BungVulchungo
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Chants of Sennaar
2023
A beautiful puzzle adventure about linguistics, culture, and the benefits of understanding one another, inspired by The Tower of Babel.
Chants of Sennaar does a fantastic job with its ludonarrative; The goal is to decipher the languages of different civilizations, achieved by analysing environments and conversations. All the while, we learn about their ways of life and what led them to the current day and the lives they live. This dual purpose really resonated with me, and I personally think it struck an absolutely perfect balance between gameplay depth and narrative substance.
I adored the use of different linguistic mechanics that make you turn your head a little when it comes to certain puzzles (as well as the different script styles inspired by existing languages). It may not be as intricate as it could have been, but it’s enough to make you go “ahhh! cool!” when you notice certain things for the first time.
Thinking about it from the opposite perspective, it was clear that a lot of care was taken into simplifying certain aspects to make sure the puzzle solving felt smooth, accessible and rewarding. An example of how this is done is the removal of many “less interesting” words in the glyphs given to you, such as “the”, and “a”. We only have to focus on the parts that are meaningful to the purpose of the game and its world. The translation experience is finely crafted for that of a game player, and not that of a PhD student, which is what keeps it fun!
Many reviews complain about the stealth sections breaking up the pacing, I disagree with this, possibly due to me being a huge sucker for the narrative. I just found that these sections blended in with the journey so well, added in a unique feeling throughout the exploration that otherwise wouldn't have been felt, and did way more good than any harm they may have done by taking you away from puzzles. They don’t take up that much of the game anyway, and some of them had dialogue to analyse throughout! Keeps the brain thinking in both ways.
Great presentation, with an especially amazing soundtrack. Even though a fair bit of the game had me slowly backtracking, it was just too striking of a world to get very upset about it.
This is definitely up there as one of my favourite puzzle games and I recommend it to anyone who thinks it sounds remotely fun. The morals told are reflected greatly within the gameplay, which is also executed extremely well.
Chants of Sennaar does a fantastic job with its ludonarrative; The goal is to decipher the languages of different civilizations, achieved by analysing environments and conversations. All the while, we learn about their ways of life and what led them to the current day and the lives they live. This dual purpose really resonated with me, and I personally think it struck an absolutely perfect balance between gameplay depth and narrative substance.
I adored the use of different linguistic mechanics that make you turn your head a little when it comes to certain puzzles (as well as the different script styles inspired by existing languages). It may not be as intricate as it could have been, but it’s enough to make you go “ahhh! cool!” when you notice certain things for the first time.
Thinking about it from the opposite perspective, it was clear that a lot of care was taken into simplifying certain aspects to make sure the puzzle solving felt smooth, accessible and rewarding. An example of how this is done is the removal of many “less interesting” words in the glyphs given to you, such as “the”, and “a”. We only have to focus on the parts that are meaningful to the purpose of the game and its world. The translation experience is finely crafted for that of a game player, and not that of a PhD student, which is what keeps it fun!
Many reviews complain about the stealth sections breaking up the pacing, I disagree with this, possibly due to me being a huge sucker for the narrative. I just found that these sections blended in with the journey so well, added in a unique feeling throughout the exploration that otherwise wouldn't have been felt, and did way more good than any harm they may have done by taking you away from puzzles. They don’t take up that much of the game anyway, and some of them had dialogue to analyse throughout! Keeps the brain thinking in both ways.
Great presentation, with an especially amazing soundtrack. Even though a fair bit of the game had me slowly backtracking, it was just too striking of a world to get very upset about it.
This is definitely up there as one of my favourite puzzle games and I recommend it to anyone who thinks it sounds remotely fun. The morals told are reflected greatly within the gameplay, which is also executed extremely well.
more like Queen Peach i tell you hwat
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As stated in my last review on Super Princess Peach, I was very excited for Showtime. Like, way more excited than I ever thought I would be. Just off of the first couple trailers, I was enamored by the charm and promise that was being presented, what would essentially be a full game's worth of watching Peach undergo magical girl transformations and exploring different set pieces with her new abilities. I was in it for the style, and nothing else. As time went on (and as Nintendo kept spoiling all of the fucking costumes on their Twitter...), in an unusual turn of events, my excitement only grew. The demo drops, I play it, and I'm locked in, pre-order and all. I got what I came for, and I enjoyed every second of it.
almost every second of it.
Obviously, the costumes are all fantastic. It is such a breath of fresh air seeing such a major character for the series in all these different outfits, especially since Peach doesn't usually get to do much in the first place. Of course she has all of her spin-off designs, but Showtime does so much more with everything, experimenting with all sorts of aesthetics and colors, not one of them failing to impress. That really was all I was expecting for this game, so to move on to the actual gameplay...
It's fine enough? Peach doesn't get much of a moveset, the game only ever utilizes a total of three buttons, and I think they did fairly well with such limited controls. Not every gimmick is a winner (lord knows I never want to play another patissiere level again), but I thoroughly enjoyed what they came up with, the big stars being the detective, mermaid, and ice skater plays. (sorry, ice world bias.)
I have to admit, though, and it never really makes itself known upon first playthrough, but holy hell is this game slow. Again, it's never a problem as long as you can finish up everything you need to in one go, collecting all the Sparkle Stones and Ribbons, but, say you miss one of those collectibles, either by simply not exploring enough or failing a certain task; in order to go back and try for it again, you have to do everything from start to finish a second time. Your newly made progress won't be saved after exiting the stage like in the previous Peach game, so instead you'll have to repeat the whole stage, and by then, you'll notice that most of your time in each level will be spent completely motionless as some dialogue fades in and out of view. You aren't given the option to skip any of it, either. Text is placed on screen by itself, accompanied by animations that you have to wait for the end of before you are allowed to start moving again. As I said, not a big deal on the first playthrough, but it gets excruciating having to see it any more times than once.god forbid you spend 30 damn minutes on the second patissiere level like i did
I see where everyone else is coming from. Yes, Princess Peach: Showtime! can feel incredibly easy, handhold-y, linear, whatever else you might have heard. It is not complex in the slightest, but that's not what I was looking forward to. I was looking forward to the cute costumes and the fun worlds to look at, with the added bonus of some new personality for the princess herself. With such little expectations, of course I was going to have at least a little fun. Not the "game of the year" I was maybe (somewhat ironically) psyching myself up for, but I'd say it's considerably better than everyone else is giving it credit for. Again, though, that could just be my low standards, made even lower after recently finishing a much worse Peach oriented game.
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peach's next smash moveset could be killer if you think about it now holy shit
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As stated in my last review on Super Princess Peach, I was very excited for Showtime. Like, way more excited than I ever thought I would be. Just off of the first couple trailers, I was enamored by the charm and promise that was being presented, what would essentially be a full game's worth of watching Peach undergo magical girl transformations and exploring different set pieces with her new abilities. I was in it for the style, and nothing else. As time went on (and as Nintendo kept spoiling all of the fucking costumes on their Twitter...), in an unusual turn of events, my excitement only grew. The demo drops, I play it, and I'm locked in, pre-order and all. I got what I came for, and I enjoyed every second of it.
almost every second of it.
Obviously, the costumes are all fantastic. It is such a breath of fresh air seeing such a major character for the series in all these different outfits, especially since Peach doesn't usually get to do much in the first place. Of course she has all of her spin-off designs, but Showtime does so much more with everything, experimenting with all sorts of aesthetics and colors, not one of them failing to impress. That really was all I was expecting for this game, so to move on to the actual gameplay...
It's fine enough? Peach doesn't get much of a moveset, the game only ever utilizes a total of three buttons, and I think they did fairly well with such limited controls. Not every gimmick is a winner (lord knows I never want to play another patissiere level again), but I thoroughly enjoyed what they came up with, the big stars being the detective, mermaid, and ice skater plays. (sorry, ice world bias.)
I have to admit, though, and it never really makes itself known upon first playthrough, but holy hell is this game slow. Again, it's never a problem as long as you can finish up everything you need to in one go, collecting all the Sparkle Stones and Ribbons, but, say you miss one of those collectibles, either by simply not exploring enough or failing a certain task; in order to go back and try for it again, you have to do everything from start to finish a second time. Your newly made progress won't be saved after exiting the stage like in the previous Peach game, so instead you'll have to repeat the whole stage, and by then, you'll notice that most of your time in each level will be spent completely motionless as some dialogue fades in and out of view. You aren't given the option to skip any of it, either. Text is placed on screen by itself, accompanied by animations that you have to wait for the end of before you are allowed to start moving again. As I said, not a big deal on the first playthrough, but it gets excruciating having to see it any more times than once.
I see where everyone else is coming from. Yes, Princess Peach: Showtime! can feel incredibly easy, handhold-y, linear, whatever else you might have heard. It is not complex in the slightest, but that's not what I was looking forward to. I was looking forward to the cute costumes and the fun worlds to look at, with the added bonus of some new personality for the princess herself. With such little expectations, of course I was going to have at least a little fun. Not the "game of the year" I was maybe (somewhat ironically) psyching myself up for, but I'd say it's considerably better than everyone else is giving it credit for. Again, though, that could just be my low standards, made even lower after recently finishing a much worse Peach oriented game.
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peach's next smash moveset could be killer if you think about it now holy shit
Persona 3 Reload
2024
This review contains spoilers
gasp A serious Agenda review!
If I fall down I'm gonna get back up
Right back up man to where I left off
I won't be caught by the fear of the
battle because I got my crew on my back
You know I've already
Burnt My Dread
Tear up your fear I got it locked down
The end is coming near so burn your dread
This will be a deeply persona(l) review. Apologies for any editing mistakes, this is nearly 5.5k words long so it’s hard to edit completely. I have a hard time quantifying this as even a review of the game in question, Persona 3 Reload. It's a rather exhaustive account of my experiences with Megami Tensei, video games, remake discourse, and life in general over the past five years, with a bit of actual review of the game itself towards the end. But I also (at this point in time) believe it to be my magnum opus. This beast of a review is insanely long. However, I couldn’t write this any other way. As of posting, it is still March 5th, 2024, so I win. Happy P3 Day.
Like almost everyone else who got into Persona as a teenager, I can safely say the Persona(and MegaTen) franchise changed the trajectory of my life.
I discovered Megami Tensei almost 5 years ago, in the spring of 2019 or so. The game that introduced me to the franchise was none other than Persona 5. I heard about the game through TGA and the smash announcement, but I didn’t immediately hop on it at that point. My memory’s a bit fuzzy, so I don’t know if that was when I first heard of P5 or if it just put it on my radar. Anyway, throughout the spring of 2019 I was getting into anime a lot more, so it’s only natural I recalled that silly RPG. At this time I was also going through a quest to beat all the PS4 exclusives. During this period of my life I had no friends, while also coming off of a period of around 4 years of being bullied. So of course with all these factors P5 was perfect for a game over the summer. Suffice to say I was immediately hooked on the game and also the wider series. Games had spoken to me before, like God of War which I had just played that winter(2019). But never had something grasped me so tightly like P5 and the wider series had.God, the music, the visuals, the themes, the style, everything. My parents had a rule where I wasn’t allowed to play M rated games, and like every kid would have I found a way around such rules. I streamed P5 on both my Vita(during the day) and laptop(during the night) with Remote Play, staying up till midnight grinding palaces and confidants. And then once I was done, I’d hop on youtube, listening to the OSTs of the games, trying to learn the lyrics(mass destruction was a doozy, lemme tell ya) Every single night of that summer was a blast because of this routine and I certainly hadn’t felt a spark like this in so long due to the aforementioned bullying and mental health issues. It’s no secret that a game like this was perfect for someone like me, you can see so many stories like mine throughout the fandom. Rebelling against your oppressors, denying expectations, hell just being a loner eventually finding a group of people who get you were all perfect for me and so many other people. Throughout all the hardship everyone faced, just to see there was a point to it all. It was nothing short of inspiring seeing the Phantom Thieves rebel against scum and trying to change society from the ground up. So inspiring that it made me want to give friendships another chance. Anyway, I beat the game one week after my 2nd year of high school began. I remember being particularly angry about needing to wait until the weekend to play again due to my parent’s rule of no gaming on weekdays. I let the specialty pizza my family ordered go cold because I was too focused on beating the game. From there I was inspired to start making friends again, I met a few people at school that year that also really loved the game, and I remember feeling really happy again.
The next 2 years(2019-2021) are some of the best ever for me. I delved into so many MegaTen games, P4G, SJ on the DS, the SMT 4 duology, Nocturne, Shin Megami Tensei V. I got into Nier Automata, which had the same magical energy to it. The next year I played Replicant and was even more astounded at how beautiful it was. The party is up there as one of the best in gaming. I played both TWEWY and its sequel(which unfortunately I didn’t like as much), but the first game also had a similar life changing effect. I started Trails in the Sky around this point, a series I’m still chugging along to this day, with Cold Steel 2 in the lineup as the next JRPG I’m tackling. One thing leads to another and in the spring of 2021 I have a somewhat sizable group of friends that can all be traced back to P5.
Without giving away too much context, I fell out of love with P5(and really everything else I loved) throughout all of 2022 and 2023. Despite P5 leading me to a place where I felt happy again, I met some rude people as well. So for these two years I really began to despise P5, not only for believing it led me to such a place of sorrow, but also because of the… elitist culture(?) surrounding it. I’m not really sure if that’s the best way to describe it, but that’s how it felt to me.
What once was an innocuous and benign part of the internet I chose to ignore became my very existence. Day after day, pointless bickering after pointless bickering, argument after argument. After a while… it gets to you. Because of how much P5 had meant to me, my relationship with it was tied to my self worth. I mean, how could I not, it’s defined my taste in media, what values I abide by, and like I said prior introduced me to many of my friends. Due to being told how awful it was so often (and many other games I liked, including the aforementioned Nier Replicant and Automata, God of War, Spider-Man) I began to nitpick everything, in hopes of hating the games so I could be liked by these rude people. It probably sounds silly and superficial that my love for a game is so easily bent, but to me, these years didn’t just affect something so simple as my views on a game. It changed me, made me depressed again. Trying to change yourself for others does that to you. As of right now, this process is still lodged inside my psyche and I still believe Persona 5 is a dogshit game, despite(and perhaps alongside ) singing its praises just a few paragraphs earlier. I believe most of what I “like”, if it can even be called that, is complete and utter soulless trash that only idiots can like. There have been numerous attempts over these years to both “fix” what I love so that I can be liked as a person again, because deep down I was led to believe I was the problem. Hell, you can see it in my reviews. God of War, Ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, Eternights, Neon White, Tears of the Kingdom. These games, for me, turned into battlegrounds where I had to prove they were good, and many times, I failed. I always alluded to some problem I didn’t really have to just keep this new voice in my head quiet. Be that the writing, “movie games”, whatever. I couldn’t simply enjoy them anymore, because I kept trying to use them as a way to prove I was worthy of love. “Look at me, I’m a person worthy of love, I hate the bad games too, or at least acknowledge how shit they are. Like me now, please.” You’ll notice a discrepancy between my ratings(and hell, 90% of the reviews themselves) of these games and the supposed hatred I harbor toward them. All of them are still highly rated and positive. No matter how hard I tried to change myself, who I was, or what I liked, despite the self loathing, my heart wouldn’t budge.
Every game I mentioned above has had some sort of guilt intertwined to it, well that is every game except one. None other than the Trails franchise. It was detached from the guilt simply because this person didn’t really engage with Trails at all. Perhaps this is why Trails of Cold Steel 1 came at such a pivotal moment, during one of the worst points of the past few years. why it means so much to me. I expected nothing of it, after being mildly disappointed by Azure, as well as hearing it was hands down the weakest game in the franchise. With absolutely no expectations, it blew me away. Amazing music, amazing cast, amazing world, getting lost in all the references to past games… It had captured me the same way P5 did all those years ago, made me feel again after being so empty for so long. This feeling was, unfortunately, not for long, and the guilt came back. But something was different this time.
Around this time I started writing more longform reviews,as well as changing up my ratings to be more in line with my heart again a bit later down the line. This was a necessary change, but it didn’t do much at the moment because real changes had yet to occur, both external and internal. But one thing led to another, and I’m here now.
There was a time, around 4 years ago I bought Persona 4 Golden on my Vita. It had to have been August or September of that year, just after beating P5 vanilla. I remember texting my friend about how I was about to waste another 60+ hours of my life. I don't remember the last time I did something like that. What I mean is, I don't remember the last time I was super excited, truly, fully excited to get into a game. I came straight off the heels of the best gaming experience I'd had in my life, incredibly excited to start a new journey in the same series. Nowadays, and I'm sure it sounds silly to call myself this, but in the gaming enthusiast space I've kind of lost that joy. It's always about being ultra critical, ultra "objective", and with remakes especially, compare compare compare. Every last change scrutinized, every small detail taking you out of the experience. See, when I played Persona 4 Golden on my vita, I didn't go into it thinking about how shitty the fog effects were, in fact I had no idea this change to the fog was even a thing until a couple months ago. If you showed me a picture of P4 and P4G, I doubt I could tell the difference if they were unlabeled. Now it’s the first thing that comes to mind with Golden. I'm so concerned with problems I don't even care about. If you asked a 14 year old Agenda who just started P5 which version of P3 he would play, Reload or FES, he would choose Reload. I would choose Reload, too. I miss this game series. I miss actually enjoying things.
That's why I've been really happy with my past reviews lately, especially things like Donkey Kong Country 2 or F-Zero. I list all the little critiques I have, but at the end of the day I have a blast and rate it super high. Those are my critiques, not anyone else's. It's been so fucking tiring trying to be someone else. I feel partially inclined to hate every Persona game I loved in the past, too. In my day-to-day life, I'm surrounded by so much MegaTen. From my phone/lockscreen background, to my phone being filled to the brim with MegaTen OSTs. My PC lockscreen is one of Royal's key art. I am listening to Sound Test while writing this. I have SEVEN Phantom Thief figures, a Thanatos figure, AND I ordered Izanagi. My PFP on this site is Sumi for fuck's sake. I love this series so much. I would love to get through P2 IS and EP, Digital Devil Saga, and all the other Megatens I haven't played . Yet simultaneously, not for a second can I stop being reminded how much I should hate Megami Tensei, or should hate Persona 3 Reload. I'm really tired of this act of ripping apart the things I love just so I can get validation from the wrong people.
I understand there’s a certain futility to sharing all this on a public game logging website but it’s intrinsic to my experience with P3R so I had to include it as a (very long) preface. Oh, right, before we get into the actual video game review. One last thing.
To everyone who blabs and blabs about remakes being soulless, passionless, directionless, and all the other buzzwords Backloggd Gamers ™ love to use: how did you arrive at that conclusion? Because you prefer the older look of the original? Because to me, from all the promotional material Atlus(especially Atlus West) has put out, this game is clearly a labor of love to the original. You can see all the dub VAs(both old dub and new) admire each other's work, and every cast member seems to have such a strong attachment to either the character they play or the franchise itself. Take Zeno Robinson for example, new voice of Junpei. He openly mentions how P3 is his favorite game ever in these Behind The Scenes interviews. Every single one of these cast members has something great to say about Persona. It's common knowledge at this point the Reload project was given to new staff at Atlus while the veterans finish out their careers with Metaphor. There are no sources for this, but I'd assure you that all the people working directly on the game back in Japan also have an immense love for P3, and judging how young the staff is probably grew up with the original or FES. If you were given the opportunity to work on something you love, would you not pour your heart and soul into creating the best possible version of that? To deliver that to a new audience? I ask you, Backloggd Gamers ™, what is "soul" , if not a game made by people who adore and are passionate for the original? You already know the answer to that. You already know it's a meaningless buzzword, you already know you're only doing these things to stir drama, and are too egotistical to let new fans have their fun. You just want to stir some drama so you get the attention you desperately crave. "Soul" to Backloggd Gamers ™ is not a synonym for passion or love, it's just a way to gatekeep people from having their fun, from believing things to be profound.
And because this will inevitably get misinterpreted: It's fine if you prefer the original, or don't vibe with the warmer P5 esque artstyle. What isn't fine is complaining about how gaming is dead or being a complete dick towards those who love Reload, especially new fans. Persona (and the wider MegaTen franchise) has some of the best combat, music, stories, themes, and characters in RPGs and gaming as a whole. To gatekeep or make new fans feel ashamed for getting into the franchise like this is immature beyond belief. The Backloggd community has quickly become more toxic than Letterboxd. You aren't cool, and no one outside your private elitist discord server respects you for it. There are many more important things to be mad about in this world than antagonizing people about what version of a video game they play and prefer. Grow the fuck up.
I apologize for the rant, but I've been needing to get that off my chest for far too long. Let's get into it.
Persona 3 FES, as I put it two years ago, is a game with growing pains. Because it is the first of the nusona games, that was bound to happen. FES suffers from some really shitty SLinks, most of them are quite forgettable. In fact, I forgot the plot of every SLink I did in FES besides Akinari. FES also had this system called tactics, which while I still don’t really think is a massive problem and the hate is overblown, it can still lead to some frustrating outcomes. The male party members don’t get social links of their own, which was disappointing. The portraits have a washed out look, and the game could look a lot better. The OG dubbing in P3 was very stiff for most characters outside of SEES, and even in SEES there’s characters like Fuuka, Ken, and Shinji who sound stiff as a plank. Persona 3 was a very ambitious game indeed, but it shot too high and has some flaws because of it. I think I understand why some people might prefer FES, despite being more flawed, because the flaws give it the charm of being overly ambitious.
That being said, I feel like Reload was necessary. Persona 3 no longer feels like the black sheep of nusona. It feels confident in itself, more so than the original. Doubling down on the imagery in full HD, all while keeping the positive themes of living life to the fullest despite the inevitability of death. Everyone knew what made things click, and kept it, while giving it a fresh coat of paint. To hell with accusations of sanitization, this is the essence of Persona 3 chiseled out while being propped up by those who loved Persona 3 and wanted to make it better. I do not believe there is a reason to play FES anymore, unless you vibe with the little chibi guys and/or want to see how we got here. And if you don’t, that’s fine too. Life is too short to engage with games you don’t feel inclined to.
On second thought, there is a reason to engage with aspects of the original P3. That being, the OST. I think most of the remixes are better, or at least stand toe-to-toe with their original counterparts. However, there are songs that do lack a “punch”. The only egregious examples I found myself were Unavoidable Battle and Living with Determination -Iwatodai-. Both of these lack the drums that made the originals so captivating. Those drums push you forward, but with… bongos… or a severely muffled beat/reverb it doesn’t have the same effect. I found this really odd, considering the drums go hard on Burn my Dread -Last Battle Reload-. I always preferred the Future Arrange from the P3 movies for this song anyway, but missed the heavy drum beat. This arrangement makes the drums heavier, while Lotus Juice makes the lyrics the most situational they’ve been.The OG Last Battle felt vaguely about the themes of P3, but this, this version of lyrics, encapsulates the development Makoto has undergone. It goes so fucking hard. I also don’t really understand why some people have said the version of Battle For Everyone’s Souls sounds worse. It sounds heavier, in fact better, to me, and I was worried it wouldn’t be as good considering how they neutered Unavoidable Battle.
It is somewhat disappointing that no P3 Movie songs were integrated. I love the Movie OST. Light in Starless Sky, One Determination, Fate is in Our Hands, Persona Summoners, they’re all really great songs and I wish they became unique encounter themes. But alas, there wasn’t a good place to play them, I suppose.
As for the new vocalist, I think she does a fantastic job. I love how she sang When Moon’s Reaching Out Stars, the new lyrics for Changing Seasons, and of course the new songs. Full Moon Full Life fucking hits and keeps up with this thesis I have going that they know exactly what P3 is. The lyrics, the sound, so fucking good and it slips into P3’s musical identity perfectly. People unfamiliar with the Persona 3 Movie OSTs and the rearranged albums might think that Color Your Night isn’t very P3-esque. However, when you look at Deep Breath from Burn My Dread -Reincarnation- album, you’ll see this happier, chiller sound is nothing new for P3. I think she does the boss tracks and Memories of You justice.
This sense of doing tracks “justice” keeps popping back up in my mind. It’s what separates the Nier Replicant OST from most of the Trails Evo Tracks. Nier Replicant OST “gets” Nier songs. Whereas Trails Evo Tracks mostly seem like they throw things at the wall. Some of these Evo Tracks are really good, like Steel Floor Obstructing the way, or Silver Will Evo Version. But others, like Fateful Confrontation or Till the Night of Glory, just don’t understand what made the songs work. I firmly believe P3R’s OST “gets” what made P3’s OST work, outside of the exceptions I made earlier.
It is disappointing as a longtime fan that Yumi is no longer the star of P3’s sound, but she is getting older. She was a chainsmoker for years, too. Look at the 2022 concert, she’s struggling. Shihoko Hirata, and Lotus Juice killed it in that concert. It’s sad, but Yumi’s been active since 1991. It’s understandable she cannot do it anymore, especially with the chainsmoking. The old versions still exist, my preferring the newer versions of the songs doesn’t mean I’m trying to revise history like some Backloggd Gamers would choose to believe Remake fans do. I love Yumi Kawamura, but time marches on, and I’m all for a new era of Persona 3.
That’s another thing that keeps popping up for me, coexistence. The OG and Reload can coexist. However, that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to play both. Such a stupid idea to gatekeep art. Those who like the original and dislike Reload can exist, same as those who like Reload and dislike/don’t want to play the OG. You don’t lose gamer privileges if you only play the remake. It’s up to you whether you want to play both or not. Same goes for reload. You don’t lose gamer privileges if you only play the original. Or both, you can like both too. Objectivity is a myth, so play what you like.
Anyway, I found the gameplay to be much improved in Reload. Tartarus is much more fun to explore with blocks feeling unique. Despite this, I found it quite hard to adjust to some of the later blocks, like Harabah. It was quite jarring at first but I got used to it. I love the depth added to the blocks, it really feels like a gigantic tower now. Hell, even the entrance to Tartarus compared to FES is insane. This is Tartarus done right. I played on Merciless and I found it a tad easy, except bosses. Maybe that’s just my MegaTen-addled brain speaking, but it really makes me want to play SMT Nocturne Hardtype for some ball busting challenge. I missed Megaten combat so much. I missed the element names, the buffs, the… everything. It really is peak gaming. The persona formula is always something that is so addicting, makes me wanna replay Golden and Royal right away, but I know I’m better off if I wait on those.
Presentation is another huge improvement. I’d mentioned how the portraits look washed out in the original, here they have much more vibrant colors. Not only that, but battle menus, UI, all of it is super beautiful. Reminiscent of Persona 5, but so clearly Persona 3 in its identity. The moon, the overwhelming amount of blue and green, it’s all so pretty. Battle presentation has also taken a huge leap in quality, with awesome Theurgy animations that encapsulate the personalities of the characters. Shift animations, cut-ins, All Out Attack animations and AOA finisher art. It’s just so fucking awesome, I don’t know what else to say.
Voice acting is also awesome, I prefer nearly every recast to the original. Like my friend Lemmers put it, Aigis and Yukari are both awesome recasts, I don’t see the issue people have with them. Ken and Shinji are both wonderfully recast. Shinji’s death in the OG wasn’t memorable for me, nor were either of the characters. But here, with better casting and direction, it got me to tear up. Ken is now one of my favorites because of his voice. Junpei is the star of the recasts, though. He can be so chill and friendly, yet also has such a deep resentment and rage to his voice at the flip of a coin. It’s such a good performance, and I absolutely hope he gets nominated at TGA for best VA. I don’t think a single voice actor is bad in Reload. The VA in reload has also made SLinks plenty more memorable.
I’d like to touch on a really neat part of the game for a bit. That being the atmosphere. Despite what I’ve seen online, I don’t think Reload is too bright, in fact the lighting shift that occurs in January hits even harder because of the way Iwatodai Dorm is lit normally. I never had an issue with it. Another thing is the general atmosphere in January. It’s a much more memorable time of the year than FES. It feels like a hazy daydream, especially with the Lo-Fi rendition of Memories of the School in the background. Almost similar to Royal’s third semester, except there isn’t anything actually wrong about the world itself here. Everything proceeds exactly as normal and it’s such a whiplash to the player. Every single one of these characters will die in a month, yet life must go on. You must study for tests, you must hang out with friends like normal, you must talk about where you’re going to college or if you’ll get a job. It’s a perfectly executed shift in atmosphere/tone and I think the whole game’s a lot more memorable for me. I remember more about Golden which I played back in 2019 than I do FES in 2022.
Now for the part everyone’s been waiting for, the story. It’s a very emotional and beautiful narrative, one I’ve become more and more attached to over time. Reload takes aspects of the movies, P3P, and FES to make it the most enthralling it’s ever been.Perhaps it can be said it didn’t hit me as hard when I first played it because I had already begun to close myself off from feelings. But it’s different now, and I’ve become a lot more familiar with the themes explored. Living for yourself, moving forward, overcoming dread, and of course, learning what it’s like to feel. I cried multiple times throughout, a feat I cannot credit FES or the movies with. It’s just a perfect narrative I think, and I’m super excited to see what theme P6 tackles next.
Somehow these games always reach me in the times I need them most, huh?
It's a really weird feeling that us "started-with-p5"s aren't going to be the newest members of the fanbase anymore. It's even weirder to think how the 14 year olds of now are discovering these games for the first time. A whole ass journey into one of, no, the best franchise in gaming awaiting them afterwards. I think there's something really... beautiful about this being someone's first MegaTen game. In 5 years, those 19 year olds'll be reminiscing on it the same as I do with P5, all the people they've met, how they grew and changed. It's a really nice feeling, at least for me, to think of these games as a benchmark of change. It feels like yesterday sometimes that I just beat Yaldabaoth, or that I met some of my friends for the first time. But I've grown quite substantially, even if I'm blinded by these feelings of inadequacy and guilt most of the time. I don't know where I'm gonna be when Persona 6 comes out, I don't even know who I'll be when Metaphor comes out later this year. I don't know if this guilt I feel will have subsided yet, but knowing that P6 will be there regardless, at some point in time, is very comforting. This franchise, specifically Persona, it's... home. I don't know how something so profound, having such a life changing effect on so many, could ever be seen as anything but beautiful. Perhaps I should be more grateful that I was deeply affected by it, rather than being fueled by hatred of those I don't understand, propping myself up by tearing others down.
It's funny in an ironic sense that some of the biggest proponents of "P3R soulless" seem to have missed the themes of the game. Someday, we’ll all die. It would do us all some good to uplift others. So why spend your life filled with negativity and hatred? You shouldn’t bring others down for preferring the remake or the original. For those who really want the original, they will play it. It’s not right to tear down those who just want to play Reload. I emulated FES because I wanted to play Persona 3 nearly 2 years ago. If you want the OG Persona 3 experience, you can find ways to have it. But that doesn’t make it right, let alone necessary, to shit on those who had the gall to prefer the remake. I, for one, will likely never go back to FES. But if you want to, go right ahead. Life is too short to not fill it with art that moves you.
Some days I woke up hating Persona 3 Reload, when just the night earlier I was having a blast climbing Tartarus. I don’t know if I can ever get this voice out of my head. But if I’ve learned anything from these past 7 months alone, from this game, it's that life is too short to cut off feeling emotions. Life is too short to give up trying to reclaim what I love. It will probably never be “the same” or “normal”, but everything’s constantly changing. Despite how much I romanticize the early days discovering of P5, I still had plenty of problems during that time, from the trauma, to the unsavory political views I had for a while(I’d rather not talk about that lol). My love for Megami Tensei and Persona was never static, it was always fluctuating when I found new games, like Nocturne and Strange Journey. So while I may never have another P5 honeymoon phase, and while I may be hurt, I still fucking love MegaTen. I still fucking love Persona. It just went away for a while, and I’m sure tomorrow it’ll go away again. But I owe it to myself to keep trying, to keep believing in myself until I can say I love them with confidence every single time. After all, it’s my life, so I gotta burn my dread, right? What more can I do but keep going?
With that, there’s one last thing to be said. Thank you to those who stuck with me when my actions didn’t really make sense. Thank you for trying to understand anyway, and supporting me when it did make sense. Thank you to those who stuck with me during the worst part of it, and for making the other side a little bit happier. You know who you are.
I want to play so many great JRPGs this year, so many great games in general, it’s so much nicer when I let myself be free like this. Stay tuned.
If I fall down I'm gonna get back up
Right back up man to where I left off
I won't be caught by the fear of the
battle because I got my crew on my back
You know I've already
Burnt My Dread
Tear up your fear I got it locked down
The end is coming near so burn your dread
This will be a deeply persona(l) review. Apologies for any editing mistakes, this is nearly 5.5k words long so it’s hard to edit completely. I have a hard time quantifying this as even a review of the game in question, Persona 3 Reload. It's a rather exhaustive account of my experiences with Megami Tensei, video games, remake discourse, and life in general over the past five years, with a bit of actual review of the game itself towards the end. But I also (at this point in time) believe it to be my magnum opus. This beast of a review is insanely long. However, I couldn’t write this any other way. As of posting, it is still March 5th, 2024, so I win. Happy P3 Day.
Like almost everyone else who got into Persona as a teenager, I can safely say the Persona(and MegaTen) franchise changed the trajectory of my life.
I discovered Megami Tensei almost 5 years ago, in the spring of 2019 or so. The game that introduced me to the franchise was none other than Persona 5. I heard about the game through TGA and the smash announcement, but I didn’t immediately hop on it at that point. My memory’s a bit fuzzy, so I don’t know if that was when I first heard of P5 or if it just put it on my radar. Anyway, throughout the spring of 2019 I was getting into anime a lot more, so it’s only natural I recalled that silly RPG. At this time I was also going through a quest to beat all the PS4 exclusives. During this period of my life I had no friends, while also coming off of a period of around 4 years of being bullied. So of course with all these factors P5 was perfect for a game over the summer. Suffice to say I was immediately hooked on the game and also the wider series. Games had spoken to me before, like God of War which I had just played that winter(2019). But never had something grasped me so tightly like P5 and the wider series had.God, the music, the visuals, the themes, the style, everything. My parents had a rule where I wasn’t allowed to play M rated games, and like every kid would have I found a way around such rules. I streamed P5 on both my Vita(during the day) and laptop(during the night) with Remote Play, staying up till midnight grinding palaces and confidants. And then once I was done, I’d hop on youtube, listening to the OSTs of the games, trying to learn the lyrics(mass destruction was a doozy, lemme tell ya) Every single night of that summer was a blast because of this routine and I certainly hadn’t felt a spark like this in so long due to the aforementioned bullying and mental health issues. It’s no secret that a game like this was perfect for someone like me, you can see so many stories like mine throughout the fandom. Rebelling against your oppressors, denying expectations, hell just being a loner eventually finding a group of people who get you were all perfect for me and so many other people. Throughout all the hardship everyone faced, just to see there was a point to it all. It was nothing short of inspiring seeing the Phantom Thieves rebel against scum and trying to change society from the ground up. So inspiring that it made me want to give friendships another chance. Anyway, I beat the game one week after my 2nd year of high school began. I remember being particularly angry about needing to wait until the weekend to play again due to my parent’s rule of no gaming on weekdays. I let the specialty pizza my family ordered go cold because I was too focused on beating the game. From there I was inspired to start making friends again, I met a few people at school that year that also really loved the game, and I remember feeling really happy again.
The next 2 years(2019-2021) are some of the best ever for me. I delved into so many MegaTen games, P4G, SJ on the DS, the SMT 4 duology, Nocturne, Shin Megami Tensei V. I got into Nier Automata, which had the same magical energy to it. The next year I played Replicant and was even more astounded at how beautiful it was. The party is up there as one of the best in gaming. I played both TWEWY and its sequel(which unfortunately I didn’t like as much), but the first game also had a similar life changing effect. I started Trails in the Sky around this point, a series I’m still chugging along to this day, with Cold Steel 2 in the lineup as the next JRPG I’m tackling. One thing leads to another and in the spring of 2021 I have a somewhat sizable group of friends that can all be traced back to P5.
Without giving away too much context, I fell out of love with P5(and really everything else I loved) throughout all of 2022 and 2023. Despite P5 leading me to a place where I felt happy again, I met some rude people as well. So for these two years I really began to despise P5, not only for believing it led me to such a place of sorrow, but also because of the… elitist culture(?) surrounding it. I’m not really sure if that’s the best way to describe it, but that’s how it felt to me.
What once was an innocuous and benign part of the internet I chose to ignore became my very existence. Day after day, pointless bickering after pointless bickering, argument after argument. After a while… it gets to you. Because of how much P5 had meant to me, my relationship with it was tied to my self worth. I mean, how could I not, it’s defined my taste in media, what values I abide by, and like I said prior introduced me to many of my friends. Due to being told how awful it was so often (and many other games I liked, including the aforementioned Nier Replicant and Automata, God of War, Spider-Man) I began to nitpick everything, in hopes of hating the games so I could be liked by these rude people. It probably sounds silly and superficial that my love for a game is so easily bent, but to me, these years didn’t just affect something so simple as my views on a game. It changed me, made me depressed again. Trying to change yourself for others does that to you. As of right now, this process is still lodged inside my psyche and I still believe Persona 5 is a dogshit game, despite(and perhaps alongside ) singing its praises just a few paragraphs earlier. I believe most of what I “like”, if it can even be called that, is complete and utter soulless trash that only idiots can like. There have been numerous attempts over these years to both “fix” what I love so that I can be liked as a person again, because deep down I was led to believe I was the problem. Hell, you can see it in my reviews. God of War, Ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, Eternights, Neon White, Tears of the Kingdom. These games, for me, turned into battlegrounds where I had to prove they were good, and many times, I failed. I always alluded to some problem I didn’t really have to just keep this new voice in my head quiet. Be that the writing, “movie games”, whatever. I couldn’t simply enjoy them anymore, because I kept trying to use them as a way to prove I was worthy of love. “Look at me, I’m a person worthy of love, I hate the bad games too, or at least acknowledge how shit they are. Like me now, please.” You’ll notice a discrepancy between my ratings(and hell, 90% of the reviews themselves) of these games and the supposed hatred I harbor toward them. All of them are still highly rated and positive. No matter how hard I tried to change myself, who I was, or what I liked, despite the self loathing, my heart wouldn’t budge.
Every game I mentioned above has had some sort of guilt intertwined to it, well that is every game except one. None other than the Trails franchise. It was detached from the guilt simply because this person didn’t really engage with Trails at all. Perhaps this is why Trails of Cold Steel 1 came at such a pivotal moment, during one of the worst points of the past few years. why it means so much to me. I expected nothing of it, after being mildly disappointed by Azure, as well as hearing it was hands down the weakest game in the franchise. With absolutely no expectations, it blew me away. Amazing music, amazing cast, amazing world, getting lost in all the references to past games… It had captured me the same way P5 did all those years ago, made me feel again after being so empty for so long. This feeling was, unfortunately, not for long, and the guilt came back. But something was different this time.
Around this time I started writing more longform reviews,as well as changing up my ratings to be more in line with my heart again a bit later down the line. This was a necessary change, but it didn’t do much at the moment because real changes had yet to occur, both external and internal. But one thing led to another, and I’m here now.
There was a time, around 4 years ago I bought Persona 4 Golden on my Vita. It had to have been August or September of that year, just after beating P5 vanilla. I remember texting my friend about how I was about to waste another 60+ hours of my life. I don't remember the last time I did something like that. What I mean is, I don't remember the last time I was super excited, truly, fully excited to get into a game. I came straight off the heels of the best gaming experience I'd had in my life, incredibly excited to start a new journey in the same series. Nowadays, and I'm sure it sounds silly to call myself this, but in the gaming enthusiast space I've kind of lost that joy. It's always about being ultra critical, ultra "objective", and with remakes especially, compare compare compare. Every last change scrutinized, every small detail taking you out of the experience. See, when I played Persona 4 Golden on my vita, I didn't go into it thinking about how shitty the fog effects were, in fact I had no idea this change to the fog was even a thing until a couple months ago. If you showed me a picture of P4 and P4G, I doubt I could tell the difference if they were unlabeled. Now it’s the first thing that comes to mind with Golden. I'm so concerned with problems I don't even care about. If you asked a 14 year old Agenda who just started P5 which version of P3 he would play, Reload or FES, he would choose Reload. I would choose Reload, too. I miss this game series. I miss actually enjoying things.
That's why I've been really happy with my past reviews lately, especially things like Donkey Kong Country 2 or F-Zero. I list all the little critiques I have, but at the end of the day I have a blast and rate it super high. Those are my critiques, not anyone else's. It's been so fucking tiring trying to be someone else. I feel partially inclined to hate every Persona game I loved in the past, too. In my day-to-day life, I'm surrounded by so much MegaTen. From my phone/lockscreen background, to my phone being filled to the brim with MegaTen OSTs. My PC lockscreen is one of Royal's key art. I am listening to Sound Test while writing this. I have SEVEN Phantom Thief figures, a Thanatos figure, AND I ordered Izanagi. My PFP on this site is Sumi for fuck's sake. I love this series so much. I would love to get through P2 IS and EP, Digital Devil Saga, and all the other Megatens I haven't played . Yet simultaneously, not for a second can I stop being reminded how much I should hate Megami Tensei, or should hate Persona 3 Reload. I'm really tired of this act of ripping apart the things I love just so I can get validation from the wrong people.
I understand there’s a certain futility to sharing all this on a public game logging website but it’s intrinsic to my experience with P3R so I had to include it as a (very long) preface. Oh, right, before we get into the actual video game review. One last thing.
To everyone who blabs and blabs about remakes being soulless, passionless, directionless, and all the other buzzwords Backloggd Gamers ™ love to use: how did you arrive at that conclusion? Because you prefer the older look of the original? Because to me, from all the promotional material Atlus(especially Atlus West) has put out, this game is clearly a labor of love to the original. You can see all the dub VAs(both old dub and new) admire each other's work, and every cast member seems to have such a strong attachment to either the character they play or the franchise itself. Take Zeno Robinson for example, new voice of Junpei. He openly mentions how P3 is his favorite game ever in these Behind The Scenes interviews. Every single one of these cast members has something great to say about Persona. It's common knowledge at this point the Reload project was given to new staff at Atlus while the veterans finish out their careers with Metaphor. There are no sources for this, but I'd assure you that all the people working directly on the game back in Japan also have an immense love for P3, and judging how young the staff is probably grew up with the original or FES. If you were given the opportunity to work on something you love, would you not pour your heart and soul into creating the best possible version of that? To deliver that to a new audience? I ask you, Backloggd Gamers ™, what is "soul" , if not a game made by people who adore and are passionate for the original? You already know the answer to that. You already know it's a meaningless buzzword, you already know you're only doing these things to stir drama, and are too egotistical to let new fans have their fun. You just want to stir some drama so you get the attention you desperately crave. "Soul" to Backloggd Gamers ™ is not a synonym for passion or love, it's just a way to gatekeep people from having their fun, from believing things to be profound.
And because this will inevitably get misinterpreted: It's fine if you prefer the original, or don't vibe with the warmer P5 esque artstyle. What isn't fine is complaining about how gaming is dead or being a complete dick towards those who love Reload, especially new fans. Persona (and the wider MegaTen franchise) has some of the best combat, music, stories, themes, and characters in RPGs and gaming as a whole. To gatekeep or make new fans feel ashamed for getting into the franchise like this is immature beyond belief. The Backloggd community has quickly become more toxic than Letterboxd. You aren't cool, and no one outside your private elitist discord server respects you for it. There are many more important things to be mad about in this world than antagonizing people about what version of a video game they play and prefer. Grow the fuck up.
I apologize for the rant, but I've been needing to get that off my chest for far too long. Let's get into it.
Persona 3 FES, as I put it two years ago, is a game with growing pains. Because it is the first of the nusona games, that was bound to happen. FES suffers from some really shitty SLinks, most of them are quite forgettable. In fact, I forgot the plot of every SLink I did in FES besides Akinari. FES also had this system called tactics, which while I still don’t really think is a massive problem and the hate is overblown, it can still lead to some frustrating outcomes. The male party members don’t get social links of their own, which was disappointing. The portraits have a washed out look, and the game could look a lot better. The OG dubbing in P3 was very stiff for most characters outside of SEES, and even in SEES there’s characters like Fuuka, Ken, and Shinji who sound stiff as a plank. Persona 3 was a very ambitious game indeed, but it shot too high and has some flaws because of it. I think I understand why some people might prefer FES, despite being more flawed, because the flaws give it the charm of being overly ambitious.
That being said, I feel like Reload was necessary. Persona 3 no longer feels like the black sheep of nusona. It feels confident in itself, more so than the original. Doubling down on the imagery in full HD, all while keeping the positive themes of living life to the fullest despite the inevitability of death. Everyone knew what made things click, and kept it, while giving it a fresh coat of paint. To hell with accusations of sanitization, this is the essence of Persona 3 chiseled out while being propped up by those who loved Persona 3 and wanted to make it better. I do not believe there is a reason to play FES anymore, unless you vibe with the little chibi guys and/or want to see how we got here. And if you don’t, that’s fine too. Life is too short to engage with games you don’t feel inclined to.
On second thought, there is a reason to engage with aspects of the original P3. That being, the OST. I think most of the remixes are better, or at least stand toe-to-toe with their original counterparts. However, there are songs that do lack a “punch”. The only egregious examples I found myself were Unavoidable Battle and Living with Determination -Iwatodai-. Both of these lack the drums that made the originals so captivating. Those drums push you forward, but with… bongos… or a severely muffled beat/reverb it doesn’t have the same effect. I found this really odd, considering the drums go hard on Burn my Dread -Last Battle Reload-. I always preferred the Future Arrange from the P3 movies for this song anyway, but missed the heavy drum beat. This arrangement makes the drums heavier, while Lotus Juice makes the lyrics the most situational they’ve been.The OG Last Battle felt vaguely about the themes of P3, but this, this version of lyrics, encapsulates the development Makoto has undergone. It goes so fucking hard. I also don’t really understand why some people have said the version of Battle For Everyone’s Souls sounds worse. It sounds heavier, in fact better, to me, and I was worried it wouldn’t be as good considering how they neutered Unavoidable Battle.
It is somewhat disappointing that no P3 Movie songs were integrated. I love the Movie OST. Light in Starless Sky, One Determination, Fate is in Our Hands, Persona Summoners, they’re all really great songs and I wish they became unique encounter themes. But alas, there wasn’t a good place to play them, I suppose.
As for the new vocalist, I think she does a fantastic job. I love how she sang When Moon’s Reaching Out Stars, the new lyrics for Changing Seasons, and of course the new songs. Full Moon Full Life fucking hits and keeps up with this thesis I have going that they know exactly what P3 is. The lyrics, the sound, so fucking good and it slips into P3’s musical identity perfectly. People unfamiliar with the Persona 3 Movie OSTs and the rearranged albums might think that Color Your Night isn’t very P3-esque. However, when you look at Deep Breath from Burn My Dread -Reincarnation- album, you’ll see this happier, chiller sound is nothing new for P3. I think she does the boss tracks and Memories of You justice.
This sense of doing tracks “justice” keeps popping back up in my mind. It’s what separates the Nier Replicant OST from most of the Trails Evo Tracks. Nier Replicant OST “gets” Nier songs. Whereas Trails Evo Tracks mostly seem like they throw things at the wall. Some of these Evo Tracks are really good, like Steel Floor Obstructing the way, or Silver Will Evo Version. But others, like Fateful Confrontation or Till the Night of Glory, just don’t understand what made the songs work. I firmly believe P3R’s OST “gets” what made P3’s OST work, outside of the exceptions I made earlier.
It is disappointing as a longtime fan that Yumi is no longer the star of P3’s sound, but she is getting older. She was a chainsmoker for years, too. Look at the 2022 concert, she’s struggling. Shihoko Hirata, and Lotus Juice killed it in that concert. It’s sad, but Yumi’s been active since 1991. It’s understandable she cannot do it anymore, especially with the chainsmoking. The old versions still exist, my preferring the newer versions of the songs doesn’t mean I’m trying to revise history like some Backloggd Gamers would choose to believe Remake fans do. I love Yumi Kawamura, but time marches on, and I’m all for a new era of Persona 3.
That’s another thing that keeps popping up for me, coexistence. The OG and Reload can coexist. However, that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to play both. Such a stupid idea to gatekeep art. Those who like the original and dislike Reload can exist, same as those who like Reload and dislike/don’t want to play the OG. You don’t lose gamer privileges if you only play the remake. It’s up to you whether you want to play both or not. Same goes for reload. You don’t lose gamer privileges if you only play the original. Or both, you can like both too. Objectivity is a myth, so play what you like.
Anyway, I found the gameplay to be much improved in Reload. Tartarus is much more fun to explore with blocks feeling unique. Despite this, I found it quite hard to adjust to some of the later blocks, like Harabah. It was quite jarring at first but I got used to it. I love the depth added to the blocks, it really feels like a gigantic tower now. Hell, even the entrance to Tartarus compared to FES is insane. This is Tartarus done right. I played on Merciless and I found it a tad easy, except bosses. Maybe that’s just my MegaTen-addled brain speaking, but it really makes me want to play SMT Nocturne Hardtype for some ball busting challenge. I missed Megaten combat so much. I missed the element names, the buffs, the… everything. It really is peak gaming. The persona formula is always something that is so addicting, makes me wanna replay Golden and Royal right away, but I know I’m better off if I wait on those.
Presentation is another huge improvement. I’d mentioned how the portraits look washed out in the original, here they have much more vibrant colors. Not only that, but battle menus, UI, all of it is super beautiful. Reminiscent of Persona 5, but so clearly Persona 3 in its identity. The moon, the overwhelming amount of blue and green, it’s all so pretty. Battle presentation has also taken a huge leap in quality, with awesome Theurgy animations that encapsulate the personalities of the characters. Shift animations, cut-ins, All Out Attack animations and AOA finisher art. It’s just so fucking awesome, I don’t know what else to say.
Voice acting is also awesome, I prefer nearly every recast to the original. Like my friend Lemmers put it, Aigis and Yukari are both awesome recasts, I don’t see the issue people have with them. Ken and Shinji are both wonderfully recast. Shinji’s death in the OG wasn’t memorable for me, nor were either of the characters. But here, with better casting and direction, it got me to tear up. Ken is now one of my favorites because of his voice. Junpei is the star of the recasts, though. He can be so chill and friendly, yet also has such a deep resentment and rage to his voice at the flip of a coin. It’s such a good performance, and I absolutely hope he gets nominated at TGA for best VA. I don’t think a single voice actor is bad in Reload. The VA in reload has also made SLinks plenty more memorable.
I’d like to touch on a really neat part of the game for a bit. That being the atmosphere. Despite what I’ve seen online, I don’t think Reload is too bright, in fact the lighting shift that occurs in January hits even harder because of the way Iwatodai Dorm is lit normally. I never had an issue with it. Another thing is the general atmosphere in January. It’s a much more memorable time of the year than FES. It feels like a hazy daydream, especially with the Lo-Fi rendition of Memories of the School in the background. Almost similar to Royal’s third semester, except there isn’t anything actually wrong about the world itself here. Everything proceeds exactly as normal and it’s such a whiplash to the player. Every single one of these characters will die in a month, yet life must go on. You must study for tests, you must hang out with friends like normal, you must talk about where you’re going to college or if you’ll get a job. It’s a perfectly executed shift in atmosphere/tone and I think the whole game’s a lot more memorable for me. I remember more about Golden which I played back in 2019 than I do FES in 2022.
Now for the part everyone’s been waiting for, the story. It’s a very emotional and beautiful narrative, one I’ve become more and more attached to over time. Reload takes aspects of the movies, P3P, and FES to make it the most enthralling it’s ever been.Perhaps it can be said it didn’t hit me as hard when I first played it because I had already begun to close myself off from feelings. But it’s different now, and I’ve become a lot more familiar with the themes explored. Living for yourself, moving forward, overcoming dread, and of course, learning what it’s like to feel. I cried multiple times throughout, a feat I cannot credit FES or the movies with. It’s just a perfect narrative I think, and I’m super excited to see what theme P6 tackles next.
Somehow these games always reach me in the times I need them most, huh?
It's a really weird feeling that us "started-with-p5"s aren't going to be the newest members of the fanbase anymore. It's even weirder to think how the 14 year olds of now are discovering these games for the first time. A whole ass journey into one of, no, the best franchise in gaming awaiting them afterwards. I think there's something really... beautiful about this being someone's first MegaTen game. In 5 years, those 19 year olds'll be reminiscing on it the same as I do with P5, all the people they've met, how they grew and changed. It's a really nice feeling, at least for me, to think of these games as a benchmark of change. It feels like yesterday sometimes that I just beat Yaldabaoth, or that I met some of my friends for the first time. But I've grown quite substantially, even if I'm blinded by these feelings of inadequacy and guilt most of the time. I don't know where I'm gonna be when Persona 6 comes out, I don't even know who I'll be when Metaphor comes out later this year. I don't know if this guilt I feel will have subsided yet, but knowing that P6 will be there regardless, at some point in time, is very comforting. This franchise, specifically Persona, it's... home. I don't know how something so profound, having such a life changing effect on so many, could ever be seen as anything but beautiful. Perhaps I should be more grateful that I was deeply affected by it, rather than being fueled by hatred of those I don't understand, propping myself up by tearing others down.
It's funny in an ironic sense that some of the biggest proponents of "P3R soulless" seem to have missed the themes of the game. Someday, we’ll all die. It would do us all some good to uplift others. So why spend your life filled with negativity and hatred? You shouldn’t bring others down for preferring the remake or the original. For those who really want the original, they will play it. It’s not right to tear down those who just want to play Reload. I emulated FES because I wanted to play Persona 3 nearly 2 years ago. If you want the OG Persona 3 experience, you can find ways to have it. But that doesn’t make it right, let alone necessary, to shit on those who had the gall to prefer the remake. I, for one, will likely never go back to FES. But if you want to, go right ahead. Life is too short to not fill it with art that moves you.
Some days I woke up hating Persona 3 Reload, when just the night earlier I was having a blast climbing Tartarus. I don’t know if I can ever get this voice out of my head. But if I’ve learned anything from these past 7 months alone, from this game, it's that life is too short to cut off feeling emotions. Life is too short to give up trying to reclaim what I love. It will probably never be “the same” or “normal”, but everything’s constantly changing. Despite how much I romanticize the early days discovering of P5, I still had plenty of problems during that time, from the trauma, to the unsavory political views I had for a while(I’d rather not talk about that lol). My love for Megami Tensei and Persona was never static, it was always fluctuating when I found new games, like Nocturne and Strange Journey. So while I may never have another P5 honeymoon phase, and while I may be hurt, I still fucking love MegaTen. I still fucking love Persona. It just went away for a while, and I’m sure tomorrow it’ll go away again. But I owe it to myself to keep trying, to keep believing in myself until I can say I love them with confidence every single time. After all, it’s my life, so I gotta burn my dread, right? What more can I do but keep going?
With that, there’s one last thing to be said. Thank you to those who stuck with me when my actions didn’t really make sense. Thank you for trying to understand anyway, and supporting me when it did make sense. Thank you to those who stuck with me during the worst part of it, and for making the other side a little bit happier. You know who you are.
I want to play so many great JRPGs this year, so many great games in general, it’s so much nicer when I let myself be free like this. Stay tuned.
Mad Father
2020
This review will be centered around both this remake, and the original release of Mad Father, as both are perfectly accessible on the system I played it on. This playthrough was done through the remake.
I genuinely adore this game. Evident by the rather exorbitant amount of time I have totaled for this quick, 2 hour long RPG Maker horror (or Wolf RPG, really) Mad Father is a game I have been able to thoroughly enjoy for an actual decade at this point. It's the perfect mix of horror and atmosphere that has somehow always managed to enamor me every time, even despite all my yearly replays.
There is such a haunting history built within the Drevis mansion. A reluctantly loving family, doomed by a madman in power. A child who only loves this mad father due to a lack of information, only learning her mistakes after devoting herself to saving him for so long. It's devastating watching this story unfold, the hardest moments only ever amplified by a just as haunting soundtrack. (yeah what's a good wheatie review without everybody's favorite part)
This is a soundtrack I can best describe as pretty. The ambience in each area is perfect, there are some beautiful uses of pianos and violins to be found, and to go just a little further into it, even just the sound design is pretty nicely done. The game will very often cause a subtle shift in the environment, accompanied by an alerting noise in the midst of the usual quietness. Mad Father knows damn near perfectly how to be unsettling. Maybe I'm a bitch.
I've mentioned in earlier reviews of this game that the 2020 remake made a few changes that I wasn't the biggest fan of. Yes, silly mistakes have been remarkably softened by the easy QTE that the game gives you, I still stand by that a fair amount. But I'm also willing to look past that. I think despite everything, the good more than outweighs the bad, and it's still amazing seeing the absolute glow-up this game got after 8 whole years, not to mention the revamped puzzles and new content with Blood Mode.
It could very well be the nostalgia talking. The average person would look at Mad Father and notice that it generally follows the pretty basic formula that most RPG Maker horrors follow, solving puzzles by mixing items and using them at the right areas, with perhaps a bit more added onto it thanks to the use of the chainsaw. I'm willing to admit that. I've always been willing to admit when nostalgia can sort of take a hold on me. Unfortunately, I've also always been willing to admit that I don't care. I love this genre, and I love this game. This is easily one of my favorite horror games ever. Always has been, always will be.
I genuinely adore this game. Evident by the rather exorbitant amount of time I have totaled for this quick, 2 hour long RPG Maker horror (or Wolf RPG, really) Mad Father is a game I have been able to thoroughly enjoy for an actual decade at this point. It's the perfect mix of horror and atmosphere that has somehow always managed to enamor me every time, even despite all my yearly replays.
There is such a haunting history built within the Drevis mansion. A reluctantly loving family, doomed by a madman in power. A child who only loves this mad father due to a lack of information, only learning her mistakes after devoting herself to saving him for so long. It's devastating watching this story unfold, the hardest moments only ever amplified by a just as haunting soundtrack. (yeah what's a good wheatie review without everybody's favorite part)
This is a soundtrack I can best describe as pretty. The ambience in each area is perfect, there are some beautiful uses of pianos and violins to be found, and to go just a little further into it, even just the sound design is pretty nicely done. The game will very often cause a subtle shift in the environment, accompanied by an alerting noise in the midst of the usual quietness. Mad Father knows damn near perfectly how to be unsettling. Maybe I'm a bitch.
I've mentioned in earlier reviews of this game that the 2020 remake made a few changes that I wasn't the biggest fan of. Yes, silly mistakes have been remarkably softened by the easy QTE that the game gives you, I still stand by that a fair amount. But I'm also willing to look past that. I think despite everything, the good more than outweighs the bad, and it's still amazing seeing the absolute glow-up this game got after 8 whole years, not to mention the revamped puzzles and new content with Blood Mode.
It could very well be the nostalgia talking. The average person would look at Mad Father and notice that it generally follows the pretty basic formula that most RPG Maker horrors follow, solving puzzles by mixing items and using them at the right areas, with perhaps a bit more added onto it thanks to the use of the chainsaw. I'm willing to admit that. I've always been willing to admit when nostalgia can sort of take a hold on me. Unfortunately, I've also always been willing to admit that I don't care. I love this genre, and I love this game. This is easily one of my favorite horror games ever. Always has been, always will be.
You would think given how much I love and talk about music on here that I would be absolutely enamored with the rhythm game genre, right? Not really, no. I used to be, definitely! But over time, I've found games like osu! or Quaver or other similar, keyboard centric rhythm games to be kinda taxing on my mental, not to mention my stamina. The competitive aspect of the leaderboards, as well as the heights some maps will go in terms of difficulty just started getting to me one day, and I haven't been able to go back since.
This is where I would start my next paragraph with a question: "Why do I enjoy this game/mod so much?" But I think the answer to that is clear enough. Take away the competitive ranking system, take away whatever "points" mechanic you might have, and have the game be simple, fun, and casually enjoyable. That's what Friday Night Funkin' is to me. Casual fun, in a genre that I should naturally be compelled to enjoy. Saruky's Hotline 024 is what I would call the pinnacle of that enjoyment.
I think I can say that I am genuinely amazed at just how much there is in this mod. More than the base game itself, even. Totaling 24 songs and nearly 2 hours of music and gameplay, there is a shocking amount of work put into what the devs still call a demo, and every second of it just as great as the last. I'm willing to sit down and admit that I thoroughly enjoy the music of Hotline 024, and I think that if there's any mod to give a chance, despite any preconceived notions you might have over the base game or its community, this would be number one. Hell, if it's just the voices used within the songs that get to you, I can also fully recommend the instrumental tracks. The download page proudly advertises its mashup-heavy nature, and it uses its wide assortment of samples and melodies beautifully for any situation. I've even gone so far as to use a few of the slower, softer songs as background music for my wallpaper.
But no rhythm game succeeds with just its music alone. There needs to be a chart associated with each song, one that works in time with the music, while still being fun to play. To not drag this out any longer, yes, the charts are all fantastic as well. Every pattern is smooth on the hands, no matter the pace, and with the way Funkin' usually works, there's always a nice amount of breathing room in between segments. Not perfect, I can think of maybe a couple notables examples of some questionable charting decisions, but for just how many charts there are? I can still praise the work and care that went into everything. Even in the two songs where your notes are split across the screen, it's still very readable, and makes for an even greater spectacle during gameplay.
The entire vibe and aesthetic of Hotline 024 is matched by so few others, and I fell in love with it even at the start, back when there were only two songs to the name. The art is all pretty, the music is great, and the charts are fun. To the fullest extent, I think this is easily the most enjoyment I've had from any rhythm game out there. I love this massive collaboration of all different artists, and I definitely look forward to anything else Saruky holds for this story, in-game or not.
This is where I would start my next paragraph with a question: "Why do I enjoy this game/mod so much?" But I think the answer to that is clear enough. Take away the competitive ranking system, take away whatever "points" mechanic you might have, and have the game be simple, fun, and casually enjoyable. That's what Friday Night Funkin' is to me. Casual fun, in a genre that I should naturally be compelled to enjoy. Saruky's Hotline 024 is what I would call the pinnacle of that enjoyment.
I think I can say that I am genuinely amazed at just how much there is in this mod. More than the base game itself, even. Totaling 24 songs and nearly 2 hours of music and gameplay, there is a shocking amount of work put into what the devs still call a demo, and every second of it just as great as the last. I'm willing to sit down and admit that I thoroughly enjoy the music of Hotline 024, and I think that if there's any mod to give a chance, despite any preconceived notions you might have over the base game or its community, this would be number one. Hell, if it's just the voices used within the songs that get to you, I can also fully recommend the instrumental tracks. The download page proudly advertises its mashup-heavy nature, and it uses its wide assortment of samples and melodies beautifully for any situation. I've even gone so far as to use a few of the slower, softer songs as background music for my wallpaper.
But no rhythm game succeeds with just its music alone. There needs to be a chart associated with each song, one that works in time with the music, while still being fun to play. To not drag this out any longer, yes, the charts are all fantastic as well. Every pattern is smooth on the hands, no matter the pace, and with the way Funkin' usually works, there's always a nice amount of breathing room in between segments. Not perfect, I can think of maybe a couple notables examples of some questionable charting decisions, but for just how many charts there are? I can still praise the work and care that went into everything. Even in the two songs where your notes are split across the screen, it's still very readable, and makes for an even greater spectacle during gameplay.
The entire vibe and aesthetic of Hotline 024 is matched by so few others, and I fell in love with it even at the start, back when there were only two songs to the name. The art is all pretty, the music is great, and the charts are fun. To the fullest extent, I think this is easily the most enjoyment I've had from any rhythm game out there. I love this massive collaboration of all different artists, and I definitely look forward to anything else Saruky holds for this story, in-game or not.
I might be a little hesitant to give my review so soon, especially in the current state of the PC release and its online lobbies, but I'm gonna hold out hope and say that it shouldn't be a problem for much longer.
Hot off the press of my Under Night 1 re-review, Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes has finally released. As I said there, I pre-ordered the game because I absolutely loved the first one, and had very high hopes for its sequel. To be playing it after the long months of waiting, yeah it's really good!
I sang all my praises of the first game, and that all still rings true in 2. Every character is unique and enjoyable, the current newcomers are all a blast (hell i'm even switching off of Hilda for Kaguya for now), and the game is just as quick and snappy as before. Among the new soundtrack, a new network menu theme, new character select music (which i'm willing to argue is better than the first game's), all that good noise, everybody has received remixes to their old battle themes. What else am I gonna say, they're all fantastic. Some more major than others, such as Hilda's, some simply got a bit of a remaster. Thankfully, we've managed to keep Canon in Initial D, and it's even better than ever. (i'm sorry this is like my favorite theme in the game, i cannot get over it lmao)
I don't have much else to say, it's a cleaner, newer, banger Under Night, bringing in some new additions to the roster and spicing up what we already had a nice amount. I'm glad the sequel lived up to my expectations, and I am definitely looking forward to spending a shit ton more hours in it.
im also looking forward to being able to play online but yknow when does anybody get a succesful release day, right?
Hot off the press of my Under Night 1 re-review, Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes has finally released. As I said there, I pre-ordered the game because I absolutely loved the first one, and had very high hopes for its sequel. To be playing it after the long months of waiting, yeah it's really good!
I sang all my praises of the first game, and that all still rings true in 2. Every character is unique and enjoyable, the current newcomers are all a blast (hell i'm even switching off of Hilda for Kaguya for now), and the game is just as quick and snappy as before. Among the new soundtrack, a new network menu theme, new character select music (which i'm willing to argue is better than the first game's), all that good noise, everybody has received remixes to their old battle themes. What else am I gonna say, they're all fantastic. Some more major than others, such as Hilda's, some simply got a bit of a remaster. Thankfully, we've managed to keep Canon in Initial D, and it's even better than ever. (i'm sorry this is like my favorite theme in the game, i cannot get over it lmao)
I don't have much else to say, it's a cleaner, newer, banger Under Night, bringing in some new additions to the roster and spicing up what we already had a nice amount. I'm glad the sequel lived up to my expectations, and I am definitely looking forward to spending a shit ton more hours in it.
im also looking forward to being able to play online but yknow when does anybody get a succesful release day, right?
Fortnite
2017
horrible game infested with children after season 1
I'll keep the introduction short this time and get straight to the point. Phantom Liberty is the best DLC I've ever played.
Dogtown being a closed-off and compact district makes it feel more personal and memorable than a lot of Night City. It being a run-down, bleak area definitely makes it stand out among the rest of the world - characters and lore tidbits always describe it as this hopeless, brutal place and I believe the overall design is quite fitting for that description.
Now, the supporting cast is more grounded and morally grey here than the companions in the base game, which I personally think is great, because it fits the moody vibe of the narrative and makes them more interesting. Each character has their own intentions and it's up to the player to decide who to trust and who to avoid - Phantom Liberty's narrative alone has four endings, depending on your choices throughout the expansion. Don't overthink this aspect too much, since the points where your choices change the storyline are very clear and not your run-of-the-mill dialogue options. If you're a completionist and want to see all endings in a single playthrough, just make a backup save file right before those choices and you're good to go. Speaking of those endings, they're really impressive and you'll definitely think about them for a while.
Aside from the narrative, Phantom Liberty also adds meaningful side content to Cyberpunk 2077. There are ten new gigs, like a dozen new side quests and an entirely new skill tree. I really liked those gigs, because they weren't just "get to this PC" or "kill/spare this person" like in the base game, but all felt like little side quests on their own. The skill tree is not as expansive as the standard ones, but it adds some nice perks for melee combat and an alternative to headshots with the weak point gauge.
You see, I almost entirely forgot to mention the setpieces in the DLC. My bad! Everyone likes a good setpiece and the spy movie setting is definitely on point here - you infiltrate a casino, a triangular-shaped club and a bunch of unique spoilery sceneries where I wouldn't like to ruin the surprise. Make sure to look for the several character cameos in the casino mission!
If you're looking to spend more time in Night City, Phantom Liberty is a must-buy. In my opinion it's everything I wanted from a final arc in Cyberpunk 2077 and I really just enjoy how thought-provoking it was overall. Fantastic DLC.
Here's my review for the base game!
Dogtown being a closed-off and compact district makes it feel more personal and memorable than a lot of Night City. It being a run-down, bleak area definitely makes it stand out among the rest of the world - characters and lore tidbits always describe it as this hopeless, brutal place and I believe the overall design is quite fitting for that description.
Now, the supporting cast is more grounded and morally grey here than the companions in the base game, which I personally think is great, because it fits the moody vibe of the narrative and makes them more interesting. Each character has their own intentions and it's up to the player to decide who to trust and who to avoid - Phantom Liberty's narrative alone has four endings, depending on your choices throughout the expansion. Don't overthink this aspect too much, since the points where your choices change the storyline are very clear and not your run-of-the-mill dialogue options. If you're a completionist and want to see all endings in a single playthrough, just make a backup save file right before those choices and you're good to go. Speaking of those endings, they're really impressive and you'll definitely think about them for a while.
Aside from the narrative, Phantom Liberty also adds meaningful side content to Cyberpunk 2077. There are ten new gigs, like a dozen new side quests and an entirely new skill tree. I really liked those gigs, because they weren't just "get to this PC" or "kill/spare this person" like in the base game, but all felt like little side quests on their own. The skill tree is not as expansive as the standard ones, but it adds some nice perks for melee combat and an alternative to headshots with the weak point gauge.
You see, I almost entirely forgot to mention the setpieces in the DLC. My bad! Everyone likes a good setpiece and the spy movie setting is definitely on point here - you infiltrate a casino, a triangular-shaped club and a bunch of unique spoilery sceneries where I wouldn't like to ruin the surprise. Make sure to look for the several character cameos in the casino mission!
If you're looking to spend more time in Night City, Phantom Liberty is a must-buy. In my opinion it's everything I wanted from a final arc in Cyberpunk 2077 and I really just enjoy how thought-provoking it was overall. Fantastic DLC.
Here's my review for the base game!
Cyberpunk 2077
2020
"Just focus on tying up all your loose ends - then you and I are leaving this city once and for all." ~ Judy Álvarez
For many, Cyberpunk 2077 will always be remembered as the game with arguably the worst launch next to No Man's Sky. It was a bugfest and the console experience was so bad that refunds were provided from the developers themselves. But I'm not here to talk about the launch - instead I would like to share my personal experience after ~100 hours of playing and getting all available endings, entirely in patch 2.1 and right off the bat with Phantom Liberty (which I reviewed already).
Cyberpunk really shines in terms of presentation. The vibes are incredible, Night City nails the feeling of a dystopian and futuristic metropolis perfectly. You know, flashy neon lights and advertisements are plastered all over the city and the streets are always busy. Another thing that really helps the immersion here is the lighting. An often overlooked aspect, but it's probably the best ambient lighting I've ever seen in a game alongside Red Dead Redemption 2. Do yourself a favor and cruise through Night City on a rainy night, you'll see what I'm talking about. By the way, this is without Raytracing. RTX enabled is a whole different beast, but I didn't keep it on for long, because it was taking a serious toll on my frames and I'm a person who likes to enjoy games with a smooth framerate over graphical fidelity all day.
The main story is solid, albeit not very long. You could probably finish it under 20 hours in total if you're beelining the main quests and ignore the side content. Despite the short runtime, you'll find yourself in a lot of cool setpieces and get acquainted to many great characters, each with their own individual questline. I would definitely recommend playing those quests, since they're a lot more personal than the overarching narrative and really help understanding the struggles and personalities of V's friends better. Speaking of those friends, I think the fluff text messages you get every now and then are a great feature. Makes the world feel more alive and it's always nice to see characters being relevant outside of their own contained substories. Romance is also a neat little mechanic - I really like how CDPR provides extra text messages for your partner, so they ask about V's life every now and then. There's an unique quest where you can also hang out with them at your apartment and talk about stuff, this is repeatable, but unfortunately the dialogue repeats after the first time. Just use your imagination here and you're golden.
Cyberpunk's side content is mainly divided into two different mission types - gigs and side jobs. Gigs are one-time missions where you do a quick job for a fixer of choice, like breaking into an apartment to retrieve some data for a client. How you handle those missions is entirely up to you (unless there's an optional objective you'd like to complete), so you could opt for a stealthy approach or just shoot your way through the enemies. Combat in general is very diverse, you can have Mantis Blade implants inside your arms or blind enemies with hacks - there are so many possible builds. I went with a Netrunner/Gunslinger build, since not many games offer you the opportunity to weaken your opponents by just hacking them! And pistols just feel like the most comfy ranged option to me - a silenced one for stealth and another unsilenced one for loud combat. If you're still unsure on a build, I'd recommend testing some of the iconic weapons (basically the "legendary" weapons of this game), since they come with unique perks. There's a lot of them, so I'm sure some of them will appeal to you. Now, I didn't go in detail about the side jobs, but that's because they're more narrative-driven quests. Some of them feel like the Stranger quests in RDR2, while others have more complex tales to tell. So basically they are a great pastime if you're looking for more worldbuilding in Night City.
If you found yourself asking the whole time "But what about the bugs?", while reading this, then I'll gladly answer that for you. In my 97 hours of playtime I only had a single crash happen (right before writing this review ironically), but since the game autosaves often enough, it was a loss of like 3 minutes only. I haven't encountered a single game-breaking bug, just some small immersion-breakers every now and then, alongside two "real" bugs. This includes various items clipping into the hands of NPCs when they were supposed to put them away and NPCs in general teleporting on rooftops where they aren't supposed to be. The "real" bugs were my V glitching through a wall after a character crashed my car into that wall in a scripted cutscene (had to reload my save) and I've also had enemies walk through a closed garage door once - but that one was rather funny, despite being unfair. There's another problem I'd like to address, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a bug, so I'm not going to label it as one. It's related to quests starting through calls of certain characters. The game explicitly tells you "Wait a day until this character calls you back." and then sometime they just don't call at all, despite 24 hours having passed in-game. Worst offender was when I tried to start the follow-up mission to the companion mission "Off the Leash", the quest giver was supposed to call after one in-game day but it took me two real-time hours (after several virtual days passed already) for that character to call. For your own sanity I recommend doing other gigs or side jobs inbetween, because I'm very sure the calls will come on time if you don't just try to exploit the waiting feature to skip to those quests instantly. Try to let it play out naturally.
Are you a fan of the Edgerunners anime? Well, good news for you! The world of Cyberpunk 2077 also includes small nods to the series, like the graves of the deceased characters at the cemetery. There's also a side job where you can get David's iconic jacket and you can find Rebecca's famous shotgun out in the world too (if you remember the spot she left it in the anime).
The final point I'd like to address in this review is the soundtrack. (Yeah, there are other songs besides I Really Want To Stay At Your House.) While the OST in The Witcher 3 had a calmer, more comforting vibe, Cyberpunk's music fits the high octane combat accordingly, but some of the best tracks come from the sad and serious moments in the game. For car rides, the different radio stations allow you to listen to your music genre of choice. Speaking of the cars, I find it a lot more satisfying to drive to quest locations than to just quick travel there (which I regrettably did a lot in like the first 20 hours of my playthrough). It's just a lot more immersive and driving feels great if you have a car you like. (My personal favorite ride is the Outlaw, great speed and handles well.)
I have talked a lot about this game now. That's because I love it. So if you would ask me if Cyberpunk is worth it, I would definitely recommend you to pick up the base game on sale sometime and go for Phantom Liberty if you want to spend more time in this fantastic world. It's pretty much in a fixed state now and if what I described in this review seems interesting to you, why not give it a go? There were very few moments where I was actually bored, even the beginning is great and brings you pretty fast into the action (unlike a certain cowboy game I have named several times in this review already).
That's all I wanted to share - thanks for reading.
For many, Cyberpunk 2077 will always be remembered as the game with arguably the worst launch next to No Man's Sky. It was a bugfest and the console experience was so bad that refunds were provided from the developers themselves. But I'm not here to talk about the launch - instead I would like to share my personal experience after ~100 hours of playing and getting all available endings, entirely in patch 2.1 and right off the bat with Phantom Liberty (which I reviewed already).
Cyberpunk really shines in terms of presentation. The vibes are incredible, Night City nails the feeling of a dystopian and futuristic metropolis perfectly. You know, flashy neon lights and advertisements are plastered all over the city and the streets are always busy. Another thing that really helps the immersion here is the lighting. An often overlooked aspect, but it's probably the best ambient lighting I've ever seen in a game alongside Red Dead Redemption 2. Do yourself a favor and cruise through Night City on a rainy night, you'll see what I'm talking about. By the way, this is without Raytracing. RTX enabled is a whole different beast, but I didn't keep it on for long, because it was taking a serious toll on my frames and I'm a person who likes to enjoy games with a smooth framerate over graphical fidelity all day.
The main story is solid, albeit not very long. You could probably finish it under 20 hours in total if you're beelining the main quests and ignore the side content. Despite the short runtime, you'll find yourself in a lot of cool setpieces and get acquainted to many great characters, each with their own individual questline. I would definitely recommend playing those quests, since they're a lot more personal than the overarching narrative and really help understanding the struggles and personalities of V's friends better. Speaking of those friends, I think the fluff text messages you get every now and then are a great feature. Makes the world feel more alive and it's always nice to see characters being relevant outside of their own contained substories. Romance is also a neat little mechanic - I really like how CDPR provides extra text messages for your partner, so they ask about V's life every now and then. There's an unique quest where you can also hang out with them at your apartment and talk about stuff, this is repeatable, but unfortunately the dialogue repeats after the first time. Just use your imagination here and you're golden.
Cyberpunk's side content is mainly divided into two different mission types - gigs and side jobs. Gigs are one-time missions where you do a quick job for a fixer of choice, like breaking into an apartment to retrieve some data for a client. How you handle those missions is entirely up to you (unless there's an optional objective you'd like to complete), so you could opt for a stealthy approach or just shoot your way through the enemies. Combat in general is very diverse, you can have Mantis Blade implants inside your arms or blind enemies with hacks - there are so many possible builds. I went with a Netrunner/Gunslinger build, since not many games offer you the opportunity to weaken your opponents by just hacking them! And pistols just feel like the most comfy ranged option to me - a silenced one for stealth and another unsilenced one for loud combat. If you're still unsure on a build, I'd recommend testing some of the iconic weapons (basically the "legendary" weapons of this game), since they come with unique perks. There's a lot of them, so I'm sure some of them will appeal to you. Now, I didn't go in detail about the side jobs, but that's because they're more narrative-driven quests. Some of them feel like the Stranger quests in RDR2, while others have more complex tales to tell. So basically they are a great pastime if you're looking for more worldbuilding in Night City.
If you found yourself asking the whole time "But what about the bugs?", while reading this, then I'll gladly answer that for you. In my 97 hours of playtime I only had a single crash happen (right before writing this review ironically), but since the game autosaves often enough, it was a loss of like 3 minutes only. I haven't encountered a single game-breaking bug, just some small immersion-breakers every now and then, alongside two "real" bugs. This includes various items clipping into the hands of NPCs when they were supposed to put them away and NPCs in general teleporting on rooftops where they aren't supposed to be. The "real" bugs were my V glitching through a wall after a character crashed my car into that wall in a scripted cutscene (had to reload my save) and I've also had enemies walk through a closed garage door once - but that one was rather funny, despite being unfair. There's another problem I'd like to address, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a bug, so I'm not going to label it as one. It's related to quests starting through calls of certain characters. The game explicitly tells you "Wait a day until this character calls you back." and then sometime they just don't call at all, despite 24 hours having passed in-game. Worst offender was when I tried to start the follow-up mission to the companion mission "Off the Leash", the quest giver was supposed to call after one in-game day but it took me two real-time hours (after several virtual days passed already) for that character to call. For your own sanity I recommend doing other gigs or side jobs inbetween, because I'm very sure the calls will come on time if you don't just try to exploit the waiting feature to skip to those quests instantly. Try to let it play out naturally.
Are you a fan of the Edgerunners anime? Well, good news for you! The world of Cyberpunk 2077 also includes small nods to the series, like the graves of the deceased characters at the cemetery. There's also a side job where you can get David's iconic jacket and you can find Rebecca's famous shotgun out in the world too (if you remember the spot she left it in the anime).
The final point I'd like to address in this review is the soundtrack. (Yeah, there are other songs besides I Really Want To Stay At Your House.) While the OST in The Witcher 3 had a calmer, more comforting vibe, Cyberpunk's music fits the high octane combat accordingly, but some of the best tracks come from the sad and serious moments in the game. For car rides, the different radio stations allow you to listen to your music genre of choice. Speaking of the cars, I find it a lot more satisfying to drive to quest locations than to just quick travel there (which I regrettably did a lot in like the first 20 hours of my playthrough). It's just a lot more immersive and driving feels great if you have a car you like. (My personal favorite ride is the Outlaw, great speed and handles well.)
I have talked a lot about this game now. That's because I love it. So if you would ask me if Cyberpunk is worth it, I would definitely recommend you to pick up the base game on sale sometime and go for Phantom Liberty if you want to spend more time in this fantastic world. It's pretty much in a fixed state now and if what I described in this review seems interesting to you, why not give it a go? There were very few moments where I was actually bored, even the beginning is great and brings you pretty fast into the action (unlike a certain cowboy game I have named several times in this review already).
That's all I wanted to share - thanks for reading.
Dragon Quest 8 is an absolute gem among the ginormous Playstation 2 library. While Dragon Quest is widely renowned in Japan, it's a bit more niche in the west. However, of all the games to break that trend, it was Dragon Quest 8.
The graphics are timeless even today, it has a beautiful style that captures innocent and disturbing designs and settings while still being colorful and full of life.
The music is fully orchestrated and it's powerful. From the peaceful town music, to the whimsical overworld theme that captures that classic adventure feel. Fighting monsters with a booming score also never felt so grand.
The story is fun and might even surprise you a few times. I won't spoil anything, but you'll be entertained by the character interactions as they play off each other very naturally and it's also quite humorous.
If you're looking for an RPG to whisk you away to a rich, classic fantasy setting, this is it. The controls are good, the combat is fun, there's plenty to experiment with as well. The game is also very good at presenting you with something of interest that you'll think about what the possibilities could be for it.
The only pressing issue for you might be accessibility. It's available for Playstation 2, Android, and IOS systems. You can also get it on 3DS that comes with some new features and a lot of quality of life updates. Please give it a try, especially for JRPG fans specifically.
The graphics are timeless even today, it has a beautiful style that captures innocent and disturbing designs and settings while still being colorful and full of life.
The music is fully orchestrated and it's powerful. From the peaceful town music, to the whimsical overworld theme that captures that classic adventure feel. Fighting monsters with a booming score also never felt so grand.
The story is fun and might even surprise you a few times. I won't spoil anything, but you'll be entertained by the character interactions as they play off each other very naturally and it's also quite humorous.
If you're looking for an RPG to whisk you away to a rich, classic fantasy setting, this is it. The controls are good, the combat is fun, there's plenty to experiment with as well. The game is also very good at presenting you with something of interest that you'll think about what the possibilities could be for it.
The only pressing issue for you might be accessibility. It's available for Playstation 2, Android, and IOS systems. You can also get it on 3DS that comes with some new features and a lot of quality of life updates. Please give it a try, especially for JRPG fans specifically.
