System Shock has a reputation for being incredibly awkward to control and sticking the player in labyrinthine levels that are impossible to get your bearings in. A lot of people have probably passed over this game because of this reputation. Most of this review will consist of arguments for why people shouldn’t be afraid to play this game.

Contrary to what I expected System Shock Enhanced Edition was actually a pretty accessible game to pick up and learn. The enhanced controls aren’t particularly clunky or hard to get used to due to the addition of optional mouse look. The biggest hurdle to getting started is learning how to navigate the UI which definitely can be overwhelming at first.

The levels, while sprawling and maze-like are actually pretty easy to navigate. The artists and level designers did an amazing job at making the different areas of each level look and feel distinct. I was also expecting the levels to consist entirely of winding and claustrophobic corridors, but they’re actually surprisingly open and at times highly vertical. Playing this game really does feel like being in an actual space station as opposed to navigating a labyrinthine 1st person dungeon crawler, which is more of what I was expecting.

System Shock rarely makes you feel like a rat hopelessly trapped in a maze. It’s very possible to find your way around through visual recognition alone in all but one level IMO. The fact that you have an auto mapper readily available makes navigation surprisingly intuitive and rarely frustrating.

There’s a lot to love about System Shock. Combat and exploration are fun and rewarding, SHODAN is a really engaging and well written villain, and figuring out how to progress the plot is a fun challenge for the player to puzzle out. I won’t go into any more detail about these qualities of the game and instead let people who want to play System Shock discover that for themselves.

I decided to play System Shock mainly for its historical value. This is a massively influential game and one that despite looking and feeling dated in various ways was decidedly ahead of its time. When I actually started playing the game, however, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up and how easy it was to get into. If you have even the slightest curiosity in this game I’d highly recommend giving the enhanced edition a shot.

N.B - Purchasing the Enhanced Edition on steam also includes a copy of classic System Shock, so if you decide you want to have the old school using a graphing calculator to control a tank experience that’s a possibility as well and seems like a very rewarding control scheme to master.

Fantastic, exhilarating gameplay. Some of the most satisfying adrenaline rush fun I’ve had playing a video game.

Story and characters are insufferable and are unfortunately an integral part of the Neon White experience. This is one of the only games I’ve ever played where the writing is so obnoxiously bad that it's impossible for me to ignore it in service of quality gameplay. Remembering the dialogue in this game legitimately puts me in a pissy mood as ridiculous and embarrassing as that sounds. I’d be giving this a much higher score if it weren’t for the writing.

This is probably one of the most infamous sequels / follow ups ever released. The game itself isn’t terrible but one truly can’t appreciate just how much this game completely abandons and misunderstands everything that made the original Fallout games special without playing them for yourself. It’s honestly unbelievable and a little bit hilarious. The whole thing speaks to what I perceive to be quite a lot of arrogance as well as a lack of respect for mainstream audiences from the people who made this game. Fallout New Vegas undeniably proved only two years later that a Fallout game doesn’t need to be dumbed down to be accessible and popular.

Exploration and atmosphere - as is the case with basically every Bethesda RPG - is quite solid in this game. It can be fun and honestly quite relaxing just to explore the map, listen to the radio, and check out locations you stumble upon. Combat is decent as well although was greatly improved in New Vegas.

The biggest problem for FO3 is obviously the writing and the whole design philosophy behind the game, which replaces the complex choices and speech-centric gameplay of the originals with a comically black and white morality system as well as progression based almost entirely on combat. One of the funniest things about the way this game is written is how it incorporates the lore of the original games. The way different factions are represented in this game is at times so baffling and so off the mark that one questions whether or not the people developing it ever played the original games. It feels more like they just listened to a drunk friend try to describe the original Fallout games:

“Yeah so there’s like the brotherhood they’re like super cool good guys and they got big armor and these awesome guns and they lkke fight the mutants who are the bad guys right and they’re like these big green dudes thay fuck your shit up. Oh yeah and in the 2nd game there’s like the enclave they’re kinda weird and I don’t remember much about them but they’re basically america but like super evil lol”

If you take away the Fallout label, this is a game that’s fun but not really anything special. With the fallout label attached this becomes possibly the most hilarious and disappointing bait and switch since Pac Man for the 2600. I've truly never played another sequel that breaks so completely from the essential character and appeal of its predecessor. I know there are some games out there that likely match Fallout 3 in this regard; I just haven’t gotten around to playing them yet.

The opening is also pretty hilarious. An hour+ long unskippable tutorial that begins with the main character’s birth and has nothing to hook the player and drive interest in the story is honestly insane. To quote Jay from RLM: “this is borderline experimental.”

Overall a pretty middling experience but an incredibly funny and fascinating piece of media - to me at least.

This game being as enjoyable as it is feels almost like magic to me. Based on all the problems I have with it, it should be getting somewhere around a 6/10. However, whenever I return to this game, I find myself immediately wrapped up in its world and unable to put it down.

Contrary to what many claim, the writing on display here is not tantamount to gaming's Moby Dick. While the Last of Us has a lot of interesting ideas and brings up some interesting themes (I suspect accidentally in a few cases), it doesn't do much to actually flesh those ideas out. One of the biggest missed opportunities for this game (and the 2nd one as well) is it's failure to really interrogate the relationship between Joel and Ellie. The game does a good job at portraying the growth of this relationship in a way that feels real (which is certainly to be commended), but it completely ignores what I believe is the more interesting element at play here - the obviously toxic nature of Joel's relationship with Ellie. This is primarily a game about the relationship between two characters, and while their relationship is certainly well rendered, it's a shame that it's not explored in a more deep and critical way.

There are definitely things I really like about the way this game is written, however. Joel's characterization feels very real to me and somewhat effortlessly matches up with the gameplay you engage in as him. Unlike TLOU2's Ellie, I truly did believe, based on the way he was characterized throughout the game, that Joel would be capable of the callousness and violence and selfishness he displays. His character and exactly WHY he got to that place certainly could have been explored further, but I definitely have to commend the developers for creating an anti-hero that feels like a real person. Given how over the top video games can be (which certainly isn't a bad thing), a studio being able to pull off a realistic feeling anti-hero that the audience is supposed to take deadly serious is impressive.

The area where this game really shines for me, and the reason why I get so wrapped up in it despite its problems is the design of the world. There's something about this game that is truly immersive - more so than most games, and I'm honestly not well-versed enough in the language of game design to point out exactly why that is. Something about the level design or the visuals? I really don't know. All I know is that this game feels way better to play than it probably should.

I definitely disagree with the assertion some make that this game is total shit or bottom of the barrel slop that tricked the mainstream gamer into thinking it was a masterpiece. There's still a lot of artfulness and talent on display here, and the game's success reflects that. People who love this game aren't idiots and they don't love it for no reason. Is this game overrated? Yes absolutely. Some journalists and a lot of fans of gaming seem to have an irrational need for there to be a game with the writing and style and tone of prestige film in order to legitimize the medium as an art form. Back when this was released, TLOU was pretty much immediately crowned as this paragon of gaming as an art form. I have a couple of problems with this 1. TLOU is not written or directed or produced well enough to stand on the same level as the great masterpieces of film, television, or literature - it just isn't. 2. Games don't need to replicate prestige media to be art. Interactive media has the potential to create emotional and intellectual experiences for the player that other forms of media aren't able to. This is where the artfulness of a game should be assessed, IMO - how it utilizes the unique character of the medium to create a worthwhile experience for the player. As far as I see it, a game like Burnout 3 is just as capable of being art as any of the prestige AAA games we've seen over the past 10 years. Trying to shove something like this, or RDR2 or God of War (2018) into everyone's face and insist that it's high art and needs to be respected is really unnecessary and honestly a little bit embarrassing.

Are there games that are able to replicate the experience of and stand on the same level as other prestige media? Yes, IMO. Does TLOU do this? No. Does a game need to do this to be considered art or worth celebrating? Definitely not.

The dialogue written for the teen girls in this game is some of the most unintentionally cartoonish I’ve ever seen in a teen drama, regardless of medium. This is like faith-based movie scaremongering about the lifestyle of modern teens cartoonish. It actually boggles my mind and makes me kind of depressed to think that this is viewed by the gaming industry and a large portion of the community as a serious and insightful examination of… I don’t know what exactly.

I have nothing against dialogue that’s kitschy or cartoonish as long as that quality lends itself to the overall effect of a piece of media. I also have absolutely nothing against media that many consider low-brow. That’s not my critique here. When you put cartoonish writing in a piece of media that takes itself intensely seriously and that quality of the writing isn’t intentionally used to a worthwhile end you get The Room or Doug Walker’s The Wall or well… Life is Strange.

I really don’t know what else to say. This game and the fact that people like it broke my brain. Is this a case where people who like this game like it in spite of the bad writing? I guess I could see how that’s possible, but what is there to like in spite of its writing? I just really don’t get it / would definitely appreciate someone explaining it to me.

The nicest thing I have to say about this game is that the setting is quite cozy and nicely designed. I’ve spent some time in the Pacific Northwest and the game’s representation of a medium sized town in that region feels fairly accurate. I can also understand people liking the music, which mostly consists of indie folk that feels heavily influenced by the Bright Eyes album “I’m Wide Wake It’s Morning.” I adored that album as a teenager, so the music kind of worked for me (although it mostly just made me wish I was listening to Bright Eyes instead). Lucky for me the publisher did pull out the cash to license an actual Bright Eyes song so I did get my wish for a couple minutes.

Another positive - Life is Strange contains the most unintentionally hilarious NPC dancing I’ve ever seen in a video game. Please go onto YouTube right away and look up gameplay from the Vortex (?) party to see for yourself - I promise you won’t regret it. Video games - especially 7th-gen and earlier almost never get NPCs dancing at a party to look natural or convincing (big props to devs of Hitman 3 for absolutely nailing this though). The dancing in life is strange is something else though - it has to be seen to be believed.

Those are pretty much all the nice things I have to say. I probably would have liked this game had I played it when I was a precocious 13 year old back in 2009, who felt very cool for listening to Beach House and Animal Collective and who desperately wished the Max Caulfield of his school would walk up to him on the bus and ask if he wanted to share earbuds to listen to the Juno soundtrack. Unfortunately for me I played this game as a somewhat cynical 20-something , and the adolescent indie vibes only served to make me realize that the mindset that would have allowed me to be won over by them had been inevitably left in the past.

So I suppose I can understand people liking the vibes in spite of the writing. I like plenty of things that are quaint and twee but not this. For me, the writing is bad enough and disruptive enough to prevent me from genuinely enjoying anything in spite of it, and the vibes simply aren’t appealing to me at this point in my life. The vibes would definitely be more appealing if characters spoke like actual teenagers.

I’d still very much appreciate hearing from someone who loves this game. People’s enjoyment of it has been frankly puzzling to me for years, and I’d like to have this cleared up.

This is obviously a historically significant game and one that was a technical marvel for the system it ran on. That said, it’s very rough around the edges and pales in comparison to Star Fox 64, which does everything this game tries to do but much much better. Don’t get me wrong, SF is a fun game, and it kept me entertained during my play through. Levels and bosses are challenging, and the feeling of flying through space and dodging obstacles all while frantically trying to hit enemies is really exhilarating. Pure gameplay design is something that Star Fox really nails, but the game as a whole is hurt by some pretty significant problems.

One of the biggest issues with this game is the frame rate, which is probably around 15-20fps but feels much lower. The visuals are the other major issue. While the SNES was obviously capable of producing SF’s 3D visuals, making a 3D space shooter for the SNES where tons of enemies, obstacles, and laser blasts need to be on the screen at the same time probably wasn’t such a good idea. One of the biggest challenges this game offers is actually being able to see and understand what’s happening on screen. This flaw does make for an interesting challenge, and some people might actually like that quality of SF but for me it definitely brings the game down overall.

I’m glad I played this so I could experience it at least once, but I can’t see myself ever willingly playing it again when Star Fox 64 is readily available and superior in every way.

Clickers are a weird genre. When played as intended they offer nothing of substance and provide almost none of the benefits that video games usually offer. They don’t offer the player challenge, narrative fulfillment, immersion, fantasy or space for creativity. The only thing clickers have to offer is engagement and they manage to do that without gameplay and almost always without narrative. The mechanics of idle games are simply designed to give our little lizard brains dopamine hits and to promote addiction. In this sense they’re honestly more like actual drugs than conventional video games. Clickers however, instead of promising to get you high, promise to make time disappear and nothing else.

I understand the desire to escape your worries and pass the time, but you’re better off doing literally anything else. You’re better off wasting time with something that will at least provide you with fun, relaxation or laughter. Clickers are the epitome of a waste of time - one of the only uses of one’s time that I can think of that provides literally nothing be it good or bad - at least in the immediate sense (playing clickers for multiple hours a day would almost certainly have a net negative impact on your life in the long run).

The only caveat to my point is this: I think there is some fun to be had if you engage with the clicker genre outside the bounds of the normal player experience. For example, this could be creatively exploiting a game’s systems or programming and trying to do a speedrun or figuring out how to break the game in other ways. These could probably be rewarding and mentally stimulating endeavors, and I’m sure there are more worthwhile unintended uses that I’m not thinking of. However, I am wholly confident that when clickers are played as intended they offer the player absolutely nothing of substance and serve only to waste their time and promote addiction.

I’ve spent thousands of hours of my life playing video games. Would my time have been better spent doing something else? Probably, although I don’t view this time spent as a waste. Gaming has given me plenty of fun, it’s given me fond memories, it’s challenged me to be creative, and, in exceptional cases, has even given me creative new frames through which to view the real world.

When I think back on the 100 or so hours I spent playing clicker heroes I see a gaping meaningless void stemming from an experience so deeply stupid I can’t help but laugh. I know it’s not healthy to feel this way, but I feel frankly ashamed that I let my addictive and compulsive tendencies be exploited by a game that seeks to prey on its users. Playing this game made me feel ashamed to have these tendencies in the first place. (Just a note for clarification - I don’t think I should feel ashamed about this and I absolutely don’t think anyone reading this that has struggled with addiction or compulsive behavior should feel ashamed either. I just wanted to be honest about the emotions this game inspired in me despite them being unhealthy and counter productive.)

The worst thing is I’m clearly not alone in feeling this way either. One skim through the reviews of this game and you’ll see a bunch of people lamenting the hundreds or thousands of hours they spent on this game despite knowing that it’s addictive and meaningless trash. It honestly makes me sick to my stomach to see how many people have had a similar experience to myself when it comes to this game.

But anyway - this game and the idle genre fucking suck. Regardless of how a game like this is monetized - whether it has predatory micro-transactions or a one time purchase - even if it’s not monetized at all - it’s still exploitative. Any game that is devoid of active play and drives player engagement through addiction and psychological trickery is exploiting and harming its players - regardless of whether or not the devs are aware of or intend to do this. I wholeheartedly regret spending any time on this game. To me, playing this game for 100 hours was indistinguishable from shortening my lifespan by 100 hours.

Mankind Divided is a step up from Human Revolution in just about every way. The most important area of improvement is undoubtedly level design. The levels in MD are much closer to the original Deus Ex than HR’s are in terms of openness and room for player creativity. In Human Revolution each level has maybe two or three infiltration routes. The levels in MD give you the feeling that the options for tackling them are basically limitless. This was one of the great strengths of the original and is mostly replicated here.

Story here is a bit stronger than HR’s, which is to say a pretty decent take on the themes and tropes of Deus Ex. The premise of an augmented apartheid being manipulated and taken advantage of by various parties is definitely more interesting and feels more grounded here than the anti aug bias in HR. In HR the anti-aug factions mostly appealed to ideas of human purity in a philosophical sense, which was a pretty weak and boring argument considering much more compelling material arguments against augmentations that the game didn’t really tackle e.g. hardening class boundaries, mandatory augmentation for certain jobs, etc.

The anti-aug violence in MD feels much more grounded and realistic due to the aug incident and the way those in power paint augmented people as dangerous and deviant. This groundedness causes the players actions and choices in the game to hold more weight. Instead of being asked to stop a Luddite holding people hostage you’re being sent to arrest a peaceful leader for aug rights that your corrupt bosses want you to get rid of. This sense of working for the bad guys but trying to somehow do the right thing or at least minimize the damage you’re causing is very much present in the original deus ex and it is here as well. The same can’t be said for Human Revolution.

The only step down from HR in my opinion is probably the visual aesthetic. HR had a very unique and striking cyber renaissance aesthetic, which MD replaces with a drab world in collapse saturated with greys and blues. While this change makes sense and I’m glad they didn’t just keep the same aesthetic from HR, this new aesthetic doesn’t really do anything interesting or creative to stand out.

The length was also a bit of an issue for me. MD is on the shorter side, the 2nd shortest DE game after invisible war, and I wish it was longer and had more levels outside of the Prague hub world which takes up most of the game. Some of the best levels in the game, like the London and Golem levels involve you traveling to a new visually unique area, and I wish there was more of that.

Overall this is a really enjoyable game and the first in the Deus Ex series to feel like a worthy follow up to the original. It doesn’t have anything really special to elevate it to the level of the original, but it’s a quality game nonetheless.

Hooh boy… There’s honestly a lot to be said about Persona Q.

First off - for those who have yet to play the game, PQ switches up the Persona combat formula quite a lot. Demon fusions are still a thing although now every character gets to equip a sub persona on top of their normal persona. The MCs also have to do this and cannot swap freely between personas. Teams fight enemies in a front and back row formation with attacks having various ranges based on this. There’s also no “one more” mechanic. If you hit an enemies weakness or get a crit you’re rewarded with 0 HP or SP cost for your move next turn, which given the cost of moves in this game is VERY helpful.

In terms of exploration it’s a classic first person dungeon crawler like the original Persona or early SMT games. Your location in the dungeon appears on the lower screen of the 3DS, and Persona Q strongly recommends that you use the stylus to update and draw a map there as you navigate (this is basically required given how complex the dungeons get).

Outside of dungeons you have a hub world screen where you can select options to get healed, buy equipment, visit the velvet room, talk to companions, and initiate side quests.

That’s pretty much everything. On to the review.

This game is a mixed bag. The main draw for most Persona fans will likely be getting to see the casts of P3 and P4 interact and just generally getting to see more of their favorite characters. PQ definitely delivers on this and there’s a huge amount of optional conversations, scenes, and side quests where the characters interact. This is done pretty well. Some characters, typically the more serious ones like Yu, Makoto, Naoto, Shinjiro, and Ken are done really well. Unfortunately some of the more comedic or off the walls characters are pretty much only given lines that boil down to one note jokes about their personalities. I don’t think Chie had any lines in this game that weren’t about eating meat. Teddy is given this same simplifying treatment and it causes him to be unBEARable in this game. There are however a lot of really nice and touching character interactions, particularly with Ken, and the good generally outweighed the bad for me in this regard.

The main story is decent but scenes and dialogue that progress the plot are pretty sparse. This is mostly because the actual plot of PQ is rather simple and doesn’t need a lot of explaining. There are some nice and genuinely touching moments regarding the main plot, and I definitely enjoyed its themes and the way it concluded.

Onto gameplay. PQ is shockingly difficult in just about every way. On normal difficulty this is the hardest Persona game by a pretty wide mile. It’s probably harder than some of the easier mainline SMT games. In terms of combat, the added difficulty of the battles is actually a really nice change. You actually have to think about what you’re doing when fighting random mobs. In terms of party and supply management the difficulty is abysmal. Your party will run out of SP very quickly causing them to be severely handicapped in fights. When this happens you have to go all the way back to the hub world to heal and it gets really annoying after a while. The same thing is the case with resources you gather from defeated enemies, which are necessary for side quests and buying upgraded gear. Your party has limited inventory space, so you’ll be walking back to the hub world to off load this pretty regularly.

The dungeon layouts and their gimmicks can be quite convoluted and generally very challenging as well. There’s a nice balance in regards to this for most of the dungeons. To progress you’ll be made to backtrack several times through the dungeons - hitting switches and writing down codes to solve puzzles and also gathering items for quests. What I mean to say is - there’s a lot of walking. This would be fine but the limited resources of your party in combination with the games VERY high encounter rate causes you to move through dungeons at a glacial pace. This game is almost all dungeon crawling, and it can easily take around 100 hours to beat on your first run if you’re trying to do all the side quests and see all the related scenes of dialogue.

So the dungeons have a lot of problems but they can still be somewhat enjoyable. That is, excluding the 4th dungeon, which is probably one of the worst dungeons I’ve ever played in a MegaTen game. The puzzles in this dungeon are incredibly complicated and require an ungodly amount of backtracking. If the pace of the other dungeons felt glacial this one feels positively sisyphean. If you look on forums you’ll see countless people talking about how despite already being 60 hours into PQ they dropped the game at this dungeon because it was just that painful. The only MegaTen dungeons that compare in terms of pure frustration and boredom are probably the world of sloth from SMT IF and the bonus dungeon from Strange Journey Redux.

As a big persona fan this game definitely charmed me, which was enough for me to forgive the immense amount of BS it throws at the player. Not everyone will be like this though, so this is a hard game to recommend. I would only recommend it if you’re a die hard persona fan that has a lot of patience, a big fan of complicated and lengthy dungeon crawling, or a combination of the two. For everyone else I’d recommend you stay away. Don’t be fooled by the chibi art style - Persona Q will kick your shit in if you’re not prepared.

Addendum: If you’re trying to decide whether to play this or Persona Q2, they’re mechanically very similar. PQ2 however, eliminates a lot of the bullshit from PQ. Resource management is easier and there’s less backtracking, which makes the game feel a lot less tedious than PQ. Character interactions in both games are enjoyable IMO. PQ2 is definitely the better game, but I find all the bullshit present in PQ kind of charming for some reason. So if you’re a normal well-adjusted person I’d definitely recommend choosing PQ2 over this. If you’re a bit of a gaming masochist like me and you actually kind of enjoy having to struggle against a game’s design to get through it PQ offers a memorable and at times interestingly weird experience.

The spirit of perversity must have overtaken me when I decided to beat this game because no rational human being would ever do that. To make this irrational self-vexing even more extreme, I decided I was going to fuse every single demon in the game. All of this created an experience almost beyond description. Playing this game was a boring, frustrating, and bewildering ordeal and yet for some reason I could not bring myself to put it down. I have no idea where this monomania came from.

This is not a short game, mind you, the whole ordeal probably took around 60 hours; 60 hours that I could have spent doing literally anything else.

If some idiot ever tries to tell you that human beings are rational actors, make them play 20 minutes of Megami Tensei and then inform them that there are countless people who have played the game to completion. I promise you they won’t believe human beings are so rational anymore.

This game exists mainly as a historical artifact for those interested in the beginnings of the MegaTen franchise, the monster collection genre, and Famicom graphical design. It’s a visually impressive game with a decent soundtrack to boot and was incredibly innovative for its time. That said, there’s really no reason to play this to completion today. You’d be much better off playing it for 20 minutes to get a feel for it or watching a video about it on YouTube.

Not my favorite of the persona games but the best one by a pretty wide mile IMO. This is the only Persona game that doesn’t have some massive problem bringing it down.

P1: simultaneous ease and over complexity of combat / encounter rate too high

P2: encounter rate way too high / IS story too convoluted

P3: Only controlling Makoto (I understand why the developers did this and it is an interesting idea just not one that benefits the game IMO), forced romance arcs, monotonous dungeon design

P4: Certain writing decisions that heavily conflict with the game’s supposed core message (see my review on P4G), monotonous dungeon design.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge persona fan and love all of these games despite their flaws and gave almost all of them 8 or 9/10 ratings. P4G is my personal favorite due to nostalgia and a very strong emotional connection I have to it.

That said, persona 5 is the first and only persona game to stand as a cohesive whole, expertly utilizing what makes the series unique and special, and lacking any substantial flaws that bring the game down. P5R certainly isn’t a perfect game but it’s close to it.

The story - despite being very long - is incredibly engaging both due to the memorable characters and it’s page-turner conspiracy plot. Each target for a change of heart exists as a really clean and concise mini-plot, which keeps things fresh and makes the game’s substantial length feel justified and tolerable. While story isn’t anything particularly deep or artistic - it makes frequent use of tropes, can be a bit cartoonish at times, and doesn’t really have any deep or complex criticisms of the power structures the phantom thieves battle against - it really doesn’t need to be and it succeeds as a fun, suspenseful, emotionally engaging, and life affirming story. While I think the Persona 2 duology and Persona 3 pack more of an emotional punch and have more interesting things to say, Persona 5 absolutely hits the mark with its storytelling goals and does this kind of story with more style and grace than almost any other similarly-minded game.

Dungeons and gameplay are overall improved when compared to the earlier persona games. Proper demon negotiation is a fantastic addition the series that was sorely missing. The use of carefully designed and planned dungeons as opposed to the generic corridors we saw in P3 and 4 makes the dungeon crawling fun, engaging and overall more challenging than the previous two games.

For series veterans or SMT veterans difficulty will likely be a bit of an issue. The persona games have always by and large been easier than other SMT games. I don’t see this as a bad thing but I understand that other people might. P5 is about the same as 3 and 4 when it comes to difficulty, which I believe suits it fine. It’s a good introduction to SMTs combat style without being too alienating and still offering some challenge for veterans on the highest difficulties.

A lot of people choose their favorite persona game based on which one has their favorite story and companion characters. For me that’s probably Persona 3. The idea of showing how a down to earth and realistic group of teenagers copes when being faced with not only their own deaths but the death of humanity is great and is done remarkably well in that game. Persona 5 takes a much more bombastic and to be honest Hollywood approach, which I think it does really well. Everyone is free to have their preference for the kinds of stories they engage with and I totally understand people not liking the direction P5 went with. That said, P5 and P5R undeniably elevate the series to a new level when it comes to artwork, design, polish, gameplay and overall cohesion. It’s a wonderful game, the perfect blockbuster game if you will, and I would recommend to almost anyone.

Nowhere near the deepest or most challenging or most artistically rendered game I’ve ever played, but it’s definitely the most fun.

This game, like only a few others I’ve played, ate my soul. Similarly to my experience with the Witcher 3, playing Yakuza 0 felt like going on a stimulant binge. The experience was so fun and so engaging and so addictive that it felt like time had skipped forward a week when I started playing. When I came to, so to speak, I realized I had sunk over 20 hours into a hostess club management mini game and over 150 hours in Yakuza 0 in general.

This is, from what I’ve heard, a common experience. Be careful with this game. Like I said, it’ll eat your soul.

Certainly not the deepest or most thoughtful RPG out there. The combat gets ridiculously easy by the end, and the story, while engaging, doesn't really have much to say. The reason why i'm ranking it so high is i dont think ive ever been so immersed and honestly addicted to a videogame. My roommate warned me before playing it. He said "that game will eat your soul dude, be careful...."

This game ate my soul and I loved every minute of it. It honestly felt a bit like going on an adderall binge or something. There wasn't a ton of substance, it wasn't particularly memorable, I felt a bit guilty afterwards, but it was an absolute fucking blast.