persona 3 was a game with identity, intent, purpose, intentionality, heart, and, most importantly, creativity. i don't enjoy the lot i've been cast in life where i have to play bad versions of persona 3 and say why they're bad, whether it be the answer, portable, or this. reload is not just a bad remake of persona 3, it is a bad game that tells an interesting story in a ho-hum and pedestrian way. it takes so many narrative risks and choices from the original presentation and either waters them down or overly explains them to make sure the lowest common denominator doesn't have to interpret art. even divorced from its source material, this game fails to create a gameplay experience worth investing time in. as a remake, it fails to capture what persona 3 meant. as a JRPG, it is a dull affair with little challenge or complexity. persona 3 reload fails to be worth the effort it takes to play it.

the design doc of persona 3 reload had a very clear goal: leave no one behind, whether it be in story or gameplay. this results in story cutscenes being more explicit and less interpretive (compare the opening FMV with yukari) and gameplay that refuses to obstruct the player in meaningful ways. to be more specific, reload sacrifices any need for the player to become competent with its systems to make sure that anyone can beat this game. theurgy makes the game brainless and poisons basically every boss fight (ken can get a theurgy skill a little over halfway through the game that casts mediarahan + samarecarm + tetrakarn + makarakarn on the entire party). resource management is embarrassingly easy to trivialize (yukari can cast media for literally 1 (one) SP; there is a veritable buffet of SP items that you can trip over in daily life for little to no investment; theurgy overall negates the importance of SP and running out of SP is not the death knell it could be in orginal). social links as a whole are extremely easy to manage both due to point requirements being lower to accommodate for needing to spend more days on new content like linked episodes. hell, remember persona fusion? now it's been greatly dumbed down such that even triangle fusion isn't available anymore. this game is a concession that persona 3 was too ambitious and needed to be toned down. this is a remake that asserts that persona 3 did too much and tries to do less instead.

i'm not even beating the dead horse that is my opinion on party control because there's so many more issues to address. on basically every level, this game has either simplified or deescalated the complexity of its mechanics to accommodate a mainstream audience. i don't think there's inherently anything wrong with making persona 3's systems more accessible, but i think these capitulations go overboard and rob the game of compelling gameplay moments. there are no bosses in the game that truly force me to approach a challenge in a new way or think outside the box in the way that bosses like change relic did. every boss in this game is made longer to accommodate for theurgy damage values without any sort of intelligent design to make the fights feel more exciting for that length of time. boss fights are longer and easier because it's more cinematic to see mitsuru skate around and use her theurgy instead of letting the player use their own competency-based skills and strategy to end the fight. i am not the person who's going to cry that atlus sold out or whatever, but i am the person who's going to tell you that persona 3 reload feels like an undercooked experience because it consistently refuses to ask anything of the player. this game is easy, this game is simple, and this game is uninteresting.

above all else, this game begs one question: who on earth is telling atlus/sega that persona games need to be longer and have more content? persona 3 was a game that had a slowburn start that reload now turns into a bloated nightmare. everything takes so much longer in reload and everything feels more belabored, so i can't blame anyone for getting burnt out or even fucked off from this game's plot by the time things start picking up steam. on top of this, a lot of the new slice of life content wastes so much of the player's time. why do we need multiple scenes dedicated to kenji's performance on job day? i remember when saying that persona 3 was 70 hours felt like i was talking about this gargantuan piece of art. meanwhile, in reload, i hit 70 hours somewhere between september and november. these games do not need to be this long, and it actively ruins the experience to do so. persona 5 being a triple digit hour experience was a bad thing, not something to aspire to.

it's hard to not be at least a little offended because, whether or not P Studio intended it, they have basically hollowed out what made persona 3 so unique, so special. reload looks drab and unimpressive in UE4, and so much of the moody visuals get lost in the graphical fidelity. iwatodai dorm feels too bright, and then when january rolls around, they make the color scheme so muted that it is genuinely comedic. and there's just some really baffling and ugly visual decisions they made, like how everyone in club escapade stands motionlessly in pose. meanwhile, lotus juice has his fingerprints all over the OST in a way that just doesn't work ("mindin' my biz, so mind your own biz"). persona 3 was more than just a game with impressive systems that engaged the player, it was also a piece of art that had an aesthetic that gets lost here. this game feels completely identity-less when compared to the original because the original was both a deconstruction and a hybrid of genres. in many ways, reload doesn't just fail to live up to that artistic intent, it outright doesn't seem to know it was even there in the first place.

and i get it, as a fan of persona 3, my opinion has a giant asterisk at the end of it. why listen to a star wars fan tell you about why phantom menace is the worst movie ever? i will own up and openly admit i expected this game to be bad and had greatly wanted it to not exist. i had a feeling atlus would fuck it up somehow. i don't like being right about that. at the same time, i think there are missteps here that would stand out regardless of familiarity with the source material. yukari's edginess is completely deleted from her character here and she now just sounds and acts like chie on vyvanse rather than a girl with abandonment issues and trauma. fuuka got turned from "weird girl who serves as the empathetic core of the cast" to "girl who could have a thrilling conversation about spoiled milk". and reload isn't the first time akihiko's been sanded down to "protein fanatic who trains a lot", but it's probably the most offensive here. wouldn't it be really fucking funny if, the whole time you were studying with him, akihiko was doing something wacky like squatting above his chair instead of sitting normally?

these characters have been reinterpreted so much that they've lost their core identity that was integral to the plot of persona 3. i don't get the feeling that i'm seeing akihiko or mitsuru, i instead sense that i'm getting how someone interprets them after nearly 2 decades of fandom and spinoff content. yukari still has those "mean" lines but they lack any emotional root, so they come off as nonsense mood swings rather than a scared girl lashing out. and i'll just say it, karen strassman clears the fuck out of dawn bennett when you compare the final aigis monologues (fwiw, in both these instances, i blame the direction, not the VAs). these characters have been done better and it's really jarring that reload tries to flatten them rather than give them more dimensionality.

there's room to broadly interpret these characters, but constantly trying to make a self-serious character like akihiko the butt of a joke that he's in on speaks to how much he's being mischaracterized here. when akihiko was in a comedic scene, it was because he was the straight man, not because he was a this big goofball constantly playing to the crowd. these characters don't feel like themselves in a profound way, and i'd have to wonder how much that comes across to anyone who hasn't played original. does akihiko just seem like a wildly contradictory character to new players? truthfully, i have no idea if any of these people would've resonated with me had this been my first exposure to them.

i don't hate what all of reload's new content wrt characterization, and i honestly really liked some of the stuff they added for shinjiro and ken. but there's just as much that is unnecessary and outright bad. when we said they wanted more backstory on strega, we didn't mean that we wanted you to turn takaya into another akechi. if you're going to remake persona 3, why even bother if you're going to do such a disservice to its characters and setting? sure, you made some of the UI stuff look neater and more Persona 5-y, but what does that meaningfully add to the experience? when i saw the trailer for reload, i immediately asked myself "what does the water motif have to do with persona 3? why is the main character sinking into water? what are they going to do with that?" and it turns out they just wanted a cool main menu animation and nothing else. i want to say that P Studio was just misguided, but some of this content is so actively bad that it makes me wonder if any of them even liked persona 3. so much of this feels like it's trying to fix something that isn't broken, like it's an apology for the source material. this isn't a persona 3 remake for people who liked persona 3. but, then again, who else was it supposed to be for if not people who wanted another persona 5? persona 5 is the new cash cow and my dread for this being a P5ified version of persona 3 was well-founded.

i kept trying to go "how would i feel about this game if it wasn't a remake of a game i love?" and that's an impossible question for me to answer. i can never know because i will never play this with the eyes and ears of someone who didn't play the original. again, as much as i've come to detest this game, i don't have it in my heart to give this a lower score, mostly out of pity, but also out of overcorrecting my harsh opinion as a fan of the original. still, i think many of reload's failings come from a place of trying to simultaneously be a remake and game for everyone. i don't think it's wrong for games to put off people. in fact, the best games often aren't for everyone because they can't be. P Studio emphasized making a game that was so mainstreamed and accessible that it would never present any obstacle or mechanic that could alienate players at the cost of making a game that players could actually be engaged with. i can't think of a broader way you could miss the mark with a persona 3 remake.

Today I remembered having this game on my giant iPhone notepad of backlog games and I just decided to buy it and yeah good purchase lmao like legitimately this wouldn’t been really damn cool if it got sequels/spinoffs for the Wii/DS. A very nice combination of utilizing tangible 3D movement with a great puzzle framework to make something along the lines of Puzzle Swap, Tetris, etc.

Highly recommended if you want a fun puzzle game to occasionally open up and play some rounds in (if I ever play local multiplayer of this it’d be too sick fr)

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom! is a well-oiled machine.

If I were to whittle down YTGV to a catch-all sentence, I’d call the game “Mario 64 Meets Crazy Taxi”. You explore open sandbox style worlds full of gears to collect, and in certain levels, you’re set to a timer and need to carry locals to their destination.

As the player of a 3D platformer, you're always placed in the driver position of your character. How you operate this vehicle is dictated by the toolkit the developers hand you. Typically, the most common place tool would be your jump.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom! does not have a dedicated jump button.

Of course, there is a way to jump. Like any car, the optimal way to gain height is to cancel your spin out and flip your vehicle over and into the air. This spin move normally allows you to dash forward, which helps with verticality when you're on an incline. You can cancel twice before a cooldown timer takes its effect, but if you land on a surface, you'll regain that charge.

You’d think that’d be all your tools but put a stop on your brakes: there’s more than meets the eye here.

Before you shoot up an incline, if you tap the A button at the right moment, you’ll soar even higher than before. Similar to Mario Odyssey’s diving onto Cappy tech, this move is a game changer for your traversal. Your tiny little taxi car mind as well become a full-blown plane with the amount air you gain.

You could casually drive through YTGV without this move, but the game calls for you to keep searching for more goodies to collect. Whether that collectible be the main gears, an assortment of cash, or the many silly hats, each have given me the drive to 100% complete this game. YTGV rewards veterans of 3D platformers with depth of skill to master, along with grit to tightly crafted end game levels.

There’s a specific tone cast upon YTGV. A vibe that reflects what I think was the mindset of the developers making this: silly, wacky, feel good, fun. You can tell the developers aren’t native English speakers, so dialogue often comes out in bizarre ways that’s comical within its own right. This also translates to the random insertion of memes and references throughout the game coming across as insane non-sequiturs. Normally this would be a problem for me, but the game is just so charming from just how much fun the developers are having that I can’t help myself from smiling too. Punchy synths reverberate out your car speakers, sunny beach side views with bright blue skies, the good times are here to stay with YTGV.

I think YTGV embodies what it means to be a video game. Fun, dumb, stupid, addicting, nonsense. I’m not sure I’d crown YTGV with the title of “Most Video Game Video Game To Ever Video Game”, as that title has hard competition, but it’s most certainly in the running.

Honestly, the most fun I have had with a game in AGES. A pure blast of silliness around every corner of every level, this game never fails to bewilder you with its absurd premise and equally absurd execution of said premise to perfection. The artstyle is charmingly low poly, and animations are bouncy and choppy, giving the game a unique vibe in conjunction with the flat out stupidity around every corner. Its a sensory overload in the best way possible.

100%ing this title was a constant joy, every level is packed with fun and challenging obstacles, which can be overcome with the very simple yet VERY deeply rewarding moveset you have access to - utilising slopes in the terrain of each level is key to gaining massive bursts of height and distance. Mastery of the simple moveset in conjunction with the level design truly unlocks the pure insane fun this game can offer.

The only drawbacks I had with the entire 100% process were limited to a small handful of levels; particularly ones with an overhead top down perspective (which removes the depth from the otherwise freeform movement system) and a couple with very tight time limits to contend with. Otherwise - everything is amazing! Go buy it and play it NOWWW!!! (you even get a super silly exclusive hat for buying within the first month of launch, so go do it!!!)

Incredible soundtrack, unique levels, silly story and characters, TONS of goofy hats to collect - everything about this game is just a joy to experience from start to end.

I might’ve said this in my review of the PSP remake but the sad truth with this game is it was made to be an ambitious and bold experiment in an era of looking forward for the future of Megami Tensei. This has become evident to me (a “megaten maniac”) with the fact that no video game company nowadays would throw away a system they built upon to make a spinoff that boldly would try and do something so risky like being cinematic (based on interviews this seemed to be the main goal). Sadly this creates a tedious gameplay experience that hides a genuinely good story and one I feel like is the most “wow I need to go outside and live my life now” Persona game I’ve played honestly. Whether it’s having the best use of a hidden video game character for legitimate thematic relevance, the crawling darkness of peering deeper into the mind, the absorbing darkness and coolness of the music, or the inner reflection on loneliness in a genre that’s kind of all about playing a long as game by yourself. I think Megami Ibunroku Persona was a great and interesting experiment.

https://youtu.be/2DYqwhSTeGQ?feature=shared

The premise was fascinating, the world of Thaumaturgy was dark and intriguing and the idea of taming demons to help you fight sounded like fun. But sadly the story is a drag, the characters are stiff, and there was way too much walking back and forth. The combat seemed exciting at the start but quickly turned into a dull repetitive action. I really wanted to like this game, I can see a lot of people found enjoyment, sadly me and this game never clicked. I managed to finish the main story and I like the idea of giving you meaningful choices to make throughout the whole game, but it's far too slow/boring for me to see what different choices may bring.

You can see my whole review here: https://youtu.be/jFDaQmlQSXQ

Oh man... I wanted to love this game. I still liked it, but I wanted to love it.

The concept and art are phenomenal. The setting is well researched. But the gameplay and dialogue are really subpar. The detective bits are incredibly handholdy, and the combat bits are too shallow to draw one in. the major story cutscenes are unforgivably stilted, and many lines of dialogue should have been read aloud before recording.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I want to see what the devs can do next, so I'm happy I bought at full price. But still, I can only recommend it to CRPG fans who are REALLY interested in games set in well-researched historical settings.