Irreverent and dead set in its ways, Dragon's Dogma II sets out to simply be Dragon's Dogma 1, but bigger and better in most ways, and a little bit worse in some others. A game by and for sickos that buckles every other open-world game trend and does its own thing; you are not here to climb map towers or blindly follow a series of objective icons, you are here to get dropkicked by ogres, thrown off cliffs by harpies, dragged and mangled by wolves. You will plan your itinerary based on the direction an oxcart can take you, and you will see the frustration of a cyclops-induced botched travel by cart superseded by the joy of discovering a cave system you had missed on your last trek. You will launch goblins into the stratosphere either by hitting them with a duoblade or conjuring a massive tornado. You will manhandle old men. You will run back and forth across cities like a headless chicken, carefully considering if that ferrystone is worth it. You will deck your pawn in the sluttiest outfits imaginable and see the cash come rolling in. You will get into arguments over microtransactions on the internet.

It's Dragon's Dogma, baby.

The world is a beautiful place and I am no longer afraid to die.

A perfect glow up for persona 3 giving it all the visual flashiness of 5 without taking away from the more melancholic story. I loved every minute of watching the story unravel while getting to know and fighting alongside every party member. There were many moments that I wasn’t expecting would hit me as hard as they did, especially the payoff for all your efforts that you get in the final chapter. A beautiful story about realizing that the constant futility and impossibility of life can only become bearable thanks to the bonds you form with others. I’ll never forget playing this for the first time and absolutely recommend it.

Developers have long since exhausted the trope of "child trapped in a scary world," yet despite that, Murasaki Baby remains compelling in a way that none of its competition ever was. Simply put, it quite literally puts the child's fate at the player's fingertips. Your goal is to ferry a young girl across screens of hazards by manipulating hazards using both the Vita's front touchscreen and the back touchscreen to cycle through various backgrounds unlocked by popping colored balloons. I find the Ico comparisons to be on-point, as the player must physically guide the girl by the hand via holding and dragging on the touch-screen, taking care not to stretch her arm too far lest she stumble and fall. While the game isn't mechanically complex or challenging, it nevertheless constantly engages the player by gradually introducing more elements that require the player to micromanage dragging the girl and the balloon out of harm's way and switching/tapping the background to progress. The best example of this occurs during the final stretch of the game; after another character pops a hole in the girl's balloon, the player must juggle dragging the girl around, tapping the green background to repeatedly pump air into the leaking balloon, and switching/tapping additional colored backgrounds to flip the stage with the Vita's gyro controls and powering moving platforms with electricity. Though the path forward remains clear, the game demands a strong degree of attention and precision to quickly recognize and solve the game's many puzzles while building the bond between the girl and the player.

Murasaki Baby has unfortunately been more or less forgotten by the public. A slew of technical issues does hold the game back somewhat, as others have reported that saving sometimes breaks down in the middle of playthroughs and a few more (myself included) have experienced crashes. If I really had to nitpick, the game also could have done a bit more integrating all of the Vita's control functionalities into the gameplay (unlike say, Tearaway), as the face buttons/triggers/cameras are never used and the joysticks are used for exactly one exclusive segment outside of the menu screen. While I do feel as if the game was fairly short (about an hour and a half) and wrapped up just when I was beginning to feel a bit more pressured, I'm still glad that I got to try another overlooked title that showed real promise of how far a game could utilize controls to create an emotional and completely new experience. Until the day Astro's Playroom gets a follow-up, I suppose we'll just have to dream of a world where Sony invested wholeheartedly into its hardware and the Vita was seen as more than just a glorified control gimmick.

I suppose I should preface this with an explanation of my relationship with Persona 3. When I was around 11 years old I was very suicidal. I was also an avid gamer and I would play any game I got my hands on and my brother gave me his old PSP which had a copy of Persona 3 Portable on it. I spent many, many hours playing through that game more times than I can count. It felt like everything about it was made for me specifically. The story was so profound and emotional while being almost laughably simple, we’re going to die so be happy with your life. I have so many memories of what it was like to experience everything the game had to offer for the first time. I would sit on the title screen for hours just so I could listen to Soul Phrase over and over again. Persona 3 Portable means the world to me and it shaped my outlook on life. Fast forward a few years and I get my own PC, I can finally play FES. I had watched a few of the events on youtube but this would be my first time fully experiencing Persona 3 FES, the version most people say is infinitely superior. I understand why they say that but as a clinically depressed lesbian, Portable means so much more to me.. I’ve heard so much hate for The Answer I was honestly hesitant to play it but my god, I can’t imagine FES without The Answer. It’s such an incredible exploration of grief and just how much it can destroy even the most established bonds. I firmly believe that anyone who says that The Answer ruined the ending of the original or that it’s a forced conflict genuinely didn’t understand The Answer. Persona 3 Portable is my favorite game of all time, but I’d say FES is a very close second. They didn't really change much of the story so there's not anything to really say on this part but they dumbed down a lot of stuff and the new VAs don't deliver on a lot of scenes so I think this is the worst way to experience the story for the first time (except for the movies). This one might be the most controversial take I'll have, they ruined a lot of characters and I don't like the new voices. I really don't like Yukari's new voice, Aigis doesn't even sound robotic anymore which make the final conversation less impactful, I don't think Akihiko's new voice it's too deep and gruff, Mitsuru sounds way too old, Junpei's VA is really overacting to the point where he almost screams every line, Fuuka's voice sounds too basic and she lacks her goofy charm, Ken's voice is good but I'd say I like the original more, I'm not sure if I like Shinjiro's voice more than the original but it's really good. One thing that concerned me before the game came out was an interview with the developers and they said they wanted the characters personalities to line up more with how they were in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax which is notorious for it's terrible characterization of the P3 characters. Reload honestly didn't even add that much considering what it took away. There's link episodes to replace the social links we got for the male party members in P3P, but there's like 2 for each character so it doesn't even begin to make up for the loss of their social link. I did really like the Ryoji link episodes though, they were very good, not as good as the social link but I'm okay with that considering how good the link episodes were. Reload added so many things to just make the game piss easy. You can pay money to increase the number of rare shadows or strong shadows in Tartarus, and in Tartarus you can get multiple cards from shuffle time and even cards that let you double the social stat points you receive, and you can work part time jobs that give you money and raise multiple different social stat points and you can use the computer in the lounge to learn how to automatically ambush any enemy in Tartarus no matter what direction your facing and you can very easily outrun and outmaneuver the shadows because after like 5 seconds of chasing you they disappear. Also in case you didn't want to think for even a second they tell you where to go to complete all of Elizabeth's requests. It's a shame since the original had a lot of challenges and things you had to engage with the game in its entirety to get through. Honestly the devs are extremely lazy. They said they wanted to remake the experience of the original P3, not FES or Portable, but that was just an excuse so people wouldn't complain about the missing content because they still cherry picked a bunch of FES and Portable content to put in the game but not the ones that would take effort. There's no FeMC, there's no The Answer (yes I know it's going to be DLC but I'm talking about the game as it released), there's no Margaret secret boss, there's no boss rush thingy from Portable (I don't remember what it's called) there's no Shinjiro, Akihiko, Ken, Junpei, Ryoji social link (link episodes are not a replacement). It's missing a lot of big stuff, but also a ton of small details like in Akihiko's 10/5 resolution, in the original he pounds his hand on the stage while talking to Shinji, in Reload he doesn't. In Aigis' 12/30 resolution they're all sitting instead of standing so Aigis doesn't fall to her knees and have her friends both literally and physically pick her up which was a beautiful moment. Also on the topic of resolutions, I dislike how it goes to a black void and the Persona does an attack like move it just takes you out of the moment. The original had incredibly directed and stylized hand animated cutscenes that Reload replaced the majority of with 3D modeled cutscenes that look terrible. I do not like the 3D models, I think the Persona 3 Dancing models looked better. Though the cutscene that are actually animated do look beautiful even if they lack the direction of the original (especially the opening cutscene, they ruined it). Now onto the music, I do not like the remixes. Some are on par with the original but the majority do not compare. They superficially added various instruments and components to the songs that needlessly over complicate them while also changing the lyrics, this is most egregious with Changing Seasons and almost ruins the song for me. I think overall the instrumentation is worse (as evident by Iwatodai Dorm and Mass Destruction), in some tracks this is more subtle like with Unavoidable Battle, but it’s still noticeable. However, the new tracks are incredible. Full Moon Full Life, It’s Going Down Now, and Color Your Night save the entire soundtrack, genuinely some of the greatest Persona tracks in the entire series and the lyrics really coincide with the game on such a deep level, one lyric that stayed with me as I played the game was “Stop living dead when your heart’s beating still” from Full Moon Full Life. I like the new gameplay, it was pitifully easy on normal but it was fun enough. Theurgy attacks are broken and can delete any boss in one turn with the right set up (which I accidentally did for the last phase of the final boss). I don’t like how they made fusion spells theurgy attacks now and you don't even need to have the personas in your inventory. They also took away almost all of the tactics options from the original and you can't see the entire turn order further straying from the strategic gameplay of the original. If I were to give my final thoughts I would say this is my least favorite version of Persona 3. It's a terrible remake, but even a terrible Persona 3 is still and incredible game. Still one of the most impactful and emotional stories even with everything holding it back, and I'm glad people are enjoying it. It's something that everyone should experience.