after abandoning it originally back in 2022 when it came out, thanks to xenoblade 3 and its amazing side content consuming my life, I have finally come back and finished the main story of splatoon 3. i needed a game to hold me over until No Rest For The Wicked released. and wow, yeah, i should've finished it sooner. that finale was fucking awesome. the singleplayer is, of course, quite fun. the lore was actually super sick this time around too! but man... nothing about this game shouts innovation to me. nothing about it seems worthy of an entire new game on the same system as the last game. its basically just doing the splatoon 1/2 singleplayers again, with some octo expansion type levels in there too, but now with smallfry (who i barely used outside of clearing fuzzy ooze). and thats just... disappointing to me. even the multiplayer is basically just more of the same. Its not like i wanted them to remove the previous gamemodes, but they couldn't at least add a couple? we got clam blitz out of Splatoon 2, but we got no new gamemodes here, and barely anything else new in the game either. it really sucks to see. I love this series, been a fan since the early days of splatoon 1! so I say this from a place of love: despite it being a great game, i just can't help but feel let down. I still need to play side order, that very well could be the originality i'm looking for like octo expansion was for splatoon 2, but until then... lets just hope that splatoon 4 is more than this.

I am a much different person now than I was when I first played persona 3. I was a clueless freshman in high school, just going about my days, chilling with my friends, and being the massive nerd that I was, not knowing a pandemic was a month away from fucking everything up. Now I'm a freshman in college, and while I'm still a massive nerd, I've started feeling a little more detached from the persona series since graduating high school. I don't know, maybe I can't relate to it as much any more, or something like that. But no matter what happens to my opinions over time about the rest of the series, my feelings on Persona 3, and now Persona 3 Reload will never change.

Back then, it made me realize that, well, death is inevitable. Doesn't matter who you are, you will die. I mean, I knew that before I played the game, sorta, but Persona 3 just made me realize the full extent of it. It fucked me up, but in the best way possible. And now here I am, 4 years later, coming away with an entirely different message than before. It's kind of hard to even put into words really, especially with tears streaming down my face, but it goes something like this: I am so damn lucky to be where I am in life. All my friends, my family, all the memories I've made in high school and am making now in college. This game was sort of a wake up call for me to just stop for a second, stop worrying about the future, or the past, for just a moment and just look back at everything that's happened to me and appreciate it. Honestly, this might be the most I've ever emotionally connected to a video game, ever. I've gotten more invested in better stories that have gotten me more emotional over said stories and their characters, but I've never had a game just sit me down, slap me upside the head and tell me to just stop fucking worrying for a second, just a single damn second and realize what you have, and cherish it. So, thank you, Atlus. Thank you for creating this masterpiece.

OK. CHEESY STUFF DONE. So how's the actual game?

Yeah, the game itself is amazing too, though I do have my gripes. First of all, I need Atlus to please stop it with the oversexualization. Using it as a plot point, like with Ann in Persona 5, can work, but it gets really annoying having the characters show up to a hot spring and knowing that the next 5 minutes are about the be the cringiest thing you will ever witness. Got that? Thank you.

The gameplay here is easily the best in the series. Tartarus is actually fun to explore now, what with the monad doors and the switching up of the layouts of floors, and the actual turn based combat is the best one more style combat has ever been. Theurgies are awesome, and getting to oneshot the reaper with armageddon was immensely satisfying. The visual overhaul here is also unbelievable. Every new floor of tartarus I visited had my jaw on the floor from how good it looked, and of course the every day stuff is still very, very good looking. The social links here I think are at their best too. Everyone deserves to experience Akinari's social link at least once in their life. Also, of course, the soundtrack is still one of the best in gaming, and the new versions mostly do it justice, with some being insane improvements (CHANGING SEASONS -RELOAD- MY BELOVED)

Really, my gripes about this game are really minor stuff, like the pacing can be a bit slow at times, and this one shot after the final boss from the original wasn't in reload, or like, three of the new remixes are a little worse than their originals, and I do wish the script was altered less, but none of that is really enough to change my overall opinion on the game. It's good. It's really good. 105 hours to beat the game is a lot, though... maybe I should start saving games this long for summer. In high school I could blast through a game this long in a couple weeks, but this time it took me two full months. I just have way less time now than I did then. but eh, it is what it is.

anyways, yeah, my point is, if you have the time, play this game. It's one of the best dungeon crawlers out there, and just might change your life, like it has mine, twice over.

tell me if you've heard this one before: "the first half of dark souls is incredible, but the second half sucks!" well I'm here to tell you that that is wrong. VERY wrong. it actually only sucks for about 20% of it!

Frankly, I came out of this second playthrough more frustrated than anything. This game is so so so good in so many ways. of course there's the legendary run of undead burg all the way to anor londo, which is rightfully regarded as some of the best level design in the series, the bosses are generally a step up from demon's souls, with only a couple exceptions, the optional areas/bosses (painted world, ash lake, gwyndolin) are really fun, the soundtrack is iconic, and the atmosphere is insane. but, and you know where i'm going with this, there is a clear drop off in quality at a certain point in the story. I already had my issues with this part of the game on my first playthrough, but I figured that, like what had happened in my demon's souls replay not too long ago, I would be so familiar with the game, that I'd be able to breeze through these low points pretty smoothly. But no, that'd would've been too easy. This being my second time through these bad areas genuinely made things even more frustrating than they had already been my first go around. dying to those stupid skeleton dog things in the tomb of the giants, dying over and over to bed of chaos, the genuine worst boss in the soulsborne franchise (original opinion i know), staring out over the demon ruins and lost izalith and just seeing random enemies littered all over the place like I was looking at a student project in a beginner game design class, and having to run all the way through the kiln of the first flame just about a billion times because, of course, the final boss would be the perfect time to add a mechanic where every time you try to heal, he has a specific move he uses to make sure you just take all that damage back, alongside his one move that comes out legitimately faster than a human can process it. It all just made me feel horrible, like somehow I was worse at the game now than I was then despite all the soulsborne experience i've gotten under my belt since. I understand that the dev team was plagued with some nasty deadlines and a near empty budget by the end of development, but I don't think that should mean I should just ignore all of this stuff.

to be honest, I was prepared to lower my score of this game to a 7/10, but unlike my first playthough where i skipped over the dlc so i could have the game done by the time elden ring came out, I actually did the Artorias of the Abyss dlc this time around. and fortunately, aside from my intense hatred for sanctuary guardian, this dlc rocked, so my score will remain 8/10. crazy how fromsoft make a basically perfect dragon fight with kalameet just to turn around and make midir, which is probably right behind bed of chaos in my least favorite bosses in the franchise list, but whatever. It really sucks that, unless this game by some miracle gets a remake, I likely won't return to it for a while, but that's just how it is, I guess.

ANYWAYS DEMON'S SOULS CLEARS LMAOOOOOOOOOO DARK SOULS COULD NEVER GET BLUEPOINT TO MAKE A REMAKE OF IT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (please bluepoint please remake this game and make the late game not dogshit thank you)

expectations on this were high, and yeah, i get it, but it's definitely not perfect. the areas are generally well designed, though i think royal wood is kinda dumb to navigate. the bosses are where this dlc really shines anyway. 3/4 of them are basically the best bosses in the game. artorias is electrifyingly good, manus is fun as long as you have the pendent, and kalameet is the only dragon fight in the dark souls trilogy I don't absolutely despise! he's actually really fun to fight! fuck you midir! the one boss that's a miss, though... lord. I hate sanctuary guardian so fucking much. actual dogshit boss. anyways old hunters clears lol, but this was kickass.