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

For reference, I played the Steam version of Persona 3 on hard difficulty.

Persona 3 Reload is a near-perfect experience for me personally. This game has a lot going for it but Id be lying if I said I enjoyed every aspect of this, as I believe they dropped the ball on a few instances in this game. This review won’t contain any major story spoilers but I might hint at some stuff in here. Read at your own discretion. I'll first go into what I like about this game and what it does good.

Firstly, the graphics and engine upgrade is one of the first things you notice, everything looks much cleaner and a lot better. Compared to P5 it's a massive graphic update. They went overkill with every aspect of the UI as well, making sure every menu has some sort of graphic, at least in the pause menu, each one of them having a hidden meaning which I think is a nice touch. While they toned it down in terms of the splash screens doing all-out attacks compared to P5, the simpler style still fits well. Where they shine is the theurgy special attacks. It all just looks amazing. The characters feel less stiff and more lively during any sort of talking sequence.

I consider this battle system the best out of 3, 4, and 5 (Insert obligatory persona joke that the first 2 don't exist.) They brought back baton pass under a new name, shifting. A standard version of giving your turn to another party member without the added benefits of baton pass in Persona 5, which is fine considering it was incredibly broken. And, you're never gonna believe this, you can CONTROL your party members. Yep, you heard me right. Shocking shit I know. On top of that, they rebalanced every party member from the original Persona 3, regardless if there is a “best” party every character is viable regardless of team comp as long as you fuse enough personas for the main protagonist. The new system to Persona 3 and what makes it unique is the newly implemented theurgy system. Every turn in battle fills up this meter so unleash a super move each character has. Each character has their own criteria to boost the meter more to get the move faster (I.E Yukari’s meter fills faster when she heals hurt party members.) My one issue with this while it adds that dopamine when you get it, there's no downside to using this, and is just there to make the game easier without any repercussions using overpowered moves. Other than that, this game is incredibly balanced in my opinion. I was over-leveled for a majority of the game with min-maxed personas and I still had some trouble with bosses. The battles encouraged me to use items as well and correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't as encouraged or even necessary in 4 and 5. On top of all of this, the shuffle system is completely revamped and is no longer random, you can even reliably trigger it by finishing the battle with an All-Out Attack. The only random thing about it is which cards appear. While admittedly, it loses a bit of its identity, and no reason for it to be called shuffle time anymore, this is a much better and welcome change. The enemy AI is much smarter in this game and follows up more with hitting weaknesses. The most notable fight that I had trouble with was The Reaper. He was easily the hardest fight in this game and it doesn’t come close in my opinion. It took me around 40 minutes to beat him using all of my resources. And on top of all of that, there is still more minibosses through these doors that appear randomly that will reward you a decent amount. There still isn't even stuff I’ve covered but the point is that they made the gameplay loop more engaging and intuitive. Never have I felt the need to keep fusing until now. I finished with an 89% compendium registry. I usually finish with around 50-60% which I think says alot.

The story in this game is 1 to 1 with the original with added segments of the antagonists of the game for the better. They are done much better and build the characters more throughout. And this goes for all of the characters. Comparing it to the original, every character is more fleshed out and given more opportunities to learn more about them and it was done amazingly. Sadly, you can miss a few as all of them are timed therefore missing out on the character-building. Another neat edition is the characters talking mid-combat to each other when they shift or hit a weakness. It's a very small thing that can go unnoticed but for me, it added a lot.

The VAs in this game also killed it, dare I say this is my favorite entry in terms of the voice-acted cast. I think the social links being voice-acted for sure adds a lot. I didn't think I would enjoy this cast more than the original but they nailed it and I actually prefer them over the original.

Now, some minor nitpicks that I want to point out before I go into my dislikes are one of them being that I personally think the VA for Yukari just misses some lines. None that ruined the game nor killed the character for me but enough to the point where it was bothersome and annoying. I can't remember what lines exactly but besides those few she is fine. Makoto (the protagonist) also is too quiet when getting shifted compared to when he summons his persona it doesn't match the energy. One more thing is that the “child” voice actors definitely don’t sound like children. They just sound like adults putting on their best teen impression.

Ok NOW onto my dislikes I have with this game and my main grievance with this remake is that it's TOO faithful of a remake. Meaning they didn’t fix some of the issues that FES had. Including some certain story scenes where it ruins the theme of the game. IYKYK. While the confidants are much better voice acted, aside from the party members I find it extremely hard to care for any of them nor do they add much to the story. I was hoping they would add or even change most of them to make them more appealing or at least somehow relate to the character. The only confidant that I felt that was done well was the sun arcana. My favorite arcana in the entire series at that. Shame that they didn't expand on them as much. And while I was invested from the get-go because I already knew the story, it still took too long for the game to pick up during the story.

Expanding on my point that it's too faithful of a remake, there still isn't enough to do at night around the midgame. Once your stats are maxed out and you get every character's special characteristic there is literally nothing to do. Also very disappointing to see they didn't expand any areas you could go to. I excused the first game as it was a first in the series but seeing them stick to it in the remake is inexcusable. Another thing that really killed the impact of one of the scenes was one of the scenes during the end of the game. I won't go into details but I really don't see why they changed it and the original was much more impactful.

All in all, I still think this game is amazing and does enhance the original in many ways but sadly downgrades it in others. An almost perfect remake in my eyes that they sadly didn't push as much as they should've. Thank you for taking the time to read this review as this is the first time I've decided to go full lengths to review a game this important to me.

Super Mario Sunshine is an odd game. It has a lot of good qualities and I could easily see it ranking alongside people’s favorite games of all time, but there’s also a lot of stuff holding it back, arguably more than any other 3D Mario. But, as a fair game critic, I should start with the positives.

Mario Sunshine’s biggest strength is in its personality. Right from the title screen, the game introduces an offbeat tone in both design and visuals, letting players mess around with Mario’s moveset and making them physically select a file. The aesthetics are beautiful, with vibrant tropical locales that still hold up visually. The soundtrack has a unique style that’s both catchy and fitting to the environment. It’s even the only mainline Mario game to feature voice acting! Bad voice acting, yes, but the voices are indeed acting!

There are some really good character designs here, too. Newly introduced series icons like the Piantas, Petey Piranha, and Bowser Jr join sleeper hits like Cataquacks and Electro Koopas to form an all-star cast. Also, I love how E. Gadd’s ties to FLUDD and the Magic Paintbrush connect this game to Luigi’s Mansion, showcasing a continuity Mario hasn’t really done since…Dream Team? Sunshine isn’t the most charming of Mario’s Gamecube outings; it’s outdone by the sports titles and especially TTYD, but the vibes are still as fresh as the water from Mario’s jetpack.

Speaking of which, FLUDD is a great addition to the gameplay. Not only does he fit with the game’s theming, but he’s a wonderful tool in Mario’s arsenal. The spraying mechanics are fun to use, serving as both a means of attack and of increasing momentum. Plus, the additional airtime provided by the hover nozzle is a nifty means of getting around. The rocket and turbo nozzles are also pretty fun to use, offering great vertical and horizontal utility respectively. And when you fully understand how FLUDD works, movement becomes an absolute thrill ride, where Mario hops, slides, and speeds along at an exhilarating rate…

…Which makes it suck when the game forcibly removes these options. Scattered throughout Sunshine are a series of self-contained platforming challenges over a great blue void. This might sound like a great chance to use that movement I mentioned, but here’s the thing: You can’t use FLUDD in these sections. Now, on paper this is a fine enough idea. FLUDD is the game’s central mechanic, and it’s only fair that it spends the entire game fleshing him out as much as possible. And removing that mechanic is a good way of doing so.

There’s just one problem: Remember that fluid movement I mentioned earlier? Yeah, see how much fluid you get without your fancy water bottle. Mario Sunshine’s movement really wasn’t built around not having FLUDD, at least not in the context of precise platforming, which is the exact situation where they remove him. It just feels awkward trying to get around without him, the game’s odd lack of a long jump especially making traversal a lot more frustrating. And on top of that, these sections harshly punish your mistakes. One wrong move and you fall into a pit and have to start the section all over again. Oh, and God forbid you lose all your lives and have to trek back through the level, wasting even more of your time.

Okay, so the no-FLUDD sections are frustrating, but so what? Every Mario game has at least a few bad levels. Just skip them! Oh, you sweet, stupid summer child, let me introduce you to one of Sunshine’s other major blunders: the change in structure. Now, Mario 64 was very generous with its completion requirements, only requiring 70 of its 120 stars in order to face the final boss. Plus, you could get a level’s Power Stars in any order. This meant that if you didn’t like a level, that’s fine. You could just do another one. Sunshine, for some odd reason, lays out an incredibly specific goal for the player: you have to do the first 7 missions in every level in order to reach the ending. All those sections that really suck? Yeah, they’re mandatory. So either slog your crusty, dehydrated plumber through platformer purgatory or give up and haul your ass back to Kirby Air Ride (Please note that I hold no ill will against Kirby Air Ride or its playerbase).

Another victim of the game’s structure is the optional shines. Now, optional content in games is cool, but usually there’s some kind of reward attached to it. Like, oh, I don’t know, something that helps you progress in the story. Mario Sunshine throws all that out the window, snapshots its corpse, and slaps it on a custom-printed postcard from the Land of Sensible Design. Yeah, I wish I was there, too. So many neat ideas in Sunshine are gimped by their complete uselessness in the face of the game’s ultimate goal. The shines you can earn in the overworld? Sorry, their purpose is in another castle. The secret shines scattered throughout the levels? The real secret is they’re a waste of time. The blue coins? Please, you’re better off buying crypto. Even the fact that shines help unlock levels (I think) is redundant because the main missions already give you more than enough to unlock all of them.

Let’s talk about those main missions some more, because Sunshine’s level design is…odd, to say the least. Remember when I praised Mario Galaxy for how its tight level design got the most out of its simple movement? Sunshine’s kind of the opposite. You have a lot of movement options, but every level either removes your access to them or plops them into an uninteresting layout. In what I can only assume was due to the game’s rushed development, Sunshine’s levels sit at an awkward midpoint between 64’s open-ended playgrounds and Galaxy’s linear, mission-based structure. The levels are technically open, sure, but you have to do all the objectives in a specific order, one at a time. Unlike the Galaxy games, though, the bulk of the level often remains largely the same, just with an objective tacked on at a different point, so you don’t really feel the variety. For a game all about cleaning, they paid shockingly little attention to polish.

But for what it’s worth, the missions you do within the main levels are fine. They reuse a lot of objectives, but they do a good enough job being engaging and the movement carries it a fair bit. Plus, this game features Yoshi’s first 3D appearance, even if it is by far the weakest and it portrays him as oddly soluble. And unlike Mario 64, the bosses don’t suck, even if the final stretch of the game is god-awful. That’s the thing about Sunshine. It’s not a bad game. Hell, I’m even tempted to call it good. But it really squanders a lot of its best ideas with an array of baffling design decisions and a development cycle that leaves it feeling less finished than the GameCube’s actual tech demo. It had the potential to reach the sky, but for every time it came close, it just got burned.

I think Pokémon Black is a great game. Everything pretty much slaps; The Story, The Region, The Characters, The Music. It was a great game to play through. I enjoyed it most of the way through. My only problem I have with the game is the Pokémon variety. I get that this was sort of a soft reboot and that’s why it’s only new Pokémon up until the post game. But some of the new Pokémon kind of suck. Not a whole lot of options and the coolest Pokémon Volcorona is pretty locked behind the post game. Which really fucking sucks. But that’s my only problem with it. Game’s great.

Also shoutout DKOldies for shipping me a working copy of the game for $120. I will never get that money back nor will I be featured in one of their TikTok’s with Joey saying my name, saying what I purchased, and throwing in a $0.05 bonus item. Very sad.