It's incredible how little effort V puts into getting you invested in it. The game chucks some anime characters in your face and promptly plops you into sand world assuming you'll care. This opening feels like someone played the first hour of Nocturne and assumed it boiled down to executing character introductions followed by an apocalypse as fast as possible, but they missed the part where Nocturne sew's the seeds of all it's game-long plot threads as well as both micro and macro goals within that time frame, which is why it works so well at getting you invested. IV's opening lacks Nocturne's tight pacing and density of context, but it eventually manages to get you invested in the world itself which I still found valuable and engaging. V's world does not establish any sense of intrigue or mystery. The nature of the world is nonchalantly revealed later and does not even try to ilicit any kind of suprise or excitement. More importantly, the game lacks a strong sense of place, and this is highlighted by the fact that all facilities are located within the glowing save point nodes, meaning that the shop, cathedral of shadows, save point, and heal station have no place in the world, they're just menu's. What you get from the world instead is standard triple-A trinket bloating; superflous pick-ups to fuel the numerous progression systems and sidequests spread throughout maps that are large and time consuming to traverse with otherwise little substance. Pick a branching path on the map, spend a minute running down the path, pick up your item, then turn around and piss off backwards. This is not a world. This is a list of chores spread across geometry made up of context sensitive jump blocks, invisible walls, and a constant bombardment of a singular aesthetic and asset stock that wears out it's welcome and draws attention to it's artificiality before it gets out of tutorial mode.

The combat related mechanics this time are a mixed bag because I recognize the attempts at trying to make a more balanced system. For example, status effects work on bosses and initial -kaja/-kunda skills are single target now, which seem to me to be a way to incentivise less homogeneous playstyles, however the game forces too many contrived restrictions for this ideology to come to fruition. The skill potential system railroads you into using specific skills for specific demons which is antithetical to the concept of skill tranferring through fusion and just artificially limits demons unless you really want to use a skill at a higher MP cost and weaker effect (you don't). The protagonist is also limited compared to Nocturne and IV. This time you learn skills from single-use demon essences; one of the new trinkets. Each essence is associated with a demon which holds a certain number of skills that demon would normally have. Ultimately, this means that your characters potential is based around stuff that you pick up, which sounds somewhat like Nocturne's magatama system, but each magatama came with stat and affinity changes, as well as several skills learned through leveling, making them indefinitely valuable and gives you plenty of room to shape your character. Their high value and scarcity made them that much more rewarding to find. Personally, I love IV's demon whisper system where your demons will share their skills with you. I feel that this is a much more holistic way to go about the process of protag skills since it ties in so neatly with the core mechanics of recruiting and fusing. By comparison, V's essence system is just shallow and only exists so they have another trinket type to generously litter on the map or hand out for completing a side quest. The new magatsuhi gauge/skills seemed to be a way to force crit abuse but without making it kind of suck like IV's Smirk system. Unfortunately, because the magatsuhi gauge fills automatically turn by turn, this railroads you into a specific playstyle for bosses where stalling and then blowing your load with magatsuhi crit skill in order to get the most bang for your buck becomes the dominant strategy early on since MP is still tight in this game. I'm assuming this is intentional because they have also added guarding which compliments the strategy. These two changes just end up making the game feel slow and contrived. Other magatsuhi skills exist as well, but regardless the stalling apsect remains, and if you actually need a magatsuhi skill that isn't Crit Spam then that means you're still being railroaded into a specific playstyle.

Despite all this, I really wanted to love the game, so I kept going. This was until I reached the point that broke me and in order to fully convey my dissapointment we're going to be diving into somewhat early spoiler territory. I haven't marked this review as having spoilers because I don't recommend it anyway but there's your warning lol

So I beat this boss and find the classmate that we're supposed to be looking for and wonder wide-eyed what's going to happen next. Minutes later we're out of the blue sentai suit and walking around school in straight-up social sim mode. You walk around and talk to classmates that have no facial features as they not-so-subtly comment on the current state of society. Totally just Hanging Out and Vibing to that school bgm y'know. You listen to the woe's of your schools most popular girl on the rooftop and then her friend that's getting bullied ends up summoning a demon out of anger while her eyes glow and she enacts revenge.
Did I mention that the classmate you save is a dorky underdog kind of a loser with blonde spiky hair? The paralells are obvious, forced, and frankly, just sad. When this game was shown at E3, my friend made an off-hand comment about how they might add Persona 5-esque flavouring to the game as a result of that tiles popularity and oh how I laughed it off! Even isolated from the comparison to Persona specifically, I was dissapointed that IV was more "anime" than Nocturne and this game just cranks that dial up to 11. It becomes impossible to even try to take anything about the game's tone or themes seriously when you're surrounded by these shonen stereotype glasses-push-lookin-asses, genki loli hands-on-hips-pouty pixies, uwu Protec-Onee-Chans, straight-faced fan service pandering, and pretty much whatever else you can think of that fits the brand.

Still desperate to want to like the game, I gave it one last push. Your mission now becomes to save this girl from the demon she summoned by traversing a "dungeon". By which I mean a straight line with set enemy encounters in it that superficially resembles a dungeon since anything with more substance than that simply wouldn't be palatable for modern audiences, presumably. The demon runs off with the girl to sand world and you follow. At this point I'd really had enough of sand world and when my navi suggested I should use the save point that was placed literally right in front of me 15 hours into the game I decided I should probably just stop.
I had already accepted that we weren't going to be getting another Nocturne and wanted to love V for what it is but this was too much to bear. I pray the poor creature that cops this off me on Ebay reaches salvation.

I'm sitting here giggling — partially out of shock — as I press the Up and Down keys to manipulate objects in Tarotica Voo Doo, slowly realising this is the most tangible fictional world I've had the pleasure of engaging with. The trick is deceptively simple: create animations made of mostly just key frames, then make the player hold Up to progress them. If they stop holding, the animation stops. If they press Down, the animation goes backwards. The finishing touch is making the animations in question correlate nicely with the Up and Down input, generally conveying a Pushing/Pulling kind of feeling. The result is a game where you directly feel every frame of your actions, and in hindsight, it's jarring to recognize how unorthodox this is considering just how much inherent enjoyment Tarotica manages to squeeze from this simple one-to-one sensation.

God I wish salamanders were real.

Of all the changes to Mario's moveset, those regarding the long jump are perhaps the most immediately striking. It's utility has been altered to the point of seeming like an explicit downgrade compared to it's predecessors, sporting much shorter distance and lowered height. So low in fact that you may notice it's altitude throughout the duration is conspicuously aligned with the top of standard sized enemies, allowing for cathartically consistent 3D head bouncing. This is a very welcome addition in isolation but the real kicker is the way you can carry momentum from the long jump after the bounce. This was present in 64 and the Galaxy games as well but there was scarcely any reason to do so. Aside from the awkward high altituide, the long jump was just extremely powerful by itself and the level design didn't really incentivise it. The straight ahead, linear level design of 3D Land has allowed the designers to place enemies in such spaces that abusing them with the long jump allows you to skip past certain sections or just generally enjoy a much faster paced experience. This delightful action feels much like a classic 2D Mario maneuver although I'd say at their best, the multifaceted nature of the 3D environments allow this particular aspect to shine much more than the limited 2D planes did. Additionally, the Tanooki suit's flutter can also carry the long jump's momentum, letting you smugly ignore certain massive chunks of meticulously designed level geometry in a manner reminiscent of it's original SMB3 incarnation.

I believe this fundamental change to the way the long jump works is just one of many in favour of truly holistic game design. The long jump's original value to cross vast spans of distance still exists, it's just now dependant on other game factors. The enemies and power ups have been made quite valuable as a result, something 3D Mario had been struggling to accomplish-if not outright ignoring- for 15 years.

Perhaps the most apparent addition to Mario's new 3D control scheme is the dash which functions much like it did in Super Mario World as opposed to a more analogue momentum focused system. There is a short period where Mario goes into an initial dash state and will then transition into a distinct full speed state. What differentiates 3D Land's dash from World's is that the extra dimension allows this full speed state to be maintained as long as you have some flat ground as opposed to being forced out of it whenever you need to press left. Much like the long jump example, maintaining said speed for as long as possible across this Willy Wonka's Platform Factory of gimmicks is a pleasure that is most delightfully & texturally reminiscent of a momentum focused side scrolling Mario. That delicious taste of self authored risk that one can ebb and flow between to differing degrees depending on the context of the situation is just the right kind of dynamic and intrinsic magic that made the original so great.

The real genius of the dash's implementation, however, is how it solves the general movement problems of past 3D Mario's. In the Galaxy games, the lack of momentum helps in aiding precision but isn't as intrinsically enjoyable as 64's mobility. The problem with 64's movement is that when the game asks you to be precise, the slippery controls end up feeling like a hinderance. In 3D Land, you are defaulted to a precise and rigid movement system à la Galaxy and may opt in to a more slippery, risky, and enjoyable movement style whenever you please. This allows the level designers to create situations that are made with precision in mind but still let you to approach them with caution thrown to wind if you so wish. 3D Land takes the concept of World's dash, manages to conjure an appeal similar to it's momentum focused ancestors with it as a result of it's context and solves the issues with general movement from past 3D games all in one fell swoop.

When I concieved my hypothosis about 3D Land's holistic design goals, I believed I'd caught the game slip with it's big/small Mario system which seemed haphazardly thrown in for tradition's sake. I was pleasantly surprised to realise that the concept of breaking blocks from underneath has simply been replaced by rolling into discreet ground level blocks holding secrets in walls instead. This isn't as nuanced or dynamic as the more generally applicable blocks of old but handing out more concrete rewards for not getting hit is a decent compromise, especially considering the comparatively low difficulty.

From the innate joy of maintaining speed, jumping on enemies for big air and creating a wholly holistic dish
of mechanics, 3D Land is much more than just "3D Mario but now there's a goal pole at the end". This is a meticulous, virtuosically contructed true translation of Super Mario's very soul.

In the Iwata Asks: 3D land interview, director Hayashida commented that he wanted the game to be like a hamburger. Something you could "just gobble down".
Gobble it down I did, but I'd argue that the game is actually much more like homemade soup.
It's familiar in all the right ways. All the aspects that you remember being good are just as good as they always were.
It's comfortingly simple and easy to to digest, but you can taste the nuance and love underneath.
Yeah, maybe it could use a couple fewer dashes of auto/quasi-auto scrollers.
Yeah, maybe you aren't quite sure why those slices of side jumps are in there, but you're thankful for em anyway.
Gobble it down I did, indeed Hayashida. Needless to say that I'll be coming back for seconds.

I think what makes sin & punishment so great — other than the exhilaratingly snappy paced set piece monster sandwich of a campaign, killer soundtrack, and pristine level design paired with a borderline sexual difficulty curve — is that it's the perfect crystallized representation of the core elements of the "shooter game"

Anyone whos played a shmup, run & gun, FPS or TPS knows these games are made up of two core elements. Move to avoid getting hit, line yourself or your reticule up with the enemy and press the shoot button to win. Move and shoot.

What makes S&P stand in contrast to its contemporaries is that there's virtually zero interplay between these two aspects. Moving doesn't affect your aiming (considerably) and aiming has no effect on the camera or your movement.
This disconnect between the two elements ends up creating a unique appeal where you're essentially playing two different games at the same time, a 3D shooting gallery and a 2D "dodge em up".

This inherent multitasking element plus the set camera let the designers create deliciously demanding scenarios like having to focus your aim on a mobile enemy in the top right while noting the missile arriving from the bottom left in your peripheral vision and making a bet with yourself that you'll reflect it without ungluing your eyes from the top right.

Were this a standardized FPS/TPS, the dynamic camera and 3D movement wouldn't afford the same level of clarity or precision that allows S&P's obstacles to be as tight & demanding as they are.
Were this a shoot em up, you'd have the clarity and precise movement but the (generally) restrictive way that shooting works doesn't allow for the multi tasking element to emerge.

This isn't either of those things though. It's straight up moving and shooting at its rawest and most literal. It's Sin & Punishment all the way through, baby.