I've replayed this game countless times, and i just have to say one thing:

Final Fantasy 7 Remake did not have to be a fucking trilogy, i swear to god people straight up took the statement of "ff7 in the modern age would be pretty difficult to adapt in one game" and just ran with it. They say shit like the game has all these "unique" environments, but like aside from industrial feel of midgar you cant tell me that grasslands, caves, snowfields, temples, and canyons are fucking complex.

"oh but ff7 just has alot going on storywise to fit in one modern game"
Ok so we cant have an actual retelling of the story but we can have 70 percent filler and time whisper bullshit instead.

After actually finishing the game i'm just going to type my thoughts.

Persona 3 has been a weird game to me, despite having undercooked ideas, slow pacing, and a few shit that goes no where narratively. I still have a soft spot for this game compared to the rest of the series. Story is not as good as Persona 2 and Not as fun as P5 but still has its good moments.

I've played every version of persona 3 (Vanilla, FES, Portable, and this version)

Is this the ultimate replacement for all of the other versions?
Nah, but it's the most fun at least.

I've played on Hard and it was fairly easy, there was never a moment where i had to go back and grind, so the only reason why i fought the regular shadows was to charge up the limit breaks.

Tartarus is the main highlight of the remake, rather than just being gradient swaps each block they look more visually appealing (except for the 4th block, that will always be known as the piss yellow block).

English voice cast is ok

-I prefer Yuri Lowenthal over Alex Le as the MC, Alex just has the generic emo anime boy voice
-Yukari's new voice is good until she has to get loud
-Junpei's new voice sounds almost the same
-fukka is objectively better because it feels like there's emotion in her voice
-Mitsuru is unnoticeable
-Akihiko is terrible
-and everyone else is fine

Also the answer as dlc is still fucking stupid. And no just because "it wasn't in the original persona 3" does not justify it because this game features content like aigis' sLink which was NOT in the original vanilla p3 , and no the fact that "people had to buy p3 again back in the ps2 days just to play the answer" does not also fucking justify it being a 35 dollar dlc for a 70 dollar game which is 105 dollars total.

Fuck Sega for taking content out of an old game and selling it for dlc, people who defend this shit along with the LaD infinite wealth dlc are the reasons why games have god awful dlc practices

Other than that the remake is ok, backgrounds are hit or miss, and some of the new music is whatever.

Game is easier than the og, and thats a good thing because i wanted to finish this quick

(Very vague light spoilers)
I decided to wait a little big longer for my recency bias to wear off.

Ryu Ga Gotoku/Like A Dragon franchise REALLY needs to tell smaller scaled stories, because every game post Yakuza 7 has been having really bad pacing. This game for example really wants to bigger and longer than it wants to be. The first 7 chapters' pacing is real slow and once you get to like Chapter 8 it switches protags and sets up something new. But the game realizes its halfway through the main plot and they need to wrap up the story, so the game just sprints towards the end.

Kiryu's chapters were so rushed and underwhelming with the only thing slowing it down and giving it substance were the optional bucket list content which were disappointedly disconnected from the main story. Honestly if this game really was pushing the Duel Protagonist thing then they should of at least give kiryu half as many chapters as ichiban had just like how Kiryu and Majima had 8 chapters each in yakuza 0 respectively (not counting the finale).

Also the vtuber shit was so fucking dumb to take seriously idc

I finished yakuza infinite wealth, gonna make a lil review
The gameplay is an improvement over yakuza 7: you can position your characters which is cool, inherently skills from the other jobs, the party bond level doesn’t lock after every time they lvl up (because in y7 you’re forced to do the drink link in the bar to get to the next lvl)

One thing I’m so glad this game didn’t do was have an ||annoying enemy lvl jump at one point|| like in the previous game
So unlike 7, yakuza 8 didn’t had any moments where I felt forced to grind

Storywise its ok and it has a lot of dumb moments
The pacing in the first half started out slow and the 2nd half began sprinting,
but unlike lost judgement’s slow pacing It actually felt like shit was happening.

I didn’t like how the 2nd half kept on speeding up with its pacing (honestly a trend in most jrpgs I’ve played nowadays), this game had so much moments where i wished they had more time with

The OG version is still the better version
-I don't like that the foggy atmosphere from the PS2 version is cleaned out
-Shuffle Time aint even a "card shuffle"
-Chie's old voice was less annoying same with Teddie
-And the golden ost was whatever

I got spoiled so much that i felt discouraged finishing it
but from what I've played it was good game.
Whenever i got the chance i'd always play as Miles because my god I honestly don't like Yuri Lowenthal as Peter Parker

I'll probably go back to it later

This probably the only other yakuza game ive hated other than yakuza 4. I knew that this game was going to be about what kiryu was doing during yakuza 7 hence the name "LaD: Gaiden", but holy fuck i felt like my time was wasted for like 75% of this game. The Game starts of with a decent 1.5 hour long chapter and its sets up the story, and i'm like "yeah i guess this kinda clicks". Then the rest of the game happened. Without spoiling there is like this event that's said to happen and before all that, kiryu is just a chore boy to pad out gameplay for like 3 chapters (lemme remind you 10hrs and 50 dollars baby!! I'm thankful good old Phil Spencer put this on Gamepass). Yeah i ain't kidding a chunk of chapter 2 and 4 are just filler and ch3 is literally just padding. The only good thing about the final chapter was the ending, which i'll admit i did tear up a little.

The characters in this game are either boring or fucking stupid. Don't get me started on the 2 main antagonist, one felt like a dollar store majima and the other one does the most contrived shit.

Gameplay wise Kiryu does feel better to control than in Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2, however the upgrade tree does not feel as satisfying as the other games.

The substories that i've did whatever, some were boring and the others were like call backs from the older games which is kinda nice with one of them being a cameo from another rgg game (aint spoiling) .

Yeah to wrap it all up this game felt like a 4 hour game stretched to 10hrs with its ONLY redeeming quality was its ending. Now i really shouldn't be harsh on this game because its obviously a side project while they cook up yakuza 8, but i do not like having my time wasted.

Man, i really wanted to like this game. You can clearly tell that this is a B-project from the dev because they were more focused on the Marvel projects (spider-man 2 and wolverine maybe).

The writing in the R&C series was at its best when it had a edgy corporate satire theme to it, every game post tools of destruction is desperately trying do a Hero's journey theme to it and its kinda lame. They even tried putting that hero's journey shit in the 2016 "remake" and it just made the game really sanitized and boring. For example in the 2002 game every npc wont do shit for free they all ways ask for bolts which fits well with its theme, 2016 on everyone is all nice and like "hey here is the thingy for free!".

Rift Apart is also as sanitized as the other games in terms of writing and humor. In terms of the plot it just digs up an finished character arc that didn't really need to be continued, brings back nefarious as the villain which kinda contradicts All 4 One's character development a little bit, and Rivet and Kit is just whatever. Rivet gameplay and story wise is just the same as Ratchet which is disappointing because they did have a chance to try something different, she's only popular because she's cute.

Gameplay is honestly not much of an improvement from the 2016 remake. One thing i do like is that its at least tries to be challenging because 2016 was kinda braindead even on hard in comparison.

The game looks pretty yeah with all the power of PS5 and shit but the animation looks so stiff. Like honestly i would prefer if the game had like ps3 graphics but with better animations than ps5 high fidelity visuals with stiff animations. Enemies all have this really fast squash and stretch attack animations that look really off in this game, ps2 and ps3 games had that style of animation too but it had some weight too it.