This is Dark Souls Remastered all over again.

Bottom line, if you haven't played these games before and this is the only/most convenient way for you to play them, then give it a shot. These are very competent versions of fantastic games.

If you have played these games before and/or are upset at what was done here, complain as much as you want. Your views are justified, and more could have and should have been done here.

Both of these statements are true and they can co-exist.

This is a very long explanation of why I’m not the most enthusiastic person about Majora’s Mask. TL;DR I agree with people’s opinions that the characters, side quest and world of Termina are fantastic; however, as a Zelda game, I think it leaves a lot to be desired and I don’t think its strong elements are enough to make up for that.
If you’re interested in my opinions, I would love to have a discussion about this game, since I feel like I’m the only one who isn’t ecstatic about it and want to know what others think of my takes.



I feel like I have more to say about Majora’s Mask than I do about any other game I’ve ever played. I didn’t hate this game, but I far from loved it. My perception of it is all over the place, and it especially sucks that I seem to be the only person who doesn’t like it. Sure, I’ve heard plenty of people say that they couldn’t get into it, or maybe there are some out there who were overwhelmed by it for various reasons, but this was my first time playing this game and I 100% it, and even still I don’t agree with the unbelievable amount of praise this game has received. That being said I still think I understand why other people love it so much, and if I’m correct in my assumption, then the things people love about this game are unquestionably the best parts about it. That “thing” being, again the world of Termina itself.

It’s easy to separate this game into two parts: the Zelda game part, and the side quest part. Personally, I really don’t like the Zelda game part. With one exception, I didn’t like any of the temples or the stories that were told in these areas.

Woodfall is ok; it’s inoffensive, the conflict that happens here is serviceable, and the temple is really simple but it’s not bad.

Snowfall is one of the biggest “mehs” in a Zelda game for me; the whole plot is about stopping a baby from crying (so it’s not exactly the most engaging conflict) and there was too much backtracking in the temple for my liking. I was constantly confused about how to progress or where I needed to be, so I ended up running back and forth through the dungeon and not having the best time. I blocked this whole area out of my memory and don’t remember very much about it.

I DO, however, remember the Great Bay. I had absolutely zero fun in this area. Zora swimming is cool I guess, but this place is so big and empty, the Pirate’s fortress and retrieving all of the eggs is so tedious, and it takes an eternity to finally get to the temple. I think it took me three hours from entering it to getting to the dungeon. And the dungeon itself is pretty lame too. It’s better than the first two because it has an interesting gimmick unlike Woodfall temple, and it isn’t confusing to navigate like Snowhead temple, but it doesn’t really have much going for it. It takes a long time to complete, has the worst boss in the game, and its mechanics weren’t fun to solve or execute. I might have found the story here more interesting if I didn’t absolutely hate everything else about it.

Ikana Canyon is the best area by far. It has the most interesting story and the most compelling characters in my opinon. What happens with the little girl and her dad is the most moving and beautiful thing in the entire game, and the area as a whole has an air of regret and decay that is unrelenting. The dungeon is also the best in the game because it effectively uses all of your tools and has a neat gimmick where you flip the entire dungeon upside down and have to explore it on the floor and the ceiling. Unfortunately, while this dungeon has the highest highs, it also has the lowest lows.

Just getting to this place is a nightmare; playing the elegy of emptiness dozens of times, unnecessary micromanaging of your inventory, and having to repeat it whenever you want to switch the temple upside down. It’s padding and tedious. I also had a rough time playing this dungeon in particular; when I got through the dungeon, I was on the night of the final day, and when I fought the boss for the first time, I used up all of my magic and couldn’t use the giant’s mask anymore. I was a bit confused on how the fight worked to begin with, magic drops would despawn before I could pick them up, and trying to hit them with arrows as regular link was practically impossible; essentially, the fight was unwinnable with my current knowledge and arsenal.

So, I decided to use the ocarina to head back to clock town and get some Chateau Romani to get infinite magic. Unfortunately, since I was on the night of the final day, I had to reset the cycle. You wouldn’t think that would be so bad since I’d already finished the dungeon and so I could go straight to the boss. I thought the same thing, but unbeknownst to me, when the cycle reset, so do chests and small keys. I had to play through the entire dungeon again, trying in vain to remember how to spawn the chest I needed to hookshot to and where the small keys were (some small keys didn’t even respawn and just gave rupies instead, forcing me to waste even more time trying to find the specific keys the game respawned). Over an hour went by before I finally had reopened the path to fight a boss I already didn’t enjoy fighting. I realize that this is a very specific instance, and perhaps I shouldn’t use this example to speak on the game’s objective quality. But I hope you understand how frustrating it was for me to go through, why it left a bad taste in my mouth, and why it negatively impressed my opinion on this dungeon, this area, and the game as a whole.

Aside from the areas and dungeons, I have two larger, more general complaints with the Zelda side of the game that were present throughout my playthrough.

My first issue is with the controls. I should specify that I played this game through the Wii virtual console with a GameCube controller, so it’s possible that these complaints are due to my control method and not the game itself. One issue is the fact that the N64 buttons are mapped to the GameCube c-stick. Needless to say, trying to replicate button presses by assigning them to an analog stick isn’t ideal, and I constantly had misinputs whenever I was trying to use an item or play the ocarina. What I didn’t know until my last few hours of playing is that they’re also mapped to the x, y, and z buttons. While this helps dramatically with item usage, it’s even more cumbersome to play the ocarina this way imo, the up button is still only mapped to the c-stick (as far as I’m aware at least), and the fact that it isn’t labelled as their respective buttons creates a disconnect between my muscle memory and what my eyes tell me (which isn’t the games fault, obviously, but with using the GameCube controller on the N64 rom).

Another issue is with item management. With the wide array of standard Zelda items as well as a couple dozen masks to sort through, going through your menu will happen more often in this game than it will in most other Zelda games save for Link’s Awakening, or at the very least it feels that way because of how slow it is. I really don’t know why the three transformation masks and the ocarina of time couldn’t have been mapped to the d-pad. All the d-pad does in this game is function identically to the b button when you’re in the bomber’s notebook (weirdly specific, I know). I realize this might be an awkward move for your hand to make considering the d-pad and the analog stick weren’t easily accessible together on the N64 controller, but this method would still be faster than sorting through menus manually and essentially give you 7 item slots for quick access; on top of that, you’ll rarely have to switch between transformation masks or use the ocarina in tense situations, so it’s not like it moving your hand over would put you in a disadvantageous spot in a boss fight or something like that.

My last control issue is that the inputs aren’t very snappy or precise. I’m not sure if this is because there’s some input lag, or if it was a programming limitation on the N64, or if it’s a GameCube controller issue, or something else entirely, but I’ll try to explain what I mean. The two specific actions this is an issue for it is bomb throwing and camera resetting. With bomb throwing, you can’t simply hold forward and immediately throw the bomb like you can in most other Zelda games; trying to do it that fast will just have Link set it down in front of him like a dumbass and blow himself up. He has to have a running start in order to throw it in front of him. This led to me failing the bomb minigames multiple times.

The camera reset is a bit harder to explain. If Link faces directly at the camera and you hit the L button to reset it behind him so that the camera turns completely around, but then immediately hold forward after the camera has finished moving, Link will do a complete 360 and keep walking in the direction he was originally facing. In order for the camera to stay set behind him, you half to wait about a half-second and then hold forward so that it doesn’t spas out. I’m sorry if I’m doing a bad job of explaining exactly what this is like, but it’s similar to Mario’s turnaround controls in Mario 64, where you have to wait a half second for Mario to make a complete stop before turning around, otherwise he’ll turn in a semicircle and fall off of platforms. The point is, I had trouble with the camera in this game, and while it didn’t cause me to take unnecessary damage or lose progress, it led to a lot of waiting if I wanted to simply turn around as well as making locking on to bosses harder than it needed to be, and this is something I had to deal with for the entire game.

My second larger, general complaint is with the puzzles in this game. Puzzle solving in this game can be very cryptic, and very often has at most two but usually one solution to problems; I noticed this most in Snowhead temple, the two skulltula houses, and a few places on the overworld. I’ll try to keep this part brief because I understand that this is an issue that is present in pretty much every Zelda game prior to A Link Between Worlds, but this is the game where it got on my nerves the most, and I wanted to give a few specific examples.

In Snowhead temple, your progress to multiple rooms is blocked with icebergs covering doors that you need to fire arrows to melt. There were some torches next the icebergs in the central room, so I tried shooting an arrow through them in order to melt the icebergs; the game had previously confirmed that using arrows to transport fire from one place to another is something that the game is capable of doing, since you had to figure out how to do that to clear poison from the water in the Woodfall temple. My friend also swore that he had done this exact thing and it worked for him, but we tried it dozens of times from multiple different angles and it never worked. I also tried punching the icebergs with Goron link, because the game had previously confirmed in another room within the same temple that Goron link could punch through ice enemies that would normally freeze you if you touched them, as well as the fact that Goron link could break through snow boulders outside the temple by punching them, but those didn’t work either. I had to get the fire arrows from somewhere else in the temple and then come back and melt them with those because the game only allowed for one specific answer to the puzzle.

Another example is in the skulltula house in woodfall. There’s a room where some skulltulas are hiding inside large pots and another where they’re in a tree that you can’t get on top of. In both cases, in order to reach them, you have to either roll into them with regular link or punch them with Goron Link (who has a janky hitbox that doesn’t always hit in front of him). I was stumped on these, and I tried pretty much everything except for the specific answer the game wanted; the pots couldn’t be broken with swords or bombs or any other attack like the smaller pots could, so I didn’t think hitting them anymore would be a worthwhile idea. The tree couldn’t be burned with fire, even though there are torches in the room and I thought that burning would be a logical solution, especially when fire could burn up your wooden shield back in Ocarina of Time, which has the exact same engine as this game. In neither case does rolling into them as regular link make sense (I don’t understand how a 10 year old boy hitting a pot three times his size would make a spider the size of a dog bounce out from the top, or how doing the same thing would knock them down from a tree), and I actually did try hitting them with Goron link, but neither time did it work at first, partially because of the aforementioned janky hitbox, but with the pot room specifically, you can’t see the skulltulas, so it’s impossible to tell which ones they’re in. You’re supposed to rely on the sound they make to determine where they are, but there are two of them and the pots are so close together that it’s impossible to determine which ones they’re in by sound alone.

I’m explaining my process in so much detail to try and show how this game often requires one specific solution to problems that realistically have multiple, and that it often discouraged experimentation and just made me frustrated. I could give more examples, but I’m hoping that these were enough to prove my point. I realize that this is pretty standard early Zelda stuff, but again, I found it the most egregious here.

I’ve been very negative so far, and perhaps even really nitpicky, but I’m trying to give an accurate description of what my experience playing this game for the first time was like. With that said, I think it’s time to move on to the part of Majora’s Mask that I really liked: the side-questy part.

The other half of this game has to do with the game’s time loop mechanic, the world of Termina itself, and the side quests associated with the games many characters. I actually don’t have a lot to say about them, surprisingly enough, but this part of the game is the real bread and butter, pretty much the only thing anyone ever talks about, and exclusively why everyone loves it so much.

This part of the game is focused exclusively on the narrative, and I think it is an interesting parallel to Ocarina of Time’s narrative. In Ocarina of Time, the focus was on Ganondorf; he was a constant intimidating figure, his influences on the decay of the world was very authentic and impossible to ignore, and the entire story centered around the importance of stopping him. In Majora’s Mask, the focus isn’t on the villain and their effect on the world (I’ll talk more about that later), but rather on the people that already existed in that world and how their lives have been impacted.

In that regard, Majora’s Mask is a massive success. The people that inhabit the land of Termina are about as far from stock characters as you could possibly get. They all have their own schedules that revolve around the time loop, and by reading their dialogue you learn so much about their ambitions and personalities. At first I took the curious shop owner to be some shady creep, but learning that he was actually one of Kafei’s closest friends and helps both of you in Kafei’s quest made me appreciate him as more than some NPC, but as a multi-faceted human being.

And the time loop being used as a way to have jumbles of polygons feel like people with their own lives and agendas is one thing, but it also reinforces the air of hopelessness surrounding this world as well. I start to feel a little funny whenever the last six hours begin to tick down, as I see the moon almost take up the entire sky, with most of clock down deserted and the few who are left either panicking, hopeless, or have accepted their demise. There’s a somberness that comes with the realization that the end of the three days is inevitable, so you reset the cycle with the somewhat vain hope that next time things may be different.

I could go on, but I likely don’t need to say anything that you already believe or have heard countless other people praise, and I don’t want to spoil some of these best moments, because I absolutely agree that this is where Majora’s Mask is at its best. Nothing is as it seems and seeing everything that happens is excellent (I will say my personal favorite quests were the Romani sisters, Kafei and Anju, and perhaps ironically the hand in the toilet).

But here’s where I get a bit less positive again. For as much as I love this part of the game, I think that it isn’t enough to save the game from how much I didn’t like the Zelda part of it. I also think that it could have been so much more than what it already is. I have a few complaints and a couple suggestions for how I think this could have been even better.

One thing that isn’t necessarily a complaint but still something I wanted to point out is that I was surprised by how many lighthearted moments there were in the game. Perhaps this is due to this game’s insurmountable hype, but I had always heard that Majora’s Mask was creepy, scary, unsettling, disturbing, and depressing. While it certainly is all of these things in moments, I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of Dark Souls, Metroid, Hollow Knight, or Hyper Light Drifter, where the atmosphere is absolutely unrelenting in the emotion it’s trying to convey, and for me Majora’s Mask wasn’t that. It is surprisingly colorful, especially for an N64 game, and there are plenty of very silly moments, from the goofy writing, to bonkers characters like Tingle, to the all the energetic and carnival-y music (a lot of which was carried over from Ocarina of Time). I imagine some people really like this diversity (plenty of games have conveyed multiple emotions while still having one central tone after all), but it certainly wasn’t what I thought it would be given what I had heard about this game.

Now I actually do think that the tone is slightly worsened by one thing however: the ocarina of time itself. I said already how I think the time loop is a great gameplay mechanic for telling the stories within Termina, and I especially like how much more use it has compared to Ocarina of Time. However, I can’t help but feel like the ability to freely control time at will takes away from the tone of the game and the stories of the characters. These stories are undeniably complex and emotional af, but by being able to reset the cycle at will as many times as I damn well want, I think it takes away from it. Link is practically a god in terms of what he’s capable of doing. There’s absolutely no limit or consequence to his power, and the more I realized that, the more the gravity of the situation lessened. The inevitability of this world’s destruction and the deaths of its inhabitants began to feel less and less inevitable as I realized I have an infinite amount of time to get everything just right. Perhaps with this realization also comes the realization that in this current loop there can also never be a happy ending, but for me I found my unlimited power came at the cost of me being a bit less invested in what happens to this place and feeling like there was a lot less tension (which I think that keyword tension is really important for both the story and vibe of the game). It also doesn’t help that character quests are completely reset when the cycle is reset, which makes sense of course, but also takes away from their impact, at least for me.

One big missed opportunity that I did notice (which I think contributes to both the lackluster stories within the four major areas as well as my issue with how Link’s unlimited use of the ocarina diminishes the impact of the stories in clock town) is how much Skull Kid’s significance is weakened as the game goes on. Once you get the Ocarina of Time from him in the first cycle, you don’t see him again until the very end of the game. You get one cutscene showing how he became friends with Tatl and Tael, but aside from that he has absolutely no presence in the main story. This is so baffling to me, because the characters in all of the major areas refer to Skull Kid as being the one to cause all the terrible things that are happening, and I’m wondering how that’s even possible and why we never see it. The time between when Link meets Skull Kid in the opening cutscene and when he arrives in Termina is like 10 minutes tops, and we play through our first three days arriving here over and over again. Given how detailed the conflicts in these major areas are and how little time there was for Skull Kid to set them all up, I have doubts that he actually could have been that fast. Sure, it’s possible that Skull Kid set all this up before we even showed up, but there’s also no indication that that is the case from what I recall.

What if we had seen Skull Kid actually wreaking havoc on these places? This alone could accomplish so many things within the story. 1. It would make Link’s drive to defeat Skull Kid much stronger, because he would have a constant presence AND he would always be one step ahead of us. Despite the fact that we can reset time as much as we want, we’re still not fast enough to stop Skull Kid before he wrecks everything (that alone I think would resolve my problem of Link being too powerful). 2. It would make the struggles of these places directly link (hehe) with our own. The stories in the four main areas aren’t nearly as interesting or fleshed out as the stories of the people of clock town are, and I really didn’t care about them to the same extent that I cared about clock town’s residents. If we saw Skull Kid cause the conflicts of the four major areas, we would have a constant threat as the source of everything, and it would help all the stories come together, not to mention make them more interesting 3. It would make the atmosphere of Termina even richer. If we were able to see these places, if even only for a brief second, right before Skull Kid destroyed them, we would have a reference point to know how joyful these places were before Skull Kid arrived, and we would have to live with the knowledge that these places will never be as happy, peaceful, or hopeful as they once were until we stop Skull Kid.

Wow, that’s a lot of thoughts. That’s all of my major points about the game. I’m sorry if this seemed overly negative, but considering how much this game is spoken about in a positive light, I felt that my criticisms were more relevant. I want to clarify that I don’t hate this game at all, I just feel like I have very little to add about what this game does well, and I mainly wanted to express why I think this game is overrated and wonder if anyone else shares my opinions or finds my thoughts interesting, or if I’m completely soulless and suck at video games and that’s why I don’t see Majora’s Mask as the masterpiece everyone else does. I should also clarify that it’s very common for otherwise great games to have notable flaws. Pokémon Platinum, Kingdom Hearts II and Breath of the Wild are my three favorite games of all time, and all of them have multiple noteworthy flaws and I would understand if those flaws ruined the games for some people.

I think that, much like Mother 3 and Superstar Saga, this is a game I will enjoy substantially more on a second playthrough. I definitely will play the 3DS version should I ever play this game again. But something I would really like to see is Bluepoint games remake Majora’s Mask. I realize that Nintendo is never going to outsource any of their properties ever again, but I would love to see what that would look like since Majora’s Mask is pretty much the only Zelda game that doesn’t have a definitive version to play.

Anyway, if you actually read all of this, thank you, and also please let me know if anything I said made sense or if you want to comment on any specific part.

I think the most impressive thing about Ace Attorney is its ability to combine character design, limited animation, and writing to instantly establish the personalities of its characters. All it takes is one glance and reading one line of dialogue to instantly know who they are and to create a voice in your head for what these people sound like.

It's doubly impressive considering that this was originally a GBA game from 2001 that wasn't localized for four years! And on top of that, the localization is superb! This is one of the funniest games I have ever played; from the dialects of these absurd characters, to Phoenix's interactions with the main cast, to the subtle references to pop culture, to the not-so-subtle yet hilarious puns in all of their names that make you begrudgingly chuckle, this game is a comedy gold-mine.

The one thing that I think makes this work most of all is Phoenix himself. The aforementioned writing and limited animation do a great job in establishing his sarcastic personality, his sense of justice, the moments when he gets way in over his head during court, and the interactions that make him feel like the only normal person in this wide cast of characters. But above all, we get to hear Phoenix's internal thoughts. He has some remark or inquiry about everything, whether that be the bonkers things that come out of witness' mouths, or the important details in cases that turn the tide in his favor. Getting to hear exactly what he thinks is brilliant; it establishes his personality, makes us feel more intimate with him as the playable character, and prevents him from coming off like a jackass or an idiot by saying everything he thinks out loud like many characters in Japanese media do. Great stuff.

And what you get in the end is a fantastic visual novel with great puzzles, writing, characters, humor, stories, and especially fantastic music. I didn't talk about it at all because my words simply can't do it justice.

I highly recommend 8-bit Music Theory's and New Frame Plus' videos about Ace Attorney, as they do a great job at taking a deep dive into how exactly the music and animation (respectively) in this series works so well.

This should not work.

This game absolutely should not work.

The amount of questionable design decisions stuffed into this one game is very worrying on paper. 1. You have a finite amount of ammunition in the game, meaning you can softlock yourself if you don't have enough to take down mandatory bosses.

2. Narrow hallways can have as many as four enemies at a time that can potentially all come back hours after you've killed them off, stronger and faster than before.

3. You have a whopping SIX item slots (yes I played Chris) to carry guns, ammo, healing drugs, keys, and whatever other items you need to progress, and because of that,

4. there is a shit ton of backtracking.

5. You have a finite amount of saves throughout the entire game. If you fuck up and save too often too early you can completely screw yourself (it's this exact thing that's part of the reason I can't stand Ori and the Blind Forrest).

And despite all of this (or perhaps in light of all of this), it is beyond brilliant.

I don't think I've ever experienced anything that so genuinely makes me feel dread. It's a horror game, but aside from a few jump scares it's not even scary. But it is undeniably so fucking stressful, and I love it. All of these things that sound terrible on paper put you so on edge, and the sound design and cinematography doubly so. The gameplay is literally just a point and click game: get things to use on other things, but it works perfectly in this horror theme. I cannot possibly praise this game enough, I had no idea I would love it this much. There's nothing I can even say to do it justice.

It's been over a week since I finished this game. I have a lot of thoughts, most of them negative, and I didn't really know how to put them all together coherently. So instead I'm using a format that I've always disliked: a list of positives and negatives. TLDR this game is super cancellable, Persona 5 does 95% of what this game does substantially better, and with how much I disliked the majority of this I'm scared to play Persona 3 and might just watch the movies instead.


Positives
I love Kanji; easily one of my favorite characters in a video game that I've seen in years
I didn't like Dojima and Nanako at first, but they both really came around for me
I like the Investigation team collectively, and I think they're a more consistent group of friends than the Phantom Thieves are
Naoto in particular is a well handled character; she's the most important party member to the plot and has several interactions with the main cast long before joining the investigation team, so she doesn't feel like a shallow final party member

The style is pretty good. The TV aesthetic and the yellow color scheme, the menus, the use of horizontal & vertical lines and the use of depth of field lines (idk how to describe this sorry).

The core Persona gameplay loop is just as solid and addicting as Persona 5. The "just one more" mentality is strong with this one.

Even though I'm not a fan of the ost as a whole, there are some undeniable bangers, (Pursuing My True Self, Signs of Love, Specialist, Heaven, Backside of the TV, I'll Face Myself, and Heartbeat, Heartbreak)

Goddamn, do Persona games know how to make incredibly emotional endings



Negatives,
P4 handles a lot of things very sloppily
- None of the side characters are introduced in the plot, making it cumbersome and unintuitive to unlock the majority of the social links
- Both dungeons and social links with party members are locked behind dialogue with NPCs, which is one of the worst parts about the game and is both confusing and pace-breaking
- There are so few things to do in the social sim half of the game that at night and especially when it rains, pretty much the only worthwhile thing you can do is power-level your social stats by shoving meat and rice bowls down your throat
- The randomly generated dungeons and lack of complexity in the battle system make the rpg half of the game uninteresting and only fun by making it as easy possible and steamrolling everything
- The game doesn't really care about the plot until the sixth dungeon, leading to a long time where it feels like there's no momentum in the story
- The villain is a lame twist villain who doesn't give off even the most remote inkling that they're evil until the reveal and then their personality completely changes, and they straight up tell the main characters that they have no motivation for all the murders they commit.
- Some social links seem to retcon themselves by the end in a way that doesn't fully realize the theme of facing yourself, and many characters suffer from a difference in how the game portrays them at the end of their social link and how they interact in the main story/special events.


But there are three enormous problems that made me not enjoy my time with this

The homophobic and perverted tone and "comedy"
- Yes, this game comes out of 2000s Japan and is filled with cringey, dated anime tropes that come at the expense of women and the LGBTQ+ community. Every character, even the gay one, act like talking about sexuality is some unforgivable taboo. It's blatantly and unapologetically homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, and misogynistic. That being said, the culture around homosexuality and gender roles in Japan is very different than it is in the west, so there’s definitely commentary and intention that gets lost in translation, and it’s possible that this direction was intentional in a way that makes more sense and/or tells a more important message in Japanese culture. However, I still think the portrayal in this game is ultimately antagonistic and needs to be called out, especially since Persona 5 isn't like this and it's good that the series seems to be moving away from it (although I would love to hear a different take on this topic from someone more knowledgable about it than me).
- There's also a section of the game where the high school that the protagonists attend put on a beauty pageant, cross-dressing contest, and a swim-suit competition where the participants (both students and a teacher) are judged by the collective student body. It's so distasteful and this tone persistent throughout the game.

A cast of extremely unlikable and shallow characters
- Yosuke, despite being one of the more complex characters, is one of the main catalysts of this game's ridiculously perverted and homophobic tone; Chie is more childish and obnoxious than Nanako, a literal six year old; Yukiko and Rise are very archetypal and often fail to offer more than a couple running gags as character quirks; Naoto is well written into the story but is just kinda there as far as personality goes, so she ends up feeling inoffensive at best but still ends up as a victim of the game's transphobia and the game hardly does an appropriate job of respectfully addressing her queerness.
- Now for the most part, these characters are tolerable because their worst character traits are not at the forefront at all times. If there's one thing that the game does right, it's making the Investigation team a believable and healthy group of friends, and I found the team enjoyable as an entity that was more than the sum of its parts.
- None of this applies to Teddie, who is an abomination to humanity. In a game filled with one dimensional characters, Teddie takes the cake for being easily the most despicable and least empathetic.
- Kanji is also an exception, but for the opposite reason. Kanji is miraculously an incredibly layered and likable character both in his social link and in the main plot, the only character aside from Dojima who has complex and well developed character growth in their social link, and ultimately feels like he was written for a completely different game and shoved into Persona 4. The contrast between the quality of the writing for Kanji and everyone else is insane.

An exceptionally mishandled theme that tells a straight up bad message
- Conceptually, the idea that everyone has a dark side that they don't show and that they don't acknowledge to themselves, but that undeniably exists and needs to be faced in order to grow as a person is a great theme. Many great works of art tackle this subject, and video games are no stranger to darker versions of ourselves. Celeste is a masterpiece in part because it handles this theme so well.
- Persona 4's take on this theme is handled poorly and I would argue is an unhealthy message. I have two main reasons for this argument. First, we don't know these characters for long enough to make the shadows seem believable; in fact, they seem completely out of character for nearly all of them. Secondly, the game has absolutely zero subtlety when portraying these shadows. They’re portrayed as being the hypothetical worst version of each character. It's not just out of character, it's comical how they portray these characters' "evil sides."
- The ultimate message with the party members accepting their shadows is that we should accept that these comical portrayals of our worst personality traits and inner thoughts manifested are our "true selves," and that's a bad message; it allows no room for inherent goodness in people and says that we shouldn't believe anyone has any. It's also a bad way for these characters to think about self-image and self-actualization.
- This problem is at its worst with Kanji’s shadow. Again, I’m not knowledgable about how this portrayal would be perceived in Japanese culture at the time of its initial release or now, and by extension I can’t begin to guess precisely what the intention was, but Kanji’s shadow is just the manifestation of his queerness, and putting that on the same pedestal as the portrayals of Yosuke, Chie, and Namatame’s shadow isn’t good. This is a really big point. Personally I'm straight and cisgender, and again have no insight into Japanese cultural understanding of LGBTQ related topics, so if anyone reading this identifies as LGBTQ and interprets this differently please let me know, I'd love to hear another take on this if someone has one.
- But to top all this off, the game retcons itself with Namatame's shadow by saying that the shadows we see are just what our subconscious mind wants to see in these people. All of a sudden it completely shifts how we read into the shadows, the game's approach to writing them, and the presuppositions behind the cast.

Guys...

Something's wrong...

I didn't see any pizzas in this

Disappointingly mediocre in almost every category. The stories of each character are satisfactory at best; the story overall is non-existent. There is zero canonical character interactions within chapters, with the game even flat-out saying multiple times that characters are alone when that literally isn't true because you have seven other characters with you at all times. It's extremely repetitive in structure across all chapters. The battle system is reliant on type weaknesses to the point of being a cakewalk if you have an enemy's weakness on your team and an eternity if you don't. At the same time it's also very grindy, especially in the beginning.

Pretty much the only thing it has going for it is the visuals, which I would be cracked if I tried to suggest that they were anything less than incredible. This is the only game on the Switch that does the depth of field effect well, and I will stand by that. And the sprite-work, especially on bosses, is amazing. But I'm gonna complain about the visuals anyway. Would it be too much to ask for these sprites to have more than like four frames of animation? This game commits so much to having an aesthetic almost identical to older Final Fantasies to the point that these incredibly detailed sprites will stand there like statues and flash when they attack, and your party members have a handful of vague action sprites and that's it. This is where the effects animation on spells picks up most of the slack, and it was what I found to be the most impressive. But aside from that, there is hardly any movement at all, and I find myself really upset by that.

I will say, this is a fun RPG to play optimally. Once you finally have an ideal party setup and can pretty much do everything with all of the jobs at once, it's really fun to take on the superbosses. But that's also a compliment I can give to basically any other really good RPG, most of which don't require getting close to the end before the battle system becomes engaging.

Oh well. I'm glad I finally played it at least.

I don't know how to go about writing my thoughts on the most critically acclaimed game on Backloggd. How daunting of a task is that?! Especially when, to put it politely, I hold a dissenting opinion. And maybe the only one ever about this game. So, instead of trying, I'm going to copy and paste all the notes I frantically jotted down when I finally finished it at 1:30 in the morning, a play session that was bookended by work the night before and work the following morning. Feel free to read, critique, or ignore at your leisure.


So much irrelevancy to the case
Very frustrating for me in particular. I am not a Skyrim gamer. I do not appreciate when side quests take so much spotlight away from the main quest.
I want to solve this murder. Anything that isn't directly related to that is worthless to me (outside of getting xp). Why should I bother painting walls, looking for imaginary bugs, starting a night club, exploring cursed buildings, attempting to persuade a cargo container to open, or any number of other quests that I never did?
Even the history and world building of Revachol often distracts from the case, although these often provide motivations for key characters and establish the tone of the world, so I'm more forgiving of it. Even if I skim through the details and forget them immediately afterwards.


The ending is amazing
I appreciate how many quests are neatly brought together and wrapped up in the end. It still does not justify the time spent on the quests since they are optional, regardless of how seamlessly they bolster the ending
That said, I love the phasmid


Very respectable above all else
A game that dares to talk about serious subject matter (politics, long-term consequences of our actions/allegiances, corruption, racism, rape victims)
A game that doesn't need to "game-ify" itself with marketable clichés, and is confident in its own identity
A game thats gameplay is reading , yet still embraces interactivity and its inspiration in table-top mechanics to make it something only possible in this medium
Is it the best example of something like this in the medium? No. But it's the exact kind of game that we need more of


The voice acting is stellar, especially the narrator, even if the deliveries often lack a natural-feeling speaking pace.
And also thank god for it, I could not imagine playing through all of this without voice acting


Concept of allegiances is a little half-baked in my opinion. Like, sure narratively maybe my political allegiances say something about me as a player or about my character or some larger thing about my political allegiance itself or the corruption of police, whatever. But at the end of the day, my sole objective is to solve a murder. With a game with this many branching dialogue options, what information I choose to disclose or not disclose to other characters is important, and as this game often shows, people are easily manipulated. Saying the right thing in the right way to the right people gets me to my objective faster. My perception is that my precinct thinks I'm a joke anyway, how much influence over their reputation could my actions possibly have? I guess I think that what politics I choose to "side with" doesn't actually have as much impact as the game thinks it does. What if I just want to role play as a cop who lies? Do the means justify the ends? Does that make me corrupt? Who cares about what a drunk, disgraced cop does anyway? I have no significance here. So long as I can do my job, nothing else matters


I think the game is undeniably pretentious. Maybe its the point? Being an amnesiac protagonist is so overdone, and the ending kinda deus ex machinas some bullshit excuses about why I have the potential to be a complete god at everything despite what an ugly, pathetic, sack of shit I am. The whole limbic system, reptile brain, shenanigans of spouting hopeless cynicism about life circumstances I have no idea about is very pretentious. Please stop attempting to overstimulate and impress me with overly detailed writing and your enormous dictionary and preaching to me the relatively shallow, cynical, and nihilistic perspective on life and the world (the expression, my mysterious ex-lover, all my internal systems, etc.)


Easily save-scummable, disappointingly so. I wish the game would incentivize living with your failed checks in a better way


Game lies to you. Don't know if I like that. I like how it encouraged you to take agency over you interactions with the game and not just exhaustively explore every possible game interaction. It's good for storytelling as well as thought-provoking gameplay decisions. On the other hand, it's stupid. The game constantly encourages you to do things that are in your least interest, and can sometimes feel like a cheap trick or slap on the wrist for not knowing better. Maybe it's even a little demeaning.


The writing is great. No denying that. Very detailed, communicates multiple perspectives well (thoughts/characters). Dialogue is always believable given what we know about the people. The characters are all surprisingly memorable and distinct, despite the large cast.
All that said, a work cannot be saved on writing alone. The pacing is often awful. Every time we meet a new character or find a new area, we have to spend half an hour learning everything they have to say/it has to see. It exponentially worsens the game when you factor for how irrelevant many quests are
Maybe just my playstyle? don't care. Also it's kind of the entire game, and in your best interest to do so, so no, not just my playstyle. I can't justify "oh just don't talk to/click on everything/one." Not engaging with a game is not justification for it doing something poorly


No humor. A little light-heartedness goes a long way to investing me in these people and the world they inhabit that make the tragic moments hit harder

I love Kim (and Titus)
I wish you talked with Kim on the balcony and reflected every night


Characters dying has little impact. Mechanically the only difference is that you can no longer talk with characters, but I feel like that doesn't matter, as many characters I have little interaction with anyway. I found it more impactful when Lisa and Morrell left after failing to discover the phasmid. They felt more "gone" that the characters who died


I believe most of my criticisms are criticisms about the game at its core, which is an unusual perspective for me. Ordinarily my criticism of a game (at least one I ultimately enjoy, if only partially), comes from how the game ultimately feels misguided or strays in some way (Chrono Trigger, Nier: Replicant, Zelda: MM & WW, Donkey Kong Country, Persona 5, Mother 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Owlboy). Otherwise I just hate it/feel indifferent about it.


My appreciation for this will definitely grow, and I may be persuaded to love it more


I feel like Ace Attorney challenged my understanding of the case and was a more effective "detective" game than this. I mostly went with the flow here
The game doesn't really give you suspects. You don't find out who the culprit is until you meet him for the first time. This isn't a detective game about narrowing down a list of suspects. It's a detective game about getting as much information as possible from everyone, and they all seem detached from the act itself. Even the Hardie boys who straight up confess to it. This isn't necessarily a criticism, but something I thought about a few days after playing.

Over the last few months, I have watched my roommate play through Nier: Automata, and playing it vicariously through him has cemented my views on this game as not only one of the best video games ever made, but also as one of the most important games ever made.

There's a lot of reasons for this and I think the first thing to address is this game's thematic identity. I think more so than maybe any other game, the themes carry Nier: Automata over any other element of the story. That isn't to say that the plot, characters, or setting are lacking, just that its themes are not only so vast and complex, but also so well realized and constantly present throughout the game that they take center stage. The human condition, nihilism, the value of life, theodicy, honoring others, hope, fate and defiance, the cycle of hatred, empathy and otherness, consciousness and evolution, and repetition. These themes (and likely many others that I don't remember off the top of my head) are so crucial to who we are as people, and handled in a believable way in the context of the story and in the context of the medium of video games, that I continue to think about them years after playing it myself and even more so on this fresh playthrough. I think that a lot of modern JRPGs can be too big for their britches with the subject matter that they try and tackle, and as a result don't end up landing as much as I think they want to (imo Xenoblade Chronicles is a good example of this, not to mention Persona 5's shitty ending); some also are very implicit and subtle, which can be very rewarding but also can struggle to make a bold first impression (Souls games, for example). Nier: Automata doesn't fall into either of these categories, and I think it's ability to stratal that line is not only commendable, but brilliant.

What I especially appreciate is how it also manages to be ambiguous with its themes and its ending. Every route in this game has a very different tone and very different implications compared to other routes. Most of it is a very depressing game, but at the same time its ultimate ending is inherently hopeful. It balances both of those philosophies, but challenges the player to discern for themselves which side they will pick. We see that in whether you choose route C or D first, we see that in the text options that are given to you at the end of route E, and we see that in the final dialogue between the pods where they acknowledge that it's entirely possible that their choices might lead to the exact same outcome, continuing the theme of repetition that the game has maintained since you hit start. However, the possibility also exists that something else may happen, and that's where the game ends. Such an open-ended, philosophical question feels earned because of how it doesn't preach any philosophy as correct throughout the entire game.

Beyond its themes, Nier: Automata is important for how it challenges conventions of the medium. Narratively, this wouldn't work as anything other than a video game, but beyond that it completely challenges concepts of diegetic elements in games, sound design and dynamic mixing, genre combinations, playing online, UI, meta elements, being a sequel, real-world references, and especially new game+. I don't think I really need to elaborate on this. I feel like the industry has been at a point in the last several years where innovation consists of pushing hardware or reinventing games that have existed for over a decade, but this game at least in part attempts to redefine how games are made, and I think it's much more successful.

Visually, the game is stunning, and I really didn't appreciate it until this playthrough. I love the visual effect with the lighting engine when the game gets darker; light seems to reflect off of every speck of dust in the air while making the player character and enemies into silhouettes. The game definitely struggles to render buildings in the city ruins, but most environments look stunning (abandoned factory, amusement park, copied city, resource recovery units, the bunker). I'm extra impressed by the diversity in attack animations with all the different weapon combinations you can have. The 3D anime style looks super good and doesn't look like its trying hard to replicate a 2D art style in 3D.

And if there's one highlight above everything else, it's this soundtrack.

Holy

Shit

Keiiche Okabe is such a fucking mastermind. I can't do his work justice with words, but if you've played it you know what I'm talking about. My second favorite soundtrack. Ever.

So the obvious question with all this praise is: why only 4.5 stars?

I have two critiques with this game that I think do limit this game to some degree, and both of them have to do with the gameplay. The first is that there is absolutely no concept of difficulty balancing here. The beginning of route C was such a humungous difficulty spike for me on my first playthrough that I almost dropped the game; side quests are basically mandatory for getting enough experience in routes A and B to make it through to the second half, and while the side quests are great, it almost seems like the game forces you to do them to be at a competent level, which I can't stand by. At the same time, you can turn the game to easy mode and have the game GRIND FOR YOU! When I first played the game I did this after getting into route C for real, and left the game running for like an hour while I did other stuff, and came back and was level 99. And that's how I beat the game. Why is this something you can do?! It's funny, and kinda cool, but there is no semblance of challenge whatsoever after route A.

The second critique is that the combat system itself is not great. I know that this is a really common complaint, and I used to not care as much. I really like the hack 'n' slash X bullet hell gameplay enough to not mind the lack of depth, not to mention that, again, the animations in combat is astounding. But in the second half of the game, especially when you become really proficient with hacking enemies as 9S, it really sinks in how most fights play out the same. It's not NEARLY as broken and braindead as Nier: Replicant, but it starts to feel really trivial (ironic, or maybe intentional). It also doesn't help how there are only a handful of different types of hacking games to play as 9S.

I think what suffers most are the boss fights. There aren't a lot of them (especially after route A), a lot of them are against big spherical robots, and as a result of all this a lot of them are very unmemorable. The fight against 21O I legit forgot even happened, and watching my roommate play it, he tore through the whole thing in like 30 seconds and it kinda made sense why I forgot after watching that.

However I will grant the game this: I think the gameplay being kinda lame makes it more approachable to a casual audience, and for a game like this, I would want it to be as accessible as possible. I wish a better balance could be struck, but I think there is merit to that fact.

I think these two things are significant enough to where I can look at them and believe in good conscious that the game could have been a lot better if these issues had been addressed.

But despite these two things, this is still one of my favorite games ever, one of the best games ever, and one of the most important games ever. Reexperiencing this has been incredible, especially watching another person who I care deeply about experiencing it for the first time.

I really hope we haven't seen the last of D-Pad Studio, because this game has some of the best sprite work and pixel animation I have ever seen. Maybe THE best. Every single frame of this game is complete eye candy, and it never stops being impressive; it was a decade long-project well spent, and if this is their most notable work, the future looks incredibly bright for them.

It's just a shame that the game itself is mediocre at best. I don't even think I know exactly what genre this game is. Sometimes it's a platformer, sometimes it's a zelda-like, sometimes it's metroidvania-esque, sometimes it's a stealth game, sometimes it's a puzzle game, sometimes it's a bullet-hell. If I had to describe it succinctly, you basically go from one linear "dungeon" to the next, each with its own gimmick, and explore a very open and empty overworld in-between them, all without a map.

Its ideas are so scattershot and unfocused, and none of them are executed well. I don't think I had fun with any part of this game, I was mainly just frustrated at how many half-baked ideas it has as well as the subpar controls.

And this is a game that I really wish I liked more than I did. It's very Mystery Dungeon-esque in its charm and writing, and it has a great score. And I feel bad that a passion project that took this long to make didn't end up being a game I enjoyed very much.

But despite how obnoxiously unfocused it is, its highs peak so high that I can easily recommend this game. I'm a solid fan of this studio now, and I'm glad this game ended up being so successful. I hope that you support this game as well, and that you enjoy it more than I did.

I was interested in this game for a couple reasons

1. I find that fugly 3D-DS model aesthetic nostalgically charming
2. Good word of mouth
3. Short games aren't really my thing and I wanted to expand my horizons a little bit.

Sure enough, I beat the whole thing in the span of no more than 2 hours, and I did a lot. It's a simple, cute, enjoyable adventure about exploring this island, playing a bunch of minigames, talking to some funny animal crossing-esque characters, and finally making it up to the top and seeing that gorgeous view. My squirrel brain was satisfied by always having something interesting to explore but never being led too far from the main objective that I felt overwhelmed or like I wasn't making progress. It was two hours well spent.