Probably half or more rpgs start with the story of leaving you home and going in an adventure, but most of the time the relatable feeling is sabotage with the tutorial for game mechanics.

In this game there is not tutorial, no mechanics other than simple first person movement and object interactions. And most important, a simple story that includes the nostalgia, fear, resentment and wander for a world to discover. You don't see the adventure, but it doesn't matter. The name of the game is "leaving", the word is "goodbye".

Love Scott Pilgrim, read the comic books, watched the movie, watched the animated series, played this game, it wasn't good, oh no. Ok I should explain myself, I think on everything that isn't the core game itself, this game is amazing at. The visuals are so eye catching, the sound design and overall ost are among some of the best i've heard, and it's a great game for fans. It's when you start dissecting the game is when it gets really ugly. Once you look past the property and you view it as a beat-em up game it's so disappointing.
Lets start off with the gameplay, the gameplay is what you'd expect from a beat-em up, but did they seriously have to make going to shops one of the most frustrating and annoying things. The way these shops work is that you have to buy the item first before you can actually know what it does. The game gives a vague description but that alone is not enough because all you care about are what it does for you the player. Also lets get the elephant out of the room, this game is unnecessarily hard when you first start out, I don't care if its trying to replicate the old-school style beat-em ups in its punishing difficulty but most of the time it feels like they should've been trying to replicate a fun experience. Even on the Average Joe difficulty this shit is just annoying, I hate how slow the characters are when they get knocked down it takes way too long for them to even get back up and there's no way to decrease the time on that, it's just how it was developed. No I don't think using a coin glitch just to get a bionic arm excuses this games sad excuse of a challenge. Leveling up doesn't even affect your stats it only gives you new moves to bring in the illusion of this game being fun, when it's not. The game only gets fun when you have all the moves but by that point you'd already game over'd multiple times that you're only on the 2nd boyfriend boss.

Man what happened here, I know this game at one point was considered lost media in how you couldn't purchase it anymore, but now that its back its made me realize how overhyped it was. For Scott Pligrim fans I think its a neat novelty, playing this game on your own, good luck.

This is not a "fun" game. It's a game about slogging away, picking up trash in a system that is designed to be rigged against you. It's all about randomness, and being a very little person in a very big world, where everything is out of your control. A bizarre, kooky world that often doesn't make sense, and where every day is a learning experience.

And this vibrant, colorful world of very strange things is more endearing and wholesome than any you might find yourself in, you'll soon find yourself in a delightful zen state of picking up more trash than you may ever have expected to see, just to find yourself living the dream of getting off this dang planet and turning your future into that of a true adventurer somewhere among the stars.

such whiplash jumping from viii to this one... I guess I brought it on myself. there's just so many issues tied to this weird hybrid 2D-3D isometric engine holding me back from enjoying this one more.

hitboxes are hard to parse because the sense of depth is compromised by the perspective and the flat characters. it doesn't help that during boss battles there's usually a lot of hitboxes on screen at once. this is exacerbated by the fact that generally adol's only way to get out of harm's way is to jump, and an aerial adol's location in space can hardly be determined without some practice. combat in general is light on options given adol's limited kit in this game. attacks are limited to the usual mash-x combo and with the added wrinkle of a couple different aerial attacks. fighting the regular mobs is so tedious and dull by the end of the game... once you get the double jump you can at least stun enemies by doing double jump->downward plunge? but late-game enemies don't respond to these as often so it doesn't feel like it significantly changes the gameplay loop.

and those boss battles... they truly love throwing crazy bullet patterns and such at you in this game. I'd love to see a 3D action game take on that level of challenge and variety of projectiles, but in this hybrid engine it feels claustrophobic and arbitrary. in the first half of the game I found the bosses truly overwhelming, and much of this has to do with streamlined mechanics from typical action rpgs that really should've made an appearance here. there's no way to heal in a fight outside of popping a full boost gauge, but the second level that includes healing doesn't unlock until the midgame unfortunately considering how useful it is. there's also no way to upgrade equipment until you unlock the ability to teleport after the second major dungeon, which is still relatively early on but feels awkwardly late given how useful upgrading equipment is.

the bosses aren't only overwhelming because of the hitboxes of course, as there's a sort of maximalist old-school design pattern going on here. each boss has a ream of moves that must be dealt with, with virtually all fights having multiple phases and occasional overlapping attacks that really stress proper positioning. what's unfortunate about this is that adol's limited toolkit results in very few options available to approach each encounter. it's a necessity to experiment and find which strategy works with each attack, which is a common design pattern for any boss fight but feels extremely restrictive here with so few different approaches to each fight. in some cases the proper solution to a given attack can be relatively obscure or unintuitive, such as the swoop attack gildias uses in the third phase in his fight. he remains aerial the whole time, but he will only pick you up if you don't jump, which does not make much physical sense and was a strategy not apparent to friends who had previously played the game when I talked to them. this one attack could potentially kill the player in a single shot depending on luck (he throws you down a chasm with ledges that will severely damage you if they are not narrowly avoided or blocked using the charge magic) which feels cruel on the side of the developers. likewise multiple other projectiles towards the end of the game (such as in the clockwork robot fight or either of the final two bosses) will knock you down and chain into other projectiles, causing massive damage to the player. it seems like in a lot of ways the developers put in a wide variety of creative ideas without caring much about how viable it was to play against them. compared to the much gentler difficulty curve of the modern ys games, it's a little shocking to spend 10+ attempts on a boss that can consistently kill you in only four hits. the final boss is especially excruciating, as for most of the fight you cannot attack the boss directly and instead must just survive until your next opportunity to attack arises. it's a shame too, as much of the end of the game (barring the clock tower boss which was far too fast for adol and mostly consisted of me running in a circle waiting for my boost to recharge) has some very solid bosses that feel more flexible regarding feasible approaches. it's not that the ideas here aren't good, but the way bosses control the pace of the fight really removes much of the fun of trying to optimize damage or fight aggressively.

what's most damning really is that this frustration is surrounded by little else. the plot is certainly fine but is pretty thin with shallow side characters and a relatively predictable structure. dungeons generally consist of long straight lines with small detours for field items or extra goodies, and so exploring each one feels more like a chore of wading through enemies rather than any sort of puzzle layout or organic area. regular enemies generally require little thought except for some focus on character placement, which would be fine if the combat had a bit more spice. the magic as well rarely gets used outside of clearly telegraphed lock-and-key puzzles that don't particularly evolve over the course of the game. this is a game entirely built around engaging boss encounters, and I really don't think the combat mechanics are robust enough to make an imprint on me that this is a must-play or even particularly engaging at all.

it's a shame really, since all of the requisite falcom bits are present: energetic music, lovely sprite art, and the feeling of a well-crafted and succinct B-tier jrpg snug within your psp (or pc, which seems to unfortunately not play nice with modern hardware). it just suffers from a lack of ambition in its fluff and structure while potentially possessing too much ambition in its boss design. for every boss I felt satisfied to beat there was a counterpoint that felt tedious or stiff or poorly considered. or perhaps I'm just more cut out for modern ys rather than these older titles.

Mega Man 4 was my favorite when I originally played all the games on the AV collection back on Gamecube, so it's gonna be interesting to see if my opinion from back then holds up or if my current one does (I like 6 the most for now).

In this game we get a charged shot to help with taking down the Robot Masters without their weaknesses, unfortunately maybe it does it a bit too well (YMMV). Hilariously, despite its reputation it isn't even the most OP charge weapon in this game. Pharaoh Shot is so ridiculously glitchy, has insane hidden utility due to hitting stuff above it while charging and is a weakness for at least three castle bosses, it's insane. You can even fire it in multiple directions! Ridiculous! Gotta push Pharaoh Man. Despite that though other weapons manage to see use, which honestly is really impressive. The obvious exception to this is Skull Barrier, the worst shield ever in a category of weapons that are already considered boring by many within the fanbase.

The stages themselves for the most part are pretty good again like in 3. I'll say I'm not too much of a fan of the mini-boss spam in Ring Man's stage, the hoop throwing guys (Called "Whopper" just so you know) are a pain in the ass to not take damage from and it's made worse by the fact that the projectiles are still active even when it dies. Bright Man's stage is also supposedly really hard compared to the other stages, but I didn't die at all somehow in my run so maybe I'm just godlike. I absolutely love the Cossack stages and their snowy atmosphere, I think if the music in the autoscroller stage wasn't so fucking good I'd probably dislike it, but even then they're not long enough to be annoying or anything.

Which speaking of Bright Man, some of the fights in this game aren't super great. I'm not a fan of needing to keep my eyes bleeding with attention toward Bright Man's HP to know when he's gonna throw an unavoidable attack. It just reeks of garbage to have to figure that whole shit out to save yourself a massive headache. I know it's one peashooter shot and then only full charged shots afterwards, but you're not gonna know that on your first several playthroughs or even know that it works that way. Drill Man also sometimes just loves to make himself invincible from anywhere between 5 seconds to nine million centuries depending on how many times he wants to burrow. Wily Machine's hitbox is also needlessly tiny for no reason, he's just awful to fight without knowing how to detonate the Drill Bomb. Nothing Boobeam Trap-esque at least, thank fucking god.

Meanwhile Toad Man just wants to dance.

Overall I enjoyed it a lot, it's better than the first two games for sure and I think I'm a bit iffy on it being better than 3. I dunno if it's better than 6 for me yet, we can only find that out once I actually get to that game. So far I'm gonna say 4 >= 3 > 2 => 1

Favorite Enemy Name: Tom Boy! It's a slinky! Maybe it's related to Fly Boy from MM2. Special Shoutout to Totem Polen. Why is he randomly in Bright Man's stage? Were they designing Tomahawk Man enemies this far in advance and just loved the design for some reason?

Favorite Music: Cossack Stage 3-4! No idea why some people don't like this game's ost, it's down a notch from MM3 for sure, but still. Different strokes for different folks I guess. Go listen to Mega Man 2 GB's ost and get back to me.

Persona 4 was probably the most miserable I have ever been while going through a main storyline in a video game in recent memory. Coming fresh off Persona 3, a game that I adored greatly for just how character focused its main story was (it wasn’t even my favorite video game at the time of starting P4), and hearing the sheer amount of praise this one received on Twitter during its re-release on Steam, I was shocked at how mind numbing this was as an experience.

Despite the intriguing premise, the main narrative is something I could only describe as factory produced. It quickly establishes a basic formula, that greatly detracts from both the emotional depth of the themes the story attempts to portray and the intricacy of the murder mystery, to create a predictable, repetitive slog of a campaign. Outside of an incident towards the end of the game, there’s little to no tension as you go through arcs with the exact same structure ad nauseam. Once the cast decide to devote themselves to catching the killer after the first arc, the “mystery” element quickly devolves into basic, deductive reasoning with no creative input required.

P4 decided to change from P3 how it would handle the time between each major event within the story. In P3, this time was filled with the cast’s introspection regarding their current circumstances and the further development of their characters arcs. In P4, this is replaced with wacky, anime high schooler hijinks that dwells more on the overall vibe between the cast rather than the individual journeys of each character. And this approach isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I can respect the greater focus on an upbeat tone, as I actually think it works pretty well and distinguishes this game from any other in this regard. And I can see why this is something that’s endeared countless people to this game. To its credit, I can say a lot of these moments do help the Investigation Team feel like a genuine group of friends. My biggest issue would lie in the fact that many of these scenes are unfunny at best and blatantly problematic at worst.

Whether it be the camping trip, where we see Yosuke blatantly accuse a sexually confused Kanji of planning to “do things” to him in his sleep solely because he’s potentially interested in men. Or in the next scene, where Yosuke pressures his female friends into wearing swimsuits so he can gawk at them. Or the cultural festival, where Yosuke signs them up for a swimsuit competition without their consent, despite the fact that one of them has made it very clear that they are extremely conscious about their feminine body... ᴵ’ᵐ ⁿᵒᵗᶦᶜᶦⁿᵍ ᵃ ᵗʳᵉⁿᵈ ʰᵉʳᵉ...

In conjunction with my lack of care for the goofy antics and the narrative’s lack of focus on organic characterization, it leaves the main story itself feeling incredibly vapid. You may be thinking “god fucking damn, he hates this game. 3/5 stars? Stop lying 😭” and yeah, I think that myself sometimes too. But I do have to remind myself that the underlying qualities of Persona 4 are really fucking good.

I think most social links do an amazing job at genuinely pushing the messages the game wants to communicate. In particular, I think they fantastically highlight the importance of self confrontation; the difficulties of acknowledging our own faults, the pain that comes with, and the betterment that we attain as a result. These stories contain the exact heartfelt writing I look for in this franchise, some of them still being among my favorites to this day. Shoutout to Dojima and Kanji in particular. My fuckin beloveds.

And I find the atmosphere, while not being something I personally clicked with, is still something I greatly respect. It’s what you’ll hear literally everyone praise this game for and for a damn good reason. A comfy small town is a genius idea that heavily contrasts with the typical big city environments we see from this franchise. The game does a good job at occasionally meshing the setting of Inaba with the motivation of individual characters and other elements within the story. And the upbeat J-Pop tracks of the overworlds sell the feel-good nature of the game’s tone perfectly.

Talking about Persona 4 makes me realize that it’s just… hard for me to talk about this game without comparing it to other entries within the series. It's hard to look back in retrospect without thinking about how this game represents everything I dislike about the series and its current direction. Not made anymore easy when recognizing that this is still technically a follow up to my favorite game ever. It turns many of Persona 3’s captivating ideas that were used to push its unique themes (The Fool’s Journey, the calendar system, the overall gameplay loop) into formulaic elements to craft a narrative that has little in common with Persona 3. And this is something that I find continues to plague the series, as Persona 5 occasionally falls into the same trappings. But at the end of the day, it’s still important for me to recognize the strengths of Persona 4. With the charming atmosphere of Inaba and consistent character writing, I still find it to be a competent, standalone game. And regardless of my faults with what I think is a flawed approach, I can still see why this could be someone’s favorite game ever.

I plan on revisiting Persona 4 some day, but through the original PS2 version. I’ve seen many discussions online regarding how Golden’s added scenes heavily detract from the atmosphere of the game. Mostly through how Inaba is now seemingly only an hour drive away from the biggest attractions in Japan. And the added padding in general is something I never really cared for. It’s important to me, as like I said earlier in the review, Persona 4’s atmosphere is something that I didn’t really click with, despite how much I respect the approach. I hope that playthrough helps me focus on this game’s strengths, as this is something that I want to like, despite the constant complaining I direct at it.