Never has a game made me cry this much before.

It's snowing. A boy and his younger sister are starving and freezing, so they seek shelter in an abandoned supermarket to find rations and warmth. No one else is in sight, the streets and supermarket are empty - until mysterious shadows break into the store and threaten the siblings. With his remaining strength, the boy heads out to the parking lot and decides to take on the monsters with just an iron pipe and dark magic spells from a mysterious book, as he needs to protect his beloved sister at all costs. It's a hopeless battle, but the brother has no other choice.

NieR Replicant ver1.22 tells the tale of the young Nier and his quest to find a cure to heal his bedridden sister Yonah. Their parents are dead, so Nier is doing his best as a big brother and takes on various requests in his village to earn some pocket money to buy food, but at the same time he hates seeing his sister alone and wants to spend more time by her side. Life isn't easy for the two of them and it would be a shame if it got any worse.

Alright, I'm not giving an entire rundown of the plot here. My point is: The game is sad! Really sad. As you've read in the opening sentence, never has a game made me tear up and shiver as much as Replicant before and I'm a sucker for stories with emotional impact. It's really one of the best narratives I've ever seen. The moment I stepped foot into Aerie Village I knew I was in for a ride, but to be fair, the game does start rather slow and doesn't really gain momentum until an hour or so in, but that's because Replicant starts by showing Nier's daily life in the village and his routine (comparable to Twilight Princess' intro segment, but only half as long). The payoff is worth it though, as experiencing the plot unravel firsthand from an average shonen story to pure Yoko Taro madness is truly an one-of-a-kind experience and you'll never see this adventure the same way again after some reveals. Through episodic storytelling in the form of multiple routes, the player needs to replay a part of the game each time, but in each subsequent playthrough, new scenes that give context to certain events are added, which totally enhanced the experience for me, especially since you'll always know after your first playthrough what's going to happen next. Not gonna elaborate on that further, since it's a very spoilery topic by nature, so you should just experience it for yourself. However, I can understand how people are upset with the repetition, especially since the third playthrough is nearly identical to Route B. But trust me, pushing through is worth it and by the time you reach Ending E most of your questions should be answered, which is a great reward. The only thing I'm a bit torn on is the requirement to have all weapons in your inventory to access Routes C, D and E, since some of them are missable. A bunch of missed weapons can be bought at the blacksmith in Aerie Village after a certain point in the story, but some also require you to do three certain side quests. My recommendation: Since you can't get all the weapons on Route A normally anyways (3 are locked behind the World of Recycled Vessel content, which only unlocks after beating the game once), I suggest you just play through that one normally and pick up every weapon you find along the way (remember to break the crates!!) and if you are still missing some, you might look up where to get them on Route B. This requirement really shows the age of the original game, but shouldn't distract you from the overall outstanding narrative.

Okay, so the story is good, but what about the gameplay? I think it's great personally! (Except for the part where I broke the spring in my controller's right trigger... by dashing too much.) The controls are simple and the combat feels satisfying, there are great animations and the attacks feel like they have weight to them. Being able to utilize weapons and magic at the same time is really cool, you can pull off some interesting maneuvers by combining certain spells with standard attacks; there's even an in-game tutorial for it, if I remember correctly. But the combat is not the only aspect of the game, a lot of time is spent... backtracking (and fishing). There's really a lot of running around, especially if you're looking to complete as many side quests as possible. As someone who wanted to get the most out of Replicant, I finished the game with 97% sidequest completion and only left out two specific ones deliberately because I really didn't like the idea of spending several real-time days on the gardening part of the game with only a chance to get the flower seeds you need. That quest aside, surprisingly I really enjoyed my time with most of the sidequests! A whole lot of them were just fetch quests, yet you get some nice (voiced) dialogue out of them and I got to spend more time in this cozy world, so it didn't really matter to me - the extra banter alone made it worth to me. There's also some particularly good quests, like ones where you can make decisions that actually impact your rewards and the people around you. As an example, in one quest you can decide whether to help a criminal out or not and you have to live with that decision. Same goes for several occasions throughout the game where Nier can decide to either tell the truth or lie to people - there is no "right" choice and it's up to the player to decide what they think is for the best. Very cool.

The cast of this game is awesome, and I'm not just talking about the main party. Characters like the twins, Fyra or the postman really add to the liveliness in this overall rather bleak world and everyone has their own unique story behind them. I mean there's even a backstory for the fisherman who gives you all those fishing quests! Fishermen and postmen aside, Nier's actual companions deserve the spotlight just as much. Weiss, Emil and Kainé are some of the most unusual JRPG companions I have ever seen (and I love them for it), since they basically go against most of the common tropes you'd expect out of a sidekick. Personally I found the banter of the party to be really interesting at times, since their distinctive personalities are just destined to have a weird dispute every now and then.

The rearranged soundtrack is just beautiful. While NieR Gestalt focused more on the bass of the songs and sounds "rougher", Replicant ver1.22 centers the instruments more and has a "softer" tone, which fits the melancholic vibe incredibly well in my opinion. If you'd ask me to pick three four favorite songs, I'm going with Snow in Summer, Temple of Drifting Sands, Song of the Ancients (Devola) and Fleeting Words (Outsider). I'm not linking them this time, because it's quite hard to find an upload of the individual ver1.22 arrangements on YouTube and its even harder to find spoiler-free ones (very important for a story-heavy game like this).

To wrap this up, I firmly believe Nier Replicant is a must-play for anyone who loves JRPGs with great narrative, characters and soundtrack (but can also handle a little repetition). While the game can be a little slow at times, the experience of slowly piercing this story and context together for yourself is unbeatable and I hope it makes you just as sad you can find just as much enjoyment in it as I did!

A great display of video games as an artform.

NieR: Automata is a game that goes above and beyond with its unique way of storytelling, taking full advantage of making the experience one that can't be substituted through a book or a movie - not just in terms of visual design, but also through the use of dynamic music and having its story told from the point of view of multiple protagonists.

Note that I have played NieR Replicant (the first game) right before this entry, so comparing the two games was inevitable for me. On one hand I still feel like I was doing Automata a disservice by doing so, but at the same time it was nice hearing remixes of familiar songs when they were still fresh in my memory. Either way, in my opinion something very important to anyone interested in this game, is to play Replicant first if you want the full experience. Not only because you would miss many cool references, but also because Automata doesn't hold back with spoiling the first game through the documents you can find in it and personally I'd be pretty upset if I read those before playing Replicant. Those documents are cool for returning players because you get more context for the events of the previous entry, but also spoil some of the biggest twists. Play this first at your own risk.

In contrast to Replicant, Automata's story has a lot more spectacle to it than Replicant's more grounded and personal narrative. This time you're not taking control of the teenage boy who wants to cure his sister, but instead slip into the role of android warrior 2B, who is fighting in an all-out war against machines to reclaim the planet. Considering the scale of the story, you're just one of many androids - Automata is less about the characters' personal struggles and more about the main conflict at hand. And while the overarching narrative is solid, the real highlight is how the story is told and the messages behind it. This game has multiple routes and endings and they're used particularly well here, compared to Replicant, where the routes were the same in terms of gameplay, but with new scenes. Even if Automata's Route A and B are the same string of events told through a different perspective (which turned a surprising amount of people off from doing multiple routes), the unique gameplay of 9S and some scenes from his perspective alone are worth warranting the second playthrough. Route C however is where the story really picks up in pace, while also being a fresh experience at the same time. New enemies, new plot, new soundtrack. (The enemy variety in Automata in general is way better than Replicant, there are so many machines and bosses with cool ideas!) Also, the finale of Route C completely blew me away with the "art direction" of it and the final battle at the end was the cherry on top. For those concerned about missables, after beating this route, you'll unlock Chapter Select and can freely return to any point in the story before, so there's no reason for FOMO, feel free to tackle the game at your own pace. In regards to achievements, what I found particularly interesting was the integration of a trophy shop. It's just like the name would suggest, a hidden in-game shop where you can buy the remaining achievements in exchange for virtual currency. Pretty cool if you locked yourself out of a trophy, but also really made me think about the actual point of trophies in general...

Combat and movement in Automata are definitely an upgrade to Replicant's combat... for the most part. Coming right from the first game, I was a bit surprised how slippery the controls felt, like they didn't have much weight to them. The most glaring difference was the missing vibration on hit though, it really gave the attacks more impact for me. Turns out the controls are actually quite good and responsive after spending a while with them, it just took me a bit to adjust. Now, the combat in Automata literally consists of hack-and-slash. As 2B, your main approach to offense will be slashing through the enemies (while looking really stylish) by dual-wielding a set of two weapons of choice, reaching from her signature katanas to the Beastbane from Replicant, you're free to mix and match towards whatever matches your own personal playstyle. Meanwhile the other protagonist, 9S, puts the emphasis on the "hack" in hack-and-slash. He does not have the luxury of using two weapons at once, as his model is not designed for combat, but rather for gathering intel - in gameplay terms this means you can hack into your enemies to deal large amounts of damage, destroying most normal enemies instantly. Hacking consists of a Space Invaders-like bullet hell minigame, where you need to shoot down hostile ships or towers which are shooting projectiles at you. If you get hit three times, you're getting kicked and need to hack the enemy again to get another shot at the minigame. In order to successfully complete a hack, normally all enemies need to be destroyed before being able to shoot the otherwise guarded core, but there are some exceptions, like bosses and special hacks have unique screens with other conditions attached to them. Hacking and slashing aside, there's actually a third type of combat (even if it's rarely used), the aerial combat. There are a few parts where you're mounting a flying mech and need to shoot down enemies in a rail shooter-like fashion. These segments are either 2D or top-down, your possible movements are defined by the camera angle.

Following up to the "possible movements", I'd like to talk about the possible movements in the overworld and the level design in general, because I'm really sold on both of those aspects. Moving around feels great, has a very parkour-ish feel to it and hopping or gliding onto certain structures is awesome. This also comes from the level design being a lot of fun to traverse and explore, a big step up from Replicant. All areas have an unique theme they're designed after and they're like semi-open worlds. No loading screens (aside from the ones disguised as elevators) are a huge plus and make for a really seamless experience. Not to mention those individual levels are gorgeous and still filled with so many small details, my favorites are the Forest Kingdom and Amusement Park. Shoutout to the Flooded City, although I wish that area was a bit larger. After reflecting on those areas, I'm not really sure if I prefer the medieval design of Replicant's world or the post-apocalyptic world of Automata. But one thing is for certain: traversing Automata's world didn't break my controller's right trigger spring. (Yeah, that happened in Replicant. Not even because I threw the controller or anything, it was just because I dashed a lot...)

The soundtrack is excellent. As I already stated in my opener, NieR Automata greatly makes use of the dynamic soundtracks - this means the songs shift between multiple variants, based on what is currently happening. Like when you hack an enemy as 9S, the current song slowly transitions into an 8-Bit version, depending on how much the hacking meter is filled, eventually the the hacking sequence starts and the full 8-Bit rendition plays until the minigame is completed, where it fades back to the normal version. But not only does the combat have changing music, the songs in individual areas also change based on location or story progress. An example fairly early on is the desert theme, Memories of Dust. As you walk into the desert for the first time, you will hear an instrumental version of this song, but as you get closer to the apartment ruins, the vocals fade in. It also works in reverse, because if you walk away from that location, the lyrics will fade out again. The most impactful use of the dynamic soundtrack for me was at the very end, and I won't specify this further, since you'll know what I mean when you get there.

Something very important for the PC players: Please do yourself a favor and set the anti-aliasing to SMAA, because MSAA looks really horrible in this port and also chugs performance for some reason; you won't even get consistent 60 frames, because there's some built-in limiter. Meanwhile the FidelityFX CAS option makes the colors look off, so I'd recommend turning that off too. These two things unironically took me three hours to figure out and I don't want you to go through the same pain.

In the end, I absolutely adored NieR Automata as an experience. While it didn't emotionally impact me nearly as much as Replicant, I prefer the direction and creative approach in this one, like using the route system for something a lot more meaningful than playing through the exact same events three times (and the final area four times!). It's definitely a game I will be thinking about for quite some time, as it really opened my eyes on games as an artform. Thanks for reading and glory to mankind!

I think a term commonly associated with romance/sol animanga and games is “wish fulfillment.” Now, from my experience, it's a term usually met with some level of disdain or condescension. “Wow what a loser, they need this thing to feel good about themselves.” And, sure, I can understand where that attitude comes from, in fact I'm like that sometimes too. But I feel it's not that simple. People come from different backgrounds, places, and circumstances. Sometimes what we need is comfort from something, even if it isn't real.
Clannad, among many, many other beloved visual novels is boiled down to the common “your friends and family are important, your life is worth living” morals, but is it a bad thing to be so commonly communicated? I would assume that Maeda and the many other writers at Key are trying to convey this, and even if they were or not, intention does not always align with found purpose. Tomoya Okazaki, our protagonist, is a great stand in for players like me to some degree. He's still his own character, but I think him being a loner to align with the usual “wish fulfillment” protagonist role really works to its benefit. No matter your background or role, there is worth in finding friends and family, whether it be genetic or found. It finally gives us purpose to those who feel so aimless in life. Clannad is not simply “wish fulfillment” at play. It's inspiring us to fulfill those wishes ourselves, and fulfill the wishes of others.
I’ve seen complaints about Clannad’s core structure before, as for some people the routes are “not interconnected enough”. But is that a problem? In my opinion, anyway, Clannad is an anthology of the multiple “what if” scenarios surrounding Okazaki’s journey in life. While Nagisa’s route is what leads to the true ending of the story, it doesn’t make the other routes pointless. Regardless of what is the “true” outcome of the story, your experiences and how you see these characters develop will always live on with the player. You get to see Okazaki give these people true happiness in life, and by the true ending, he is repaid for everything he’s done. While in gameplay the route system is a little rough around the edges with much needed polish, I think playing with a guide allows for a very smooth experience.
Playing this after my most prior Key visual novel experience, that being AIR, really opened my eyes to how well thought out and executed much of Clannad is. While AIR suffers from an overly ambitious but ultimately meaningless structure, Clannad takes a safer approach and cuts out any filler. Jun Maeda and his team really wanted to make up for the mistakes of AIR, and you can really tell from how much more polish is applied to this game. Despite this being one of the longest games I’ve ever played, Clannad rarely falls victim to artificial padding. The game gives you and makes proper use of the “skip already read text” feature, which makes hopping into your next route a very quick and easy experience. It helps that the game is split into 10+ routes that all vary in length, meaning I don’t think the game can ever burn you out from a scenario. Each route (with two exceptions, one being entirely optional) is very different overall so nothing is samey either. I’d also like to make note of the amount of content on offer, Clannad is not only long from the main game but has TONS of little secrets and extra blurbs of dialogue to discover, it really feels like the team wanted to put as much as they could onto the disc.
And that’s the overall thing I love about Clannad: it’s very polished. Not perfect, but very damn close. Clannad may seem safe or tropey, but it uses those aspects and pushes them to a wonderful and engaging extent. The current top review tries to make fun of fans of this game and I’d have to say that this person probably has never experienced joy in their life. None of the huge visual novels I’ve played so far have been flops, and Clannad is no exception either. In fact, out of the three (Higurashi, Tsukihime, Clannad) I would say this is my new favorite, and knowing that Key still has some fantastic games in their catalog for me to still try out (Kanon, Little Busters!, and Rewrite) has me so immensely excited. But none of those games, or any visual novels in the future will take away what a special experience Clannad was for me. I had taken a long break from reviews and I needed to get out of that slump, and this game was what inspired me to write a little something again, especially seeing how none of the longer reviews about this game on this site are in good faith. I wanted to fix that. Thank you for reading, and if this review manages to get even one person to fully play through this game, I’ll be happy.

it's been weeks since i finished persona 3 fes, and yet i still find myself searching for the words to summarize how i feel about it.

this game is truly stunning in every way. the combat is layered, expertly weaving main plot theme and narrative with it's use of tactics and tartarus. the characters are independent of the mc, with the game being entirely unafraid to explore them in both flaw and strength, writing them in the most natural and real of any persona game. the protagonist is one of the strongest silent protagonists i've ever experienced, ending up as my favourite character for so many reasons, and the skill in which the writers round him out and make him a fully living being in this dark, scary world is unbelievable.

every single shred of persona 3 fes is dripping with its themes, every ending and variable in the game gives you such immense emotion and outlook, with the tone and the atmosphere never shying away.

p3's themes are treasured in my heart, and yet plays with ideas that keep me up at night with worry. it delivers on both with exceptional skill. my all time favourite persona, and a new favourite game of all time.

dreams are big, and subtext is for cowards

have you ever wanted to be a taxi driver? what about a bear hunter? what about an idol? what about a guy who has money?? what about a ex baseball pro??? well guess what! with yakuza 5, your dreams (wink) canm come true!!!!!!

yakuza 5 does have some littol flaws that keep it from being a 5/5 for me, such as the encounter rate which made me want to have an encounter with falling off the side of a cliff :3 there's some plot issues but tbh they are not so bad that they bring down the game much, if at all, for me.

the new characters make me ascend higher than the highest highs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! takasugi and shinada 4 lyfe <333333 i think also this game in the series is one of the first to really dig deep into self reflection, and using dreams (wink) to showcase characters flaws and goals in such a beautiful way oh my god, very good very well done rgg i love u

i also think the antags are very good and i'm so happy that yakuza 5 did not fall into the same tropes that have been going on for 4 games in a row. good job yakuza 5

yakuza 5's themes are dreamlike (wink), i think they really do well at weaving the protagonists stories together, and make the finale section of the game genuinely superb writing. there's something so special about these larger than life characters, who often times literally and metaphorically explode off the screen, have wishes that are so human. dreams (wink) are so big and huge, yet the humans wanting them are so small, but can still be a constant inspiration for those around them

yume think i'm exaggerating, but i wouldn't dream of it, this game is sheer peak, and i cannot wait for more of the story to come <3

Easily one of if not probably THE largest scope single-player game I've ever played, and somehow rarely unwavering in quality through the entire 100+ hours. Not only is there an incredible, nearly unmatched level of variability in the gameplay, from sidequests to minigames to main story content, but each of these pieces clearly has an equal amount of effort put into them. Nothing is left behind in favor of anything else; there is so much care put into the smallest minigames and sidequests and songs all the way up to the biggest scale story set pieces. I am truly in awe at the scale of this game and find it incomparable to nearly anything in this sense other than perhaps Elden Ring.

I was fully engrossed in this world, in every area, for just about the entirety of my playthrough, and really did not want my adventure to end. I was very motivated to do the majority of side content, simply because of how good it all was, with a random sidequest more than once leading to a completely unique minigame challenge I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. The combat evolves from the first game significantly; I loved the synergy abilities and additions to each of the original party members plus the new party members equally. Everyone is fun to use in their own way and I LOVED how the game separates the party in the story quite often, forcing you to try out different combinations of characters. Not only that, but each of the specified party sections typically will have enemies and/or a boss that is designed for the combat around the members you're using, whether it being aerial enemies with Barret/Yuffie, or perhaps physically aggressive enemies with Red to block and counter with, or fast enemies with Tifa, just as an example. I wish more RPGs with larger parties would do this, as deciding who to use while also wanting to use everyone somewhat equally is something I often struggle with.

I was a fan of FF7 Remake, but it was far from one of my favorite games of all time. Rebirth has more than lived up my greatest expectations and absolutely is one of the best games I've ever played. Any of its shortcomings, mostly in the form of a couple sub-par minigames or sidequests, or some world traversal issues, absolutely do not take away from the spectacle of the adventure and world. I did not even mention Queen's Blood, which is easily my favorite of the various evolving Final Fantasy side-games, and is a great game in and of itself. The soundtrack is also no question one of the greatest ever made, from beginning to end, with the massive quantity of tracks all of incredible quality. I really do love the Final Fantasy VII universe, and I would be shocked to see anyone that doesn't after playing this game. I cannot wait what is in store in the final part of this already legendary trilogy.

10/10

I can't recommend this collection enough. While seasons 2 and 3 have their naysayers, I think they're pretty damn good and definitely worth playing, especially if you intend on experiencing the whole Walking Dead story. Personally, I loved all four main seasons of this series, and I thought Michonne was decent as a supplemental piece, although I wouldn't recommend it on its own.

Along with that, this collection comes with developer commentary for seasons 1-4. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work for whatever reason, so I can't say for sure how worthwhile it is (although I know the season 2 finale has a juicy cut content drop), but you can probably find them on YouTube if nothing else.

Anyway, I'm going to use this review to link to every review I made for each episode of each season, along with a link to my ranking of all the episodes as a whole. Each review includes some thoughts on the episodes, and the major choices I made (except S1E1, didn't have the idea to do that yet), why I made those choices, and the character relationship statuses seen at the end of season 3 and the end of each season 4 episode. This is probably gonna suck to type out, I really hope I don't fuck something up.

Oh - this should be obvious, but each review has spoilers for the episode!

Ranking of all episodes
Season 1, episode 1: A New Day
Season 1, episode 2: Starved For Help
Season 1, episode 3: Long Road Ahead
Season 1, episode 4: Around Every Corner
Season 1, episode 5: No Time Left
Season 1, DLC episode: 400 Days
Season 2, episode 1: All That Remains
Season 2, episode 2: A House Divided
Season 2, episode 3: In Harm's Way
Season 2, episode 4: Amid the Ruins
Season 2, episode 5: No Going Back
Season 3, episode 1: Ties That Bind - Part One
Season 3, episode 2: Ties That Bind - Part Two
Season 3, episode 3: Above the Law
Season 3, episode 4: Thicker Than Water
Season 3, episode 5: From the Gallows
Season 4, episode 1: Done Running
Season 4, episode 2: Suffer the Children
Season 4, episode 3: Broken Toys
Season 4, episode 4: Take Us Back
Michonne, episode 1: In Too Deep
Michonne, episode 2: Give No Shelter
Michonne, episode 3: What We Deserve

S4>S3>S1>S2>Michonne

Really fantastic realization of Granblue's scope and charm in stunning detail. Has some of my favorite ARPG combat that I've ever experienced, its similarities to Xenoblade made me realize that those systems are infinitely more engaging to me with full-on action combat as opposed to auto-attacking. It definitely helps a lot that it keeps up an extremely consistent flow to its combat, never feeling like it drones on or stalls too much. I haven't tried too many of the cast yet but Zeta was an absolute blast to play with how much airtime she gets with her combos. The sense of scope is helped even further by having some of the most stunning giant bosses this side of FFXVI, each one feels bigger and grander than the last. Story's not too much to write home about, it's basically the Granblue equivalent of a Shonen anime movie, which is fine as a standalone thing but a bit disappointing since I know that Granblue's capable of really engaging and gripping narratives. This probably being a lot of peoples' first impression of the cast doesn't help since it doesn't really showcase as much of what makes them so charming and likeable as the mobage does. (Lyria and Vryn are hit by this the hardest) Even so, a lot of Granblue's charm is still completely intact in here, so I can definitely see it drawing more people further after the fact. After beating its fairly brisk main story, I wanna keep playing to see everything the game has to offer. I guess I really have been itching for another Monster Hunter-like experience since I played 4U way back. Overall fantastic game, Cygames add Vira in a future update or all of this was for nothing.

For a while now, Persona 4 Golden has been in the back of my mind as one of the most special pieces of fiction for me. So this review is a poor attempt to verbalize what this game means to me.

In the middle of 2022, I was at one of the lowest points of my life. Through my own admission, I had lost the people around me. My days felt empty, my future looked bleak and I struggled to get out of bed, let alone take care of myself. In an attempt to make my life a bit better, I purchased a new PC, to delve into new games that I previously wouldn't be able to play. To at least get out of bed.

Luckily, my best friend stuck with me through these tough times. He introduced me to Persona 4 Golden, a series I had previously been aware of and been mildly interested in through Persona 5, but never got the push to quite get into it. Ironically, I could've easily played Persona 4 Golden on my older PC, but nonetheless it felt like the mark of a new beginning.

I would love to say that starting the game and playing it was a magical experience, but it was a struggle at first. But it was a reason to talk to my best friend, it was a way for me to keep going so I managed to keep going. Through the daily struggle to keep up, I got to know the characters slowly, but surely. I started to pick a favorite, get invested in their character arcs, try to figure out the mystery of the town and most importantly, feel a bit better every time I saw that friend group that had started to mean so much to me.

Of course, the characters of a video game cannot replace any real friends or any real interaction, but the bonds that were being forged in front of my eyes were enough to fill that temporary emptiness in my heart. The perseverance of these kids, to have the courage to keep moving forward when it all seems so bleak, gave me hope in my darker hours. To be able to share that with the only person close to me at the time was a special time and allowed me to keep the hope that life would get better.

And it did. Because of Persona 4 Golden and my best friend Goh, I was able to persevere myself and keep faith in the future. To me, they saved me.

I usually like to close off a review with a quote that meant something to me in the story that I experienced, but here I would just like to thank Persona 4 Golden and Goh to be there for me and I'm grateful to anyone who took the time out of their day to read what this game means to me.

The phrase “x story helped me out during a rough time” is used commonly to elaborate on how much a piece of media has helped someone out, but I can’t say that about Persona 3, primarily because it’s a story that has taken root inside me deeply and stayed with me throughout the years ever since 2021 when I first played it. It’s not like it helped me during a single rough time, it was more like an affirmative embrace and an acknowledgement of my struggles throughout all of these years collectively instead of just one period of time. Persona 3, much like Good Will Hunting, Evangelion, and Pandora Hearts, is a game that I like to revisit and reflect upon every time I feel like I’m in a rut and can’t figure out who I am and what am I supposed to do in this world. It’s something I’ve closely attached to who I am because of how much it shaped my mindsets towards life, “The meaning of our lives is something that we make but don’t see”, and, “You don’t need to save the world to find meaning in life” are quotes I internalised, reminded myself of anytime I felt myself falling down an existential crisis, and the long term effects it had on me throughout the years is not something I take for granted. In a way, Persona 3 is a symbol of my struggles during my adolescence, and so, it is that revisiting it through Reload that I felt like I was looking back on parts of myself from back then and getting in-touch with them again. It felt like a reflection of my past, of all the struggles I pushed through to make it this far to where I am today, and by the end of it, I realised that much of my own growth throughout the years was because of stories like Persona 3, growth due to me burning my dread and venturing in life while living in the moment.


When you’re faced with a crisis that you have no idea how will it end, or how you will resolve it, you have two choices, whether to believe that you’ll fail and fall into a hole of cynicism or to believe in your happiness and work towards that ideal in the moment by focusing on yourself and doing what you can until eventually, everything falls into place. This sentiment seemed too unreal to me because of how clouded my vision was with all of the negativity that I surrounded myself with back in 2020 because whenever I tried to resolve my issues, I half assed it and it backfired, whether it be my existential crisis due to the societal pressure I experienced that made me feel like I had to have a larger than life success story to be worth anything, my ever growing disdain towards the fleeting nature of bonds, struggles with navigating interpersonal issues due to my self pity and cynicism as a byproduct of my fear of abandonment, and fear of death due to religious doubts I had. All of this was too much for my 17 year old self to bear, but as I said, Persona 3 and its characters all reflected different intimate parts of who I am for a reason.


For a dumb teenager like me who couldn’t believe in himself, drowned in self pity and inferiority towards others, and had trouble seeing what was so special about myself, Junpei Iori represented my struggles with the indifference of the universe crucially. He’s someone who believes his own hype to subconsciously convince himself that he’s a hero destined to save everyone, when in reality that’s merely his coping mechanism with his deep-seated insecurity about his incompetence, and that shows in the dichotomy of his goofiness and feelings of envy and jealousy. It’s only later through meeting Chidori, someone who felt like her life held meaning due to her persona, much like he did, that he realized that he doesn’t need to be this impossible image of a hero that he created within himself and that if he kept on being true to his innermost self, the one who wanted to become a baseball player, he’ll have already become a hero to someone, like he did with Chidori. I said that Junpei’s insecurities and tendency to compare himself to others reflects a part of me in the past, but truth be told, I still have those tendencies lingering in from within me, yet in the same vein, over time I’ve learned to trust in myself, that whatever I do, it’ll result in something special. I learned that it doesn’t matter if there’s someone who’s better, smarter, more insightful than me, because no matter what, they can never be me, and so long as I pursue that self and see to it that its potential is met, everything will fall into place. It’s for that reason that I can look back on Junpei’s arc in P3 fondly and think to myself about how much it helped me internalise that self trust, because there’s nothing more real than pulling a mentally ill goth bad bitch by being funny and quirky.



When I said that P3 reflects different parts of myself from the past, I meant that because it’s not just my teenage years that it reflected but my childhood as well with characters like Ken. I could go into how characters like Mitsuru, Akihiko, Shinjiro, & Fuuka connected with me but I want to go with Ken not just because he’s my favorite among the aforementioned characters (I’m quirky, I know) but because of how he crucially reflected a part of me that no other character has, and it’s how Ken chooses to adapt to his situation to fit in in self deriding ways that I feel seen by. From the start, Ken is pushed into this dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive, even in SEES, and that sudden change in his environment not only made him lose himself but a person’s most precious value, that being his inner child. Ken was forced to let go of his childish nature, gaslight himself into thinking that such notions would only hold him back, and proceeded to move solely through objective means because of how he was stuck in an adult world where if he doesn’t man up and throw away his childish needs and struggles, he’d be left behind, much like how his mother left him behind and so did everyone else, with their looks that were devoid of nothing but pity, yet even then, in his linked episodes, he couldn’t let go of his inner child and it shows sprinkles of his inner child peeking out due to his enthusiasm. It’s a heartbreaking accurate depiction of how much Ken struggles to connect with others and most importantly himself, because nothing has been the same for him since his Mom died. Many people, when looking at Ken’s character, view Ken’s arc as a revenge arc, and while that’s a valid reading of his character, to me, it felt like it was more so Ken reconnecting with his inner child, realising that he doesn’t need to put up this facade to “survive” and “fit in” with this cruel world, and that he doesn’t need to hold himself back emotionally so much because of others anymore, because while he may have lost his family, he gained another through SEES, and that’s what “living” means. Losing people, meeting new people, bonding with them, and doing simple things like practicing your hobbies, that’s what living really means, and that meant so much to me because back when I was a kid, I never had any friends of my own, could never really connect with them, and that’s because I always hung out with my older brother’s friends, which subsequently made me mature too fast for my good and didn’t allow me to live my childhood to its fullest. I could never connect with people my age, because I was so used to forcibly maturing myself to keep up with my older friends, I always felt like bottling up my emotions and needs in favor of a facade that could get me the closeness and sense of belonging I wanted out of their company since I was too awkward to make any friends of my own, yet on the inside I was too young and emotional to get along with my older friends, creating this unstable interpersonal problem I had that plagued my childhood. It’s funny, how I’m a grown person now, yet seeing Ken be plagued with this same issue I had and recovering from it through mundane means, almost had me tearing up because it reminded me of how much I hardened myself and designed a strong man to protect the hurting child inside me.




Earlier, I described Persona 3 as a meditative experience that gives me space for my feelings whenever I need a haven to express myself within, or feel seen within, and so, there are parts of it that are timeless to me, parts of it that help me see myself in a better light and enable me to look at myself more positively, one such part is Yukari’s character and how much of an embrace it feels to me. Truthfully speaking, my aim with my media experiences is to either escape the real world, or for edutainment purposes, but it is so rare for me to engage myself with a story that can help me discover positive, strong traits within my character that makes me love myself. It’s hard for a story to do that, since what I look for in fictional characters are parts of me that I and others around me struggle to accept, more often than not are negative parts, but that’s why Yukari means the world to me, since not only does her character give me a safe space to feel seen and accepted for my contradictory feelings of love and hate towards intimacy, but she also embodies a trait of mine that helps me accept it, that being kindness and empathy. Yukari’s premise is that she struggles with the internal conflict known as the hedgehog dilemma, where she craves intimacy but disdains contact with others, because she wants to be loved, but doesn't think she's worth loving because of the self pity, sense of weakness/inferiority, & self hatred she internalised as a byproduct of being "abandoned" by both of her parents, at least emotionally. I say emotionally because her dad died so he didn’t abandon her technically, and her mother simply clung to other men for emotional support, so she didn’t consciously abandon Yukari, but at least on an emotional level, Yukari felt like she had the deepest craving she had was taken away from her, forever a wish beyond her reach, and that affected how she perceived herself and others and based her moral compass around her disdain for her Mother who abandoned her and what she represents. Following that, Yukari would disassociate with anything that resembled the escapist coping mechanisms her Mother did through either self-denial or self-isolation from others. It’s why she despises being helped out, because not only does she blame and hate herself for what happened to her parents but because it resembles her Mother’s helpless state of feeling like she needs to be saved, it’s why she was mad when Makoto helped her out during her s. Link, it’s why she tries to present herself as this being who towers above the concept of weakness to feel a sense of leverage and derive self-worth from that, but at the same time, she’s a highly emotional person who wears their heart on their sleeve, and so bits and pieces of that need for emotional support and insecurities about her self image come out. An example of this would be her jealousy and fixation over Mitsuru, she’s so fixated on Mitsuru because deep down, she wants to be like her, someone who’s unfazed, looks powerful and is the exact opposite of her Mother. A toxic sense of admiration, you could call it, since she never recognizes this jealousy, how wrong it is since even Mitsuru’s flawless demeanor was fake and a byproduct of societal expectations, and how much it contradicts Yukari’s conscious desire to present herself powerfully, and whenever she recognizes that, it’s in self-loathing, like how she did in Yakushima, because of how much she gaslights herself into thinking that she’s strong and doesn’t need help, even if it means ignoring herself and wrongly seeing others. Despite those insecurities getting in the way of how she interacts with others, she's a very kind person who has all the love to give to others, yet when it comes to loving herself, that ''love'' she has for others is devoid of any love for herself. Time and time again, in various instances Yukari shows how much empathy and kindness she has for others, even from the start of the game, like how she was the first SEES member who bothered to reach out to Makoto and connect with him instead of spying on him, how she was the first to defend Makoto when Junpei lashed out at him, how she made insensitive jokes about Junpei but then apologized to him and considered his feelings, or with how she helped other SEES members navigate their problems like Fuuka who struggled with people pleasing habits during her final s. link and Mitsuru who struggled with self-acceptance and existential dread. Additionally, if you spend enough time with her during the night events, there's a moment where she talks about how inspiring the main female character is, how she wants to be just like her, someone who's there for everyone around her and is capable, and that puts into perspective how kind Yukari is and how much she empathizes with others. Yet, she has moments where she’s a tease and makes fun of others, sometimes in a tone-deaf way, and why is that? The majority would chalk it up to her being a quirky mean white girl, and while I get it and understand how appealing that is since I’d love for a pretty white girl like her to call me racial slurs and deride me my right to live, I think that Yukari’s need to prove her toxic self image right to justify her self hate and rejection of help to disassociate from her Mom is what causes her to be such a tease and to be so slanderous, because while she's quirky and mean in her own right, it's also valid to infer that about her character. It doesn't help that being bullied due to her father's failure influenced her perception of social interaction more aggressively and might've added to that if anything. In a sense, she has the most amount of kindness out of anyone, but the dichotomy she has where she pushes everyone away while craving their love and attention, is what clouds that trait of hers and makes it harder for her to express that, and it's why whenever she gets praised for her kindness, she denies it. She's a perfect example of how someone's personality can be so dynamic, where she's a mean teaser on the outside, but would be the quickest to be there for someone else, and that part of her helps me embrace the idea that I'm a kind person, or at least, try to be because I'm similar to that aspect of her and it feels very validating. It's especially relatable because there are moments where I went out of line and lost friendships due to that, due to unhealthy tendencies and mindsets I had, and that made me reject my kindness in favor of self-loathing, yet through Yukari, I was able to see that part of me, admit to it, and love myself more authentically because of it.


By now you understand how much Persona 3 means to me, how much of a solace inducing experience it is for me, and how much it helps me to love, to feel loved, to express my earnest desires, and to be there for everyone around me, but in contrast, oddly enough, when I was playing through Reload, a certain part of it re-stimulated my fear of abandonment, my disdain for the fleeting nature of relationships due to past experiences, and my desire for everything to stay the same way, thinking about how worthless something is if it’s destined to never last, that certain part being the front and center of the game, Aegis. A few years ago, during the pandemic, I’d say I was at my worst mentally, and it’s not because of the experiences I went through by that point, but it was more so because of how I dealt with those experiences by willingly surrounding myself with negativity, choosing to be miserable instead of fighting, and preferring victimhood over the pursuit of happiness. It led to loads of perceptual issues I had, and that only piled up more on the issues I already struggled with at the time. You see, I grew up in an environment that shunned sensitivity and emotions and saw them as a sign of weakness, and so, a feminine guy like me who was highly emotional and sensitive, was essentially born and raised in the wrong environment because of how much that aspect of it contradicted how I was at my innermost core. In an attempt to fit in, I discarded myself, drowned myself in an endless hell of facades, and over time, forgot who I even was, becoming something of a colorless broken puppet unable to discern my emotions and convey them, forever emotionally stunted and ignorant of how it feels to “live” because all I did was exist. For that reason I’ve had my complications with loneliness and love, feeling like I couldn’t feel it or even deserved it. So, it is that through Aegis I was able to see a picture of my past self, a grotesque portrait of how I was 4 years ago. It was as eerie as it was comfortable, seeing a character frustratingly and confusingly try to navigate their place in the world and getting shredded by it. It felt validating, because Aegis had the same misconception that I did, and it was that I thought I had to do something larger than life itself to justify my existence when that wasn’t the case. It was very comforting for me to see a character that represents how I was a few years ago, that’s how it was at first anyway. It later dawned on me that after Aegis decided to live, she started struggling with something that I struggle with nowadays, and it’s maintaining relationships, or rather, thinking that they’re worth maintaining anyway since they all end. I’ve always had this thought that yeah, sure, all bonds end, that this is an absolute, but it always pained me whenever I met someone, because I knew deep down, that at some point they’re going to leave me behind and we’ll part ways. Even if we reconnect, it might not even be the same as before and that made me oftentimes crave a reality where time could be halted. But upon revisiting Aegis’ social link, there’s a piece of dialogue that reminded me why I cherish the people I cherish and why I’ll never stop loving the people I’m with.

“Life is both short and finite. That’s what makes it so invaluable, and why one feels that it must be cherished… When you think about it, it’s a miracle that two given people are able to ever meet in this chaotic flow of time and space.”


It’s a simple line, something that’s hard to miss, but that's the case with most ideas in life and is what makes it connect with me because of how Makoto’s dynamic with Aegis resonates with that sentiment and embodies it with the stark contrast of how they live. Their differences made them feel complete because, on the two opposite spectrums, they struggled to understand life and the worth of the process that goes within it that inevitably leads to death, yet through something simple, like knowing and understanding each others' emptiness, they felt the elusive taste of connection and yearned for more from it. Makoto is a human who tries to be a machine, while Aegis is a machine who tries to be human, yet despite their differences, they connected because they both yearn for the same thing, to stand with one another atop Gekoukan’s rooftop and gaze at the city that gave them a taste of that elusive connection. The shortage of something is what makes you fear losing it. Yet, in the same vein, it makes you want to appreciate it and make use of it to the fullest so that when it ends, you can look back on it with no regrets and cherish your memories of it because it’s the memories that make our experiences with one another flow through all eternity. And so, even if I fear losing the ones I love, even if I lived a life of an emotionally stunted puppet, even if I lived in existential dread, even if I thought at times that I didn’t deserve to be liked, or that I was of less worth than others, none of that matters, because regardless of what happens, I’m human, I have feelings worth conveying, I will always have people I love, and I have something to live for, it may not be monumental, but the small ripples caused by the day to day things I do will surely produce a result worth living for in the long run because no two days are the same. It’s funny, I talked about my time during the pandemic as the worst time in my life, yet when I look back on it, I can’t look at those days as an unhappy time. To me, they’re a sign that I’m alive, a backdrop for me to push forward from, a pat on the back telling me how much I’ve changed, and a signal to dash forward and follow my heart, because I now know that rejecting it is the most painful of all. Maybe that’s how I feel about them because over time, I’ve slowly subconsciously implemented the feelings and lessons that Persona 3 made me feel and taught me into my day-to-day life, and now looking back on it, after everything has been said and done, I feel nothing but pride and love towards who I became and who I was. Through remembering my mortality, I remembered to live, and so I did.