A little ways in rebirth i'm given a job by a local woman who wants to send some money to her errant son, one who recently took off to another village across the map. She sends the moeny attached to a dog and wants me to escort it safely. it's a cute quest, but what strikes me is the music. this dog has a unique theme, a drum and bass track with a choir of children cheering him on. I don't hear this song again for 40 hours. This sticks with me for the rest of my playthrough. In the triple A space there's the constant feeling of games buckling under their budgets. the ever rising bar of fidelity increases the time needed to generate assets for a given area, which cascades as the game goes on, meaning while games take more time and money to develop, they often feel smaller, samey. Rebirth does not feel small or samey. It is the most ambitious game i've played in years.

The social systems that define the series feel a bit thin here and many of the side stories seem undercooked, but in the mid months when you're navigating your personal life and juggling dungeon crawling alongside it, its alclear why persona became such a powerhouse franchise. Its core story doesn't take long to kick up and stays out of the way, but when it comes to fruition it feels full of purposeful ideation on grief and loss. Reload relit the fire in me for a series that defined much of my late adolescence and reinvigorated it.