Time is unrelenting, it strips the new of any freshness or excitement. Worn down and beat-up, even gold loses its shine. So it must be a testament of greatness, when that which strives to maintain and preserve such an old blueprint— its skeleton— doesn't feel outdated.
Persona 3 'Reload' neither shows its age nor evokes lesser emotion. It presents the game not as it was, but as it's remembered.
P3R is P3. As if recalled through memory.
An old, loved friend you get to meet again. And you're thankful, thankful in some aspects they've gotten better— and in some others they haven't changed.

Foi uma boa experimentação, o combate é ótimo e o elenco de personagens é variado, os gráficos são bons mas o modo história.. ai ai.

A franquia Storm é um arena fighter altamente aclamado pelo público e não é por acaso, os comandos são de fácil aprendizagem; as animações são excelentes e o game é totalmente casual, fora a ótima fidelidade e criatividade vinda dos desenvolvedores com os movesets para os personagens.

O modo história no entanto, nesse primeiro jogo me decepcionou bastante, imaginei que seria algo como o Storm 2 e acabei quebrando a cara; aqui nesse título em questão tudo é passado como um pretexto para as coisas acontecerem, nada é desenvolvido, muito menos explicado. Alguns confrontos importantes no mangá/anime como do Rock Lee x Gaara ou Sarutobi x Orochimaru é só mais uma lutinha normal nesse game. Ainda existem aquelas boss fights incrivelmente animadas com quick time events e tudo, mas infelizmente são poucas.

O modo aventura é legal só nas primeiras 2 horas de jogatina, pois as atividades irão ficar repetitivas com o tempo e a progressão do jogo é baseado em complecionismo, então se você não fazer pelo menos algumas side quests em um certo ponto do game.. não vai avançar na história principal.

A trilha sonora é original e de alta qualidade, simples assim.

No geral o que realmente salva esse título é o combate divertido, se você gosta da franquia e tem curiosidade da fase criança do Naruto recomendo dar uma olhada, mas se está em busca de uma gameplay mais robusta e refinada, Storm 4 é a resposta.

ps: sim, eles cortaram o arco do Zabuza.

I've always had a fondness for licensed games. They're messy and flawed by the very nature of their production. Trying to manage an existing story into a different world of gameplay, appeasing fans and corporate needs and everything in-between. Nine times out of ten, its just not gonna be very good. Sometimes its in an endearing way. Sometimes it ends up like rushed shovelware being pushed out to die.

But sometimes you get something that's just completely off-the-rails.

I've never consumed any Digimon product, so I couldn't claim to understand if there's any wider connections to the franchise. And it really didn't seem like I needed any. It sets up its world pretty efficiently and just kinda drops you into it. The game starts slow, with some relatively cookie cutter characters and some frustratingly dull dialogue. But before long, your playable character is experiencing existentially horrifying digital body horror and in a race against time to cure themselves until their data shatters into pieces under the stress of existing in the physical realm. With this set-up, the game doesn't spend long resting on this gimmick before punting you off to solve digital crimes.

A lot Cyber Sleuth is actually About Something. EDEN, the VR internet tech, is the central focus of this game and the implications of the technology behind it is given heavy focus. One faction in the game is various collected hackers who worship what EDEN used to be. Uncontrolled and free, before it got overtaken by corporate interests. At the same time, EDEN is also TOO lawless, with rampant less-benevolent hacker problems that Kamashiro Industries can’t be bothered to deal with. Kamashiro has their own schemes to organize, from corporate manipulation and the inhumane methods EDEN is built on top of.

Beyond that, there’s the “smaller” crimes that the game takes efforts to examine. There’s an arcade store downtown that has this sort of full-body scan system. People can pay the machine to scare themselves and 3D print fun toy statues or whatever. One sidequest involves criminals stealing the data from those machines to make digital copies to see on the internet, claiming they’re offering “Dream Models” of anyone you might be crushing on.

Except, that grift goes another step further. The people buying Dream Models are lead to believe that these copies are arriving in the real world. The cost is that you aren’t allowed to leave the Model alone, for the sake of security. The people selling Dream Models then trick their customers into reentering EDEN in a digital copy of their home, surrounded by their Dream Models. Believing that the Model is taking care of them now, buyers fully believe they’re still in the real world. This gives the criminals basically free reign to ship their customers’ real bodies across the globe for, presumably, organ harvesting. The sidequest ends with a buyer desperately trying to log out into a body that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s fucked up and horrifying on a million levels. It’s that kind of sci fi horror bullshit that kept me returning to the game, in spite of its flaws.

But there are significant flaws. While I described that storyline as a sidequest, its actually one of the required mysteries to solve in order to progress. None of that impacts the wider story and its not like I think it needs to. But out of the required non-plot cases to solve, that's really the only interesting one. You're also required to solve such exciting cases as "a cat went missing" and "let's hunt some ghosts (except there aren't ghosts and they aren't even secretly digimon)." I wouldn't mind as much if they were sidequests, but it becomes arduous when the plot slows to a crawl for these distractions. If they were all sidequests, including the Dream Model quest, then the game could keep its pace and the sidequests would feel more rewarding instead of forced. Any game that could potentially relegate something so fucked to side content is something I would admire a lot.

On a character basis, a lot of them really won me over in the middle stretch after a rough start. Nokia starts off as stereotypical valley girl, but she evolves into the heart of the game and the one holding the peace of the world together. Arata starts off as an edgy loner, only to become clear he's intentionally projecting that image and he's just a nerd who wants you to think he's cool. They become really endearing characters! But the dialogue or the translation make their actual words come off pretty two-dimensional, even as they do interesting things with their actions. It makes you wish for a skip button every now and then, which the game sorely lacks.

The gameplay itself is very Pokemon-esque, but with extra steps added. A lot of Digimon you catch are in the same evolution tree and you can evolve and devolve your characters across a whole gambit of different monsters, snatching up special abilities here and there to build a powerful warrior. Its this process that makes grinding and evolving Digimon genuinely engaging. You can mold and shape your team in so many disparate ways, and the game gives you plenty of opportunities to let your spares grind in the background while you keep a more reliable squad on hand. The game constantly feels like its always keeping you from juuuuust getting to your next progression stage, encouraging you to keep grinding, keep the story going, waving a carrot in front of your nose to keep up the pace. It gets addictive quick. Once you gather up tools that double/triple/quadruple your exp gain, grinding becomes speedy, addicting, and bizarrely enjoyable.

But by the end-game, this game design starts to falter. In Pokemon, I always felt like I was picking the team I wanted to pick. Out of the hundreds of Pokemon, I found the little dorks I personally liked and raised them on my own. Digimon has more complicated mechanics, which comes with a need for more complicated enemies. Gradually, my favorite designs vanished one by one into more powerful picks. Checking around gaming threads from six years ago, people state again and again that the game is easy if you just get THESE Digimon and make sure they get THESE moves. And while that's inherent in any rpg set-up, all the Digimon they pick tend to be the same. UltraVeedramon, who makes sure you always attack first. A Digimon who cuts through defenses, which is Lillithmon, Belphamon RM, or WarGreymon. And then make sure they all have the same attack doubling moves, yadda yadda yadda. Its all the same strategy. I wanted to focus on building my own team with their own merits. But it became clear as I entered bonus boss territory that even with the same moves these people recommended, it isn't a viable strategy. The wider attribute/type mechanics vanish in favor of these Digimon-specific moves that cut through everything. I collected all 242 of those fuckers, but only four to five of them were worth keeping around.

But that last sentence kind says it all. I found and registered all 242 Digimon. My brain shuts down around the 20 hour mark of most rpgs. I played this for 92 recorded hours, not counting the days I spent throwing failed Digimon at some bonus bosses. I took some breaks for my sanity, but that's still maybe the most time I've put in an rpg since Three Houses. And Three Houses took me two years to finish. I did this in a month whenever I was free. That has to speak to something, right? There's a pure joy in Digimon. It made me want to learn more about this franchise. It makes me understand why people find it compelling. Its got real meat on the bone. And I really admire it for that.