Maybe it's because I"m coming off of Omori, a really narratively complex and starkly interesting game, but this feels a lot less genuine. At times it can feel like "torture porn." My reasoning behind this is that a lot of plot points are just left in the air, never to be addressed. There's a lot of plot holes like Yado's plan or the flash that are just used as vague setpieces or fake motivation. It feels like there's a lot of context just ripped out of this game and constant toying with all these sadistic and horrifying things but never really following through on them. It tells a decent story but it doesn't really say or do anything very profound.

I genuinely don't think there is a single moment not overflowing with soul in this game. You can feel the love and care poured into every single moment of your play session. I've been thinking about it for a while but the way the controller vibrates like a heartbeat when a shadow passes by your hiding place is what pushed me to write this review.

Regarding the theme, I believe that people who think it boils down to "adults bad," in any sense, genuinely have zero media literacy and/or need to watch YouTube essays to understand any piece of media beyond the surface level.

My only real issue with this game is that I wish the final story was unlocked after Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles' stories, as the other three really suck the pacing out of it.

The main story of the game goes like this:
Sonic's story -> Tails' story -> Knuckles' story -> Final story

Amy, Big, and Gamma are more side-stories that flesh out the background details of the world, and don't contribute to the plot in any real way. They feel like they should be extra unlockable modes for completing the game.

The more I think about this game's story the more upset I get. It's a complete mockery that acts pathetic all the time and sucks off the older games. It makes sense why Sonic Team chose to completely rewrite the script for Japanese audiences. While I do love the older games, I don't love them because they would obsess over the classic games. They were original and had ideas they wanted to explore. This game is extremely surface level in terms of story and the voice acting perfectly exemplifies it. They try to make it a more "mature story" by having the English voice actor put on a deep voice. That's it. It's all performative. There's nothing of narrative substance here. The music is great but the music is always great when it's a game made by Sonic Team. The writing and english voice acting is the opposite of witty, and frankly painful to sit through. It reeks of Sonic comic writing and the characters act like their comic counterparts rather than the versions of them this game is trying to ape.

I hope this new "era" of Sonic doesn't last too long.

Good gameplay. Great bosses. Horrible story. Bad English voice acting.

Playing in Japanese. Aside from Xander Mobus's legendary performance as Dagda, ATLUS West really dropped the ball here.

This game feels like a love letter to the entire history of Megami Tensei. It takes cues from every notable game in the franchise. While SMT IV was more original in setting, this game has a somewhat basic setting of living in the demon infested Tokyo during the apocalypse, except this time, you're not a messiah. You're just a regular person. I can easily imagine this game working in the world of SMT I or II. It's a standard setting with a really interesting setup.

The direction this game goes with its story and themes are very interesting and unique for the series and I wish a lot of people had the literary analysis beyond "friendship is power?? Not in my MegaTen!!!"

This game is secretly extremely anti-religion and portrays how religion exists only to divide and control humans, and that the only way peace can be achieved in a world with religion is if every human is enslaved to that religion.

Another thing it is about is the inherent flaw in "choosing the lesser evil," instead of striving for something better.

Game journalists were half right about God of War. Kratos was just a shallow, 1-dimensional, revenge-lusted, angry and loud, power fantasy that weak men aspired to. He had no real character in these first two games. Everything about him was surface level. It was not until Chains of Olympus, and the subsequent writing improvements that came along with God of War III, Ghost of Sparta, and even Ascension, that Kratos starting gaining some real depth to his character.

PS2 God of War is the epitome of "Spectacle over Substance," and no amount of obnoxiously funny screaming will ever change that.