Wow.
I played Persona 3 FES in early 2023, soon after wrapping up my playthrough of the incredible Persona 4 Golden. What I found was a game with a lot of wonderful qualities, including but not limited to the story and characters, which was held back by many factors.
The gameplay, while far from bad, didn’t quite hook me. Tartarus was great at first but it quickly lost its flair. The daytime activities were decent, though it felt like something was missing. It was their first attempt at the new calendar system, so I get it, but the qualities I enjoyed were certainly weighed down. I wasn’t able to connect with the game the way so many others did. So, for me, Persona 3 was a game that I liked, one that I had a profound level of respect for, but not much more.
Fast forward a few months later and Persona 3 Reload was announced during Microsoft’s showcase for Summer Games Fest, and to say I lost my shit would be an understatement. I was hyped for this game, and each subsequent infodump only skyrocketed my excitement even further. This game had the potential to smooth P3’s rough edges so its highs could shine even brighter than before.
And for the most part? It really did.
I want to start on something I didn’t like before gushing about how much I do like. One part about vanilla P3 that I had a deep adoration for was its art direction. It had this surreal, dreamy and eerie vibe that the others didn’t. From the Dark Hour music (I’m a big fan of how vanilla P3 utilised reversed kicks) to the cutscene direction (which sorta reminded me of Evangelion, actually), it was a part of the game that I loved start-to-finish. I can pretty safely say that it has my favourite opening cutscene out of any game I’ve played, it set the tone perfectly.
Unfortunately, this is one aspect where Reload falters. That opening cutscene? Completely nerfed. Everything that made it great was gone. I would genuinely call it horrible. The direction for Reload’s cutscenes in general is inferior to vanilla. It doesn’t ruin the experience, but its definitely disappointing. I will say, however, that the UI design and how it brought in a new water motif was great.
And on that note, this game is PRETTY. Like, actual eye candy. The environments are detailed, the character models for this game are the best in the series, etc etc etc. Don’t get me started on how Tartarus looks in this game. For me, it’s Reload at its very best visually. The environmental design of each block is perfect, the lighting is BEAUTIFUL, the team did an incredible job adapting it into modern technology.
But visuals aren’t the only thing Reload’s rendition of Tartarus excels at. It’s actually everything. I would go as far as to say it’s my favourite dungeon in modern Persona, even including P5’s palaces. It’s so endlessly fun to just run through, fighting enemies and collecting items while basking at how good everything looks. There is something comforting about just grinding through blocks of Tartarus, I don’t fully know how to explain it. I loved P5R’s Mementos, and this is just everything good about that dungeon but elevated even further. I was enjoying the dungeon crawling from the very beginning, but it truly became something special when Monad doors and passages were introduced. Anything that gives me an excuse to engage in combat is a plus for me.
Speaking of combat…
Persona 3 Reload carries over P5’s additions to the One More system. This battle system was pretty barebones in vanilla P3 and P4/P4G but it truly came into its own as something that could stand alongside mainline SMT’s Press Turn system with P5. Reload’s combat is just as satisfying as P5’s, with the added benefit of not being as piss-easy as the latter. I mean, it’s still a lot easier than it should be but I’m glad to say there were a lot more game over screens and boss battles that made me break a real sweat. The new addition, which replaces Showtimes from P5R is Theurgy. Theurgy attacks are pretty similar, but this system is a lot more developed. For starters, each party member fills their Theurgy meter through actions that match their personality (for example, Yukari charges her meter through using healing spells), and that is the greatest possible way to handle it, ties the characters to the gameplay mechanics so well. The actual Theurgies are a lot more varied than Showtimes too, rather than exclusively being big damage moves (which does still apply to most of them), they can also provide huge stat boosts. It adds to the strategy of battle. Overall, the combat mechanics complement each other quite well and are very satisfying to use, the only thing I’d change is the game’s difficulty. Though I would say that is a balancing issue rather than a problem in the mechanics themselves. I will say the early game bosses had a really satisfying level of challenge, even with Theurgy, though the game quickly became a cakewalk. I did spend a lot of time grinding in Tartarus and fusing personas, however, so I’m sure a part of that difficulty drop was my fault.
That’s enough about the dungeon crawling, though. I now want to focus on the other half of the game, that being the social sim. Fully voiced Social Links are one of Reload’s greatest additions, I found myself enjoying and looking forward to them a lot more. Characters I already liked, such as Yuko and Akinari were only made better, especially because their respective voice actors absolutely killed their roles. Even people like Nozomi were more enjoyable due to the voice work. No complaints here, Social Links in Reload are great. Aside from that, there is a lot more to do in general, particularly at night, which made me really happy to see. New restaurants provide more opportunities for levelling up social stats, and you can work part time jobs for some quick cash (I can’t say I’m a big fan of the related achievement, though). Being able to use software bought at the net café on the dorm computer is a good addition too. Upgrading Makoto’s ambush ability in Tartarus through software in particular was a great use of this mechanic, and I’m glad it’s more balanced than Royal’s Ryuji’s instant-kill. I think I prefer this method of upgrading and gaining abilities compared to tying them to Social Links, as I felt as though P5’s approach trivialised a lot of confidants for me. Fusion bonuses are more than good enough.
I’d also like to highlight the new Linked Episodes. I’m a big fan. I’d go as far as to say party members shouldn’t have social links, I prefer this approach. The main reason is that it allows their stories to intertwine with the main plot, rather than being a self-contained arc that doesn’t impact their character in the main story. They give player opportunities to really delve into how a character is feeling regarding current events, it’s awesome. The greater focus on interacting with your fellow SEES members, through Linked Episodes and the new dorm hangouts actually made the main story hit even harder for me.
It’s been about a week since I beat Reload now. I’ve given myself time to sit on it, and let the initial hype wear off before I give a concrete opinion.
I liked Persona 3. But now? I adore it. At the time of writing this review, I’d say it’s my second favourite in the series.
This remake certainly isn’t perfect, it does miss deliberate design decisions and smooths the rough edges of P3 a bit too much, even the edges that were designed to be rough (does that make sense?). It’s not a definitive version of P3. But I don’t think wanting remakes to be 100% definitive is a good way to look at them. This is simply another interpretation of the Persona 3 experience. And it’s a damn good one. It improves in some areas, falters in others, but it adds its own identity, nonetheless. Just like any other remake.
I fully understand people who still view FES as their favourite version, though for me, this is the game I’ll replay when I want to experience this story. The Royal team cooked yet again, and now I’m even more excited to see what they do with Persona 6. Thank you for reading my review.

(I played the undub patch btw I couldn't take the game seriously in English LOL)

Welcome to my rushed, not proofread review.

I was both scared and excited going into this. I had recently finished Yakuza 0, a game that I frequently think about and appreciate more and more as time passes, and was eager to explore the rest of this series that so many of my friends adore. I was scared, however, of the chance that I’d get scared off by Yakuza 1 due to how much older it was. I mean, I play PS1 dungeon crawlers for fun so I definitely didn’t have much to worry about, but still. I was adamant to play PS2 rather than Kiwami, both because I planned on playing Kiwami afterwards to see the differences, and so that the notorious age gap between K2 and Yakuza 3 wouldn’t strike me as hard as it did many others.
I was quickly surprised at how familiar Yakuza felt. I’m genuinely impressed at how much of the series identity and feel had already been captured by RGG in the very first entry. Running around Kamurocho felt like I was coming home after years, probably just like how Kiryu must’ve felt. Though I will say the side-content wasn’t too compelling. I don’t think I can remember a single substory, though perhaps a part of that is due to me deciding to completely focus on the main quest partway through.
I’d like to talk about that main quest now, actually. It’s pretty decent overall, albeit held back by a multitude of factors. This game is no longer than 20 hours yet it somehow still feels really padded. There are a lot of useless quests throughout the game that make you run around all corners of the map that are very obviously there to increase your playtime, and it always kept me from staying engaged. I thought the story was good though, particularly in the final stretch which seems to be a pattern in these games. It was certainly what kept me coming back to this one.
I don’t think I articulated my thoughts on the combat in my Yakuza 0 review very well, so I’ll try my best to do better here. Yakuza combat, on a systemic/mechanical level is good fun! But the enjoyment of its combat is directly tied to the battle design, which can unfortunately get really poor at many points during this game’s runtime. Yakuza PS2 shines when you’re fighting a small amount of enemies at once, both due to the game’s general clunkiness and because the battle arenas are almost always a little too small for the amount of foes the game loves to throw at you. For this reason, I was enjoying battles the most during the fights against Shimano, for example. It was just a good fun brawl, but I’m sad to say that these fights are in the minority. Most of them are just the game spawning a dozen goons in a tiny-ass room with half of them armed with guns that’ll stunlock you and prevent you from doing anything. Enemies armed with pistols in Yakuza 1 might be the worst ever. I hate them with a deep, burning passion. The combat would be infinitely more fun without them. The ‘difficulty’ in this game barely ever feels like a true challenge, it’s just armed goons who won’t let you make a single move without knocking you down for seconds at a time over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and…. Yeah, I think you get the point. This game’s combat is the definition of hit-or-miss.
Also, I’d like to give a quick shoutout to that car chase mission in chapter 10. It sucked. I hated it. Chapter 10 was the worst part of any Yakuza game I’ve played the controls sucked so bad I wanted to jump off the nearest building like a full swan dive. But I digress.
On the whole, I think this game is decent. It has a cool story and can be quite fun at times. I think it’s aged a lot better than you’d assume, though it definitely has a lot of annoying clunk. This game is held back by a multitude of issues that I don’t think are tied to its age, its more of a general design thing. I do plan on playing Kiwami someday, so I’ll know if those issues ever get fixed then. But yeah, I don’t really have too much to say. It’s just a decent game. Very excited to play Yakuza 2 I hear its #fire.

ZDoom is dead. Lilith.pk3 is alive.

Lilith.pk3 (simply lilith from here) embodies a very important but often overlooked tenet of horror: the concept of wrongness. Cheap horror is easy to make, easy to consume, and easy to identify; all it needs to do is startle you. It needs to make you jump, it needs to make you shout, it needs to stimulate your fight-or-flight response. Cheap horror is often conflated as being “bad” horror, which I think is unfair. There’s always going to be a place for cheap horror, whether it be because we’re looking to be startled or because we’re looking to deride something that thought it could startle us, but the underlying idea of cheap horror is that it’s always kind of fun. We get a thrill at either our own expense or at the expense of the work; we laugh as we come down from the scare because they got us good, or we laugh at the creator who thought their screaming Jeff the Killer picture was going to get us. Cheap horror is fun.

I won’t dare call lilith “elevated horror”, largely because I think that’s a term reserved for exclusive use by Letterboxd users who believe themselves to be above shit like Paranormal Activity. But lilith is a very different kind of horror than we usually see in video games, especially those made by independent creators, and even moreso from those creators who are making DOOM wads. lilith doesn’t try to startle; it tries to fuck with you. It worms its way around the corners of your brain and makes you question everything, knowing that something is wrong but not being able to tell what that something is. The clown-vomit graphics that make it impossible to tell what’s a wall, what’s a door, what’s an enemy — they make you paranoid. You start tilting at windmills. You whip around and blast two shells into a skewered UAC soldier because you thought he was an enemy. An ammo box gets recolored and you have to spend precious time figuring out whether or not it’s safe to touch. Your gun disappears while you’re fighting Revenants. You get teleported into a hall of mirrors and unload minigun fire in all directions in the hopes that you hit something. Nothing works the way it’s supposed to. lilith preys on you, like a malevolent spirit. It drains you. lilith is not fun.

As much love as I have for the original two DOOM games, I never got too deep into the fan scene. I played the official episodes, and I messed around with Russian Overkill a few times, but most of my experience with wads was pretty tertiary. With that in mind, I don’t know if lilith was more or less effective on me than it would have been if I was a DOOM veteran. There’s a lot here that’s clearly broken, that clearly doesn’t work the way that it should, but I’m left wondering if there are even more subtle changes that a layman like myself missed out on. Lost Souls felt like they were taking more damage than they otherwise would have, but I’m not sure; Archviles seemed like they had fast monsters enabled just for themselves, but I’m not sure; certain sound effects like screams would play over the music that didn’t sound like they were in the base game, but I’m not sure. This uncertainty, I think, probably adds a lot more than it takes away. Fear of the unknown is a common element of horror, after all. Is it better that I don’t know?

This might be me editorializing a bit, but I started to get the feeling while I was playing that it was leaning into the idea of the body breaking down; of getting old, of falling apart. You’ll walk up a flight of stairs just fine, only to start getting stuck on the exact same set of stairs the next time you try to climb them. You can make out flashes of Doomguy’s face through the garbled mess that is his sprite every now and then, and it sometimes seems like he’s grimacing in pain even when he’s not taking damage. Splash screens between levels warn you that your files are corrupted, that the emergency help commands aren’t working. Text becomes increasingly illegible the further you get. Textures become even more unreadable than they already were. The game ends with text asking “WHO AM I WHO AM I” over and over again with no explanation for whether those are Doomguy’s thoughts, or if it’s lilith speaking directly to the player. Fans who try to make a “lilith explained” are going to wind up short, largely because lilith is playing its cards close to the chest; again, in an era where indie horror seems almost desperate to have MatPat make a video for them, lilith defies explanation. The closest thing we have to any out-of-universe explanation is a note from the author about how they used to keep magnets on top of their DOOM floppies. There’s something to understand here, something that exists, but it’s unknowable. We can guess, but we can’t know. Nothing is explained. Nothing can be understood.

A lot of rules are being broken, here. One level starts you off in a maze, and as you walk around it, you start being bitten by a Pinky. You look around and you don't see shit. Your immediate assumption is that there's a Specter, so you back up and shoot, and you hit nothing. You step forward again and get bitten again. You look around a second time and notice a Pinky at the far end of the hall biting you from all the way down there because it has hitscan. Imp fireballs will linger in the air where they're thrown, and walking into a stationary one will deal full damage. Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds shoot massive barrages of rockets and laser blasts, but they travel in slow motion; if you don't keep moving, you'll get rocked by a wall of heavy ordinance. I was going to take a minute to talk about how the maps are laid out, but then I realized that the automaps have been published online and I can just show you some pictures, instead. What is this? What the fuck is this?

It shouldn’t go unsaid that this mod made people fucking mad. While I think a lot of people largely just didn’t get it — it’s equally likely that an artsy wad was hardly the thing that some were booting up 1994’s best shooter to play — the most notable person that it pissed off was Graf Zahl. So-named after the localized German title for the Count of Counting, Graf Zahl shit his fucking ass over lilith taking home a Cacoaward. His shitfit was unique, however, because he had skin in the game; lilith relies wholly on exploiting bugs found exclusively in ZDoom, and the mod refuses to run if you play it in any of the significantly more popular and not-deprecated source ports such as GZDoom. Graf Zahl contributed quite a bit to ZDoom, and GZDoom was a fork that he originally made (if you’ve ever wondered why it’s called “GZDoom”, it’s because those are his initials). Seeing someone exploit his old, bad code and get celebrated for it while some of his favorite GZDoom-exclusive wads got snubbed made him so mad that he threatened to quit developing GZDoom entirely. It wasn’t the first time he’d made such threats. The last time he’d done it, he purged his project pages; still, though, mirrors of GZDoom were back up and running within a few days at most, and his absence was barely even felt by the larger community until he returned four years later. Him getting mad again meant that everyone openly mocked him for a bit and moved on, certain that he’d never follow through on quitting or purging his uploads. Some of the co-developers of GZDoom took his threats seriously, but they were entirely hot air, and he went back to continuing his work like nothing ever happened. It’s a strange and funny footnote to a DOOM mod that’s otherwise pretty harrowing.

Far from just being a novelty made to stoke some flames, however, lilith is clearly as remarkable as it is painful to look at. Predating so many of the works that others will inevitably draw comparisons to — MyHouse, Cruelty Squad — this feels foundational. Those knee-deep in the DOOM modding community might get even more out of it than I did. The more that you know, the easier it is to circumvent your expectations. What's here is confusing, frustrating, and a visual feast; lilith is something that you'll never be able to forget.

But something is wrong. But something is wrong. But something is wrong.

Holy shit.
I've known of Yakuza/Like a Dragon for a while now, though like with Persona I never to playing them because all I had to my name was a Switch and a shitty ass laptop. Luckily, I was eventually able to get some decent hardware and a copy of Yakuza 0, and I think I can confidently say that I'm a fan.

The highlights for me are definitely the story, characters and the side quests. I shit you not, this is some of the most enjoyable side content I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I don't know how RGG did it, but they did. I'm sure everyone's heard of fighting of zombies to protect Michael Jackson as he moonwalks across the street - it's celebrated for good reason.

I'll add that the goofiness of the side content also gives our two protagonists, Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima some cool development and makes you even more attatched to them, which is important for a story like this.

Wow, the story can get insane. I had a pit in my stomach for the entirety of the last act. The amount of twists and turns was exhilarating. It's impressive for a game this long (80 hours, for me) to not have huge sections where I'm just bored. For the most part, I was having a great time following these characters along. I'm proud to say this game joins the very, very small list of games that made me cry.

The big side-minigames, being Real Estate and Cabaret Czar were also welcome additions. I'll be honest, the Real Estate stuff wasn't very engaging, so I never felt the motivation to do it (which came back to bite me in the last few Kiryu fights). Cabaret though? DAMN! I completely stopped doing the story for a while because it was such a fun minigame. It's insane how much more fun playing as Majima is compared to Kiryu because of this alone, since you get to upgrade his fighting styles a lot more.

Speaking of combat, I think that's where Yakuza 0's greatest flaw lies. It's either mind-numbingly easy, or so frustratingly cheap that it almost kills the motivation to continue. It's serviceable for most of its playtime, but there are definitely times (unfortunately mostly during tense story sections) where it's not that fun.

Overall though? Wonderful game. Despite the flaws, I never disliked my time playing. I will definitely be playing the whole series. I'm sold. I feel like I've come across something special.