Today I went in to get some bloodwork done. My hands still hurt from where they pricked me. 6 whole vials, taken from me. Well, "taken" isn't exactly fair. This was of my own volition after all.

Maybe it's not my right. Maybe I'm making an irrational decision, one that feels correct to me, but isn't exactly correct in the eyes of the world. Do I care? Hell yeah I do. Far, far more than I should. But... but even still... this is what I want.

I'm scared. Scared that living as a man is rotting me to my core. It's making me cynical. It's making me sad. It's depriving me of hope that I'm so desperate for these days.

I'm scared. Scared that I'll never be accepted as a woman. That because I'm fat, because I'm not attractive, that I'll forever just be an ugly perverted man in the eyes of the world.

I see 9S struggle against the crushing realities of his existence. I see his fear, his anger, his despair, and I see myself in it. Upon learning his existence was never his to begin with, and his agency was never a right he had, he had nothing left but to be angry and scared.

I see A2's rejection of the powers that be. I see her refusal to give into total despair despite the cruelties of their existence. I see her take her life into her own hands, make her decisions of her own volitions. I see her disregard suggestions of the systems that oppressed her. I see who I want to be. Who I hope I can be.

Right now, I see the world through the eyes of a man. A depressed, unemployed man. A man who hates being a man. A man who hates every ounce of his own flesh and blood. I see a crying girl in there, begging to be freed from this disgusting body I was forced into. A body created by people I hate, by people who hate me, by people who reject me and robbed me of my "self."

I can't change that. I'm powerless to the cards dealt to me. Fight as I might, this is the life I have. It's not one I'm happy with. If I had my way I wouldn't be who I am at all. I wouldn't be alive in the first place.

I can't change that. Instead, I'll have to change me.

My hands still hurt from where they pricked me. It served as a reminder during that final sequence, a systemic destruction of the artists who worked on this game, that my existence doesn't belong to my pain, my traumas, my despair. It belongs to me.

So this week I start HRT.

Might be a perfect game? Heartbreaking and anxiety-inducing in an incredibly novel, choice-driven way. To go too into detail would be to spoil this game's trick, which is something everyone should experience for themself, so: growing up is a uniquely terrifying process. Everything changes--your friends, the world, yourself. I Was a Teenage Exocolonist captures the feeling of watching the entire universe uncontrollably drift, your closest friends warping in frightening and confusing ways, the environment you live in gradually growing more hostile and less accommodating, and the government dropping its veneer of protection to reveal the ugliness underneath. And all the while, you can do nothing but watch. Nomi-Nomi is literally me.

As somebody who is intensely afraid of death, many of the struggles the characters faced and the overarching conflict really resonated with me. It has been difficult to pull myself away from this game for the last few weeks.

I absolutely adored how the game presents its main objective; For the first few months your goal is beating the 12 shadows. Simple enough, and you just wanna get through all of that and bring peace to the world as quickly as possible. But then you get to December, and learn the real nature of what lies ahead. Suddenly, the passage of time is dreadful, and all you want is to relish in the last few moments you have left with your friends. It perfectly captures how it feels to grow up in your late teenage years, and I think that’s what I found most compelling about this game.

An excellent bit of sci-fi writing with enough gameplay chunkiness to be engaging for people who need a bit of that anchor (like myself). Starts off precious but quickly Gets Real, and then takes a deft hand with pretty much everything it brings up throughout the playthrough, not the least of which is the thorniness of colonization as a concept regardless of whether there is a native people to bulldoze or not. Despite outward appearances, this is not some cozy hangout game, and there are moments of real violence and struggle that were a pleasant surprise. The game bits are easy but engaging enough to string you along with a bit of strategy and numbers going up, and metaphorically tie into the conceit of the game nicely. Was also very impressed with how multiple playthroughs are contextualized, though admittedly being sent back to the beginning with my little baby deck was deflationary enough for me to not go for it - would be nice to try one day though.

Sometimes you just have to disappear for a month and play an Extremely long video game. In summary - I loved Persona 5 Royal and its many many flaws

Let's get the worst out of the way - I do think the game undermines a lot of its own messages/themes by being unable to break away from certain tropes or cheap gags. The first Arc of the game deals with a teacher that uses their position of power to sexually harrass students. However, four different romantic options are adults also in a position of power while the character you control is a minor. The adult characters also acknowledge Joker being underage if you romance them, and some basically have a line of dialogue that's like "welp guess I'm a pedophile now!" which was certainly Something. The other thing is, I myself am an adult and the adult characters are actually pretty great but I couldn't help but feel just kinda skeeved by the whole thing - especially when I don't think the game would lose anything by making our protagonists college students or whatever. I also think it's made worse by Persona's romance options being Very hetero centric and listen before you give me shit for saying that, imagine if the writing team had one extremely unhinged fujoshi on it - that shit would go SO fucking hard, like Joker and Akechi's dynamics are already one of the best parts of this game...... basically it's just a bit silly that a minor dating their teacher was an option before dating your male best friend right? Plus Government Mandated Homophobic/Transphobic Persona Scene would be scrapped

But anyway - P5R is a very long game, split up into multiple gameplay sections. You have preset story moments, the dungeons and the life sim aspects. All of it generally flows pretty well, although I wasn't the biggest fan of Mementos which are minor side quests in a randomly generated dungeon. That was definitely pretty dull at points and could've had the number of floors reduced. In regards to the life sim aspects, I never felt like I didn't have anything to do (besides the last week or so of January where I COULD NOT FUCKING FIND LIKE HALF THE CHARACTERS AAA). I really liked the side stories of characters like Iwai, Yoshida and so on. The palaces/dungeons are....fine? Even though I never needed more than one ingame day to get through them, I still thought a few of them felt a bit too long

I do think Persona's combat has more depth to it than other turn based combat games but still never feels super challenging outside of the Okumura boss fight, which is a huge difficult spike that demands a lot more strategy and planning than any other fight that comes before it. I think the game could've preppred you better for this one - maybe make the difficult increase more gradual instead of a sudden hit to the face

In terms of presentation, it's almost flawless. The soundtrack is great and the stylish UI is literally infamous. The voice acting, character potraits and anime cutscenes get no complaints from me either - it all combines together to make a really expressive experience

Also, I will say - I think the Royal content is what really brought everything together for me, and honestly kinda where a lot of aspects peak. The characters and extra development it brings are just SO damn good, after feeling a bit mixed by the base game's final arc