My mother and father were taking me on a road trip as I hadn’t left the state of Florida throughout my life, and seeing as how my 12th birthday was around the corner, they figured there would be no better time. The trip was long and arduous, the seemingly unending road ahead of us nearly made my father swerve off of the road and slam into a nearby tree, or realistically fall into the river of Alligator Alley. I woke up suddenly to the unfamiliar sensation of my ears popping from the rise of elevation. I looked outside of the backseat car window and the first thing I noticed were the trees, towering and winding above the road, each trunk housing centuries of untold stories. A still darkness lies beneath them with beams of the sunset's light shining through the cracks of the leaves, burning my half-asleep eyelids shut once again. As we drove on a bridge that was above the canopy of trees, I noticed the vast ocean of mountains. The beauty of the insurmountable that laid bare upon my unknowing and immature eyes astonished me, cloaked in a mist of distant fog, shielding me from what lies beyond. What interested me more however, was that I had multiple street-passes on my red 3ds XL that I had in sleep mode during my slumber. That was true happiness.

Nearing dusk, we arrived at the destined mountain in which my grandparents resided. The one way gravel road with many twists and turns and minimal lighting was a horror beyond human comprehension, especially when your father was showing symptoms of being high due to having three mango slushes from Sonic. My Father does not remember this part of the story. After nearly driving off of a cliff multiple times, we arrived at the house. Dimly lit, it was slightly illuminated by the local firefly population. Sadly, we still couldn’t see shit and went to sleep because mosquitoes kept biting my ass. Ouch.

The morning came and I woke up to the smell of fresh air and nice smelling food. Just kidding, it was the exact opposite. I smelt rotting eggs and my balls were shivering because it was so fucking cold and I didn’t have a blanket. This fucking sucked. What’s more is I found out I was sleeping on an air mattress, which at the time sucked until I walked around the rest of the house and realized everything in the house and the house itself were rotting away at the seams. Then and only then was it seen as a blessing. Thank you mother. It was tradition for me as a kid to put my 3ds under my pillow as I slept, and before even opening my eyes I would scrummage around my bed trying to ensure my favorite toy was still there. Thankfully, not unlike all of the preceding days, it was and all was good in the world. Except for the stench of rotting eggs, which I was too lazy to follow. Instead, I opted to play Mario & Luigi Dream Team, a game I had purchased on the eshop months before. I was sitting on the edge of my air mattress in the heat of the final battle against whatever the fuck his name was, when suddenly my “grandmother” barged into my safe heaven, undoing the imaginary locks on the rotting wooden door and allowing the aforementioned stench to flow into my olfactory glands in it’s purest form, and only after reaching my olfactory cortex did the odor truly fuck me up. The ogre stood in the doorway, blocking the light from the morning sun from reaching my once pure, not grimacing face. She asked, no, demanded, “DO YOU WANT EGGS?” in a loud and quaking tone in her raspy voice akin to that of an eldritch demon. Startled, I stood up from the side of the air mattress, the precipice of fate, starring the demon in her ugly and moldy eyes. Pleading for my life, I begged “No, thank you”, then walked past the horrific creation of a jaded God, resting my opened red 3ds XL on the corner of my air mattress and ran as fast as possible toward the door. Not before seeing the watery eggs she had crafted. I dodged a fatal bullet.

As I swung open the front door, I heard a roar from the inner tunnels of the dwelling in which I rested, the demon cursing in her native tongue. It was only when I exited that I saw our location in light. Our cabin was atop a small hill with a barn at the foot of it. I was taken back in awe at the beauty that nature provided, staring distantly at the mountains and treeline. I snapped back into reality when I heard my mother yell my name from the bottom of the hill. I ran down the hill and told my father what I had experienced in the previous 10 minutes. After telling him the tale in which I escaped with my life, I instinctively touched the pocket on my red shorts… It was then I realized the grave error in my judgment. My red 3ds XL was not with me. I recollected the events and came to the conclusion that it must have been left on the air mattress. I looked back at the hill and saw the menacing castle before me, fumes of green oozing out of the many crevices of the once inviting home, a haunting laugh emanating from the inner corridors. I had to make a decision. Face the stench and find my love, or hide in my sorrow and fear. I ran as fast as I could up the hill, dodging the many bugs that came to attack me on my hurried pilgrimage. I rammed open the door and saw the beast sleeping on a throne of human skull. Tip toeing toward my goal, every creak in the floor could be my end. I refused to even breathe on my careful descent into the lair of madness. I eventually met the door and stood quietly in front of it, slowly moving my hand toward the doorknob. I opened the door as slowly as humanly possible, and what laid on my bed changed the course of my life forever.

My favorite, red 3ds XL. Shattered in two pieces. The hinges on my love were completely broken. The game would not even turn on. I wept for an eternity as I realized that I would never be able to play my favorite games again. What’s worse is that there is no conclusion. We don’t know how it happened. My mother believes it was the result of it sliding off of the corner of the air mattress and her stepping on it. My friends think she just snapped it in half out of anger due to the lack of watery eggs in my stomach and vomit in the toilet. But deep down, I know she sat on it because her legs were tired after standing up for 5 minutes after making eggs. Furthermore, the extra padding on her behind due her comically large body weight caught the innocent red 3ds XL off-guard, and couldn’t find a way to lift the pressure of 10,000 suns crashing down upon its red, feeble, extra large body. I never got to complete this game. I can’t ever go back. This is my story.

Will forever be known to me as a game i played ONLY during every single one of my Jewish Studies lectures. Im not even Jewish so i cant begin to tell you how i ended up in that class but this was the only thing i looked forward doing at 10:55 - 11:30am tuesdays and thursdays every week. Today was my last day of class so it was either I beat the game today or i take another class about the Jewish religion. There was no better option.

Fun game though if not a little confusing at times which is why it took me so long to beat it, though the game does have hints which i used religiously because between learning about pangrea or whatever my professor was talking about and me not knowing the geography of Japan i couldnt hope to keep up... Then i would have had to take a second Jewish culture class. The zones are pretty open at times and normally i would find this to be boring but the music was very good so i didnt really care much... either that or i was just so bored that anything was entertaining. The tight corridor areas were extremely fucking annoying due to the god awful camera

This game also does that Final Fantasy V shit with the humor where they do an attempt at comedy and nobody laughs but instead of playing this it just plays a laugh track (<-- thats a laugh track in case any of you didnt know) and unfortunately im a sucker for shitty jokes so this appealed to me. I think beating this game was more of an accomplishment to me than completing the course

Once you beat this game ask yourself if there is a single change in the story that you prefer over the original. I get that isnt the point of the game at all but i cant stand this modernization and re-imagining shit that theyre doing

For the first 10 hours I was screaming “hell yeah!” because i do genuinely love these characters and i don’t think ill ever get bored of seeing them interact with each other, on top of that seeing the remade locations from the original and hearing the music from the best soundtrack ever remade in stunning orchestrations is as phenomenal as it is nostalgic, however a good 60% of the time it either feels like ive played this game 40 times before or i just hate it.

I could go on for days about why the gameplay, strictly the combat, is amazing and easily the best action based system in the series (even though the bar is nonexistent), though it stops being as impactful when all im doing is grinding out the uneventful and unneeded filler main story quests that are there just to make the game 30 hours longer to get to the fun combat. Push object A to point B then climb a yellow wall while following a map marker that shows you exactly where to go at all times I LOVE CONSUMING SLOP😋 Of course this also heavily applies to the mundane and surprisingly small “open world” which is cool for the first 30 minutes and then quickly becomes boring as you realize there’s really nothing to do in it aside from fight enemies and do occasional QTE sequences. It’s not the worst thing in the world, it’s just very generic.

The story is just fan service and while some elements are cool its actual slop and that’s alright because sometimes it’s ok to treat yourself to some junk food (shit like this game) after eating healthy greens (the original game) there was another joke i wanted to make but i can’t even remember i think im developing alzheimers something something cell degradation
Once you beat this game ask yourself if there is a single change in the story that you prefer over the original. I get that isnt the point of the game at all and that this is supposed to be its own thing or whatever, but i cant stand this modernization and re-imagining shit that theyre doing because they’re doing it so horribly wrong

For the first 10 hours I was screaming “hell yeah!” because i do genuinely love these characters and i don’t think ill ever get bored of seeing them interact with each other. That very well could be the best part about this game, because there wasn’t a point where I got bored of the character writing, and honestly it was one of the few things getting me through the boring ass story aside from seeing the remade locations and music, however a good 60% of the time it either feels like I’ve played this game 40 times before or I just hate it.

I could go on for days about why the gameplay, strictly the combat, is amazing and easily the best action based system in the series (even though the bar is nonexistent), though it stops being as impactful when all im doing is grinding out the uneventful and unneeded filler story that are there just to make the game 30 hours longer to get to the fun combat. Push object A to point B then climb a yellow wall while following a map marker that shows you exactly where to go at all times I LOVE CONSUMING SLOP😋and of course this also heavily applies to the mundane and surprisingly small “open world” which is cool for the first 30 minutes and then quickly becomes boring as you realize there’s really nothing to do in it aside from fight enemies and do occasional QTE sequences. I want to make it clear that im not one of those console warrior people who care about the world size and loading screens because i really could give less of a shit but I am a firm believer in quality over quantity and like most open slop games this doesn’t follow that mantra. It’s not the worst thing in the world, it’s just very, very generic. Also Charley or whatever that assholes name is has to shut the fuck up

The best way I can summarize my thoughts on the story is that it’s just fan service for really hardcore final fantasy 7 super fans who either dont know how to read between the lines or read between the lines too much. Like I’ve said about pretty much everything in this game… it’s cool…. But its just slop… and that’s alright because sometimes it’s ok to treat yourself to some junk food (shit like this game) after eating healthy greens (the original game) there was another joke i wanted to make but i can’t even remember i think im developing alzheimers something something cell degradation

I think what it comes down to is that this game is always either way too scared to do anything impactful during key story sequences or when it’s somewhat impactful it completely fumbles by doing some weird multiverse bullshit that shouldn’t have even a suggestion. I have not been a fan of anything they’ve done with FF7 and its characters since the original game and i guess crisis core and this is a key reason why. That being said, am i going to buy Final fantasy vii: reborn? Of course. I love slop💕😋 and i love final fantasy

No this game can actually go fuck itself fuck the boring combat and fuck the shitty music i am not sitting through another piece of shit yoko taro whatever the fuck his name is game collect the 50 knick knacks to get all 10 endings after 2000 hours of bashing my head against a wall pretentious, corny ass story i WILL NOT be giving a single fuck about

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Fool me three times lock me in a white room with a stray jacket and throw the key away

I would hate to be one of the people who refuse to play the game because it doesn't have social links, flashy UI and non first person gameplay just to miss out on what I consider to be a well told story that isn't as drawn out and boring as other persona games. I’m serious too, the first person gameplay really isn't bad and I can't understand what drew me away from this game when I first played it.

I figured I would have hated this game a lot more than I did, and it really isn't even bad at all. I had no trouble with the combat and fusing in this game and found it fun especially near the end of the game when things started opening up, I would even go as far to say that it's my favorite fusion system in the series since every character is able to equip three personas of your choosing. It’s never too overpowered because most of them usually have 4-5 moves max, though the game is really easy so I guess this doesn't really matter much Lol

Should be noted that in the psp version of this game, it's hard to pay attention to anything but the mini map when exploring mazes because the gameplay is too fast, even when you’re not running and toggling skip animations during battle. I'm not exaggerating either you're actually running at mach 5 and getting into constant encounters because for some reason they decided the encounter rate needed to be raised. To that end I wish I listened to my friend @Zotol and played the ps1 version when he told me to, but instead because he hates using the emulator I sent him what’s apparently a “half broken psp” even though it was perfectly fine aside from being smashed with a Warwood Tool 3 lb. Double-Faced Small Sledge Hammer - Tools for Home Improvement - Tools & Home Improvement - Made in the USA and being dropped in the toilet twice (he didn't notice though)

I loathe being called a persona fan so let's just leave it at "persona 1 fan"

I want to preface this by saying that I play my games without using Google or any emulator cheats (fast forward / save states / actual cheats) because I feel that by using them, I’m disregarding the game’s design. From my understanding, people use them either because they have limited time to play games or they’re simply impatient and don’t want to deal with archaic design. To both ends, if you truly care about a game and are enjoying your time with it, why rush through it and ignore the pacing of the game? That’s not to say you can’t enjoy a game while fast forwarding and the like, for some it might help them enjoy it more… for me however, it ruins my enjoyment of the product.

I emphasize the above because the contacting system is abhorrent and easily the worst part of this game. I think it worked fine enough in the first game even if it was easily abusable and barebones, but this is just needlessly grindy for absolutely no reason. How it works is each character has 4 unique contact options that you can use to talk to a demon, given that you have 5 characters throughout the game, it easily becomes overwhelming. Depending on the personality of the demon and contact you chose, you will elicit an angry, happy, eager, or scared reaction. The goal is to make them eager so that you can get their arcana’s spell cards, though if you make them happy before doing so, you will get free cards that can be converted into any arcana card type in the velvet room. You can only have 3 happy demons at any given time as the would-be “buff” stays constant throughout the game, unless you make them angry, which is very easy to do. On random occasions, including at the very start of a battle, a demon will start talking to you, except during these sequences you pretty much have to guess what the correct answer is because they ask you questions like “if you were an animal what would you be human dog demon” and on my life I picked every single possible option for multiple demons, and they were all fucking wrong so i think it’s bugged or something. While that’s annoying, I found the fusing system to be fun, assuming I had enough cards to make what I wanted to make. I like the emphasis on spell cards, but I would be lying if I said I preferred this over the modern fusion systems, even though the game is hardly balanced around them.

On the topic of balancing, it’s all over the place. I played the PS1 version which is harder than the PSP remaster according to everyone, and for a good portion of the game all I was doing was getting into random encounters, even boss fights, and just auto battling. To extend on that, the combat system is centered around auto battling. You set your characters moves and press start battle. You can stop the auto battle whenever you want and check the turn order of your party members so you can plan your attacks accordingly, but outside of the final boss I pretty much turned my brain off the entire time, save for a select few instances. I don’t like this system because more than any RPG I’ve ever played, I get little to no reward or satisfaction mainly because I’m not pressing buttons as often. While some might see that fact as a good thing, I see it as mundane and boring. I make it sound bad, but in reality it barely affected me and it’s not like the difficulty is completely nonexistent, it’s there I just found it incredibly easy and manipulable is all. That final boss is some bullshit though. Game goes from being easy for about 15 hours to being extremely tedious and hard for no reason? Boring as hell

THE RUMORS SUCK. The system is there to remind you that the story involves rumors, and it fucking sucks. I don’t like talking to rumor mongerors with the clunky ass text boxes that plague the entire game and just don’t skip properly just to hear that Bimble Fuck Joe is selling his Sweaty Ass Shirt for 3 yen cheaper. Same people who defend this shit are the people who say Drakengard is a masterpiece because the gameplay sucks on purpose or whatever. I’m heavily overblowing it and this was hardly an issue because i did it twice throughout the entire game but it just made me realize how much i hated the textboxes in this game. Going back to that demon happiness shit for a second, if you have 3 contracts (3 happy demons) then the demon you’re currently trying to contact will ask you to replace one of the contracts so that they can be added, and for some god awful reason the developers thought it would be funny to have the dialogue option to appear at the least opportune time so that almost every single time I press the A button to progress the dialogue, the options appear and I annul the wrong contract. Every. Fucking. Time. Even when i'm careful I still somehow fuck it up. Yes, I know, skill issues and many such cases. Shit was made to make me fall asleep im not even going to lie spread a rumor to make my bed more comfortable. Booking the luxury suite at the Innocent Inn™ if it doesn't become a reality (joke donated by @Zotol)

Now that I aired my grievances, I liked the characters! I think they’re easily some of the best and most realistic ones in the series. I loathe how the modern persona games have these uninteresting and almost repetitive characters that for the life of me I just can’t give a single fuck about half the time, and for the first time I actually found myself caring about the issues and problems these characters are facing. They may not be as realized or fleshed out in this game as I would have liked them to be, but they were nonetheless impactful, more so than half of the slop the modern games shoved down my throat and I’m sure they will be even more amazing in the sequel. There's more I could go into and I made the game sound a lot worse than it actually is but the reality is that I'm mincing my words in fear of spoiling people, so it might sound like I'm not complimenting the game enough. The reality is that it does have good qualities but I also don't feel like I'm at a position where I can collect my thoughts and judge the game's story based without having played the sequel, so I won't. It's pretty good though, if not paced strangely at times. It's also incredibly hard to take this game seriously when iykyk is the villain. I'm serious if you don't know shit about this game go play it right now and prepare to have the craziest whiplash ever

I'm not going to lie though that PSP version is probably better because the god awful fan translation for this game gave characters different during different points in the story and I could never tell who was who.. Aside from that, the music was alright. Just alright. Few stand out tracks but I’m not foaming out of the mouth for anything. The PSP soundtrack sounded better from what I heard, and I’m probably going to play the PSP version of Eternal Punishment after my exams.

If you played the PSP versions of Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment, WITHOUT SPOILING, what does the save transfer do? Is it important or can I just play EP on PSP without it