Persona 3 Reload is the perfected way at portraying a remake of a beloved game while retaining and respecting the originals tone, story and integrity for new players to experience.

I played through FES back in April 2020 and believe that every aspect of Reload and the original both have their own strengths that make them fantastic games.

Where the new gameplay features and balanced difficulty are some of the best the series has to offer, the originals challenge and lack of controllable party members gave it a character of its own which I really enjoyed.

Where the absolutely stunning visuals of reload especially in the new in-game cutscenes was everything I wanted from a remake, the originals tone in it’s early 2000s cutscenes and what they had to work with given the hardware is still visually fantastic to this day.

Where essentially all of the re-recorded music captured the original soundtracks feel and all of the new songs sounded stellar and were some of the best music they’ve done, the originals is timeless and certain tracks despite how amazing the new versions are they will never hit the same as before, but are so good that hearing them through Reload doesn’t do you a disservice.

Where the new voice work is absolutely fantastic and I’d even go as far as saying the likes of Aigis, Junpei, Mitsuru, Chidori, Ken and Shinjiro all did just as good if not better performances in my mind, the originals cast still holds up its own (a few characters in the original, not so much) and both games have the same impact as it did before.

The extra story and character scenes in the likes of the link episodes, hangouts and added Strega scenes did nothing but wonders for the game and improved its already fantastic story and character writing. I noticed this when going through Reload and it’s really apparent now, characters in Persona 5 and to a lesser extent Persona 4 really don’t develop much without the aid of the main character. I think this is partially due to most of their arcs happening behind a social link and tying their second awakening to the rank 10 of a character may be one of the worst decisions Atlus made with the recent games.

Having these characters have scenes completely devoid of the main character and allowing them to develop as the game goes on, coming to a realisation through the consequences of the story is so much better and it’s what really sets Persona 3 apart from the later entries.

That’s not to say later entries are bad, characters do get development but it’s a far cry from what is portrayed in this game. I will say despite the main cast having zero bad characters the villains of this game are still just alright. Strega as a group are fine and Takaya is a great parallel to Makoto, being the visual representation of a Messiah rather than the mental representation that Makoto has. Chidori is their best member with everything she has and Junpeis awakening scene was done extremely well. The likes of Ryoji were improved a lot with his extra scenes and Nyx is the best final boss they’ve done from a story, character and gameplay standpoint as he doesn’t just come out of nowhere having time to be built up towards the final confrontation.

Going through the majority of the social links in this game made me realise I actually really like a lot of them. Sure the likes of Kenji, Nozomi, Miyamoto and Hayase were either just funny or I was indifferent on. But the variance in the character writing with people like Tanaka being just an awful person, Mutatsu being not a good person as well but having his own realisation and redemption and Akinari being the best non party member social link in the game with his ties to the core themes made them stand out a lot. The newly fully voiced social links really adds a lot to them and it’s surprising how just adding a voice to these characters made me care a whole lot more.

Knowing what the ending to this game is really adds a lot to the final day. Obviously going into the ending completely blind is the best experience but seeing Makoto go around and talk to all these people he’s bonded with over the last year, making false promises with all of them as his time is drawing to a close is very impactful and the likes of Akinaris mother hit extremely hard for me.

The ending scene got me again, they did this scene so much justice and it was absolutely beautiful the way it was portrayed. Aigis being my favourite character in the whole series is always the part that gets me the most in the ending. The amazing voice acting from Dawn M. Bennett really sold this scene and I’m glad that they managed to keep, maybe even better the feeling that the ending brings in the original. I could go on and on about how this and many other scenes in this game are so well written but I have a tendency to make essay long reviews and this ones already getting there so I’ll leave that for now.

Despite all this and even though I do prefer Reload over the original, I can’t say it’s definitively better. They both have their own standing in what makes them unique experiences even if they are the same story, it feels vastly different from the likes of Golden and Royal where they are in every sense of the word an upgrade. Those games being remasters makes them essentially the definitive experience but with Reload being a remake, it gives ground that the original still has a place in being played and appreciated akin to FFVII and its remakes.

Do you need to play the original after playing Reload? No I don’t think you do need to do that at all. But if you wanted a slightly different experience with all the above points I made, it’s still worth your time.

Persona 3 is and continues to be the best game in the franchise and I’m excited for if or when they release The Answer to finally be able to play through that portion of the story.

10/10

I very often get bored or burnt out of games after a while but that is not the case with resident evil 4 remake. baring in mind that for the first two weeks of the game being released there was nothing to do except play the main story, this is a serious testament to the games incredible replay value. The original game is one of my favourite games of all time and I was adamant there was no way they could improve it. I was wrong.

With a current playtime of 93 hours I have done everything I possibly can on RE4. I got every achievement, every weapon, every charm, S+ ranks on all difficulties multiple times and yet I still find myself wanting to do it all again.

The games story is very faithful to the original. Most of the plot points are still there with a few exceptions. And almost everything that was removed was replaced with something superior. The main example of this is the U3 boss fight. It has been completely removed from the game and I am perfectly okay with that. I always felt it was the worst part of the game because of how out of place it felt so I was glad to see it go in favour of more Krauser.

The main complaint that I have seen others make is the lack of some iconic lines from the original game. While I was a little upset to see some of these lines go I can understand why and I wasn’t disappointed with their replacements. Fans of the original game will get a good kick out of a lot of the trophy names that pay homage to one-liners from the original game. Plus Leon still gets his fair share of really good one liners in the game.

Giving Luis more screen time was one of the best decisions they made, he is much more interesting and likeable character this time around and I genuinely felt sad when he died in this version.

The gameplay of resident evil 4 remake is stellar. It is fun, engaging, interesting and challenging especially on Hardcore and professional. Professional difficulty took me on such a journey that I felt like a different person by the time it was over. The new knife parry is one of my favourite features in the game and makes every interaction with an enemy fresh and exciting. The knife durability helps further improve this feature, and keeps the player thinking on their feet. The new stealth kills are another feature that I really enjoyed as another method of dealings with ganados but the knife durability helps keep this balanced. All of the guns from the original game return (with the exception of the PRL) as well as a few new ones which are welcome additions.

The way RE4R handles Ashley escort sections are much better. Instead of health Ashley gets knocked down and the player will have to help her up before she is killed. As well as this Ganados can also still carry Ashley away if you’re not careful.

As much as I love the game, I just wish there was a little bit more to do in the game, the main story is fantastic but I don’t know how much more I can play it before it loses its charm. Even adding new playable characters such as Krauser, Hunk or Ada would give the game that extra nudge towards perfection.

The Mercenaries is by far the best mercs mode in any RE game in my opinion. Krauser, Leon and Hunk are so much fun to play and add such a nice spice to the game. Luis is also there. I do hope if and when the separate ways dlc releases they add Ada and Wesker to mercenaries. Wesker was my favourite part of mercenaries in RE4OG and I was disappointed that he was substituted for a much inferior Luis. I was really rooting for Luis to be in mercenaries this time around but after playing as him I was deeply saddened by how criminally unfun they made him to play.

I love RE4 remake. I am going to play this for years to come and I am so glad. As the months go on I really hope that capcom will add more content to the game such as new bonus weapons or unlockable outfits for Leon and Ashley. I give resident evil 4 remake a 10/10. Congratulations capcom for creating the best game of all time. Again.

Zero time dilemma is absolutely fascinating for all the wrong reasons.

I played this game one year ago and to this day it lives rent free in my head and I’m not afraid to admit, but no game has ever been able to fumble a storyline so absurdly, so ridiculously as this game does that I’m still finding out awful things about it a year later.

I’m gonna start with what was expected, even promised to an extent. A conclusion to the zero escape trilogy that will tie up all lose ends and realise the plan and plot points set in motion by VLR to their conclusion, we got almost none of this and for what we did get it was lacklustre at best. For an example the route where Sigma and Phi are meant to try and find out the true path described in VLR that took 45 years of work and training is decided by a coin flip. Yep all that build up to see if they win the 50/50.

Anyway starting with the only okay part of the game, Diana’s route. This route consists of the timeline that loops into VLR and shows the events before the AB project. It revels how Sigma lost his arms, how the virus broke out and how Phi was born. This is all great and I feel was the only written part of the game. It was a nice timeline to coincide within the storyline and ties up some information we didn’t have from VLR, however. This route also includes a very pivotal plot point, something that if you were to hear it you’d think it would have numerous hints and other tidbits of information and world building to make it seem feasible in the story’s universe.

The aliens.

I don’t know what they were thinking when they thought to introduce extraterrestrial lifeforms in a series that has not even hinted about their existence all to try and explain a very poor plot device in the form of transporters that send you mind and body through time. What happened to all the intriguing real life theories about concepts like morphogenetic field and Schrödingers cat that were littered throughout the previous games and gave meaning to them being brought up later. The aliens came out of nowhere and although they are a concept in real life, this was never mentioned once before its reveal making it feel ridiculous and out of place in the world.

Then we go onto the Carlos route. This route has just a couple more things wrong with it. The complete character assassination of Junpei made me think we were seeing a different character in the story unlike Tenmyouji who feels like a development on his character. Although very important and one of the best characters in the last two games, Akane is kinda just there (when she isn’t meant to be as stated by HERSELF in VLR) and only serves to infodump for far to long on the player at random points throughout the route.

Then we have the man himself Carlos, who I believe was meant to be the main character before they decided to have 3. This man finds out he’s able to SHIFT and once he does he can just do it?? at like any time he needs to and he just abuses this ability that took Sigma and Phi an entire game, a whole 45 years of preparation to even use semi reliably while Carlos jumps to a different timeline well over 10 times and completely messes with the games already messy story. This on top of a recent revelation that me and my friends came to that got confirmed by Uchikoshi himself that “?” In VLRs ending “intervened” in the Decision Game and is someone who knew Sigma and Phi from the decision game. Only two characters that fit this bill are Delta and Carlos with the latter being incredibly likely which is a huge retcon to what VLR lead you to believe. If you really want to see how bad this character messes everything up just search “Carlos shift timeline ZTD” and try and piece it together.

Trying to keep this short I’ll move onto Q team. This cast of characters is one of the worst cast I have ever seen in a story. Them being uninteresting aside, they add almost nothing meaningful to the story and what they do add, makes the ENTIRE series as you knew it completely different.

I’ll start with a simple one, Mira. Mira plays the roll of the psycho/killer of this game and just doesn’t really do a good job of it. She likes to kill people and feel their heart in her hand, great i guess but this is pretty much her only trait of her character. The only thing she really does is kill Eric’s mum in the past.

Speaking of Eric I think he’s even worse. He doesn’t even have the villain character situation going for him, he just complains at Q and really wants to be in a relationship with Mira. That’s it. That’s his character. He does however tell a story about one of the most stupidest plot twists and metaphors used in this entire series, the snail.

If you look through “the snails” wiki page for this game you will understand how ridiculous this is. This one snail basically inadvertently causes the events for the ENTIRE SERIES because Eric’s mum saw this snail on her bike trail and decided to go a different path to avoid it, thus running into Mira, dying, and then having Akanes father be blamed for the murder which spirals her family out of control.

I wouldn’t mind the snail situation had it been anything but a snail. Eric’s mum could have just cycled past it, there was nothing to avoid most people wouldn’t even see the thing. If it was something like a tree fell over on the road then sure, but no the god damn snail caused it all.

I will return to that later because it gets even more insane, but moving on we have Q. Q isn’t bad I’d say just very under-utilised. From what I gather Q or Sean is a robot who’s personality had a car accident?? Honestly I do not know what to say about him other than you are under the illusion that you are playing as him throughout his route, you actually play as a very cool character called Delta.

Just wanted to say before I go off on the tangent that is about Delta, the whole map/room being the same for every character at different times was also ridiculous in that it just was an unnecessary twist.

Now Delta is revealed to be on the Q team this entire time and is actually who you play as in EVERY route through “mind hacking”, he can also be “seen” in some sections where there’s just a random shadow of a wheelchair (you should be able to see the thing) on the ground. If that already isn’t insane enough I just want to assure you that this man is the most ridiculous and most absolutely outlandish character to ever be made.

Let me give a small summery on Delta. He is 120 odd years old, is the son of Sigma who was then transported to the past. Is after an unnamed, never before mentioned “religious fanatic” that’s apparently who he’s trying to stop and he has the ability to “mind hack” (what???) people to make them do his bidding.

This is all well and good and already makes no sense whatsoever but what if I told you the absolutely shocking revelation I found out after scrolling through information about him, I genuinely don’t believe that this wasn’t somewhat intentional and is just never brought up or considered in the entire game.

Here’s a couple of extra facts about delta:
Was sent back to 1904 Germany.
Was in his late 30s during the 1940s.
Founded an organisation that states if you devote yourself you will be reborn as a “new race”.
Created a militia of “blonde haired, blue eyed” white men.
Had melting chambers in his facility.
Killed 6 billion people.

So based of this information we can safely say that delta is A NAZI, UCHIKOSHI HAS JUST WRITTEN A SECOND HITLER. Like I cannot stress enough how insane this is, way to much lines up for it to be a coincidence his cult following that he has even has a red and black colour scheme going on for his “new race” of people it’s insane.

Delta ends up being the beginning of nearly every event in this game, he was the answer the writers had for us for all our questions. Free the soul? Delta. The man who placed the snail knowing that Eric’s mum would change her path? Delta (yes that’s real). Who was Akane conversing with to try and stop the catastrophe shown in VLR? Delta. Who gave money to Ace to fund the second Nonary game? Delta. Everything leads back to Delta, and what does this man say after all this, after everything he’s apparently done surely this man has some very solid motives for all of his actions-

“My motives are somewhat, complex”

That’s it, this is all he has to say for himself before “””mind hacking””” Eric into shooting him in the head with a shotgun. The man who has been there for everything just describes himself as “complex” in the game we were meant to get answers.

In the end the cast all shift to the coin flip timeline where they escape (Because they can just all do that now) and delta appears giving Carlos a gun, ending on a cliffhanger to the finale of the series on if he shoots him or not. And that’s how it ends.

This game is so flawed, so absurdly terribly written that it’s actually one of the funniest games of all time and I cannot recommend it enough.

-1/10