It's true that all I asked of capcom was "more dragons dogma" but I think they took it a bit too literally. I had a great time and was thoroughly addicted up until the credits but there's just not enough new stuff going on for it to feel fully satisfying. Having a whole new world to explore is great but the enemies and bosses are largely repeats with quite a few not even making the jump from dark arisen. The story starts out a lot more comprehensible than the first game's but once you get past a certain point it becomes just as disjointed and bizarre and it lacks iconic moments to hang onto like the encounters with daimon and the seneschal. The vocations are great to play but again are lacking in fresh new content. The mystic spearhand is cool but playing it in the late-game just resulted in me getting stunlocked constantly which was pretty miserable. I guess having a good time despite glaring flaws is really in the spirit of the original game but I wish it was better.

This review contains spoilers

An enjoyable but disappointing mixed bag of a sequel. Combat has some nice improvements with more focus on positioning and team attacks while just generally feeling smoother. Hawaii is nice enough for a new area but it lacks the chill atmosphere of Onomichi or Okinawa and the enemies around every corner combined with strange level scaling across the map make exploring kind of a pain. The dungeons are incredibly dull and I would much rather go through the same dungeon from 7 over and over than go through a bunch of identical square rooms connected by narrow hallways. The pacing is also very bizarre with the first half of the game going very slowly. On top of constantly being assaulted with tutorials it takes forever to unlock the job system and the lack of money means you're going to frequently come across systems and shops that all require a ton of cash that you can never hope to have until much later in the game. Substories are weirdly front-loaded so if you do them as they pop up then you'll really be missing a lot of that charming Yakuza levity in the latter half to make up for the main story's shortcomings. The substories are pretty fun though and I like how they took advantage of the Hawaiian setting with stuff like hijinks at the beach and being befriended by weebs. Dondoko island is also an extremely boring minigame and the fact that they force you to interact with it at all is really annoying.

The story is much less compelling than 7's and also suffers from strange pacing issues. The Kiryu section, while I really like what they did and believe it's what Gaiden should've been, really slows down the story and significantly distracts from the plot in Hawaii. Ebina and Bryce suffer from trying to share the villain role and both come out feeling under-cooked. Akane and Lani do disappointingly little despite being the objective of every group in the game. Eiji's heel-turn from helpful guy we knew for like 2 scenes to cartoon villain mastermind is way too abrupt and comical to take seriously. Yamai being one of the only weird and charismatic new characters and not becoming a party member is a huge missed opportunity. Tomizawa and Chitose are fine inclusions but Tomi does kind of overlap with Namba a bit too much. Everyone at least benefits from the new party bingo board system which allows for a lot of cute little mini conversations that make every party member even more endearing than they are already. I also really hate what they did with Saeko. I don't think she's obligated to like Ichiban or anything and his proposal was terrible but her choice to ghost him for a year just makes her purely unlikable. This was especially unnecessary since they really didn't have much romantic buildup in 7. The theme of redemption is also heavily used in every other JRPG so it wasn't too interesting. I wish someone would give me a dollar every time a JRPG villain was going to die and the hero saved them so they could serve their time instead.

...Well I have a tendency to focus on complaints but it was still a fun time overall.

I've been playing this since launch but unfortunately some error is keeping me from logging in anymore. Pretty much everything about Eversoul is extremely generic but for some reason I'm pretty fond of it. The little love stories for each character can be pretty endearing and the models are really high quality for an autobattler. They're also so generous with the currency that it's the only gacha I've ever played where I could guarantee rolling every single character as they came out but I might also just be a luckgod. Garnet best girl btw tbh.

Aside from an extremely terrible launch, it's more Uni with rollback so can't complain too much. Just a little disappointing.

Fun comfy dungeon crawling with cute To Heart characters and surprisingly difficult boss fights. Unfortunately it gets pretty repetitive after a while and once you have a set team of 5 you'll rarely be doing much different between 5 hours in and 15 hours in. A lot of the maps can be pretty tedious too with an annoying plethora of one-way doors and floor switching. However, it features Manaka Komaki so it is unquestionably a good game.

This review contains spoilers

Great remake of a very good game. I will say this solidified P3's spot as the weakest out of 3, 4 and 5 for me after having not played it in at least a decade but it was still nice to re-experience it. The process of building social links, dungeon crawling and filling the compendium is still very enjoyable but P3 hits a few snags that drag it down a bit.

Tartarus is notably more bland than themed dungeons and goes on longer than it should but the remake at least introduces some nice additions like the monad doors for extra challenges and the giant clock to make trying different party members less obnoxious. Theurgy attacks are also a stylish addition that put a bit more flare into the combat. It also feels real good to collect major arcana to make long tartarus dives feel more and more rewarding.

Social links, particularly those for the party members, are relatively simple and a lot of the time require the player encouraging characters' bad tendencies which doesn't make for a very satisfying experience. There are still some good ones like Akinari and Tanaka but a lot of the time it's just like "hey man I wanna bang a teacher" "sweet dude go for it" RANK UP. The daily life aspect is also hampered by frequent nonsensical interruptions that only serve to annoy the player like the typhoon and having to work at McDonalds for a week. These exist in the other games obviously but the lack of fun bonding scenes with the party members just makes it feel like a waste of time.

The story is still fairly good with a strong melancholy atmosphere, particularly in the last parts of the game, but the pacing is really all over the place. Party members are just kind of casually dropped onto the team without much fanfare and while they all get their moments, Junpei is the only one that feels consistently developed throughout the entire game. Link episodes help a considerable amount, especially for Shinji, but overall it was just hard to feel a strong bond with the SEES crew. The villains were also pretty weak with Ikutsuki's betrayal ending anticlimactically right after it began and Takaya's reasoning falling completely flat so a lot of the conflict and tension relied heavily on the ominous nature of the major shadows themselves.

The visuals of the remake are a straight upgrade and it was nice getting to move around 3D spaces since I had only previously played P3P. I really like a lot of the new music as well. I do miss some of the old voice actors, particularly Aigis and Akihiko's which are just way too distinct to be naturally replaced, but the new ones do a fine job.

I guess this is just another one of my rants made up of 90% complaints but really I had a great time. It's pretty much the only thing I've been playing for like a week. Fuuka cute!

The story is extremely generic but fun combat, high quality presentation and monhun-like endgame make it a real gem. Also luv me cag.

Great game with a strong sense of adventure. It alleviates the main issue I tend to have with crpgs in that there's effort put into the presentation and I'm not just looking at tiny sprites talking to each other with text boxes.The plot isn't anything phenomenal but the dialogue is well-written, the voice acting is top-class, and there's a lot of variation depending on your companions and character background. There's also a ton of choices to make which is always fun. It also makes for a very enjoyable co-op experience even without the fun of trying to annoy the DM. Combat could drag sometimes, especially in the early game where everything misses and at the end where every fight has 30 enemies, but overall it was fine and it's fun to play around with the massive amount of abilities to choose from.

Has a fair amount of cute designs but missions take too long and the combat is too dull to make logging in daily enjoyable.

Unique on the surface but beyond its presentation it's just a below average gacha experience.

2023

Very enjoyable gameplay, solid music and cute character designs bogged down by a half-baked mess of a story. Objectives feel totally inconsequential and completing sections feels lackluster as a result. Dozens of unimportant characters are constantly introduced just to disappear for the rest of the game and serious/tragic scenes feel unearned. I don't play metroidvanias for story so it doesn't hurt the overall enjoyment for me that much but it is hard to ignore with the amount of cutscenes. Definitely prefer Rabi Ribi which knew how to chill out and not stretch beyond its means.

I expected going back to classic-ish monhun to be a real pain after world and rise but it was plenty of fun. I definitely don't miss some of the old systems like paintballs and flexing after healing but otherwise the old style has a lot of charm to it. Hunter arts were fine and getting to go between all the hubs was cute, if a little pointless. I respect the huge monster roster but really a fair amount of them could've been left out without really losing anything. It's just a little disappointing fighting basarios and then a few quests later the urgent is..a remix of basarios.

Cool collection of games with a very pleasant style reminiscent of an age I didn't experience. The games themselves were a bit of a mixed bag for me since half the games were too complex or difficult for my peanut brain but I got more than enough enjoyment out of the solitaires, dungeons and diagrams, and the model builder.

A stellar game that holds nothing back and revels in it. The story is a creative rollercoaster that deftly balances humor, tragedy, an earnest dive into the concept of love and absolutely unashamed perversion. Compelling dialogue and situations are presented at a refreshingly brisk pace and rarely did I ever feel like I was forcing myself to get to the next enjoyable moment, though I will admit to making liberal use of PPSSPP's fastforwarding in battles. The evocative imagery puts most other games to shame despite the limitations of the PSP and the soundtrack, much like the first game's, is top notch.

I did find the combat notably less enjoyable than I did with the original like a decade ago but I still don't think it's as bad as everyone makes it out to be, and I really liked how it never felt like the devs wanted to just make a VN instead since they made constant efforts to mix story and gameplay in creative ways.

The characters from the first game are used exceptionally well and show up with a lot more charisma with even a side character like Gatou becoming a highlight. The new characters are also great additions and emphasize the game's themes while having interesting stories in their own right. Being a Sakura chad and getting not one not two not three but FOUR Sakuras is a level of pandering few gamers will get the chance to experience and I pity you all. Also naturally getting to team up with Gil is amazing and makes the mostly-unchanged 2nd playthrough entirely worth it.

I like boobs.