Saw a lot of praise for this game, so when I found it was on a pretty steep discount I decided to pick it up. The campaign was really solid, if a bit short. Interesting locations to visit, with a very satisfying gunplay that has a very fun movement system. Titans are big chunky bastards that occasionally move fast, but the combat is just not as fun as on foot in my opinion. The duels against strong titans are the highlight, they can get intense. Haven't touched the multiplayer, but maybe one day.

The first SMT I complete without counting Persona which is pretty nice, it got a bit annoying at times, but overall I had a pretty enjoyable time. I only had trouble in a very small amount of boss fights, and it was nothing that more tries didn't solve. Music was great, loved the boss themes and overworld tracks. Speaking of, the overworld map kinda blows, its annoying to navigate. As for the story, I found myself a bit mixed. I did the nothingness and the chaos endings, and both were just anticlimatic and disappointing. I've heard the neutral ending is the best and canon one, so I'll probably do a replay eventually to check it out.

Perfectly acceptable sandbox I played a decent amount on my old 360, and had to replay on pc. What surprised me is how little it took for a sandbox, just about 25 hours to do all the main story and enough optional stuff that according to the game I had a completion rate of 77%. Story had a terrible pacing and I really wasn't able to give a shit about any of the characters. Several enemies are very annoying to fight but overall the combat was fun enough, and the game made me laugh a couple of times. Nice licensed soundtrack, I just wish it wasn't almost completely relegated to the car radios, as several main missions play out in a very weird silence. At first I thought it might be a bug since the pc version is apparently notoriously buggy, but no, that's just how the game is. Speaking of bugs, I had a pretty decent experience, only having to reload a save like 3 times in the whole game cause an npc was stuck in the ground, and only had a single crash.

Bought this game today for quite cheap in a bundle, though I finished it years ago in my 3ds. Its been long enough that I didn't feel bad about replaying. A short and sweet experience, took me about 4 hours to finish. Its a cool twist for a metroidvania, instead of a pre crafted level, you're given a pile of dirt and told to dig. So you do, making tunnels to go down and reach your objectives, but having to keep in mind to make them somewhat easily traversable, as you're going to be coming back and forth. Still, it really ends up not mattering that much because by the end of the game you have a lot of mobility and also teleporters, which are fairly cheap to buy, and can stick them anywhere to go to the town and back. Combat is barely a thing, with a very limited amount of enemies barely capable of moving from side to side, they rarely pose a threat if you're careful with your tunnels. I don't remember absolutely anything from the soundtrack, but it probably was generic spaghetti western songs, you most definitely know the one, and the visuals are not bad, it has a colorful artstyle, with my only complaint in that area being that the bloom looked weirdly terrible for me, so I had to turn it off. I think it was a bug. This game is not bad, but honestly very unremarkable. I've heard the sequel gets better, I should check that out at some point.

I finished this a while ago but forgot to add here. Good game, Rapture is a great setting and exploring was fun, the shooting mechanics were satisfying , but I feel like the story is overrated. The two main villains are just greedy assholes with very memorable quotes, they almost feel like cartoons. And the whole would you kindly twist is interesting, but it falls a bit flat. Graphically its great, the demo of this game was the first time a game's graphics really blew my mind many years back when I got my xb360.

Finished it a while ago, forgot to add it here. Whoops. In my opinion, this is probably the worst Yakuza game yet of the ones I've played it. I went in expecting it to not be as good as the more modern remakes of the previous games, but how good those were definitely made me biased. Story continues to be okay, I quite liked the new characters, and Okinawa is a very comfy place. The gameplay is what falls flat though, enemies block a lot, way too much. All fights get prolonged for a lot more than they should because enemies just block most of your attacks, and Kiryu gets knocked down by attacks a lot more than compared to Kiwami 2 for example. The combat was such a drag for me that I ignored a lot of the side stuff. I did a fair share of side stories, but completely ignored things like weapon crafting, or the hostess minigame. Engaging as they possibly were, I wasn't gonna sit through more fights.

Played for the second time, but actually finished it this time around, before I just dropped it right at the second to last mission for some fucking reason. This is a very interesting game, that should I not know it is a triple A 2012 title with a big expansion that fixed a lot of issues and added a fair bit of content in 2013, I'd say it feels like an Early Access release. Overambition on a not so big budget, perhaps. The pawn system is very unique, even if the pawns are retards and at times feel more like another obstacle instead of allies. Combat is fun, there's a decent amount of variety, though I would like more slots to put active skills instead of just 3, but maybe that would be too easy. The world is really boring and small, its all just european grasslands and ruined castles and caves. Not a lot of variety there, and the story is about the same. Characters are bland and not memorable, its full of cliches, but I liked the conclusion. This series could really, really benefit from a second entry. The combat system and the pawns are already very good, a bigger and more varied world with more stuff in it would be enough for me. As for now, this is worth checking out,

Yakuza is really fun, and for me Kiwami 2 is probably the best out of the three I've played just because of how good the combat feels. Its fluid, responsive and the delightful ragdoll physics courtesy of the Dragon engine made me laugh every time a thug went flying when kicked. Story was interesting, Ryuji was a memorable antagonist, but I feel like it suffers from too many plot twists. There's a point where you should just leave it like that, and Kiwami 2 has trouble finding said point. Like always, one of the main draws of the yakuza games is the secondary stuff. Substories were cool, though maybe too many of them boiled down to "talk to this guy, and beat these thugs", but the main minigames, namely Majima Construction and the hostess club were kind of a drag. The hostess club less so, but Majima Construction got really annoying for me. Played on hard like I always try to do with Yakuza, and found it really easy. The game expands your inventary a lot more compared to previous games, I never felt like I was low on healing supplies, and Kiryu feels so good to control most fights ended fairly fast.

A lovely little adventure. Took me less than 10 hours to finish, and I quite liked it, visually its simple but not ugly, and the little island is a very pretty and soothing place. The gameplay consists of running around taking pictures of animals, fixing shit, and picking up thrash, and that's fine, but it got a little tedious. Music compliments the game pretty well, but it's not a big presence most of the time, the main thing you'll be hearing is animal noises, and in this regard the game is actually pretty outstanding. Its easy to tell what animal is making the noise, and from where its coming. Overall, this is a fine experience, but I'd only recommend it on sale, or if you have apple arcade, as this game also launched in there.

A wholly enjoyable experience with a not insignificant length, and at the same time it doesn't feel padded. 33-ish hours of a very good sci-fi story that made my head spin with the sheer amount of twists and ideas it juggles, and viewed through the eyes of 13 different protagonists, all of them doing their own thing until their stories start intertwining in very interesting ways. Though I have to admit, the story got a bit difficult to follow sometimes, but that's just probably because I'm a dumbass, and thankfully for fellow dumbasses, the game lets you rewatch the story scenes in any order, and there's a glossary with recaps and explanations in case you forget something. Visually, its a delight. The art is just beautiful, with very desktop background worthy shots. Music is a bit forgettable, I can't see myself humming any track, but it complimented the game pretty well. As for the gameplay, its interesting. It's only mildly difficult even on Intense, the highest difficulty, and that was only before I upgraded all of the mechas and characters. After that it was mostly a walk in the park. I didn't get a game over once, but that didn't make the combat not fun. Its got a satisfying arcadey feel, and using a missile rain to obliterate everything in its very wide radius never got old. Each of the 4 generations of sentinels has one or two attacks so useful I always had one character just spamming that every fight, there was no reason not to.

More Yakuza rarely fails. Although this definitely felt like a step down from Zero, I still enjoyed it a lot. After over a 100 hours of Yakuza with Zero and Kiwami combined, I've come to realize I might not be the biggest fan of the combat. Its a bit jank, and nothing seems to be nearly as effective as spamming your most effective move, cause that's what enemies do as well. In this game, get Tiger Drop as soon as you can, its ridiculously busted. Its not the easiest move to land, but you can always do it without heat bar and it can oneshot everything but bosses. Story was weird. Not bad, but I felt like I was watching a summary instead of the full story. The Majima everywhere mechanic is great, and it very rarely gets tedious, unlike the random thugs that I fucking swear appear even more frequently here than in Zero.

Emulated. Its pretty interesting how wildly different this is from Persona 1, which I finished not too long ago, but still feels distinctly like a game of the same series. The now staple school life aspects of the Persona series were introduced here, and the combat has changed a bit. Instead of every party member having 3 personas, now everyone but you has 1, you can have up to 12. Its an interesting change I'm not sure I like. You don't have as much control over your party member now. In fact, in the original release and the improved FES you can't even control your party in battle. Thankfully the devs realized that was dumb and you can control them here. Persona 3 in general has a trend of giving you less control over things you previously could, all of which were bad ideas that were changed in later sequels. You can't even choose what skills your party member they keep or change when they level up now, they automatically do it themselves, which is a change I definitely don't like. You can't manually choose what skills the personas you fuse have either, you have to pray and hope the RNG gives you the ones you want.

Little niggles aside, I did like this game, and found the story pretty engaging, the characters were likable enough and the music was great, as is tradition of the Persona series.