VitalVile
SG-027 ZIMMERMAN, my beloved.
I really like the premise and there are too few games that let you play as a the stooge villain group. It could have benefitted from more variety in game types and the respawn speed of enemies on some levels is way too fast.
2020
I wish I liked it more than I did
2020
This feels like shit
2022
I played this for 5 hours, and I can't bring myself to keep going. It has nothing going on for gameplay, and everything feels cheap and undercooked. What a fucking waste of Shirow Miwa's art.
2024
I didn't know how much I needed a game like this.
I did the main story and post-game story. I did not expect this to enjoy this as much as I did. I played the game almost entirely as Zeta and had a blast. I had some nitpicks, but nothing major. The biggest one is I wish the characters you recruit with crewmate cards felt a bit more integrated into the main story. I understand that could be a lot of work but just them having some more comments on the current story situation would have been nice.
"I can fix her" [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE] [MAKES HER WORSE]
This is kinda structured like an arcade mode for a fighting game, with different endings depending on who you pick. I had fun but it gets repetitive pretty fast. Ibuki-Douji is so fucking hot, man.
2024
Persona 3 Reload is such a strange mix of high quality and low quality.
The biggest slight I have against Persona 3 Reload is the anime cutscenes; they are such a massive downgrade from the original Persona 3. Sure, they are “higher quality,” but they are directed so boringly in comparison, sometimes to a shocking degree. When I saw the very first anime cutscene, it was the first time I became worried about this remake. It’s not even them just not comparing to the original; completely new ones are kind of bad. The one for getting your new SEES combat gear is so weird, awkward, and goes on for so long. Why is it like that? Around halfway through the game, I became retroactively glad whenever they replaced what was an anime cutscene in the original with an in-engine cutscene in the remake, like they do with the Hero’s Persona awakening scene. Every single one is better directed to an almost ridiculous degree compared to the anime ones. The anime opening is good, though; it feels like it was done by completely different people. There are also times where there were once anime cutscenes; they just did a basic in-game scene; an early example is the Dark Hour scene on 4/8. It only happens twice in the entire game, if I remember right, but it is still disappointing when it happens. The takeaway I have from all of this is that I feel Atlus is at the point where they don’t really need anime cutscenes as much anymore; models and environments are detailed enough to make them feel a little unnecessary at times.
Environments can sometimes be a mixed bag in P3R as well. This is the first time in my life I’ve played a game where lowering the brightness made the game look better. Places like the Iwatodai Strip Mall, Iwatodai Station, and the shrine are perfectly recreated and look great to me. I know people think the dorm looks weird, but once I lowered the brightness, I didn’t really find it to be. Maybe I just got used to it after hours upon hours of playtime. However, there is one play that I do think looks really bad: Yakushima. The Yakushima environments are so bad-looking compared to everything else in the game, to the point that they are distracting.
There are multiple points where it will cut to black, so they don’t have to animate a character doing something. A good example of this is when on two occasions, Yukari stomps on someone’s foot. In the original P3, you see this, but in P3R they cut to black and have a text box. There are a lot of little things like this that you start to notice the more you play. But to contrast this, there is a lot of detail given to other things, like how characters will flip a page when reading a book or magazine, or how characters eating will have the food disappear into their mouths. There are a lot of strange contrasts in this Remake.
The character models for all the important characters that have portraits are extremely high quality; they look great. They feel like a massive step up from Persona 5. However, all the generic NPC models can look really weird sometimes; you can tell they are ones from P5 and edited, which is fine on its own, but sometimes it can really be a hard contrast with other models. Also related, having almost all the people in Club Escapade be frozen models in the middle of dancing was not a good decision; it just ends up looking cheap.
The new English voice cast does an equal or greater job than the previous cast. Junpei and Fuuka's new VAs are ones I think deserve particular praise for their work. Zeno Robinson captures the original Junpei perfectly while excelling in the performance, and Suzie Yeung just completely knocks it out of the park as Fuuka. Aigis' new VA, Dawn Bennett, is another one that deserves praise, mainly because I love Aigis and she does a perfect job. It’s a cute touch to have a lot of the former English cast return as older characters; it creates an almost passing-of-the torch feeling. Social Links being fully voiced adds so much; I hope that becomes the standard for Persona going forward. Giving your Social Link voice acting keeps your attention in even the possibly less interesting parts. All of the Social Link VAs are great too. (Sun is still the best Social Link btw.)
One of the new additions are Link Episodes, which give you a way to interact with your male party members in a pseudo-Social Link. These are all great. Everything they add feels right at home in Persona 3 and is just as worth doing as any Social Link. You also get more ways of hanging out with all of SEES through cooking, gardening, reading, and watching TV together. Much like the Link Episodes, they are great and have the added bonus of giving you items, social stats, and even new passive abilities for your party.
Strega are the biggest winner in the remake. I found them to be pretty underdeveloped in the original P3, but they are given enough in P3R to push them way up the Persona Villains chart. It really highlights the strength of P3R; it isn't really adding a new story element to an already existing story like P4G and P5R do by adding new characters; P3R is more focused on expanding on what is already there.
A thing I was worried about P3R messing up was the music, and much like how I feel about the new English cast, the music does an equal or greater job than the original. Remixes like Changing Seasons are amazing, and new songs like Color Your Night are an absolute vibe.
Gameplay is pretty much what you expect from a modern Persona. The biggest difference from the original P3 is that you can control your party fully, much like you can in P3P. I understand why this change bothers people, but I honestly prefer full party control in RPGs, mainly just because I like doing as much as I can in combat in a turn-based RPG. Reload still keeps the slash, strike, and pierce attack types, but something I did find disappointing is that you do not have the ability to switch weapon types anymore, much like in P3P. I kind of get why, but it is still disappointing. A new addition is that they added non-insta-kill light and dark attacks, which I am so glad they did; it makes those elements so much more useful. Theurgy is another new addition to combat, which are basically overpowered super moves that are all super cool and flashy. I do think that they are perhaps a little too overpowered, as it adds to a problem that might not be a problem depending on the person; the game is too easy. P3R might be the easiest Persona game; you can do Tartarus runs in one night with no problem from the get-go. The Persona team needs someone in the room to say, “No, that will make the game too easy.” Not even the final boss felt like a threat; I would even go so far as to say the fight just before may have been harder, honestly.
Persona 3 Reload is still a very good game, but it does have some problems that could have been fixed if they had cooked the game for a bit longer. However, a lot of these problems are not really things that ruin the game. Some of these problems only exist if you have the context of playing the original Persona 3. I have seen people treat this as P5 with a P3 coat of paint, and that feels incredibly disingenuous unless you are taking an absolute surface-level observation. Sure, it has modern sensibilities, but I don’t equate that with being Persona 5. I equate that with being an Atlus RPG released in 2023. Another thing that is more of a criticism outside of P3R is that this game should not have been $70 USD; that’s too high for what this is.
I don’t think this invalidates playing Persona 3: FES, but I don’t think you are losing “something” if you choose to play Reload over it. If you ask me which one I prefer, I would say Persona 3 Reload, despite everything negative I said. It’s not perfect, but it is still damn good.
The biggest slight I have against Persona 3 Reload is the anime cutscenes; they are such a massive downgrade from the original Persona 3. Sure, they are “higher quality,” but they are directed so boringly in comparison, sometimes to a shocking degree. When I saw the very first anime cutscene, it was the first time I became worried about this remake. It’s not even them just not comparing to the original; completely new ones are kind of bad. The one for getting your new SEES combat gear is so weird, awkward, and goes on for so long. Why is it like that? Around halfway through the game, I became retroactively glad whenever they replaced what was an anime cutscene in the original with an in-engine cutscene in the remake, like they do with the Hero’s Persona awakening scene. Every single one is better directed to an almost ridiculous degree compared to the anime ones. The anime opening is good, though; it feels like it was done by completely different people. There are also times where there were once anime cutscenes; they just did a basic in-game scene; an early example is the Dark Hour scene on 4/8. It only happens twice in the entire game, if I remember right, but it is still disappointing when it happens. The takeaway I have from all of this is that I feel Atlus is at the point where they don’t really need anime cutscenes as much anymore; models and environments are detailed enough to make them feel a little unnecessary at times.
Environments can sometimes be a mixed bag in P3R as well. This is the first time in my life I’ve played a game where lowering the brightness made the game look better. Places like the Iwatodai Strip Mall, Iwatodai Station, and the shrine are perfectly recreated and look great to me. I know people think the dorm looks weird, but once I lowered the brightness, I didn’t really find it to be. Maybe I just got used to it after hours upon hours of playtime. However, there is one play that I do think looks really bad: Yakushima. The Yakushima environments are so bad-looking compared to everything else in the game, to the point that they are distracting.
There are multiple points where it will cut to black, so they don’t have to animate a character doing something. A good example of this is when on two occasions, Yukari stomps on someone’s foot. In the original P3, you see this, but in P3R they cut to black and have a text box. There are a lot of little things like this that you start to notice the more you play. But to contrast this, there is a lot of detail given to other things, like how characters will flip a page when reading a book or magazine, or how characters eating will have the food disappear into their mouths. There are a lot of strange contrasts in this Remake.
The character models for all the important characters that have portraits are extremely high quality; they look great. They feel like a massive step up from Persona 5. However, all the generic NPC models can look really weird sometimes; you can tell they are ones from P5 and edited, which is fine on its own, but sometimes it can really be a hard contrast with other models. Also related, having almost all the people in Club Escapade be frozen models in the middle of dancing was not a good decision; it just ends up looking cheap.
The new English voice cast does an equal or greater job than the previous cast. Junpei and Fuuka's new VAs are ones I think deserve particular praise for their work. Zeno Robinson captures the original Junpei perfectly while excelling in the performance, and Suzie Yeung just completely knocks it out of the park as Fuuka. Aigis' new VA, Dawn Bennett, is another one that deserves praise, mainly because I love Aigis and she does a perfect job. It’s a cute touch to have a lot of the former English cast return as older characters; it creates an almost passing-of-the torch feeling. Social Links being fully voiced adds so much; I hope that becomes the standard for Persona going forward. Giving your Social Link voice acting keeps your attention in even the possibly less interesting parts. All of the Social Link VAs are great too. (Sun is still the best Social Link btw.)
One of the new additions are Link Episodes, which give you a way to interact with your male party members in a pseudo-Social Link. These are all great. Everything they add feels right at home in Persona 3 and is just as worth doing as any Social Link. You also get more ways of hanging out with all of SEES through cooking, gardening, reading, and watching TV together. Much like the Link Episodes, they are great and have the added bonus of giving you items, social stats, and even new passive abilities for your party.
Strega are the biggest winner in the remake. I found them to be pretty underdeveloped in the original P3, but they are given enough in P3R to push them way up the Persona Villains chart. It really highlights the strength of P3R; it isn't really adding a new story element to an already existing story like P4G and P5R do by adding new characters; P3R is more focused on expanding on what is already there.
A thing I was worried about P3R messing up was the music, and much like how I feel about the new English cast, the music does an equal or greater job than the original. Remixes like Changing Seasons are amazing, and new songs like Color Your Night are an absolute vibe.
Gameplay is pretty much what you expect from a modern Persona. The biggest difference from the original P3 is that you can control your party fully, much like you can in P3P. I understand why this change bothers people, but I honestly prefer full party control in RPGs, mainly just because I like doing as much as I can in combat in a turn-based RPG. Reload still keeps the slash, strike, and pierce attack types, but something I did find disappointing is that you do not have the ability to switch weapon types anymore, much like in P3P. I kind of get why, but it is still disappointing. A new addition is that they added non-insta-kill light and dark attacks, which I am so glad they did; it makes those elements so much more useful. Theurgy is another new addition to combat, which are basically overpowered super moves that are all super cool and flashy. I do think that they are perhaps a little too overpowered, as it adds to a problem that might not be a problem depending on the person; the game is too easy. P3R might be the easiest Persona game; you can do Tartarus runs in one night with no problem from the get-go. The Persona team needs someone in the room to say, “No, that will make the game too easy.” Not even the final boss felt like a threat; I would even go so far as to say the fight just before may have been harder, honestly.
Persona 3 Reload is still a very good game, but it does have some problems that could have been fixed if they had cooked the game for a bit longer. However, a lot of these problems are not really things that ruin the game. Some of these problems only exist if you have the context of playing the original Persona 3. I have seen people treat this as P5 with a P3 coat of paint, and that feels incredibly disingenuous unless you are taking an absolute surface-level observation. Sure, it has modern sensibilities, but I don’t equate that with being Persona 5. I equate that with being an Atlus RPG released in 2023. Another thing that is more of a criticism outside of P3R is that this game should not have been $70 USD; that’s too high for what this is.
I don’t think this invalidates playing Persona 3: FES, but I don’t think you are losing “something” if you choose to play Reload over it. If you ask me which one I prefer, I would say Persona 3 Reload, despite everything negative I said. It’s not perfect, but it is still damn good.
I don't really have a lot say other than it's short, has great art, great characters, and is very enjoyable.
2013
As of writing this, I have completed the Saber route, Gilgamesh route, and CCC route.
After playing this, I see why it is called a companion game. While telling its own story, it gives more time to the already-established characters while also adding new ones. Giving you plenty of opportunities for characters to get more characterization that wouldn’t really make much sense in Fate/EXTRA. CCC also gets an overarching villain with BB, which I would count as a strength over the original Fate/EXTRA. Also, it is fun to watch her do her usual thing of being an evil imp. Bringing up BB, I should also mention how, boy, this is way more horny than EXTRA. Not just horny with designs, but plot horny; it’s up to you if you have a problem with all the stuff that comes with that; it didn’t bother me.
There are some slight problems caused by this being a sort of sequel, but not really a sequel. An important aspect of a lot of Fate works for me is the developing relationship between Master and Servant, and you lose that in this in a not satisfying way. They try to reset your relationship by giving you memory loss, but it’s nowhere close to capturing the original Fate/EXTRA. Honestly, it felt like a pointless plot point. I assume they did this so you could go into Fate/EXTRA no problem if, for some reason, you played CCC first. It probably would have been better to have CCC be a more direct continuation of your relationship with your Servant from EXTRA.
That is why picking Gilgamesh is so great because you get that developing relationship part back. It’s really interesting to have this feeling of walking on eggshells around your own Servant. He is such an ass in a way that is really entertaining and, honestly, kind of endearing by the end for me. Also, picking him straight up makes CCC’s story better. If you are reading this without playing CCC, I strongly recommend picking Gilgamesh.
I’m still not crazy about the rock-paper-scissors combat, but it is still a definite improvement from the original. Things in general look better presented with menus and animations. All the music is good, but I found the battle OST to be a step down from EXTRA. I miss the jazz.
Ultimately, I like the original Fate/EXTRA more than CCC, but there are aspects of CCC that are improvements, and it is definitely worth playing if you are a fan of Fate/EXTRA.
This game introduces the braindead lizard idol. How can it be bad?
After playing this, I see why it is called a companion game. While telling its own story, it gives more time to the already-established characters while also adding new ones. Giving you plenty of opportunities for characters to get more characterization that wouldn’t really make much sense in Fate/EXTRA. CCC also gets an overarching villain with BB, which I would count as a strength over the original Fate/EXTRA. Also, it is fun to watch her do her usual thing of being an evil imp. Bringing up BB, I should also mention how, boy, this is way more horny than EXTRA. Not just horny with designs, but plot horny; it’s up to you if you have a problem with all the stuff that comes with that; it didn’t bother me.
There are some slight problems caused by this being a sort of sequel, but not really a sequel. An important aspect of a lot of Fate works for me is the developing relationship between Master and Servant, and you lose that in this in a not satisfying way. They try to reset your relationship by giving you memory loss, but it’s nowhere close to capturing the original Fate/EXTRA. Honestly, it felt like a pointless plot point. I assume they did this so you could go into Fate/EXTRA no problem if, for some reason, you played CCC first. It probably would have been better to have CCC be a more direct continuation of your relationship with your Servant from EXTRA.
That is why picking Gilgamesh is so great because you get that developing relationship part back. It’s really interesting to have this feeling of walking on eggshells around your own Servant. He is such an ass in a way that is really entertaining and, honestly, kind of endearing by the end for me. Also, picking him straight up makes CCC’s story better. If you are reading this without playing CCC, I strongly recommend picking Gilgamesh.
I’m still not crazy about the rock-paper-scissors combat, but it is still a definite improvement from the original. Things in general look better presented with menus and animations. All the music is good, but I found the battle OST to be a step down from EXTRA. I miss the jazz.
Ultimately, I like the original Fate/EXTRA more than CCC, but there are aspects of CCC that are improvements, and it is definitely worth playing if you are a fan of Fate/EXTRA.
This game introduces the braindead lizard idol. How can it be bad?
It can be pretty, but it's too budget for what it wants to be.
2023
I was enjoying it but then it introduced dailies and the season pass, breaking the spell it had over me. The more involved and high budget your game is, the more intolerable gacha/F2P mechanics become.
2023
This game is something