I really love the fact I can just boot this up and hang out in some of the places I used to go all the time when I lived in Tokyo. I only played this after moving out of there, but the overlap of places depicted here and places I would go to do stuff is huge, which is a real blessing when I want to reminisce. I used to live really close to Inokashira Koen and I would go there all the time to take pictures, my workplace was in Shibuya and would stroll around after work until dinnertime, there was this brazilian ramen joint I loved in Sancha, along with tons of record shops... When I saw Kichijoji for the first time in this game I just spent 1h just hanging out.

Anyway, just immaculate presentation. Although is not the best Persona game, it's still the most replayable one by a long mile because of that - it's like like a luxurious hotel package where everything is taken care for you and you just have to sit back and enjoy it without any care in the world. The menus, the UI snappiness, the music, everything comes together and makes this one of the best hangout games ever.

Played it on the hardest difficulty setting this time around, which is still fairly easy compared to other SMT titles, particularly the ones for the DS. Also played in japanese, which is something I should really start doing every time I replay japanese titles, it's great practice

I feel like this game should tick all the boxes for me - fast paced precision platformer where you can get creative with combat and frame perfect execution sounds like heaven to me.

Unfortunately, more often than not the satisfaction I expected was frustration instead. I really like the speed and the physics here (except for the grappling hook which is way too slow when compared to the other things), but the level design didn't really take advantage of it and I never really understood if I was going through it correctly. Although there are tons of secrets, I rarely bothered to go after them, never felt compelled to explore.

Double jump is essential and is just taking up a slot, although I understand the appeal of trying to beat the game without it. Damage on contact makes sense in this type of game, but I still don't like it here, especially in such a fast paced game. It makes enemies way more boring - without it, they could have a more varied move set.

Still, when everything clicks and you are chaining kills on top combos and throwing bad guys at each other the game is one of the best in its genre, I just wish that that happened more often. Maybe I just need to git good™, but the game never really bothered to teach me how and it's not that fun to figure it out on your own.