moment)
and id love it, id be talking about it so often.. and then thatd kinda just! be it! for a bit atleast
id listen to the music when i was alone, id listen to the other games ost's
it was far from my first JRPG but it felt like a lightning in a bottle moment because id never touched anything SMT before and id hold these thoughts and memories and theyd peter(heheh) out as time marched... i wound up playing persona 1 and having my fun trolling my friends into thinking that id play 3 or 4 next, and i enjoyed my time with that too but in a Different way.
It's been 7 years since i played persona 5
and since then i think i can totally call myself an "smt Fan" instead of just someone with passing interest, ive played about 10 games now at this point and im levelling with you..

I think Persona 4 has the worst gameplay of these 'modern era' type persona games,

No, really!
I think this Process of going through persona 4 dungeons sucks! There's some exceptions here though... the GaMEr dungeon is neat.. the laboratory one.. the two before the endgame one that i wont say the names of..
but in general I think while the aesthetics are a step above persona 3's tartarus blocks... i do wish they took more advantage of sending you back to previous floors or even having mid bosses thatre more interesting, some of them are so utterly stupidly hamfisted in one way or another that just makes them not stand out to me AT ALL compared to persona 3 mid bosses
The closest thing to a smooth dancer or sleepy table moment was the big fuck you jarhead mech asshole that has an ungodly amount of defense
But even in spite of this there's so much variety that goes in with your party and having party members remember shit from doing side activities.. ultimate personas getting a THIRD tier.. its incredible
HAFHAHF INFACT LIKE EVEN THE MOMENTS WHERE A BENCHED PARTY MEMBER CAN JUMP IN AND DO A FUNNY ATTACK ON THE ENEMY WITH THEIR MOTORCYCLES, THE TEAM ATTACKS THAT CAN SOMETIMES JUST H A P P E N, ALL THAT I love that
I love how involved everyone is to the point of even showing up in some random blocks of the dungeons just for idle interactions, persona 3 had some moments like this too! but nowhere Near at this extent even in FES
And thats really why this whole game works for me in general

Yeah you could say the plot technically doesnt kick into gear until the latter quarter of the game, yes there's absolutely disgusting momentary segments of for lack of a better term

'atlus moments' where theres punching down at being queer or even having whole actual just predator/pedo characters in this shit while at the same time having arguably the fruitiest fucking cast in this entire series with yosuke, naoto, kanji and even teddie and the others getting glimmering moments of acceptance and self affirming perspective about them. This is where the game comes into a sort of cognitive dissonance that makes it so conflicting to talk about and I think to wrap my head around in general while playing and even after playing ....
This game WAS written in the 00s after all, and the bulk of the cast that this game centers on.. are kids! freshmen and sophomores just trying to do the right thing out here and it shows. Yosuke MAY be goonerer supreme in some moments of the narrative, and then be one of the most realistic characters in self doubt and isolation and wanting to Be something and have a grip on who he is.. in his social link!.. but bits of that Do trickle into the narrative too.. so you have this guy thats just so gross but it gets brushed off so quick as if the game itself knows its just a stupid silly thing that he had bought girls swimsuits in advance for his friends in a creepy manner...?????????

Yea
This game has some moments like that. and I never like it but I think it speaks volumes on it all when there can be fuckshit in this game and I primarily remember and Felt at the forefront what was going on when it mattered.
Shopping for groceries, getting drivers licenses for the motorcycles, the silly shit at the beach, the camping, the ski trip, going to the movies, yosuke needing help at junes', the fuckup with halloweeennn all of it.. i loved All of that more than the actual boss fights, more than the personas more than any of that more than anything that shit stuck with me

ESPECIALLY when it came down to Nanako and Dojima whichre two of my favorite characters in this franchise now too because in some ways I think it feels like somewhat of a peek into what itd be like if i could be there for a little version of myself going through shit alone with her dad when her mom's passed, what itd be like if there was someone to make things right and close the rift between my dad and i instead of it rolling harder and harder in contempt for one another. This is a lot of projecting im aware, but honestly this is the meat of why this game is even a 4/5 at All because if none of this landed to me, idve probably gave this game a 3/5 at most.
Which still isnt bad, but there's so much here that i think is Objectively hampering whats going on.. but theres so much soul fighting through to the point where itd feel like i was Lying through my teeth telling you this game as a whole sucks
because i loved it so much
I didnt wanna say I did
because everybody and their fuckin mama's goldfish meatsuckle this shit to hell and back
and i think i was afraid of being biased like that too
I even had some contempt for how id been spoiled on this years ago on instagram... but Im so glad i didnt play this as a teenager because it felt like the most brisk wave of nostalgia i didnt think a game i never played could ever give me.. a piece of media ive never experienced evoking so much out of me so different from what made persona 3 so special to me. I grew up in a town where jackshit happened apart from hanging with friends to talk and play games, there wasnt much going on for being one of the most boring towns in the entire state of florida at that too. But it was always PEOPLE that got me through my first time being homeless, it was always people that got me through the passing of loved ones, the decay of my enjoyment of school, first car, venting, movies, all of it bitch
im talking all of it
This made me think about all of that to the point where I think it was around december or january, these stupid asses teddie and yosuke were at the door of your place and i started to cook yosuke for being dumb as all fuck and how karma always shines and repays in full with every stupid ass little thing he says and thinks to do during the game.. but tears kept flowing cause he felt like a friend or atleast someone id know from back in those days and his growth was absolutely felt(until atlus thinks to do stupid shit for a joke)

It's that shit that matters, its that shit that makes the whole journey worth it, its that shit that makes even the several BAD endings that much cooler, its that shit that makes pressing through the social stats feel so much more Earned, its that shit that makes you wanna actually talk to everyone and get to know everyone because the group chemistry is so knit together well. I love S.E.E.S but the Inaba investigation group is so specifically bumbling and sweet and dumb all at the same time that I think they give the vibes of a cast that can literally have conversations about Anything and keep going and going without a writer being pressed for how to handle a situation.
Having been spoiled on shit in this game prior also made following along the killer really interesting too, it even got me keeping an eye open for them at all times and catching onto how their alibis would form and all that
which honestly just made the mystery that much more fun.

So yeah, i only got one more set of Persona(s) to play through
I was gonna make this one the last one and keep my weird play-pattern for this series rolling till my last breath but I really needed something to make me feel Good lately with how heavy life's been. I think this game has and probably still will continue to be there for people like that with how many characters can resonate with you regardless of age and regardless of identity. I think it's beautiful in it's own.. sometimes ugly little way. I cant let some shit slide though so its capped at 4/5 on here because like, THERES TOTALLY SOME THINGS THAT PISS ME OFF

which brings us to this lightning round of things i like and dont like since this is already probably my longest backloggd review

-margaret's social link is a farcry from what elizabeth's was that shit is so depressing and only is nice for some momentary nods about the past i GUESS.

-if you played persona 3 and loved persona 3, and its your favorite one like me, this shit will meatsuckle you like crazy for a little bit and i think thats kindof cool

-shuffle time i THOUGHT was completely fucked up at first, but I think that sweep bonuses and everything pertaining to it are good I just miss the mystery guessing aspect of shit now

-The final boss funnily enough aint even the hardest fuckin fight in this game LMAO

-I think its fucking disgusting that atlus went out of their way to have two bath house scenes that suck ass in this game

-THE PINK ALLIGATOR GOT PUBLISHED!!!!!!!!! AND SLEEPY TABLE HAD A COMEBACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

-This is now my most played steam game at 230 something hours...

-Marie is rly cool

-Kamui Miracle is the best additional skiill in the whole franchise and we should always make it mandatory to have a way to gamble when you fight in a persona game thank u

so yeah this game sucks and i hate atlus, loved it, bye

my friend naomi gave me crack for 99 cents. jesus christ.

Popcap is usually one of those companies where they kind of hit their boom early on and then everything after in the modern age is either Kinda Cool or an utter anti-consumer dumpsterfire
With change
Comes new solutions
Always
With change
Comes new problems

Insaniquarium is kinda like this

I was already versed in plants vs zombies, bejeweled and peggle games
But this kinda just EXISTED to me without me even havin tried it before and it is HELL.

Its fun
But its also hell
I think one thing I wish was really different about it was spicing up the tank gimmicks

You got about four different tanks with five different levels and a final boss to tie it off into a neat little bow
but really I think the fourth one is the only one that does it in a drastic way because its a lot easier to get run up on by monsters and have your fish snuft out when youre relying on Pregos(the like.. the birthing fish tht pump out the guppies)
and the money flow is slower

I like the tank with the starcatchers a lot too though! I think the game atleast is throwing enough aliens in rotation with enough Pet variety to keep it from getting BORING

despite this game not bein too terribly long, i wound up taking a couple breaks and finished it in like 3 playing sessions because my finger was getting tired from clicking. You use leftclick for fucking EVERYTHING in this game, to the point where i think it genuinely mightve been better to experience this as an app game or something. But im chillin.

final thoughts:
its war.
krillions will be devoured and need to be fed to reach the egg of power. an enthralling battle after battle in each tank you set fin in. you may click fast, Strong even, owllunchers. But they are beyond strength.
Death? It's meaningless.

my favorite pets were the clam, the mermaid and the shark
but s/o to Angie the MVP

that final boss goes hard asf

i was gonna hop on here and DOG ON this shit hard but then that started subsiding and i found myself retyping this because i was realizing.. i DID have some fun with this
Totally Spies is one of those shows where I remember really enjoying it despite not being able to tell you a damn thing about the show itself aside from the basic pitch, liking the whole cast and that people are Very Weird about these girls

I was stoked 2 see that there was actually a game that wasnt just a flash game or something on cartoon network...

...

and then it was more like.. a bunch! of cartoon network flashgames LMFAO

Minigame collection type shit usually has more of a tendency to suck especially when youre not a kid in a car ride riding the high off of your favorite show, but this is honestly so inoffensive at times i cant think of a moment where i was Truly Like "this game is complete shit"
cause some bits are Shit-TY but other times its chill
Like i enjoy the pseudo battletoads rope shit you do with Alex
the platforming bits with Clover are FINE
And uhhhh... I mean the puzzles are all so incredibly simple..
this is O K
for licensed games you can do a hell of a lot worse

it could be ONE shitty platformer
or ONE shitty abysmal spy game where everything is broken

instead its in the vibes of like
i enjoy the spy girls teaching videogame motor skills practically type shit

like i enjoyed this even if im way out of the age skill ceiling atp

Also i always thought it was fucking stupid how the girl in red is named Clover while the girl in green is named Sam
it made me think about if there was actually red four leaf clovers in the world and then i looked up if there was one on my dads shitty dinosaur dell computer when i was like 8 and there was no results n tht just made me saltier

i actually got to play this wayback while my friend at the time, dustin i remember his name was, we were waitin for a couple others to show up for laser tag at his birthday party
i was in like 4th grade at the time but i Knew f-zero and loved f-zero then
and this is the single best arcade cabinet experience i think ive ever had with any game ever still to this day.. i fucking love f zero gx but ax hit so different cause youre face is right up in that shit

just seein that chair.. the gamecube in a glass box.. thats how you know you were in for some of that good shit

i probably wont ever get to sit in one ever again in my life though, and thats pretty sad

not because people hated this, the opposite du h
this shit is worth like half a year's worth rent for some people out there
and probably sitting uncleaned and with no maintenance

F-Zero AX is like a comet or an eclipse to me in video game form for that reason
n thts probly... atleast the 6th or 7th dorkiest opinion abt video games that i got cya

for when you need a web browser kongregate crackfix of Warioware highspeed magic going on

A lotta the shit it hits you with can be a lil repetitive but it gets decently quick to never being all that bad

Cant really complain much abt this, elephants fucking rule

I MEAN LIKE ITS ALRIGHT, it kinda gives me Rez vibes and i love the colors
but wow i dont even know whats happening LMFAO

like im chaining combos and shit and it's kinda fun!.. but there isnt much else with it that i care about. i dont really think its BAD bad, i like the concept!.. but hm! EH!...
it needing to have continues like an arcade game kinda puts me off too i guess

the cover is so gender though fwiw!... thats somethin!..

REKINDLED NOSTALGIA GRAH!!!! yeah most of these sure... are some games!... you got a shitty platformer somethin where you shoot villain tiles, etc etc i actually Forgot how many even came on this
I guess because Id often hop between this and the spongebob one like crazyYYYYYY back in the day
i also like that this feels more based around the spiderman show that was up and around at the time as oppose to how sam raimi's spiderman 2 was comin out this year in specific

somethin that feels a little bit lost nowadays is how with the MCU and Sony, theyre like bickering old people that are so weirdly tight about shit so if there's a new interpretation of a certain character up and around its Probably 9 times out of 10 gonna be influenced by whatever movie thing is up and around

Ofc thats not to say its always the case, just refreshing to see someone like Tony Stark not look like robert downey junior
or when spiderman doesnt look like tom holland

It feels more like the vision is unique.. oh yea i was talkin about a plug and play

why did they have to make this one look so gross LMFAO
like the games aside like the graphics aged but i dont care much(though the rose tinted glasses dropped for the rhino platformer)
Im talkin the actual plug and play itself like what the hell