DoctorAkira
12 reviews liked by DoctorAkira
Persona 3 Reload
2024
there are 8 ways to experience this story and this is the worst
In Stars and Time
2023
im a sucker for time loop plots and stuff so this one had potential but the characters and dialogue ultimately broke this one for me. i was too scared to interact with anything in this world cause it always resulted in a 20 hour conversation full of quirky remarks and ❀✦ wholesome ✦❀ moments. also what type of preteen has gages? whats up with that?
mirabelle was precious tho she was the reason why i kept playing
mirabelle was precious tho she was the reason why i kept playing
This review contains spoilers
Unlike its sequel game CS4, which is bad because too much garbage happens at once, CS3 is bad because nothing happens at all. A lot of things in this game narratively either serve no purpose or go nowhere.
Characterwise, this game is probably the weakest in the entire franchise in terms of character writing. They kind of learned from their mistake in CS1, with the main cast size in this game being much smaller, but despite the smaller cast size the character writing is still not very good. Rean's character arc sort of... doesn't go anywhere and is really underwhelming. The only thing they touch on with him is his unwillingness to use his power due to events that happened offscreen and the guilt over it (the north ambrian war), but they literally absolve him of blame from said events, which makes his mental state in CS3 and CS4 hard to relate to. Outside of Rean, the character wiring is disappointing. Kurt and Altina have as much personality as a 2 by 4. Musse is not really touched on in this game, and her stuff in CS4 is really, really bad so there's no point to her character. Ash is fine, but like Rean he is absolved of his only defining character moment in CS3 (shooting the emperor) in CS4 so hes not really engaging either.
I'm going to have an entire section on Juna because I dislike her that much. Her character writing makes no sense due to both how shes presented and how she acts. She acts like she has known the SSS for her entire life, but is absent in the original versions of Zero and Ao. In the ps4 port for Ao they retroactively retconned her into the game as an npc, which was a pathetic attempt to try and fix her problem with writing consistency, solved 0 issues with her writing, and also shows how little Falcom care about the integrity of their narrative. It is incredibly jarring for a series that heavily features narrative callbacks and a consistent storyline to have a character come out of nowhere and claim that they actually are best friends with a cast of characters that already had two games. Her arc in CS3 is also boring; her hate for Rean makes no sense since not only did the game already absolve him of blame for the north ambrian war, but it is revealed later that he actually saved the lives of her two siblings, and shes not mad she was just being tsundere. The only other 'moment' she has is when she has a stroke on top of orchus tower and yells at campanella because the SSS are locked up and she's mad about it. Which, to be fair, is a reaction I had at that plot point because it was shit.
The story in this game goes nowhere until the last chapter, and does a poor job at setting up CS4. The new parts of Erebonia are fine, and the story does a good job in introducing them, its just that the structural story framing is not engaging. In CS1, the field studies served multiple purposes in the narrative, and the endings of each field study either featured an interesting take on the game's themes or set up the main villains for CS2. In CS3, the field studies accomplish only some of what CS1's did. Their introduction into each area is fine, but they don't engage any themes, and the ending of each field study does not set up for any event in CS4. The frame setting is also much weaker; the main campus in CS1 had a lot of effort put into characterizing the NPCS through well written sidequests and the student festival,but in CS3 I found it to be disappointing. The branch campus lacks a student festival until HAJIMARI lmao.
The field studies are all framed around ouroboros experimenting with aions, which has no bearing to anything in CS4 outside of being used as throwaway minibosses. You could skip the first 3 chapters of the game and miss nothing relevant to the plot. The random dragon fight at the end of chapter 4 is pretty jarring, since it felt like a final boss but is placed directly before the actual final boss.
The real reason why this game's plot is a mess is because they crammed most of it into the last 5 hours of the game. At the start of the final chapter Roselia finally shows up after being hinted at for the entire game to loredump like, everything relevent for the final chapter/CS4 in 5 minutes. Then the game fires a bunch of plot twists and events that had no build up in the game outside of said loredump. It feels like Falcom tried to repeat what they did in CS1, but didn't have enough story to cover 2 games with, so they just withheld everything to dump on the player in the last 3 hours. And, despite the writing being okay there, the entire sequence of events is really jarring. I feel like people only like this game because most of the okay parts of the plot happen in the final chapter, which is the most recent thing they play.
The gameplay is poorly balanced, and brave orders are so broken that they trivialize all combat encounters. The game is easy on all difficulties and is unengaging as a result. It does have a lot of potential though, and difficulty mods actually make it pretty fun.
The music is good expect when a singa song comes on lol.
Overall, CS3's broing narritive and uninvolved character writing make it one of the worst Kiseki games, and a pretty mediocre jrpg in general.
Characterwise, this game is probably the weakest in the entire franchise in terms of character writing. They kind of learned from their mistake in CS1, with the main cast size in this game being much smaller, but despite the smaller cast size the character writing is still not very good. Rean's character arc sort of... doesn't go anywhere and is really underwhelming. The only thing they touch on with him is his unwillingness to use his power due to events that happened offscreen and the guilt over it (the north ambrian war), but they literally absolve him of blame from said events, which makes his mental state in CS3 and CS4 hard to relate to. Outside of Rean, the character wiring is disappointing. Kurt and Altina have as much personality as a 2 by 4. Musse is not really touched on in this game, and her stuff in CS4 is really, really bad so there's no point to her character. Ash is fine, but like Rean he is absolved of his only defining character moment in CS3 (shooting the emperor) in CS4 so hes not really engaging either.
I'm going to have an entire section on Juna because I dislike her that much. Her character writing makes no sense due to both how shes presented and how she acts. She acts like she has known the SSS for her entire life, but is absent in the original versions of Zero and Ao. In the ps4 port for Ao they retroactively retconned her into the game as an npc, which was a pathetic attempt to try and fix her problem with writing consistency, solved 0 issues with her writing, and also shows how little Falcom care about the integrity of their narrative. It is incredibly jarring for a series that heavily features narrative callbacks and a consistent storyline to have a character come out of nowhere and claim that they actually are best friends with a cast of characters that already had two games. Her arc in CS3 is also boring; her hate for Rean makes no sense since not only did the game already absolve him of blame for the north ambrian war, but it is revealed later that he actually saved the lives of her two siblings, and shes not mad she was just being tsundere. The only other 'moment' she has is when she has a stroke on top of orchus tower and yells at campanella because the SSS are locked up and she's mad about it. Which, to be fair, is a reaction I had at that plot point because it was shit.
The story in this game goes nowhere until the last chapter, and does a poor job at setting up CS4. The new parts of Erebonia are fine, and the story does a good job in introducing them, its just that the structural story framing is not engaging. In CS1, the field studies served multiple purposes in the narrative, and the endings of each field study either featured an interesting take on the game's themes or set up the main villains for CS2. In CS3, the field studies accomplish only some of what CS1's did. Their introduction into each area is fine, but they don't engage any themes, and the ending of each field study does not set up for any event in CS4. The frame setting is also much weaker; the main campus in CS1 had a lot of effort put into characterizing the NPCS through well written sidequests and the student festival,but in CS3 I found it to be disappointing. The branch campus lacks a student festival until HAJIMARI lmao.
The field studies are all framed around ouroboros experimenting with aions, which has no bearing to anything in CS4 outside of being used as throwaway minibosses. You could skip the first 3 chapters of the game and miss nothing relevant to the plot. The random dragon fight at the end of chapter 4 is pretty jarring, since it felt like a final boss but is placed directly before the actual final boss.
The real reason why this game's plot is a mess is because they crammed most of it into the last 5 hours of the game. At the start of the final chapter Roselia finally shows up after being hinted at for the entire game to loredump like, everything relevent for the final chapter/CS4 in 5 minutes. Then the game fires a bunch of plot twists and events that had no build up in the game outside of said loredump. It feels like Falcom tried to repeat what they did in CS1, but didn't have enough story to cover 2 games with, so they just withheld everything to dump on the player in the last 3 hours. And, despite the writing being okay there, the entire sequence of events is really jarring. I feel like people only like this game because most of the okay parts of the plot happen in the final chapter, which is the most recent thing they play.
The gameplay is poorly balanced, and brave orders are so broken that they trivialize all combat encounters. The game is easy on all difficulties and is unengaging as a result. It does have a lot of potential though, and difficulty mods actually make it pretty fun.
The music is good expect when a singa song comes on lol.
Overall, CS3's broing narritive and uninvolved character writing make it one of the worst Kiseki games, and a pretty mediocre jrpg in general.
Nirvana Initiative is bad. I've been sitting here for like 2 hours writing about how bad it is, but I gave up because I realized I was getting way too wordy (like, encroaching on 1k. nobody's going to read all of that).
the most important thing is that Nirvana Initiative has two layers of badness to it. the first is that, as a standalone title, it's full of messy and insecure writing, obsessed with pulling the rug out from under you at the expense of any compelling or coherent characterization or storytelling. Nirvana Initiative's top priority at any given time is to make sure The Big Reveal is surprising, surprising always taking precedence over satisfying.
the second layer is that as a sequel, it is even worse. and this is the one that really gets me, that takes AINI from a lukewarm disappointment to a raging dumpster fire for me (I could say I'm a fan of the first game, but that kind of downplays the fact that I think about it near 24/7). there's ways they could have mitigated this, but the writers wanted to have their cake (all the characters old fans love from the first game) and eat it too (accessibility to new players who don't know who any of these people are). Nirvana Initiative flounders under its no spoiler policy, meaning no character arcs or threads from the first game can be meaningfully followed up in this one. all of the returning cast, without fail, is flanderized, retconned, or otherwise subjected to absolutely bizarre creative decisions, either to service the new mediocre plot or to preserve the "mystery" of the first one - including and especially the character that returns as one of the protagonists of AINI. it's bad enough to the point where I frequently find myself wishing it focused on ONLY new characters in a new setting without trying to bring the previous cast into the picture at all.
one last, salty sidenote: anyone who says the gameplay is an improvement over the first game is lying to you. QTEs are "improved" by making them last longer (upwards of 15 minutes straight in some instances), putting in more of them, and requiring more complex inputs which, if messed up once, boots you back to the beginning of the sequence. there is a fast-forward button, but it's not nearly fast enough. likewise, Somnia are "improved" by making them longer and stripping back interactivity with most objects except the ones explicitly required to progress through the Somnium. many Somnia in AINI follow the format introduced in one of AITSF's late-game Somnia, PSYNCIN' IN THE REFRaiN, where you are given a group of the same or similar objects in a little pile and the puzzle is to pick the right one out of the bunch. REFRaiN is one of the longer Somnia in the first game, and it takes about 30-40 minutes - now imagine doing this for an hour or even an hour and a half, and imagine doing it in five Somnia instead of just one, and that's pretty much AINI's revolutionary new take on Somnia as a whole. also two of them have swim mechanics, and they play as badly as you'd expect them to.
the most important thing is that Nirvana Initiative has two layers of badness to it. the first is that, as a standalone title, it's full of messy and insecure writing, obsessed with pulling the rug out from under you at the expense of any compelling or coherent characterization or storytelling. Nirvana Initiative's top priority at any given time is to make sure The Big Reveal is surprising, surprising always taking precedence over satisfying.
the second layer is that as a sequel, it is even worse. and this is the one that really gets me, that takes AINI from a lukewarm disappointment to a raging dumpster fire for me (I could say I'm a fan of the first game, but that kind of downplays the fact that I think about it near 24/7). there's ways they could have mitigated this, but the writers wanted to have their cake (all the characters old fans love from the first game) and eat it too (accessibility to new players who don't know who any of these people are). Nirvana Initiative flounders under its no spoiler policy, meaning no character arcs or threads from the first game can be meaningfully followed up in this one. all of the returning cast, without fail, is flanderized, retconned, or otherwise subjected to absolutely bizarre creative decisions, either to service the new mediocre plot or to preserve the "mystery" of the first one - including and especially the character that returns as one of the protagonists of AINI. it's bad enough to the point where I frequently find myself wishing it focused on ONLY new characters in a new setting without trying to bring the previous cast into the picture at all.
one last, salty sidenote: anyone who says the gameplay is an improvement over the first game is lying to you. QTEs are "improved" by making them last longer (upwards of 15 minutes straight in some instances), putting in more of them, and requiring more complex inputs which, if messed up once, boots you back to the beginning of the sequence. there is a fast-forward button, but it's not nearly fast enough. likewise, Somnia are "improved" by making them longer and stripping back interactivity with most objects except the ones explicitly required to progress through the Somnium. many Somnia in AINI follow the format introduced in one of AITSF's late-game Somnia, PSYNCIN' IN THE REFRaiN, where you are given a group of the same or similar objects in a little pile and the puzzle is to pick the right one out of the bunch. REFRaiN is one of the longer Somnia in the first game, and it takes about 30-40 minutes - now imagine doing this for an hour or even an hour and a half, and imagine doing it in five Somnia instead of just one, and that's pretty much AINI's revolutionary new take on Somnia as a whole. also two of them have swim mechanics, and they play as badly as you'd expect them to.
I was really excited to play Zero after all this time since I figured a smaller cast set in just one city instead of an entire country would make for a rather concentrated experience but ended up being a bit of a disappointment.
Despite the cast being significantly smaller than Cold Steel's, you might assume that Zero's character development would end up being much more thorough but Zero sadly has so many time skips that there was never really enough moments where you got to see the main characters interact outside of their police work. Each character gets a few scenes but just not enough for a player to be satisfied. Clearly the intention was for players to play Zero multiple times to get all the Bonding scenes but I don't think playing a game three times for a total of 120 hours or so just to see a couple scenes is really a good use of a player's time.
It doesn't help that Zero basically ends up being more of an Epilogue for the Trails of the Sky series than its own game. Like, the last 20 minutes of the game sidelines the main cast as focuses on completely different characters and while its fine in the grand scheme of things if I was a new player I think I'd be more annoyed that Llyod, Elie, Randy, and Tio just stand around for a while another group of people have their "Happily Ever After" moment.
While it was fun to finally play the missing link between the Sky series and the Cold Steel series, Zero ended up being a rather disappointing. Its not terrible but its a a game where you end up getting frustrated at what could have been.
Hopefully Azure pans out better.
Despite the cast being significantly smaller than Cold Steel's, you might assume that Zero's character development would end up being much more thorough but Zero sadly has so many time skips that there was never really enough moments where you got to see the main characters interact outside of their police work. Each character gets a few scenes but just not enough for a player to be satisfied. Clearly the intention was for players to play Zero multiple times to get all the Bonding scenes but I don't think playing a game three times for a total of 120 hours or so just to see a couple scenes is really a good use of a player's time.
It doesn't help that Zero basically ends up being more of an Epilogue for the Trails of the Sky series than its own game. Like, the last 20 minutes of the game sidelines the main cast as focuses on completely different characters and while its fine in the grand scheme of things if I was a new player I think I'd be more annoyed that Llyod, Elie, Randy, and Tio just stand around for a while another group of people have their "Happily Ever After" moment.
While it was fun to finally play the missing link between the Sky series and the Cold Steel series, Zero ended up being a rather disappointing. Its not terrible but its a a game where you end up getting frustrated at what could have been.
Hopefully Azure pans out better.
Resident Evil 4
2023
Did I just play a completely different build of RE4R than everyone else?
Enemies have arbitrary super armor now so while in the original a headshot always rewarded players with a stun and a melee attack, in RE4R its a coin toss. The entire point of the melee system in the original was for the player to have a crowd control attack when encounters became too claustrophobic. So now, not only is this crowd control mechanic not consistent, but if you end up getting a stun headshot the enemy will reel backwards a bit. This means that in order to get your crowd control kick, you have to run into a crowd of enemies generally. The problem with this is that:
1. enemies feel like they get out of the stun state significantly faster than in the original
2.Leon's i-frames feel like they've been cut in half.
this lead to two outcomes:
1.You don't reach the stunned enemy in time because you now spacing yourself further away from enemies than in the original because headshots no longer consistently stun. This leads to to getting swarmed and punished. Punished for trying to even attempting to use the crowd control melee that the game wants you to use for situations like this in the first place.
2.You do get the melee attack but even before the animation of the kick is completely finished. an enemy can actually damage you.
The diminished i-frames this is especially noticeable when you boot up the Mercenaries mode but its also a big problem in the main game too. I've had this happen multiple times: The bull head mini boss enemy kicks Leon to the and while Leon is in the middle of his getting up animation the mini boss can just kick you back down again. I've have multiple runs get cut short because of this and its so irritating.
I forced myself to finished RE4R and this is from someone who thought RE3 remake was bad but still played that game twice back-to-back. This should have been such an easy homerun for Capcom and its honestly baffling to me that the Dead Space Remake ended up better than RE4R.
Enemies have arbitrary super armor now so while in the original a headshot always rewarded players with a stun and a melee attack, in RE4R its a coin toss. The entire point of the melee system in the original was for the player to have a crowd control attack when encounters became too claustrophobic. So now, not only is this crowd control mechanic not consistent, but if you end up getting a stun headshot the enemy will reel backwards a bit. This means that in order to get your crowd control kick, you have to run into a crowd of enemies generally. The problem with this is that:
1. enemies feel like they get out of the stun state significantly faster than in the original
2.Leon's i-frames feel like they've been cut in half.
this lead to two outcomes:
1.You don't reach the stunned enemy in time because you now spacing yourself further away from enemies than in the original because headshots no longer consistently stun. This leads to to getting swarmed and punished. Punished for trying to even attempting to use the crowd control melee that the game wants you to use for situations like this in the first place.
2.You do get the melee attack but even before the animation of the kick is completely finished. an enemy can actually damage you.
The diminished i-frames this is especially noticeable when you boot up the Mercenaries mode but its also a big problem in the main game too. I've had this happen multiple times: The bull head mini boss enemy kicks Leon to the and while Leon is in the middle of his getting up animation the mini boss can just kick you back down again. I've have multiple runs get cut short because of this and its so irritating.
I forced myself to finished RE4R and this is from someone who thought RE3 remake was bad but still played that game twice back-to-back. This should have been such an easy homerun for Capcom and its honestly baffling to me that the Dead Space Remake ended up better than RE4R.
This game somehow managed to take everything from the previous 6 games and just make all of it so much worse besides the music and graphics.
The story feels so halfassed and also like a stupid ripoff of what made Dusk great.
The best way to experience this game is to look up the OST on Youtube and stop there
The story feels so halfassed and also like a stupid ripoff of what made Dusk great.
The best way to experience this game is to look up the OST on Youtube and stop there
the worst falcom game to date.
cs4 is filled with trite, worthless filler (act 1-2), and character writing that borders on parody. act 2 is abyss fiction with conflict so forced that the villains themselves cannot even justify the reason for it. act 3 sucks and relies on the shitty plot device (the curse) to move the plot along. the curse is one of the worst written plot devices in all of fiction, being able to do basically anything the writers want by taking away character agency. with the characters having their agency being manipulated by the curse, the writers can set up literally any sort of conflict they want regardless of whether or not the character would participate in said conflict. its like the blood pact from radiant dawn (if you know what that is good job) but applied to like over half the cast. but hey, why set up sidequests/plot points/character moments when you can just make the curse do it for you? it doesnt help that the central plot doesnt kick in until act 3.
the combat was decent but falcom cannot be bothered to balance their games anymore. with balancing the combat system would be excellent but even on nightmare the game is piss easy. the mech fights are pretty cool though
the bloated cast (16 main party members) means little to no character development occurs. the only stratifying character moments come from callbacks to older arcs. the entirety of oc7 and nc7 sucks outside of ash as alisha, the rest of the characters get no character developments or moments. the harem sucks and takes away agency from the women's character arcs. musse is actually a joke and i cannot believe that anyone can take this game seriously. juna being forced as the pseudo main character was awful in cs3 and is awful now: her corny speeches are so bad they offend me. like the rest of the female cast, her character arc is ruined because of the forced rean simping. she talks like she knows the SSS even though we have never seen this. not to mention they had to fucking RETCON HER INTO CROSSBELL BY MAKING NEW VERSIONS AND HER CHARACTER IS STILL SHIT. they just use pedo coom bait like altina to sell copies instead of write them arcs (altina gets no development she doesnt even grieve over the events in cs3 ending lmao). what a joke.
characters are brought back to life for no reason, which takes away from the stakes along with the horrible pacing. the continent is on the crux of war and u are in some fuckoff town taking strolls and running errands. the stakes are also fucked because the game gives every single fucking villain a redemption arc. your friend killed 3 people? no problem, we can save him using the power of friendship!!!!
the music is okay, unisuga made some bangers. i dont know how singa is controversial considering his mixing is worse than most armature music and is overall shit. they also play his awful music for hours on end, in fragments i think i had to listen to the same 3 singa songs loop for 3 hours straight and i had to turn down the volume because it was so bad.
the localization was okay, but full of bugs. a boss in act 2 only spoke japanese lol.
they did bring back a lot of older characters for fanservice, which was cool but a bit disappointing considering they dont show up for a purpose beyond fanservice and being there for the plot. i wish more of it was like renne in zero in how they actually continued her arc and weaved it into the plot, but hey with a cast that bloated u cant really do much.
why this game has a 4.0 is beyond me. i guess kiseki fans are so deep into this series that they cant bear to recognize the game has flaws.
cs4 is filled with trite, worthless filler (act 1-2), and character writing that borders on parody. act 2 is abyss fiction with conflict so forced that the villains themselves cannot even justify the reason for it. act 3 sucks and relies on the shitty plot device (the curse) to move the plot along. the curse is one of the worst written plot devices in all of fiction, being able to do basically anything the writers want by taking away character agency. with the characters having their agency being manipulated by the curse, the writers can set up literally any sort of conflict they want regardless of whether or not the character would participate in said conflict. its like the blood pact from radiant dawn (if you know what that is good job) but applied to like over half the cast. but hey, why set up sidequests/plot points/character moments when you can just make the curse do it for you? it doesnt help that the central plot doesnt kick in until act 3.
the combat was decent but falcom cannot be bothered to balance their games anymore. with balancing the combat system would be excellent but even on nightmare the game is piss easy. the mech fights are pretty cool though
the bloated cast (16 main party members) means little to no character development occurs. the only stratifying character moments come from callbacks to older arcs. the entirety of oc7 and nc7 sucks outside of ash as alisha, the rest of the characters get no character developments or moments. the harem sucks and takes away agency from the women's character arcs. musse is actually a joke and i cannot believe that anyone can take this game seriously. juna being forced as the pseudo main character was awful in cs3 and is awful now: her corny speeches are so bad they offend me. like the rest of the female cast, her character arc is ruined because of the forced rean simping. she talks like she knows the SSS even though we have never seen this. not to mention they had to fucking RETCON HER INTO CROSSBELL BY MAKING NEW VERSIONS AND HER CHARACTER IS STILL SHIT. they just use pedo coom bait like altina to sell copies instead of write them arcs (altina gets no development she doesnt even grieve over the events in cs3 ending lmao). what a joke.
characters are brought back to life for no reason, which takes away from the stakes along with the horrible pacing. the continent is on the crux of war and u are in some fuckoff town taking strolls and running errands. the stakes are also fucked because the game gives every single fucking villain a redemption arc. your friend killed 3 people? no problem, we can save him using the power of friendship!!!!
the music is okay, unisuga made some bangers. i dont know how singa is controversial considering his mixing is worse than most armature music and is overall shit. they also play his awful music for hours on end, in fragments i think i had to listen to the same 3 singa songs loop for 3 hours straight and i had to turn down the volume because it was so bad.
the localization was okay, but full of bugs. a boss in act 2 only spoke japanese lol.
they did bring back a lot of older characters for fanservice, which was cool but a bit disappointing considering they dont show up for a purpose beyond fanservice and being there for the plot. i wish more of it was like renne in zero in how they actually continued her arc and weaved it into the plot, but hey with a cast that bloated u cant really do much.
why this game has a 4.0 is beyond me. i guess kiseki fans are so deep into this series that they cant bear to recognize the game has flaws.
This review contains spoilers
look okay i enjoyed the first aitsf, it wasn't a perfect game and it certainly had LOTS of problems but i had fun playing it and i found both the mystery and the twist pretty solid and cool!
i think it works good as a standalone game, and that's why when the sequel was announced i was really skeptical about it. BUT! mizuki was one of my fav characters in aitsf so the idea of exploring her more as protagonist made me at least a bit curious
i already had low expectations about this game and it was even WAY WORSE THAN I EXPECTED
- i absolutely HATE how much this game ignores its prequel, i don't understand at all why uchikoshi wanted this to be playable by people who never touched aitsf, what's the point of a direct sequel if it completely resets and ignores all of the characters' development of its predecessor.................. do a separated spin off then............. (i'm so mad about how much the whole mizuki+date family relationship is non-existent)
- the crime mystery in itself and villain were both so weak, because this game is so fixated on doing this narration 4th-wall-breaking-plot-twist that was SO USELESS and exists just for the sake of "haha lol gotcha" and pointlessly confusing the player. and lots of the stuff related to it does barely make sense (like mizuki and bibi both having the EXACT SAME OUTFIT AND HAIRCUT at 18y/o??? what the fuck)
- the mizuki side was really boring to follow, both her and aiba were so so much more flat as characters they did them so dirty................... (also bibi literally has no personality besides being. idk mizuki's protector or whatever)
- i was actually surprised by ryuki, i enjoyed him as a character and protagonist :) and his side was a bit more ok. too bad everyone treats him like shit and he gets put by side thorough all the game ending 🥴 (i also can't stand tama's 3247778542 sex jokes it's even worse than date in aitsf)
- THE WHOLE LONG ASS BIG ACTION CUTSCENE AT THE ENDING WAS AWFUL that was just. way WAY too much anime cliches and bullshit (it does get a point tho for having kizuna with a machine gun. that shit had me in TEARS)
- this game is so full of characters' relationship that are supposed to be crucial but NEVER get explored or if they do it's. bad and superficial (like. shoma saying he cares soooo much about amame his dear sister but before that THEY NEVER TALK) again because. this game is so fixated on the useless plot twist
- kizuna and lien are so fucking cringe i hate so much how him being so obsessed with her especially at the beginning is so romanticized
- if i hear any more cult "tHiS WorLD iS fAkE" bullshit istfg
i haven't been this disappointed in a sequel in years, i genuinely don't undertand how it gets 4/5 stars
i'm at least glad i watched a gameplay and didn't buy it
i think it works good as a standalone game, and that's why when the sequel was announced i was really skeptical about it. BUT! mizuki was one of my fav characters in aitsf so the idea of exploring her more as protagonist made me at least a bit curious
i already had low expectations about this game and it was even WAY WORSE THAN I EXPECTED
- i absolutely HATE how much this game ignores its prequel, i don't understand at all why uchikoshi wanted this to be playable by people who never touched aitsf, what's the point of a direct sequel if it completely resets and ignores all of the characters' development of its predecessor.................. do a separated spin off then............. (i'm so mad about how much the whole mizuki+date family relationship is non-existent)
- the crime mystery in itself and villain were both so weak, because this game is so fixated on doing this narration 4th-wall-breaking-plot-twist that was SO USELESS and exists just for the sake of "haha lol gotcha" and pointlessly confusing the player. and lots of the stuff related to it does barely make sense (like mizuki and bibi both having the EXACT SAME OUTFIT AND HAIRCUT at 18y/o??? what the fuck)
- the mizuki side was really boring to follow, both her and aiba were so so much more flat as characters they did them so dirty................... (also bibi literally has no personality besides being. idk mizuki's protector or whatever)
- i was actually surprised by ryuki, i enjoyed him as a character and protagonist :) and his side was a bit more ok. too bad everyone treats him like shit and he gets put by side thorough all the game ending 🥴 (i also can't stand tama's 3247778542 sex jokes it's even worse than date in aitsf)
- THE WHOLE LONG ASS BIG ACTION CUTSCENE AT THE ENDING WAS AWFUL that was just. way WAY too much anime cliches and bullshit (it does get a point tho for having kizuna with a machine gun. that shit had me in TEARS)
- this game is so full of characters' relationship that are supposed to be crucial but NEVER get explored or if they do it's. bad and superficial (like. shoma saying he cares soooo much about amame his dear sister but before that THEY NEVER TALK) again because. this game is so fixated on the useless plot twist
- kizuna and lien are so fucking cringe i hate so much how him being so obsessed with her especially at the beginning is so romanticized
- if i hear any more cult "tHiS WorLD iS fAkE" bullshit istfg
i haven't been this disappointed in a sequel in years, i genuinely don't undertand how it gets 4/5 stars
i'm at least glad i watched a gameplay and didn't buy it
Shin Megami Tensei V
2021
ORIGINAL REVIEW
The game arrived prior to the release date.
The game was great up until the last 5 hours where it became kusoge
midturne 2.0
UPDATED REVIEW
The game isn't bad. It has probably my favourite OST in all of Megaten, the gameplay is solid, but the story is what really bothered me in my first playthrough. Now that I know how bad it is, a second playthrough was a lot more enjoyable since I wasn't expecting much. I had fun and it was somewhat addicting.
The game arrived prior to the release date.
The game was great up until the last 5 hours where it became kusoge
midturne 2.0
UPDATED REVIEW
The game isn't bad. It has probably my favourite OST in all of Megaten, the gameplay is solid, but the story is what really bothered me in my first playthrough. Now that I know how bad it is, a second playthrough was a lot more enjoyable since I wasn't expecting much. I had fun and it was somewhat addicting.