About a year ago, I replayed Pokemon Black, and it’s still hands down one of the best mainline Pokemon titles. But that truly was all set up to bring me here, to Pokemon Black 2. Of all of the Pokemon games out there, the one game I missed of the bunch was Black 2, and it’s always been a goal of mine to actually play it. And while yes most of the dual versions are similar to each other, I feel like Black 2 and White 2 especially are different enough to acknowledge them somewhat as separate entities. Regardless of either version though, Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 are one of the best sets of games in the entire history of Pokemon, and I’m glad I finally got around to replaying them.

The first thing that’s always interesting to me about Black 2 and White 2 are that they’re the only direct sequels to prior Pokemon games. While some take place or continue storylines from older games, none are really as directly sequels like how Black 2 and White 2 are. It’s really interesting to see how Unova has changed between the two year time gap, and how characters have changed between then. Cheren is now a gym leader, Bianca is a full on assistant for Professor Juniper, so on and so forth. It’s really nice to see these characters grow beyond the game they first appear in, which happens so rarely.

One of the first big changes to Unova that’s noticeable from the start is the introduction of so many non-Unovan Pokemon. The regional Pokedex is practically doubled from what it was in Black and White, adding about 150 non-Unovan Pokemon. While I do really adore the soft-reboot style of Black and White, it makes perfect sense why they chose to do this here, and I really appreciate it. It allows for you to sort of re-experience Unova, but with Pokemon from older regions, though with my habit, I still use only Unovan Pokemon. My team for this run of Pokemon Black 2 was Samurott, Stoutland, Leavanny, Mandibuzz, Chandelure, and Beeheyem. The team itself was really fun, and I was able to really figure out how each Pokemon worked. Chandelure was without a doubt the best Pokemon in my team, and it’s one of the few Pokemon I ever kept a status move on. My team was kind of on the slow side too, which added an interesting challenge to the mix.

I mentioned in the introduction that Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 feel distinct enough to count them as different enough games. Of course they differ somewhat in story, since one features Reshiram, and the other Zekrom, but there are more differences as well. Some places are notably different aesthetically, much like in the original Black and White, Opelucid City is entirely different aesthetically. But locations like Route 4 are not only different aesthetically, but the layout and how you explore that route is different depending on the version. Some of the game’s dungeons, including Victory Road itself is laid out different depending on the version. I’ve been so used to playing White 2 that during the areas where the layouts were different, it felt so wrong, but that also made me adore the experience so much more.

Another interesting aspect when looking specifically at Black 2 and White 2 are the key systems. Upon beating the game for the first time, you unlock certain keys, depending on which version you play. One of the most interesting aspects to the Key System is that it makes it so that Black 2 and White 2 actually have difficulty settings. I’ll admit, I edited my save file so that I could play in Challenge mode. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try out, but never had the chance to. It’s unfortunate that you have to beat the game to unlock these difficulty settings, because playing Challenge Mode was exhilarating. Never was I more scared by the first battle in a Pokemon game, or the fact that each gym leader has an additional Pokemon. While I honestly didn’t struggle all too much, it was still a really fun and unique experience that I would love to see in future Pokemon games.

And in a similar vein to this, one of the coolest features that Black 2 and White 2 have is the memory link. Being able to link up with another DS with a save file of Black and White to incorporate that history of that save file into the save file of Black 2 or White 2 is awesome. That’s why I chose to play Pokemon Black and Black 2 specifically, it felt more thematic to line up those two games specifically, and allow for a sort of chronology between them. It makes these games so much more personal, and I absolutely adore it.

I think the one thing that’s somewhat weaker compared to the original Black and White is the story. While I do think Black 2 and White 2 both have amazing new characters, and still a really good story, it just simply doesn’t hit the same highs as Black and White does. What it does do though is create the perfect conclusion for the story of Unova, of Team Plasma, and of N. Hugh is probably one of the best written rivals in the Pokemon series, and these games also introduced one of the fan favorites of the series, Colress. Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 especially have one of my favorite League endings of a Pokemon game. From the music alone, it feels like a proper celebration of all you’ve accomplished, and at the end of it all, it’s time to show how strong you’ve grown from this journey. It’s such a beautiful song for the final battle of the story, I adore it.

I’m so glad I finally got a chance to play through Pokemon Black 2 proper. While I’m not unfamiliar with the Unova sequels, playing it in Challenge Mode, alongside all of the differences to the region in Black 2 specifically, made this playthrough such a unique experience for me. As well since Pokemon Black 2 was the one game I never got as a kid, it feels like some sort of destiny has been fulfilled by me finally playing it. It feels unfortunate that no Pokemon game after this, even the ones I like, never hit the same highs that Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 did. I hope maybe one day down the line we’ll be given Pokemon games that are of this level of quality again, though I’m unsure of when that will be. Regardless, Black 2 and White 2 are absolutely some of the best that mainline Pokemon has to offer.

Golden Sun Dark Dawn was the first Golden Sun I ever played. I had always been interested in the series, but I never got around to playing it until I lucked out in getting a physical copy of Dark Dawn. Its been years since I last played it, and since then I’ve finally gotten around to playing the original two Golden Suns. With that, while I still really enjoyed Dark Dawn, I’ve noticed a lot more of the issues it has, both ones that are the fault of the game, and those that aren’t. Dark Dawn is a game that could entirely change quality-wise depending on if a new Golden Sun ever releases, as this game is just an incomplete storyline. Even then, Dark Dawn still has some innate design choices that I entirely disagree with, so even if the game gets a sequel, it’ll still be flawed.

To begin, Dark Dawn may be the most engaging of the trilogy when looking at combat. It fully polishes out the combat of prior Golden Suns, though unfortunately it’s noticeably easier because of it. There were also very few bosses in the entire game, and even then, only two bosses were ever noticeably challenging. One near the beginning of the game, and of course, the final boss. I think one of the biggest reasons why Dark Dawn is such an easy game is because MP regenerates as you walk. Oftentimes with RPGs with random encounters, some part of the game’s difficulty is having to constantly go back to heal MP, or use items to recover MP. Ofentimes this may then make the player choose to more likely run away, than fight. However, MP regenerates as you walk both in the overworld, and dungeons, meaning you can practically fight every battle, without worrying about running out of MP. Because of this, I never felt like I was grinding at all, or that I ever needed to grind.

I also adore the weapon master mechanics, where each weapon has unique skills tied to them. It makes weapons more than just the stats they give, but some weapons have unique abilities. Sometimes a weapon gives a skill that hits all enemies, or drains enemy health. It’s really cool, and it makes you have a sort of personal connection the weapons each character has, and I absolutely adore it.

Psynergy and most puzzles throughout the game are really fun. They’re not as complicated as puzzles from the original two games, but I still found them to be really fun! I do wish there was more psynergies, there were a lot more in the previous two games, and I think it’d be really fun to have more puzzle variety. The biggest difference I noticed was the lack of teleport, which worked as fast travel in the original two games. Eventually, the explorable world of Dark Dawn becomes really big, with a decently high encounter rate. I think a fast travel ability in Dark Dawn would really help, but then again, I might’ve just been really unlikely with random encounters, and I imagine I wouldn’t have this complaint if I was luckier.

One of the big bad design choices Dark Dawn has especially is the multiple points-of-no-return. There will be moments in the game, that aren’t perfectly telegraphed that will gate off access to certain areas of the game. Now, that isn’t terrible by any means, but if you pass a point of no return and miss 1 or 2 djinn, you’ll never be able to get them again. If the game accounted for this somehow it would be fine, but it doesn’t at all which to me at least is a really bad design choice. It doesn’t help either that multiple points-of-no-return feel narratively forced, and doesn’t really feel natural.

Now, the biggest problems come with Dark Dawn’s story. And I personally believe that most of the problems with Dark Dawn’s story would not exist if there was a fourth game. As I played through Dark Dawn, I noticed so many different things that were set up and never resolved. So much had been hinted to a greater plot than what we see the characters go through, but practically none of it gets resolved within the game. I believe Dark Dawn tries to do the same thing that the original two Golden Suns do, where they’re both 2 halves of a much greater story. Where Dark Dawn differs, is that it doesn’t have the second half, leading so much of the game’s setup to be unfulfilled. The most impactful moment of this is the post-credits moment of the game, which leaves on a gigantic, yet-again-unfulfilled cliffhanger. In a hypothetical world where the DS also had a Golden Sun 4 with the second half of the story, these problems wouldn’t exist, but until there is a fourth Golden Sun, this game’s story is left at an unsatisfactory false conclusion.

Even aside from that, the story is somewhat weak. This is due in part to the sort of vague-ness to the overall grand scheme. So often it revolves around the main cast being controlled by the villains, but the game barely elaborates on the villains or what they want, so it leaves little impact. So much of the game is presented as a long-winded goose chase to get a specific item, which isn’t bad as a starting motivation, but to be the motivation for practically 2/3rds of the entire game definitely drags it out a bit. The characters as well are a mixed bag, some interesting, and some not. Primarily, the first couple characters aren’t super unique, they’re good executions of typical RPG archetypes, but they don’t blow anything out of the water. On the other hand, some characters join the party so late in the game, they get so little time to shine, so even though they’re conceptually really good characters, they don’t get the proper time to make a lasting impact.

But when looking at the game’s main playable character, the absolute shining late of the game is Sveta. Sveta is my favorite character in all of Golden Sun, and has the most stakes throughout the entire story of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. She exists the way she does because of the events of the first two Golden Sun titles, and practically all of the major plot elements of Dark Dawn are tied to her. She feels like she’s the only character who has actually growth and an arc through the game, and she’s a standout character because of it. Not only that, but she is the only playable character in the game with a mechanic unique to her, which makes her an extremely powerful physical attacker which I adore.

Though through and through, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is an innately flawed game, though not all the fault of its own. It feels clearly intending for there to be a fourth Golden Sun, to resolve all that was set up in this title, but without it, this game is lacking in resolution. Its story though lacks notable depth, even though I adore Sveta. And even though I deplore the points-of-no-return, the combat and puzzles are really fun so it’s still a game I believe is worth playing. One day I really hope that a new Golden Sun releases to finally resolve the storyline of Dark Dawn. Once that game releases and hopefully resolves the storyline, the perception on this game may be entirely different, for better, or for worse.

Bravely Default is one of my favorite games of all time, and it’s had a massive influence on me generally. This isn’t my first go around with the game’s proper sequel, Bravely Second, but it’s been an absolutely long time since I last played it. And at the end of the day, I find it to be a flawed sequel. It improves upon a lot of gameplay aspects, though in some areas I think it’s worse. The major flaws of Bravely Second, however, come in its story, it’s not the worst story ever made, but it’s following Bravely Default, whose story is one I adore to no end.

As I said, gameplay is where I think Bravely Second most improves. While general combat is about the same, most of the noticeable changes are applied to Jobs. Some jobs were removed, and they will be missed, I love Arcanist and Spell Fencer, though I understand why they were removed, especially the latter. Even with the jobs that were removed, Bravely Second has a total of 30 jobs, 6 more than the original. Some of them take the roles of jobs from Bravely Default, though to me at least, they’re not as interesting as the ones prior, or in the case of some, significantly nerfed. However, the jobs that introduce new mechanics are really fun. The Fencer has a simple stance mechanic, but it’s really fun. And the Charioteer is one of my favorite jobs in any of the games, being able to equip more weapons instead of armor, and being able to deal massive damage is awesome.

Though with that in mind, there were a couple changes to gameplay that I didn’t particularly like. Mainly it was tied to things with encounter rate and how EXP/PG/JP modifiers worked. To begin, while you can change the encounter rate in the same way that you can in Bravely Default, there’s a small handful of dungeons where you’re not allowed to, and you’re forced to the regular encounter rate. I just simply don’t like that the dungeons override your options, even if they explain it away. On the other hand, I miss how EXP/PG/JP modifiers worked in the first game. Back in the first game, it was determined by how you performed in battle. For example, if you won a round in the first turn, you’d get an EXP boost, gradually increasing as you get the modifier in consecutive battles. In Bravely Second though, it’s just a chain that runs out until it takes more than 1 turn to beat a group of enemies. The main issue with this system is just length, it takes so much longer than it needs too, especially if you need to grind JP. JP gain per battle seems to max out at 999, so having to do 4-5 battles only to cap out early is just a big time sink. I’m insane though, so I did max out every job, but I can easily see people not doing what I did.

As I described prior, many of the major flaws I have with Bravely Second come with the story. I think it’s probably best to section it off into three major themes: Worldbuilding, Side Quests, and Yew.

The world of Luxendarc in Bravely Default is so well-defined. It feels like a purposefully crafted world, with information and its history going back centuries, even longer. Bravely Second on the other hand is… odd. There’s of course a 2-year time gap between Bravely Default and Bravely Second, so it would make sense for things to change. But things feel too drastic in a way, multiple gigantic cities appear, seemingly out of thin air. There’s changes to specific aspects of Bravely Default’s lore that I don’t really like, but can’t express because it would spoil major aspects of both games. As well too, the game seems to try and set up more than the game could properly handle, leaving the game at a somewhat inconclusive conclusion. There’s some stuff that I like, and think is interesting, but it just needed a bit better execution.

The Side Quests are… weird. They all have the same structure to them: An NPC tells you about some trouble that’s happening, you meet 2 returning characters from Bravely Default who have opposing opinions on the trouble, you make a choice, fight the one that disagrees with you and get their job. This structure alone would be fine, and there was potential I feel. There’s an interesting balance that could’ve happened here, where you had to weigh whether or not the job you got, or the morally right choice mattered more. However the game allows you to make both choices, and get both jobs from each side quest, which removes any weight that these side quests had to begin with. And that’s also not to ignore that some of them have absolutely gross writing. For an example of one, you had to make the choice whether or not to segregate schooling by gender. As the game expects you to make both choices in order to get both of the offered jobs, it’s kind of gross.

And lastly, and this may be a controversial opinion, I’m unsure, but I don’t like Yew Geneolgia. At least, not with how the game overly puts the spotlight on him. He is a new character, and one of the playable four, but he overshadows the other characters so much that the other new character, Magnolia Arch, doesn’t have as much time to shine. She feels primarily just like the love-interest for Yew, the game doesn’t allow her enough time to be her own character in isolation of Yew. Aside from this, Yew Geneolgia, alongside the whole Geneolgia family is suddenly the most important family in all of Luxendarc. Some of the history back in Bravely Default is somewhat rewritten to include the Geneologias, which I particularly don’t like. I don’t think Yew Geneolgia is a bad character writing or personality wise, but he’s too much of a focus. Bravely Default’s main cast was really well balanced, giving a near equal amount of time for Agnes, Tiz, Edea, and Ringabel. Bravely Second however really focuses primarily on Yew, which makes both Yew, and the other playable characters suffer for it I feel.

But that’s not to say that I dislike the story generally. The Kaiser is a really fun villain, and the dynamic between Yew Geneolgia and both Janne and Nikolai are really good. I think Chapters 5 and 6 are really good from an emotional and thematic perspective, especially with what happened in Chapter 4. However I can’t lie when I say that I think this story is as far from strong, as it’s hard not to compare this to its predecessor. In isolation, without Bravely Default, it’s likely that I would look at this game with a different perspective, I’m unsure.

Yet again, I think Bravely Second is still rather solid. When looking at the Bravely Default “sequels” I think this is still the better of the two. Gameplay wise it’s improved a lot, and some of the new jobs are really fun. However the story is noticeable weaker, and it just doesn’t have the same magic as the original. I think my expectations are set way too high though, I’ll acknowledge. Bravely Default is one of my favorite games ever, I think it’s absolutely perfect. I still think Bravely Second is a game worth experiencing, especially if you do like Bravely Default, you may see some worth in it that I didn’t see.

I can still remember it, it was early 2015, and I was interested in trying out Fire Emblem for the first time. I knew I’d be getting Fire Emblem Fates as a present at some point, but that would be later in the year. Then one lucky day in March, I was allowed to choose what game my parents would buy for me, and I ended up choosing Fire Emblem Awakening, in turn, that became my first Fire Emblem. Back then I was about 13, and aside from my slowly forming interest in Fire Emblem, I’d basically only ever played Pokemon at that point. Fire Emblem Awakening was my first ever divergence from what I would typically play, and I became obsessed. At the time, Fire Emblem became a big special interest, and it helped me finally get out of my comfort zone, and play games from other franchises. That’s all to say that Fire Emblem, and Awakening especially has had a big impact on my life in a way. So after all this time, and so many years since I’ve last touched it, I finally got around to replaying Fire Emblem Awakening. I truly believe now, after all I’ve experienced since then, I’ve gained a much stronger appreciation for Awakening. Not only for the impact it’s had on my life, but the entire circumstances behind its existence.

There is something relatively interesting I feel. At least back when I was big into the Fire Emblem sphere, it was always somewhat assumed that Awakening was the one to introduce Casual Mode or Avatars. In fact, they had already existed in a prior game, New Mystery of the Emblem. I imagine the general confusion occurs since New Mystery of the Emblem never released outside of Japan, and with how big of a release Awakening was, I imagine it likely overshadowed New Mystery of the Emblem. I really appreciate Casual Mode when it comes to Fire Emblem. Sure, it removes permadeath which is a staple of the franchise, but it’s a really nice option to have. Plus, there’s still an option for Permadeath with Classic Mode, so you’re not forced to use Casual Mode either. And in the vein of Avatars, I do really love Robin especially. Robin is a unique character in and of themselves, so they’re not much of a blank slate. Even then, they’re not the game’s protagonist, so it’s fine too. Playing Awakening again, I really miss being able to customize the design of the Avatar, I get why for certain aspects of Byleth and Alear, but making a character an “avatar” with little customization isn’t that fun for me.

Awakening is also in a way, nonlinear. While it’s main story is in itself linear, just a total of 27 chapters total, there’s also about 20 extra chapters you can play at any time you want. There’s also challenge battles that may appear, or you can force them to appear with certain items. This feels like one of the few Fire Emblems where you can feasibly level-grind in because of this, and I did it a lot. In fact, I grinded so much just for fun, that I had about 20 units with fully maxed out stats and custom skillsets. Units themselves are so fun to customize, you’re able to freely switch them between different classes as long as they’re above a certain level. Combined this all together and you’re able to really able to build units to certain specificities, and at least for me, this is really fun. Definitely though, it is a bit game breaking. With how I did this, I cleared the entire final chapter without taking damage (though if I was on a higher difficulty, I do believe I would’ve taken damage).

I also think how Awakening is structured really allows for you to learn the characters too, in a way. What I mean by that is that you’re able to build supports freely, instead of having a general chapter limit before the game is over. Especially in a game like awakening, where getting certain character to S rank will then unlock new characters and chapters to play with. Im referring to the child units here, and it’s interesting how they work. Their stats, growth, classes, and skills all take in account their parents. A Child Unit’s father gives them new classes, so for example, Frederick may give a child unit the ability to be a cavalier or a knight. It makes these units especially really customizable for those who want to break the game that much, though I didn’t go that far. I paired characters up with who I thought were the most fitting character and story wise. But Awakening allowing you to freely build supports is really nice, and I was able to get myself attached to these characters super easily.

The story of Awakening is interesting. I do think it has a bit of issues, though at the same time I can overlook them. I think it’s primarily a pacing issue, the game has a sort of 3 act structure, but the first act of the game is so much longer than the other two. Act two especially feels really quick, especially with how big of a threat the villain of that act is posed as. I ultimately think Act 3 needed at least another chapter or two. Ultimately though, the game and its story is still really good, with the only issue I have being its pacing.

Awakening though is a powerful story to me. Not only in the general themes and emotions of the game itself, but how it’s all tied to the circumstances of its creation. Awakening is a game about defying an apocalyptic future, a future so desperate to occur. In a way, it’s like how the game itself was made. Originally, it was meant to be the final Fire Emblem game, if this last game didn’t succeed, it would be last. And even if fates opposes us, we can still fight and defy it. In a way, it’s really poetic that a game like this was able to be wildly successful, and really saved Fire Emblem. Not only that, but it also made Fire Emblem wildly popular, for better or for worse. Awakening is also about the bonds we make, and how they connect us all as people. I don’t think I can do that concept justice in words, but I really love it.

Fire Emblem has had a complicated history since this game’s release, and game quality hasn’t always been the best, but I’m glad Awakening was able to save this franchise. Awakening itself is such an amazing game for what it is, and I appreciate it even more now that I’ve finally played it all over again. Whatever next Fire Emblem releases, I’ll be sure to at least give it a shot, no matter what it ends up being.

I’ll admit, Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were my first ever experience of Hoenn. I played it when they released back in 2014, and I haven’t really played them since likely 2019. Since then, I’ve practically played every other Pokemon game out there, and I’ve played the other versions of Hoenn that exist, so ORAS has been a set of games I’ve been wanting to come back to for quite some time. I think ultimately I prefer Emerald, but I had a great time playing through Omega Ruby. As a remake of Ruby and Sapphire, it’s also really interesting too.

This is arguably the most changed remake of the Pokemon remakes out there, and I really like how they do things. One of the first obvious changes are the designs of major characters, especially the likes of Team Aqua and Magma members. And honestly this creates a whole new life and identity for Hoenn that I really love, the Team Magma and Aqua members feel like actual unique characters now, and Maxie and Archie’s ORAS designs are the ones I first think of. As well, major aspects of the story change, and incorporate aspects about Mega Evolution and Primal Reversion, which is really cool. It is an improvement on the story of Ruby and Sapphire, but I end up preferring Emerald’s story. Emerald more incorporates a feud between Aqua and Magma, while (since I played Omega Ruby,) Team Aqua feels more minor characters than I wish they would be. Of course, there’s also numerous changes that made perfect sense to include as well, since entire mechanics changed and altered since Generation 3. There’s an entirely new Pokemon type, the physical/special split exists, and there’s been numerous other tweaks to improve gameplay and convenience.

One of the biggest inclusions in ORAS that I greatly appreciate is that of the Dexnav. Being able to find Pokemon that appear in shaking grass, and being able to use the Dexnav to search for specific Pokemon. If you chain them more and more, you can find rarer Pokemon, having higher IVs, egg moves, even being able to find their hidden abilities. In fact for a good number of my team, I found them through using Dexnav, even though it was a bit of a struggle finding some good Pokemon. I also used the feature introduced in X/Y, Super Training, to train my Pokemon’s EVs as well. ORAS feels like one of the best games to hunt for decently strong Pokemon in, with the combination of both Dexnav and Super Training.

My journey through Omega Ruby was really fun. I found it particularly easy, the Exp. Share makes grinding absolutely unnecessary. I was overleveled early on, due to Dexnav hunting, but by the end of the game, since I didn’t fight as many trainers as I should, I ended up back on par with major battles. My team in the game was Sceptile, Masquerain, Exploud, Mawile, Sharpedo, and Banette. I was honestly surprised by Masquerain, it was a really helpful Pokemon, even into the Elite Four, and it was a surprising help against the Champion. As well, I was surprised by how much of a powerhouse Banette was, even though it was the last Pokemon I added into my party, it easily had the highest offensive stat, but ended up being the highest level Pokemon in my entire party. This was a really fun team that I crafted, and I’m glad I finally got to try Pokemon like Masquerain and Exploud for the first time.

I also am so happy that ORAS better incorporated Mega Pokemon into the main campaign itself. Pokemon XY, for all that I do enjoy those games, always frustrated me with the fact that practically 90% of all mega evolutions were locked to the postgame. In ORAS however, the Mega Stones can be obtained as you play through the game, scattered around Hoenn, meaning you can craft your team to include mega-evolving Pokemon. Mega Evolution does make things a bit more unbalanced though, there’s very few Mega Evolved Pokemon you have to fight, so your mega evolved Pokemon will like be at the advantage. Though that being said, Mega Evolution is so cool, I can’t really fault it.

While I do prefer Emerald when looking at the list of games that take place in Hoenn, I really like and appreciate ORAS. ORAS’ ending is such a beautiful thing, and it’s easily something I prefer over Emerald ending if anything. I’m glad I finally got around to playing ORAS again, I still really enjoy it, even if my preferences have changed. It’s such a unique remake compared to the other remakes out there, and I think it’s definitely worth playing at least once, just to see what it’s like.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner – Soul Hackers is a very odd game. I really enjoyed it don’t get me wrong, but there’s certain things about it that make my opinion of it not fully certain. I’m at least somewhat familiar with MegaTen, I’ve played SMT4, SMT5, and multiple Persona titles this year alone. I may be wrong, but since I played the 3DS remake, this may be the oldest MegaTen game I’ve played. That may just be why this game feels more unfamiliar, while I’m confident that the 3DS remake features Quality of Life changes, it’s still more in line with older MegaTens than the newer ones.

I love the aesthetic and setting of Soul Hackers. I love sort of futuristic, cyber-punk settings, and combining that with the pre-existing aesthetics of an SMT title is really cool. It’s heightened even further by how the environments of the game are presented. A tile based dungeon crawler where each floor and dungeon is a bit of a maze. Strange Journey is already one of my favorite SMTs, and I’m glad to have finally played another MegaTen with a similar presentation. Also combining this all with the fact that the game is about being a hacker, and the internet as a whole, it’s just super cool.

The characters and story of the game are also really interesting. The character writing is probably one first things that hooked me about the game. While it took a little bit for the story to get going, the dynamics between the members of the Spookies was strong from the getgo. Especially when Nemissa is introduced, that dynamic gets even stronger. I wish the game’s plot was somewhat better though. The last third of the game had a really strong story, but the first two thirds didn’t have as much. That’s not to say the story’s bad though, as I still enjoyed my time with it.

Combat itself is really interesting when looking at Soul Hackers though, and that’s where a lot of my actual thoughts are. Theres a lot that I really like about the game’s combat, but at the same time there’s things that I’m rather conflicted on. One of the first big things that I had to get accustomed to was the fact that demons cannot level up in this game. As I’ve only played later SMTs, I’m used to demons leveling up, though at a different rate from the player character. In Soul Hackers however, demons cannot level up at all, which means there’s a higher necessity to fuse demons. Fusing demons is fun as normal, however talking and recruiting demons is a bit harder than what I’m used to. Demons were really picky about choices, and it’s easy to make a demon stop wanting to speak with it, meaning you’ll have to encounter another of that type of demon to try again. While not necessarily bad, and honestly pretty good design with how the demons should act, I wish it was a bit easier to know how to respond. Typically it felt random whether or not a response was good, and I’d see different results to the same response, even if I’m talking to the same demon.

Demon personalities are another interesting aspect of battle. Each demon you can use has their own personality, and those personalities determine what they would prefer to do in a battle. For example, Wild Demons would prefer to use physical attacks, while say, Kind demons prefer healing or supporting allies. These personalities go hand-in-hand with a trust meter, which raises or lowers depending on if you let a demon use their preferred action. The lower the meter is, the more likely they’ll be to disobey if you tell them to act in an un-preferred way, and if the bar is low enough, they’ll just choose to leave your party. Yet again this is another mechanic that I’m somewhat conflicted on. Thinking about it from a design standpoint, this is a really cool mechanic. It personifies the demons you have in battle, making them more than just the actions that they can do, and creating personalities for them. Where my confliction comes in is honestly just based off of circumstance. Demons always seemed to disobey at the most inopportune time, even if their trust meter was nearing the maximum. I honestly think even just showing the percentage of how likely they are to disobey would remove this confliction I have, and that’s really it.

There was also this chip mechanic that I ended up barely using. I filled out my slots for it, but it ultimately didn’t really impact gameplay as much. It probably would if I tried to do more demon negotiation, but it ended up not mattering as much as I thought it would. I think the reason why I didn’t engage with it much was that there were only 5 slots, and you could never upgrade to increase how many slots you had, so I didn’t have a whole lot of space to experiment with.

And one of the biggest frustrations with the game is how unnecessarily cruel it feels at times. Soul Hackers is another example of one of my biggest pet peeves in a videogame, that being dying sends you back to the title screen, and you lose all of your unsaved progress. It’s especially worse in a game like Soul Hackers especially, where no matter what if the player character dies, it’s an immediate game over, regardless of if any of your other characters are alive. It’s a really cruel combination, but I don’t think any part of this necessarily needs to change. What I think does need to change however is the placement of save rooms. For nearly all of the dungeons in the game, there’s seemingly ever 1, maybe 2 save rooms per dungeon, and that feels way too little. I think even just adding a sort of mid-point save room would solve the problem, as sometimes you can be in a dungeon for way over an hour, and still not find a new save room. There is a chip that allows you to save anywhere, but it costs 2 slots for some reason, and it really felt like a waste of space.

That being said though, I did enjoy Soul Hackers. I definitely think the game is a bit flawed, but I really liked what I experienced, it feels unique compared to the other MegaTen games I’ve played. Though if the game gets another remake, I think it should have a couple more Quality of Life changes to make the game as good as it should be. I do wonder now, since I’ve succeeded in playing this game, is it possible for me to handle the other older MegaTen games?

It’s been probably about two years or so since I played Pokemon Colosseum. While I really liked it, I wish it was a little bit longer, it felt like it ended too soon. Fast forward to now, and I’ve finally gotten around to playing the game’s sequel, XD: Gales of Darkness. Practically any issue I had with Colosseum is gone, and this game is such a great time overall, I’m so glad I finally got around to playing it.

Shadow Pokemon are so fun, even just catching them is super engaging. Having to catch them in Double Battles, where you also have to pay attention to the second field on the enemy’s field. Eventually you’ll have to catch multiple Shadow Pokemon in the same battle, making it a far more delicate balancing act. It’s also really nice that there’s a pretty safe way of trying to get a Shadow Pokemon again, if it faints in the first battle. I haven’t played Colosseum since I played it the first time back in 2022, but I don’t remember it being as forgiving. I was able to get every single Shadow Pokemon obtainable in the game, and I purified them all as well, to boot.

Purifying them as well is so fun. Of course you have the original way, going to the relic in Agate Village once a Shadow Gauge is empty, and purifying it. But the new Purification Chamber is such a handy tool, though it was definitely a learning curve to figure out how it works. The Purification Chamber allows you to purify up to 9 Pokemon at a time, being able to do other things while they purify in the background. You’ll need already purified Pokemon to help them purify though, and that’s where the nuance is. You can place 4 Pokemon around the Shadow Pokemon in the Purification Chamber, and the order that they’re placed in can increase the purification rate. It took me a long time to actually figure it out, In a clockwise order, each Pokemon must be weak to the one placed before it, and doing that for the full circle maxes out the tempo. Doing so is really fun, especially once you get each Purification Chamber Slot at max tempo, and being able to purify 9 Pokemon at the fastest possible rate.

I also think the introduction to Wild Pokemon is also interesting. There’s only 9 Wild Pokemon you can catch, which is fine, but it is quite limited. On it’s own, it’s not very interesting, but I do like how they did it. Simply just placing down a PokeSnack at a spot, and returning once you get notified of a Pokemon Spawning is really interesting. This, alongside the Purification Chamber, are really good ways to add mechanics that can fit naturally alongside the normal campaign of the game, and I really like that.

I think one of the best things about Colosseum and XD is the Pokemon you’re allowed to use. Typically in a Pokemon game, you’re likely to use similar Pokemon, and there’s often some Pokemon you’ll like never be able to use. One of the first things I think of is how in the Gen 2 games, a good number of new Pokemon (Slugma, Houndour, Larvitar) are postgame exclusive. In XD, I had a really fun team, especially with what Pokemon I was allowed to get early on, I think I was about halfway through the game when I finalized my team. My team for XD was Jolteon, Ursaring, Houndoom, Walrein, Dusclops, and Aggron. It was so fun to use pokemon like Houndoom, or Dusclops, pokemon that I’d otherwise be unlikely, or unable to use.

The battles of the game are always fun. Just like Colosseum of course, all of the battles in the game will be Double Battles. I just think by the nature of them, they’re just naturally more engaging. Having to synergize the two Pokemon you have out on the field, and be aware of the Pokemon your opponent is using as well. Sometimes your opponent will just have something you wont expect, and I think it’s really interesting. For a good majority of the game, I didn’t really need to grind all that much, the game was relatively balanced level-scaling wise. Most of the time, I grinded a little bit in order to help Shadow Pokemon I caught be on par with the rest of my party. The only problem I have with the game is the one bit of level scaling that I wish was improved, which was the final location of the game. In there, most of the Pokemon you’ll be fighting are about mid-30s to low 40s at best. But this jumps highly with the last handful of battles, bringing out Pokemon that are mid-40s all the way up to 50. I think it’s a noticeable spike, and I wish it was ironed out a little bit more, probably just adding some more battles to that final dungeon would honestly be enough.

But even then, I absolutely adored this game. As I mentioned prior, I went out of my way to fully obtain and purify every single Shadow Pokemon in the game, I didn’t even do that for of Colosseum. I haven’t even acknowledged Shadow Lugia up to this point, and I am an absolute sucker for that design. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but Shadow Lugia has a similar level of coolness design-wise that I see in Shadow the Hedgehog. I know it’ll never happen realistically, but I’d love to see it appear someway or somehow. It’s so cool to see a Shadow Pokemon be transformed by the shadow experimentation, instead of just getting a shadowy aura. But yeah, I can see myself replaying this game again at some point, it’d be fun to try the game again with a new team, and new eeveelution. Or maybe I’ll try to see if I can beat the 100 battle challenge in the save I do have. This game is an absolute blast.

This is without a doubt a vast improvement upon the original Mega Man in practically every aspect. While I had an absolutely dreadful time with the original Mega Man, I actually had a pretty pleasant time with Mega Man 2. It wasn’t some stand out, blow me away type game, but for what it is, it’s honestly pretty fun.

Level Design is where the game vastly improves, though I definitely would say it’s not 100% perfect. There’s some areas that conceptually seem fun, having to dodge or avoid instakill objects, but they’re vertical segments, and the transitions between sections interrupt the flow of things. I think the parts of levels that I disliked most weren’t cause of platforming this time around, but more so enemies. That one bird enemy that drops an egg that spawns like, 10 baby birds is the bane of my existence. And as well, this is just a major pet peeve of mine, but enemies respawning off screen was annoying at times, especially if its one of the tougher enemies, like the Sniper Armors in Flash Man’s stage.

Almost every boss is pretty solid as well. Much like with the first game, typically the first robot master you fight is going to be the hardest, as you won’t have their weakness. I honestly can’t imagine not doing the fights without that robot master’s weakness, sometimes it feels absolutely necessary. Especially in the case of Quick Man, he feels way too fast to deal with without his weakness. The Wily Castle bosses are just as easy, aside from the boss of I believe it was stage 4, which that boss just feels cruelly designed. That boss requires some thinking to figure out how to hit all of the sirens, which is fine, but every so often each of the sirens will shoot at you, and it was way too fast to react to. Aside from this and the one robot master though, the bosses were actually kind of fun to figure out, even if they were slightly on the easier side.

And I’m so happy E Tanks are a thing. Just being able to heal back to full as long as you have one is really nice, and can help ease some amount of difficulty that the game has otherwise. They seemed somewhat generously placed throughout the game, which helps a lot too, even if you can only hold 4 at a time.

Yet again, this game is a vast improvement upon the original in practically every aspect. I actually had fun playing Mega Man 2, though that being said it didn’t blow me away in any degree. I do wonder what the next Mega Man games would be like, I’ve heard complicated things about Mega Man 3, but I don’t know anything beyond that. But Mega Man 2 was a pretty fun time overall.

Without a doubt, I feel like this is a perfect videogame. Everything that this game does, it does perfectly, and at times it feels like it does more than it needs to, but it all just adds together into something amazing. Years ago, I was planning to play this as my first entry into the series, and I’m so glad that never happened, and I started at the beginning instead. The build up and improvement of each subsequent game made Devil May Cry 5 an absolute masterpiece.

Of course I’m already a bit biased here, I love Hack’n’Slashes. They’re easily one of my favorite videogame genres, what on the surface looks like thoughtless slaughter of enemies is actually thought out, rhythmic, all to counter each enemy and raise that combo rank even higher. I’d be lying to say that this gameplay loop isn’t addictive. DMC5 may just be the pinnacle of this, it’s ridiculously stylish in presentation, and I’m left in awe at the end of each and every battle. I think this was the DMC title where I got the most S ranks in normal battle. And the fact that the music builds and changes as your rank increases from D all the way to S is immaculate. I absolutely adore this feature, and it makes each of the main music tracks so memorable because of it.

And I adore the main playable characters of the game. I didn’t play as Vergil so I can’t really say what he plays like, but Nero, V, and Dante are super fun characters. Nero is both mostly the same as how he plays in DMC4, and also drastically different. His main shtick, Devil Bringer, is completely replaced with Devil Breakers and they’re amazing. Being able to switch between different arms that can have unique effects is really fun. Though I’ll be honest, while playing I barely lost any of my Devil Breakers, so for 90% of the game, I just had 3 of the basic ones, too afraid to destroy them as I’m afraid of losing resources. The fact that Nero can just grapple enemies to force them into the air, or just bring them closer to him is really fun.

And much like Nero, Dante is about the same as DMC4 too. He has his styles, and he has his weapons which you can switch with the triggers (I don’t remember if switching weapons like this is new to DMC5 or if it was introduced in a prior game, but if it is new, I adore this change). Dante is sort of the gold standard of hack’n’slash combat to me, no matter what he’s always ridiculously fun to play as, and he was my favorite character to play as in this game generally.

And V is really unique compared to the other 2. He’s more of a summoner, conjuring spirits to attack enemies for him, but he has to be the one to finish enemies off. There’s a sort of balancing act, where he can’t stay far away from enemies forever, either to help recharge his summons, or get in for the finishing blow. He was the character I got the most S ranks with, without a doubt, though he’s not my favorite to play as. That being said though, whenever they do a DMC6, I really hope they have a character that plays like V, his playstyle is refreshing compared to the likes of Nero and Dante.

There’s also just so many nice little things in the game. Practically every level in the game has a boss for it, which is always one of the highlights of a hack’n’slash. And the fact that nearly every boss is completely unique is amazing, and I’m so glad they were able to pull something like this off. As well, the game features a sort of multiplayer, where you can see other people playing a different character’s perspective if there’s an overlap. One level someone’s playing as V when you play as Nero, but when you play the same events as V, someone else is playing Nero. Sometimes even, the game will record you inputs and play that back instead, which is really cool.

But of course because of the multiple playable characters, and how perfect they feel to play, I already think gameplay-wise 5 is the best of the series. But where I think DMC5 goes to propel it to being a perfect videogame is its story. It’s the grand culmination of 4 games before it, all leading up to this grand sort of conclusion to this arc, and showing us what comes next for each and every character. I know that’s a bit grandiose and vague, but there’s of course reason to my madness. I don’t want to spoil a game that I love, so why would I say exact events or plot beats for a story here, even if it’s pretty well known what happens in it. The journey to get from Devil May Cry 1 all the way to 5 may be rough in the beginning, but it is no doubt worth it.

Yet again, I must reiterate, I think Devil May Cry 5 is a perfect video game. There is zero wrong with it, and every moment I played of it, I was absolutely amazed. I don’t know how many times I said, “Dante is so cool”, but it’s true, in every single instance. I’m so glad I finally got to experience this game, and the entire story with it, it was so worth the wait.

Dragon Quest XI is a game I have a little bit of a funny connection with. For years now, I’ve been wanting to get it, but fate just chose otherwise. It went on sale a month or two ago at this point, and right as I was about to buy it, I found out that I got robbed, and couldn’t buy it. Only thanks to a friend buying it for me was I able to get, and finally play Dragon Quest XI. I don’t have much experience with Dragon Quest, I’ve only beaten 8, and I’ve played a small bit of 9, so I don’t have much familiarity with the series. But I had a great time with Dragon Quest XI, though I know I haven’t seen all of it.

I have to say, first and foremost, having a game with simple turn-based combat like this is really nice. And I like how you’re able to walk around the little arena as well, it just adds a nice amount of juice into something that’s rather stagnant in other games. I’ll be honest, I don’t know if the position of your characters matter or impact things in some way, but even if they don’t its fun just to move them around. And I was able to try out each of the playable characters in this game, and honestly they’re all really good. I think the general structure of the game allows you to try out each character enough to get used to them. Especially for me, the characters you get first in Act 2 were the ones I passed on using in Act 1. It may have just been coincidence for me, but it was a really smart choice all things considered.

And I adore exploring the game’s world. The main overworld of Edrea is certainly massive, but it creates this wonderful sense of scale that makes me enjoy just walking through it. The dungeons are also really fun to explore. Since (outside of the sea) enemies aren’t random encounters, it makes exploration feel so good. Especially since you’re not interrupted by random encounters all the time. That was one of my biggest pet peeves with Dragon Quest 8, so I’m glad to see that not being an issue here.

As well, the level grind didn’t seem too bad. In fact I don’t think I level grinded at all during the game, though I don’t know if that’s for better or for worse. By the end of Act 2, I was level 53, with the other characters being between 49-51. I had some challenge with the end boss of Act 2, so it’s hard to say if I was underleveled or not. This is more a feel thing than anything, but it really feels like it takes a long time for a character to level up, oftentimes taking so many battles before even one character levels up. Yet again this isn’t a negative, as I said I never needed to grind in the first place. It’s just odd in a feel sort of sense.

One of my favorite little options in Dragon Quest XI is Tickington. Being able to explore locations from previous Dragon Quests is really cool, even though I’ve only played 2 of them. And since it incorporates the 2D Mode that you can switch to, it’s nice to see all of the spritework made for the game as well. It’ll be funny when I finally get to the other Dragon Quest titles, and recognize the locations I saw from this game.

I also really love the story of the game. I wont go into too much detail here, especially with what occurs during Act 2, but there’s a lot that I really love. I think the main playable cast of Dragon Quest XI is absolutely perfect. There’s genuinely nothing I would change about them. Their growth, their personalities, everything. I just think particularly, I adore everything about Act 2, from the story, characters, and just general events.

When it comes to Dragon Quest XI, I know technically I’m not “done” with the game. But I’m satisfied with the ending I got, and I don’t really have much of an interest in playing Act 3. Honestly, with what I’ve heard about the general premise of Act 3, it would probably leave me unsatisfied, and I feel like I’d prefer ending the game at Act 2. Is that sacrilegious? Probably. But I’ve been playing this game for 60 hours now, I think I’m Dragon Quest’d out, and I did get an ending, even if it isn’t the final ending. Maybe after a decent break I’ll return to play Act 3, but I do feel like I have beaten the game regardless of playing Act 3 or not.

But I will say though, I really enjoyed my time with Dragon Quest XI. It’s probably been 2 years since I’ve been trying to get it, so to finally get around to playing it feels like a dream come true. I really would like to play the other Dragon Quest titles at some point, though I definitely need a bit of a break from them, this one took me quite a while to beat. Yet again, I may return to DQXI to play Act 3 at some point, but not today.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is a game unlike any other. While I would say of the series I probably enjoy MGS2 more, MGS3 is still an absolute masterpiece. There are still things I’m thinking about even as I type this, from the characters, to themes, just to everything about it. It’s really been a long time coming for me to finally getting around to playing MGS3, but I’m so glad that I did.

One thing that I immediately loved about MGS3 was how much of the game was dedicated to stealth. While I loved MGS2, I wish more of the game allowed for stealth sections, it didn’t feel like there were enough for what I was hoping for. In MGS3 on the other hand, stealth is absolutely the name of the game. Being able to create disguises to help increase your camouflage, sometimes even needing necessary disguises to progress. Being able to hide in the grass, or just blend in with the environment is so fun. I think the general jungle setting of MGS3 really helps with how refreshing the stealth feels. Not only that, but with enemies wearing green, they too can at times, blend into the environment, which is really cool.

The Stamina and Curing mechanics are really cool too. I thought they were going to be a bit of a nuisance at first, but I really got attached to them as I played through the game. Needing to use surgery or medical equipment to actively heal wounds feels much more realistic, and while yeah, it can make things difficult or annoying at times, that’s the point. I also think Stamina as a mechanic feels the same way, purposefully frustrating, but because of that, realistic. If these mechanics weren’t there, the game would have an entirely different, and probably weaker feel. Even then, they’re not as bad as they seemed at first, though maybe cause I was playing on easy they just didn’t affect me as much as they would on higher difficulties.

As well, the bosses of MGS3 are interesting. I say that because I don’t know if they’re my favorite set or not. If we were looking at them from a gameplay and actually fighting them sort of perspective, yes, they would be. They were probably the collection of bosses I had least frustration and the most fun with, and I was actually excited to fight certain bosses. But it gets complicated when looking at their characters. Obviously the ones that are well written are amazing characters, I don’t think I need to explain how The Boss is one of the best characters made for a videogame. But early bosses like The Pain, or The Fear don’t feel memorable as characters, only memorable as fights. It’s hard to say whether or not this is purposeful though, I have some interpretations that could explain why it’s a purposeful choice, but that’s simply an interpretation, not fact.

But god, the story of MGS3 is a masterpiece. It didn’t hit me as hard a MGS2, but beginning to end, MGS3 is a downright perfect story. So much so that, much like many other games I adore, I’m not saying anything about it. MGS3 is probably one of the most important games of all time, and I feel like it’s one of the games that must be played in a person’s lifetime. Of course, that would also require playing MGS1 and 2 beforehand, don’t jump immediately into MGS3. Even though it is a prequel, and the earliest game in the Metal Gear timeline, it’s far more rewarding to play it after 1 and 2 with the knowledge you know from those games, and not before. The ending is one of the best in a video game ever, and I’m so glad I got to see it with my own two eyes.

And just, what a thrill Metal Gear Solid 3 turned out to be. I’d give my life to play MGS4, but that’s stuck on PS3, and I don’t have any way of actually playing it. But I do really hope that I’m able to see this series through to the end in my time, as I’ve just constantly been blown away by each entry. I still technically have some other games of the franchise I could play, I do want to at least try and play the Metal Gear games, since I technically jumped ahead when starting with MGS1. But going back to the topic at hand, which is MGS3, this game is a genuine masterpiece, and I’m glad I was able to play it finally. I haven’t gotten over the ending at all, it’s like I’m still in a dream of some kind, I don’t if that makes sense.

I wonder how I’ve gotten here. If you were to ask me my general thoughts on Persona, I’d be rather neutral, I had only played one game of the series, and I didn’t like it. Then, not even a month ago, I played Persona 5, and it rewired my brain in a way, I found a Persona game that I loved. I loved it so much that I immediately bought Persona 3 Reload, and I played through it immediately after. Of course, it took me longer to beat it, I didn’t have as much free time, as unlike Persona 5, I was in classes at the time. From what I’ve heard about FES and Portable, I’m glad I chose Reload over them, there were some design and gameplay decisions in those versions that I’m glad aren’t here (though I would’ve loved FeMC). Persona 3 Reload has further rewired my brain, making me love this series even more.

Of course I don’t want to go too in-depth into all of this. While Persona 3 has existed for over a decade now, Reload released barely over 2 months ago (at the time of typing this). Saying anything even somewhat specific, even now, might be too much of a spoiler, and I’d like to try and avoid it as much as possible. Especially since Persona 3 as a game is something that I think deserves a blind experience, I want to avoid saying anything too revealing. But I will say as much as I think I can.

Combat-wise the game is amazing. One Mores are as amazing as a mechanic as ever. The adaptability, switching between your teammates in battle to help hit certain weaknesses, or heal if need be. I still love that enemies benefit from this system as well, it makes enemies feel more dangerous, especially if they luck out with crits. It’s interesting how there’s three different types of physical attacks, Slash, Strike, and Pierce. Each character’s regular attack differs too, being one of those three types which I think is really cool, and can help determine your team composition.

Social Links are interesting in Persona 3. If I hadn’t played 4 and 5 beforehand, I would be fine with Social Links in 3. What I mean by that is that Social Links only give EXP boosts when fusing, and there’s no other bonuses. This critique though is of minimal importance, contextually, Persona 3 was the first to introduce Social Links, so of course it wouldn’t have the things that were added in 4 and 5. But with that being said, I think of the three, Persona 3 has my favorite set of Social Links. The best way I have of describing it is that it’s the most realistic. Some Social Links are just normal people, some of them are unlikeable, and some of them feel meant to be hated. But that in itself feels purposeful, and meant to mirror relationships you may have in real life. You’re not gonna like everyone you know, and I’m glad that this game was able to emulate that experience. One thing that I’m grateful about with Reload though is that you’re not locked into Romance routes with social links.

Tartarus as a dungeon is another interesting aspect of the game to me. It made me further realize why I don’t like the dungeons in Persona 4, and I apologize for the oncoming tangent. Persona 4 in a way is a mid-transition, between the randomly generated dungeon of Tartarus, and the personal dungeons of Palaces. While Persona 4’s dungeons are meant to represent certain ideas about relevant characters, they only really do it aesthetically, but because of it being randomly generated spaces, it still feels impersonal. It makes them all blend together, aesthetics alone don’t feel enough to differentiate the dungeons of Persona 4. Now bringing this tangent back to Tartarus, it feels purposeful that Tartarus is like this. It’s long, it’s randomly generated, it’s purposefully impersonal. It’s meant to feel like an uncomfortable, otherworldly place, and I think it does that really well. And honestly it never felt too long. Sections are unlocked over time, and usually you unlock about 20 floors at a time. As well, it feels clear to me that while I did it this way, I wasn’t supposed to clear each section in a single day. The game gives you a good number of checkpoints, so if you need to, you can take a break, and come back another day.

And what can I say about the story. The answer, really? Nothing. I’m saying nothing. This is the part of the game that the less you know, absolutely the better. The story itself is why this game is probably my favorite of the Persona titles that I’ve played thus far, and I don’t want to potentially ruin that for anyone else. Yet again, at the time of typing this, the game came out barely over 2 months ago, so there’s still some recency here. What I can say though is that it’s absolutely amazing, and also Fuuka is my favorite character. That’s all I’ll say here.

I don’t think there’s much else I can really say here. I absolutely adore Persona 3, I haven’t played the other versions of the game yet, but I can’t imagine any would be better to play than Reload. I swear, I’ve drastically changed my tune on the Persona series in less than a month thanks to this game and 5, it’s somewhat crazy to look back on. I already bought the Expansion Pass for Reload, so it’s assured I’ll hop on The Answer as soon as it releases, and I can’t wait. Reload may be a pretty expensive buy, 70 dollar base price is a lot, but if you can afford it, please get it. It’s just such an amazing game.

Minecraft is an unreviewable game. Each review of Minecraft is paradoxically, both true, and false. The experience one has with Minecraft is one of the most personalized experiences ever made for a game. This is to a point that any description of mechanics, systems, and characteristics of the game in truth, just don’t matter. What matters then is the personal experiences, the history, and the memories made by Minecraft. While there is an “ending” for Minecraft, Minecraft is a game with no absolute ending, the world, story, and game go for as long as you play. While I have had Minecraft for practically a decade now, I only now finally got to see the game’s “ending”, and only now does it feel proper to describe my experiences with Minecraft.

Minecraft is a game that helped birth new creativity within me. Be it Survival, Creative, or even custom made adventure maps, I loved seeing, or even building my own little worlds with their own history. Even in my single player survival worlds, it felt like I had crafted my own narrative, starting from nothing, and making a true home for myself. I remember my first set of rudimentary houses, before I got better at building, learning, and finding new materials in order to create something even better. I remember venturing off into the wilderness to find stunning land generation, running into new structures, or new biomes. I remember the moments I stopped to farm, craft, and plan what the next little chunk of progress I wanted to work on was. And whatever I did, whatever narrative was told, I was the one telling it. All of those experiences were caused by my own actions.

For me, Minecraft holds a lot of memories. I remember back before I even had a full copy of Minecraft, demos allowed you to play really old, like Beta 1.3 versions of Minecraft for free, and I did that a lot. I remember getting Minecraft proper around Release 1.7, for a time frame of reference. Even after a decade now, Minecraft has still stuck with me. It’s a game I play whenever I’m stressed, and I need to relax. It’s a game I play if I’m feeling creative and I want to build. It’s a game I play with friends when messing around online. Minecraft is so much to me, even if I don’t play it as much as I did as a kid.

And it’s weird, right? This review, this general examination of Minecraft may not, likely will not, remain true. Minecraft as a game is ever changing, when I put this out, Minecraft is seemingly close to releasing 1.21, while I played on 1.20. There will always be more to see in Minecraft, Minecraft when I was a kid is wildly different than Minecraft as it is now, and even then, I still end up falling in love with it all over again. In the next ten years, when I’m in my 30s, who knows how different Minecraft will be, and how different I will be as well.

It is a little bit of a wonder to me too that it took me this long to finally “beat” Minecraft. Minecraft isn’t too difficult of a game, and if you know what you’re doing, the Ender Dragon isn’t that hard of a fight. I think the reason why it took me this long to finally do it was because I just never prioritized it. I always focused on other things, building, farming, exploring, those sorts of things are what I loved to do. Only once I set out to finally fight and beat the Ender Dragon did I finally do it. And with how long I’ve had Minecraft and it taking over a decade for me to finally “beat” this game, I had a feeling that I haven’t felt in such a long time. It felt like beating my first ever game all over again.

I used to be really bad at videogames, I’ll admit. My first ever videogame was Pokemon Diamond, I got it around its release date, and I could never beat it for years. I think the 3DS was already out when I finally beat Pokemon Diamond for the first time, and it felt amazing, refreshing, and it felt like a book closed that has been longing for this moment. I felt a genuine sense of joy and sadness when it was over. Even looking back further, the first game I ever beat proper was Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs, so with the general frame of reference there, it took me 4 years from my first videogame to the first time I beat a videogame. With the fact I had Minecraft for over a decade, this joyous, and sorrowful sense of closure has hit me once again.

I have no doubt I’ll return to Minecraft. I don’t know if it’d be on the same world, or on a new save, but I’ll be sure to play it again. Minecraft is a game to relax, and reflect when the world outside becomes a bit too much. It’s a game where you can truly test the limits of your creativity. It’s a game where communities can be formed. It’s a game where stories are told, and memories are made. It’s a game that’s always changing. It’s a game where everything is possible.

I’ve had Persona 5 in my library for way over a year now, and playing it has been a long time coming. I was honestly somewhat apprehensive to, I really disliked Persona 4, so even though I’ve heard nothing but great things about Persona 5, I was afraid something similar would occur. My main motivation to playing Persona 5 in the first place was that one of my friends started playing it, and I didn’t want to be spoiled. This entire preamble is to lead up to this; for the past 8 days I have done nothing but play Persona 5. 104 hours total, beginning to end. My perception of time has been fundamentally altered because I was so engrossed and invested into Persona 5, these past 8 days have all blurred together into some amalgamative mass. If it isn’t already obvious by all of this, I absolutely loved my time with Persona 5.

Way before getting into where this game just absolutely works, I love how much style is put into this game. UI, animation, music, everything in this game has this particular style to it that’s addictive. Even when I’m 20, 40, even 60 hours into the game, I hear certain music tracks, or see certain animations, and I get that same level of excitement that I do seeing them for the first time. And in a similar vein, the game’s UI is absolutely stellar. It took a little bit of time getting used to each button being a battle command, instead of having to scroll through a list of actions, but once I got used to it, it really felt great.

I also absolutely love Palaces. They feel like properly planned out and designed dungeons, and I love how they’re able to fully and completely fit the theme they’re going for. I’ll try to avoid comparing Persona 5 with Persona 4 as much as I can, but I want to highlight that I really didn’t like how the main dungeons of Persona 4 were all procedurally generated, it made Palaces such a breath of fresh air. I love the stealth mechanics, being able to hide from enemies and ambush them from the shadows always felt great to do. I would say most palaces are rather good, with only one not being as strong as the others, but that’s mainly because the puzzles in that palace are rather basic. It might be contrarian to what I mention prior, but I also really love Mementos as a dungeon. It is procedurally generated which would make it seem like I would dislike it, but I think it’s the balance between Palaces and Mementos that allows me to actually enjoy Mementos. It’s a dungeon you can take at a sort of piecemeal way, as you’ll be able to slowly gain access to lower parts of Mementos as you progress with the story. You can then alternate between Palaces and Mementos, allowing for a sort of balance between them, which I really appreciate.

I’m also really enamored by the combat system of Persona 5. This is the first MegaTen game I’ve played that doesn’t feature the standard Press Turn system, so it was definitely another thing I had to get used to. Even then, Persona 5’s gameplay system is absolutely masterful. Persona 5 does sort of feature a press turn system, though not in the exact same way. One More functions about the same as a Press Turn, but of course it only activates when downing an enemy. There’s also of course a specific turn order in battle, instead of player and enemy rounds. But going back to One More, it leads into one of my favorite mechanics in the entire game, Baton Pass. Baton Pass works basically as a free switch to an ally to use their action, but you can chain it up to a total of 4 times. Increasing power, recovery, and even lowering the cost of skills if you chain it high enough. It becomes an absolutely addictive system that I love both utilizing, and in a way, abusing.

And this leads me into what I think is what kept me playing all this time. What allowed to sit through and play 104 hours total of this game with only sleep being a break. That of course is none other than the game’s story. Immediately before the game even gets going, it has absolutely one of the best cold opens I’ve seen in a game, and it serves well as a tutorial section too. It sets up so much intrigue that made me want to see more and more of what is going on in the game. As well, the character writing is so good. The main party’s dynamic is really good, and it feels like they’re a proper group of friends. As well the villain of each arc can at times be cartoonishly evil, but I think that exemplifies the world and the themes that Persona 5 is trying to go for. This idea of young rebels fighting against a corrupt society that allows for these cartoonishly evil villains to avoid punishment, and forcing them to realize their actions and live with the understanding of what they’ve done. It’s something immaculate. There’s also just so much else I could talk about here, though I won’t as I don’t really want to spoil anything specific here. The last few arcs of the game are amazing, I love the Royal story content, and the end is absolutely perfect. Persona 5’s story is everything I really hoped it to be, and more.

Goro Akechi

Unlike in Persona 4, where I went only for the Social Links of the main party, I actively engaged with as many social links I possibly could in Persona 5. I’m not going to go into elaborate detail into all of them, that would be the absolute death of me. I would say for a good majority of them, they were really good, and I love how some sort of tie into Mementos and doing Mementos Requests. Its nice that the game opens up a lot of night options to allow you to try to at least get 2 social link rank ups in a day if you plan well. There were definitely some characters I didn’t feel as strong about, but there were few, if any characters I actively disliked. I tried my best to get as many social links done as I can, and I’d estimate I probably got about 90% complete. I completed 18 social links, but I was pretty high in the other ones, ranging between ranks 5-8. I also really like the bonuses that some social links give, some of them are absolutely busted too. One of Ryuji’s bonuses particularly became the perfect level-grinding method. Though it does feel weird examining the mechanical reasons to raise Social Links, it feels good to raise social links not solely because of the mechanical boons, but because I care about these characters.

I’ll say this as well, but I wish I was able to really compare the differences between base Persona 5 and the content exclusive to Royal. While the last major arc of the game (if you unlock it) is Royal exclusive, there’s noticeably differences solely based upon certain characters existing. Maruki and Kasumi are Royal exclusive characters, but they exist through nearly the entire main storyline of base Persona 5. What is it like when those characters aren’t there, what changes? This thought makes me wonder what other changes exist in Royal, and since I don’t have a way of playing the original Persona 5, I have no way of comparing. I should specify I’m not saying this as a negative, it’s more just a thing I’m curious about more than anything.

It feels weird being done with Persona 5. Yet again, I must reiterate, I have done nothing but play this game for the past 8 days. I really do feel like for me, Persona 5 is an unforgettable experience, not only because of the game itself, but because of the environmental circumstances around me that not only brought me to play the game, but while I was playing the game as well. I don’t know if I can bring myself to replay the game anytime soon, it was over 100 hours long after all, but maybe a few years from now I’ll revisit it. I’m glad to have played a Persona game I ended up absolutely loving.

Its not often that I go out and play a Castlevania game, but every time I do so, I feel a genuine joy. I absolutely adored Portrait of Ruin, there’s so much that’s really unique to it that sets it apart from other Castlevania titles. It’s not one that’s hard either, so I do think it’s one that I can really suggest as an entry point to Castlevania, while also being really good.

To me the first and most obvious aspect of Portrait of Ruin is the dual player character system of the game. Being able to switch between 2 characters on the fly, and summon the other character either to help with combat or puzzles ended up being really engaging and fun. Honestly, I wish there were more puzzles that involved switching between the two characters, there were only a small handful, but they were really well done. I also loved playing as both of the characters in the main campaign, though I definitely did prioritize one over another. Throughout most of the game, I played as Charlotte. I loved switching the spells she used, adjusting to whatever I was facing, especially since some spells are better than others for certain bosses. Only at the tail end of the game did I switch to Jonathan, but he’s also another great playable character. He has the same general abilities of other vampire hunters in the series, and because of that he is really fun. I know it’s possible to use different weapons, but it felt only right for him to use a whip, so I didn’t experiment as much with Jonathan as I did Charlotte.

And of course, the other part of Portrait of Ruin that I think is super interesting is in the namesake itself, the portraits. While the game is located in Dracula’s Castle for a good chunk of things, you can also enter portraits throughout the castle which take you to wildly different locations. And I completely adore this, it allows for you to go to locations that otherwise wouldn’t be possible in a typical Castlevania setting. My favorite area in particular is the Pyramid, which I find really cool to be able to explore in a Castlevania game. I also really love how there’s sort of remixed versions of the portraits later on in the game. I’ve always loved the sort of “upside-down castle” idea that most Castlevanias have, and the portraits being remixed is a really fun way of doing things.

I mentioned this earlier, but Portrait of Ruin isn’t too difficult of a game either. Even if there’s a boss or room that is difficult, the game gives an ample amount of healing items, so you’ll never have too much of a worry. Though, I have played a good number of other Castlevanias, some notably harder than this one, so I may just be more used to them, and this is easier to me than to others, who knows. I imagine the challenges I did have were brought upon by myself though. I remember one boss that I struggled with hard because I didn’t realize that you could jump as many times as you wanted while underwater. Though at the same time, it’d be hard to know that, as that, to my knowledge, is the one time you’ll be underwater during the entire game. As well, some bosses probably would have been slightly easier for me if I summoned the partner character more often, and it might’ve been easier if I switched to Jonathan more often as well.

With the multiple locations in the game, exploring and trying to find every little nook and cranny is really fun. I think I got nearly 900% map completion, which is really funny to type out here, I didn’t explore the final area of the game, which is why I’m not close to the full 1000% map completion. It’s mainly because I saw on a guide I was looking at that the bosses in that final are connected to a different game, Dawn of Sorrow to be specific, and I didn’t want to see them until after I had played that game. As well, it’s primarily a boss rush, and completely optional, so I wasn’t too motivated to clear it. Whenever I get around to playing/beating Dawn of Sorrow, I would like to go back to that final area and see what it’s like.

And I most assuredly will replay Portrait of Ruin. There’s multiple additional playable characters that unlock upon getting the game’s good ending, and they have some interesting play styles to them. Theres one where the combat is done entirely on the DS touch screen which I wonder how that’ll play later in the game. With the little bit I tired of it, the game seems ridiculously easy with those characters. Though of course I’d have to wait and see.

I absolutely adore Portrait of Ruin. The ideas this game has are really fun, especially for a series like Castlevania. I love the environments that the game features, and with how much of a sucker I am for multiple playable characters, a game structured around switching between 2 characters is really fun. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, I’m almost assuredly replaying this game, as I want to play with the additional playable character sets, and see what they’re like. This isn’t my favorite Castlevania, but it’s definitely up there, I can’t help but suggest it.