I've been thinking about why I liked this so much. It's in no way a new concept; I've seen it done before. The story beats are fairly predictable, as is the ending. So what is it that makes THIS stand out? The world building? The setting? The pacing? The dynamic between Jude and Philia? The translation, even?
Yes. It's all of that, working in perfect tandem to create a masterfully told story. It's simple, yes, but beautiful.
I'm not a Tanaka Romeo fan in particular (I've only read Rewrite of his, other than this) but I'm sold on him being an extremely competent writer, without a doubt.

Really I'm almost shocked at how captivated I ended up being by the very believable world he built up. And in the short amount of time, how attached I was to Jude and Philia by the end. Philia in particular was the star of the show, her development by the end is just...ugh. I love it. So proud of her, as I know Jude would be.
She radiates "MUST PROTECT" energy to the highest degree I swear.

On a less serious note, I loved when Jude went full assault mode and dropped a bunch of savages using Promethean vision from Halo, fun times

If only this had less...gameplay, or at least better gameplay. It doesn't even try to hide the fact that most of it is running back and forth doing random stuff for people.
Because yeah, the story and how it's told is fantastic. Games that can manage to move me in ways that this has are very few. Absolutely beautiful message/themes that hit hard now, and would have been possibly life-changing if I was 15 years younger.
I've rated it pretty low (struggling between a 3 or 3.5) because I can't quite forgive the slog that is the actual gameplay, but if I was rating the story itself it'd be much higher.
And I feel like I should also point out the pixel artwork because it's just phenomenal.

It's like P3, but better. I was so excited for this remake and it delivered like I thought it would.
Amazing QoL updates (no tartarus fatigue lol) are very welcomed, and the character redesigns by Azusa Shimada are incredible. New music also bangs and is on par with the original, and all the added scenes with teammates give even more depth to the already well-written cast.
Voice acting is impressive as usual (I played with JP voices as always with Japanese anime games, but from what I heard the dub is also very good, way better than the original's), and there are much more voice lines than I remember.
Combat is also improved, with P5-style baton pass mechanic (but less broken), and addition of Theurgy, characters' ultimate attacks. It's really neat seeing the animations for these; and some hit really hard, like Junpei's second one...

I had a much better time with this than I did the original. The atmosphere maybe SLIGHTLY loses out to the original's, but it's hard to explain.
The ending is 10/10, no question the strongest of Persona's. I cry.

My biggest gripe with the game is the antagonists. Strega is good, don't get me wrong, but some missed potential I think. Ikutsuki kind of just exists. The pacing is also VERY slow, especially at the beginning. Luckily, it's Persona, so it still never feels actually boring.
Nothing like minmaxing your efficiency with social links and stats etc.
Good game, absorbed weeks of my life.

A really beautiful looking remake. Like jaw-dropping at times.
I actually had no idea this was related to Key in any way, I didn't even know Jun Maeda wrote most of it until after I started. After seeing Sumii (an actual Sunohara clone) and the general vibe, I began to piece it together.
So, the story. The nicest way I could put it is that it was very obvious this was one of Jun Maeda's earlier works.
I see much of the foundation in this game that he managed to capitalize on in later Key works, but this was overall very weak. Annoyingly ambiguous serious scenes that often seem out of place, Kohei's almost bipolar characterization makes early routes unsatisfying (especially Nagamori's).
Once I realized what HAPPENING to Kohei, stuff is easier to swallow, but I still never really LIKED it. I don't think anything in this game was realized to its full potential. Misaki's route was easily my favorite route and girl, which had an amazing theme of accepting your lot in life and finding beauty that you never thought was there.
The theming of the whole game is its strongest point (well, aside from the insanely adorable characters), but like I said, disappointing in that it doesn't quite feel complete.

However, I enjoyed it enough thanks to me being a sucker for cute girls and the indescribable Key-like atmosphere it provides.

Oh man, one of my favorite games ever, with a remake that came out of absolutely nowhere. And for the most part, it's good.
I really like the cutscenes they added to certain scenes, not crazy fancy but still beautiful and they definitely add to the game. Speaking of beautiful, the game itself. Very eye-catching and colorful, and the new models are good.
The animations that every enemy has now (for dying especially) adds life to it.

For the bad, for starters the game is way too easy now. It already wasn't that hard, but it is pretty much baby mode now, with an even easier option if you want. You can now switch partners during battle (insanely broken), you have indicators for attack timing, you now have special Final Smash-like moves (which are visually amazing!), but yeah. The game doesn't feel very balanced anymore.
But regardless, it doesn't take much away from how great the game is. I do still much prefer the original overall, but I enjoyed this one a lot. I'm glad it got new attention.

As much as I love Digimon (and the idea of a VN about it!), this simply ain't it. I got up to part 3, which is many hours in, and next to NOTHING has happened. Small things do happen, but it somehow treats everything with meticulous tedium.

Long story short, it's slow. It's TOO slow, like, molasses going uphill-slow. After all this time, none of the characters are interesting. There's affinity with your friends, but it doesn't feel like it matters. Exploration segments are just pure padding.
The combat is Fire Emblem, which COULD be fun, but turns out it's extremely simple, and more importantly, also slow as heck. (Even with 3x speed)

I'm a bit sad I couldn't like this, because a Digimon VN with dark twists sounds amazing on paper. But it's simply not fun or engaging at all.

I had to drop it, unfortunately. I got up to like midway through the final route, but I couldn't handle it anymore.
Things happen at a fairly fast pace, yet it feels slow at the same time. Every route is different, yet so similar.
All the action scenes read the same, and they're never exciting or engaging.
It's WAY too long for its own good. A big problem I have with the game is despite the clever premise and all of the jokes (which are sometimes really funny honestly) it just wears itself out and to me the payoff of the routes is never worth it.

The main heroines are all like...decent, I guess? Nanase huge wife material (and a gyaru yes please), Hinami is of course cute but most of her personality revolves around how she's (not) a loli (but her route is somehow the most emotional and the only part that got me feeling anything), and Misaki who is actually hilarious, whose route is pure nonsensical fun.
But weirdly, the FS members are miles more interesting than any of them, and they shine way more than they do. So much so that I wish they had their own routes instead.

The H scenes are extremely disappointing, btw. For something with nukige in the title and the insanely lewd things happening constantly, you'd think the H scenes would be top tier, but they're all lackluster and I skipped most of them out of boredom.

I'm disappointed because I easily COULD have loved this if it was done better; all the groundwork is there.
From what I've seen of the sequel, it looks exactly the same, and I almost surely won't read it.

Extremely uninspired and predictable story with unappealing characters. Like it's mostly just...FINE? I've just seen everything this game does with its story a thousand times before, and better. And god I did not like Phin at all.
I get it, they're young and stupid, but it just didn't vibe with me. I think the ending was great though.

As usual, city traversal is a blast, and the combat is nice and fluid. It's just not enough to carry this game.
And for some reason the game locks a few upgrades behind NG+, like I'm gonna play this thing again.
Overall, 10 hours of mindless and forgettable fun that wasn't quite for me.

What an incredible journey, and an all-around improvement to the already master-class SakuUta. (Bit of a disclaimer, my Japanese isn't the best and there were a number of cases where I didn't feel like I fully grasped the meaning, but I am confident that I was good enough to understand it for the most part)
If Uta was the set-up, then Toki is the best a sequel can get. Knocks it out of the park. It trims the fat of Uta and focuses solely on hard-hitting, thought-provoking ideas and themes, and it doesn't stop. It's a never-ending train of emotion and impact.
Unlike Uta, where Makoto's route was a (pretty unanimous) weak link, surely in part because it had a different writer, every route in Toki was good.
While I do think it was strange for Makoto to have another route in Toki, I kinda wanna believe SCA-ji wanted to redeem her and write one for her himself. Or he just likes her a lot. Or maybe she's more popular among the fans than I expect.
Anyway, this game made me love Makoto, and she's the most relatable character for me. Well, her and Kana.

Speaking of Kana! What Toki also does is takes one-dimensional characters from Uta (some more so than others, looking at you Thomas) and fleshes them out. I hated Kana in the first game, but now? Arguably my favorite character if it wasn't for Ai. She really feels like the only "normal" person in this game, among a cast full of monsters blessed with natural talent. Her theming of hard work, strenuous effort and finding your own place in the world resonated me hard.

And yeah, even Thomas got his moment to shine, something I did NOT expect but was greatly welcomed. He's still a ridiculous character and I don't like him, but his speech about the idolization of heroes made me see him in a new light.

Kei's chapter? I teared up. Chapter 4 (I think?) and the ending leading to the climax were my favorite parts. God damn amazing storytelling and execution. Amazing tale of loss and moving on from it. Very strong finish.
I'm just rambling at this point, wanted to get some things off my chest. I haven't even scratched the surface of my experiences with this game, but I'll leave it at that.
I'm not confident at all in recognizing themes and analyzing stories, but hopefully this was somewhat readable.

I'm grateful to SCA-ji for giving us these amazing VNs. I could probably rate this a 10/10 in good conscience but something is holding me back. At the very least I can completely understand why people view this as a masterpiece, and I wouldn't argue.

What a pleasant surprise of a game.
Worldbuilding is wonderful, and as some people have pointed out, I definitely see the Xenoblade 2 resemblances.
Got mechs, got titans with the titano-machina (and one looks a lot like Urayan titan), got the CLOUD SEA!
Even without leaning on XB2 comparisons, the world is unique and beautiful, and the great soundtrack emphasizes it more.
The characters are mostly pretty damn good. I wish Chocolat got some more development, but most of them are good (Red, Elh, Marveille especially).
The villains were good too, though a bit on the weak side imo. Part two's were better but still wish they were a bit more compelling. (I may have a high bar when it comes to this)

Now for the weakest part of the game, the gameplay and controls. The controls less so, they're not SO bad. It's limited to 8-directional movement so it's awkward at times when the game demands precision platforming.
And the combat, well...At least it's easy. It's not too deep, and fairly button-mashy. Pick up and throw, that's basically it. It's a breeze to play through but it's also not very challenging.

Ok anyway I loved it overall, it's a severely underrated gem for DS. Shame about the outrageous price for the physical version.

It's a Layton game. The first one to be on 3DS, and the transition to 3D models is really well done, kinda love it. It gives it a bit more of a dynamic feel to them, especially Emmy who they put extra care into (I love her quick photograph snaps, even though she does it like 2 or 3 times in the whole game)
Speaking of Emmy they really didn't know what to do with her character huh? I don't think she did a single thing that mattered, she was kinda just there.

Anyway, the game itself is fine. The puzzles are once again also...fine...but truly feel like they've been re-hashed every time and most of them feel more like a chore to me.

The story is possibly the worst one yet with one of the most predictable twists I've ever seen. But at the same time, I like everything surrounding the twist, and how it was resolved. Wholesome stuff. It sort of felt like a kids movie or something, but that's okay. We also get a real look at Layton's past for once, and I liked that a lot.
But god, what a shitty antagonist these prequels have.