Persona 3 Portable is the third Persona game I have played, and its the third game in the Persona game that I have loved. From a gameplay standpoint, it is clear that the games have stepped up in quality with Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal, but something about P3P's story hit different. Maybe its the themes of life, death, and what it means to be living, or it could be the fact that this is the only Persona game that feels like there are any stakes to it. It also helps that I felt that the overall story and its final antagonist felt the most natural to the story. Don't get me wrong, there is still some level of ridiculousness that coincided with the game's final boss, but not in the same way has P4G's or the vanilla P5 boss.

Really good game. But it's not really the masterpiece I've been hearing so much.

Sure, it's great in the gameplay department but it's a tan lame with it's history and some characters being for the most part walking steriotypes compared to P4 which had better characters that felt more special and unique.

The combat is great. A lot of spectacle and little effects. Demon negotiation is here for some reason, it's more basic than in the SMT games but it opens for some interesting possibilities. The social aspect is here and greatly expanded from the past games.

It may be the best in the series, but it's not my favorite.

I'm someone who doesn't carry a whole lot of nostalgia for The Legend of Zelda franchise. The only other game I had played in the franchise was Breath of the Wild. That being said, without exaggerating, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is easily one of the best games that I have ever played. I thought Breath of the Wild was really good, but this game blows that out of the water.

The game improves upon almost every aspect of the previous game that many already considered a masterpiece. The world, the game mechanics, the story, the music and just about every other thing that goes into making a game. It also has an absurd attention to detail that just about any other game wouldn't have had, making it just that much better. The game took me 120+ hours and I really never got bored. The open world is so full of things to find and places to explore that it is incredibly hard to get bored while playing.

I can't say much more without repeating what I have said in some way, but honestly I shouldn't have to explain how good the game is. If you've played it you know how great it is, and if you haven't then you've already heard how good it is. Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece.

Jedi: Survivor feels more like a classic Star Wars story than anything released from this franchise in recent memory. A great balance of heart, tragedy and adventure. The story is fantastic, and is far more emotionally complex and deep than the standard hero’s journey found in the original 1977 film. It makes interesting connections with both the original trilogy and the new High Republic era. It builds on the fantastic characters from 2019’s Fallen Order (Cal, Cere and Merrin just to name some standouts) and develops them into far more interesting and conflicted characters, with their own complicated dynamics between them. Cal is truly fleshed out in this game as a character stuck between his desire to respect and continue the ways of the collapsed Jedi Order, while also recognising the inherent darkness within himself which may be necessary in order to defeat the Empire and save the ones he loves. It is perhaps the most morally ‘grey’ a Jedi protagonist has been in any Star Wars media and this was a welcome and unexpected fresh take on the traditionally heroic Jedi troupe. Cal is no longer some starry-eyed hero, a slave to the order’s traditions, but now a more ruthless and vengeful guerrilla fighter that is willing to do whatever it takes in order to strike back against the Empire for all the pain it has wrought. It is this conflict within Cal, and how this is mirrored in the antagonists of the game, that truly makes this journey a special and meaningful one.


Alongside the fantastic narrative, the gameplay is also top notch, with crunchy parry based lightsaber combat, and some of the best platforming in recent memory (one of Respawn’s great strengths as a developer is their fantastic, fluent traversal). Survivor is bigger and better than Fallen Order in every way from story to combat to travel to characters. It is a true evolution from the original, think of the step up from Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2 in terms of a quality jump that builds upon an already solid formula. Not to mention this game also includes one of the best set pieces since Uncharted 2, thanks to Merrin’s portal-based platforming. My only criticism would be that the game world and levels have been perhaps expanded to too large and broad a scope in some areas, particularly the planet of Koboh which takes up the majority of the game’s length through repeated trips and exploration. It does start to feel a bit samey after a while constantly returning to that location. Luckily there are enough trips to other planets and fantastic set pieces thrown into the mix in between to make up for Koboh’s flaws as an overly large and daunting explorable space. The beating heart of this game is its story and its characters so the game would have benefitted from being more linear in some sections (particularly Koboh) in order to put more focus and momentum on the fantastic story. The Metroidvania style exploration is fun, but when your only picking up cosmetic items and health/force upgrades it can feel a little pointless, especially when you could be following the fantastic main story instead of exploring. Despite my gripes with the large open world sections, the gameplay is still fantastic and the story touched me in a way that no traditional jedi-focused Star Wars story has done since the original trilogy. It is the new high point for Star Wars games and potentially even for 3rd person action/adventure titles in general given it excels in both gameplay and story. Jedi: Survivor is truly the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ in comparison to Fallen Order’s ‘New Hope’: bigger and better, while also being more complex and emotionally engaging on a narrative front. It has succeeded on being both greater in scale and ambition than its predecessor, while also telling a story that feels more human and personal despite the larger ‘space opera’ underpinnings.

Respawn has truly accomplished something great with Jedi: Survivor and I greatly anticipate their next chapter in Cal Kestis’ story. Aside from Andor which is brilliant in its own more introspective and nuanced way; these Respawn Jedi games represent the highest bar that Star Wars has reached in terms of narrative and heartfelt storytelling since the original trilogy.