the subpar of both worlds
"just play the game for yourself so you don't get spoiled" type reviews are probably the least fun to read, but it's so hard to not just make that my review of this game. this was a very pleasant surprise, even going into it with relatively high expectations by virtue of a friend's glowing review of it. this is surprisingly gory in the "gives you enough details so your imagination fills in the blanks" kind of way that honestly sucker punched me. the art style here is remarkable too; it does so much of the heavy lifting for making so many moments work. there's an intentional uncanniness to a lot of the facial expressions here that requires a deft touch. i think maybe the strongest thing about the game is that it consistently zigs when you think it's going to zag while still having very logical and solvable mysteries within its narrative structure.
i've never heard of xeen as a developer before this game, and looking through their catalogue, this game sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the mario sports titles and whatever the hell rhythm thief is. paranormasight is so effortlessly confident that it feels like it's a game that xeen's been waiting to make for years now. it's safe to say that the wait was most certainly worth it. this stands out as another visual novel gem with an art style that should be studied for future inspiration. think of a hotel dusk meets 999 while simultaneously surpassing both. if you like either of those games, you really owe it to yourself to look into this.
again, it bears repeating: this is a great game. please play it if you have even any mild interest in horror or visual novels. it is worth your time. it's put xeen on the map as a developer to keep an eye on, and i do look forward to what their next project may be.
i've never heard of xeen as a developer before this game, and looking through their catalogue, this game sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the mario sports titles and whatever the hell rhythm thief is. paranormasight is so effortlessly confident that it feels like it's a game that xeen's been waiting to make for years now. it's safe to say that the wait was most certainly worth it. this stands out as another visual novel gem with an art style that should be studied for future inspiration. think of a hotel dusk meets 999 while simultaneously surpassing both. if you like either of those games, you really owe it to yourself to look into this.
again, it bears repeating: this is a great game. please play it if you have even any mild interest in horror or visual novels. it is worth your time. it's put xeen on the map as a developer to keep an eye on, and i do look forward to what their next project may be.
2023
you look at the store page and trailer for this game and go "huh this looks like it was made by a mega man zero fan" and then you play it and, surprise, surprise, it plays identically to a mega man zero game. if you liked mega man zero, you will like this game. it doesn't do anything exceptional nor does it really elevate MMZ's gameplay or feedback loop at all. but, it's fun and it's what you expect it to be. it's like going to the movie theatre to see some popcorn action flick. you aren't expecting anything contemplative or genre-defying, just something moderately entertaining for the price of admission. this game very much succeeds in that way.
but what is with the name. why is the dude called gravity circuit. he never uses gravity. what the hell.
but what is with the name. why is the dude called gravity circuit. he never uses gravity. what the hell.
This review contains spoilers
metal gear solid 2 is a game that has a shroud surrounding it. either you know it goes completely off the rails by the end, or you don't. odds are that if you're reading this, you fall into the latter. i want to state upfront that i think my already great enjoyment of this game would've skyrocketed even higher had i managed to play this game unspoiled. i didn't actively seek out anything regarding the plot or characters, but this game's legacy is extremely difficult to avoid. cultural osmosis told me two things: the game breaks the fourth wall a lot near the end, and it is subversive as all shit. that's not a lot to go on, yet it is surprisingly large thematic spoilers when you've been attuned to look for the unusual. i envy people who played this game unaware of what would eventually transpire, because i'm sure it created a feeling that no other game has been able to replicate for them.
even with the mentality of "i know what to expect", i still was able to greatly appreciate what this game was doing, both on a literal and subtextual level. on the literal level, MGS2 is a fantastic sequel to 1 that elevates the gameplay in so many distinct ways, whether it be in control, the variety of different options you now have (some of which you have to discover for yourself), or even something as simple as movement. raiden controls smooth as butter, and getting acquainted with the new control scheme doesn't take too long, meaning you'll be exploring every nook and cranny of your environments with ease. the enemy AI has been complexly structured as well, meaning that some enemies will be sentry guards that report to HQ every so often, some will be much more aggressive when interrogated, etc. etc. MGS1 already had an interesting layered detection system, so adding on the complexities of the AI to that makes MGS2 feel like a stealth game that observes your every move and adjusts accordingly. it's great.
that said, i think my largest complaint with the game is how little of the stealth gameplay you actually get before the game veers off in another direction. once you've found ames, you basically have no more stealth left in the entire game besides the one room after the torture sequence that has nothing of value in it and you can do in like, less than a minute. this is supplemented by the gigantic quantity of VR missions that most versions of the game now come with, sure, but part of me wonders if we couldn't have gotten maybe a little bit more time in the game where we're still doing standard stealth. the systems lend themselves naturally to more exposure, and there's parts of the map that never go explored, so it makes you want more. whether that's by design or a limitation of the dev time is hard to say, because the game otherwise feels designed in exactly the way it's meant to be.
i find my largest problems with this game come down to some questionable game design at moments. this game just did not hold up for me on extreme. you can accuse me of poisoning my own well on this one, but parts that i didn't think were that bad on normal mode became nightmareishly tedious on extreme mode. i'm not necessarily saying "playing this game on extreme made me like it less", it just opened my eyes to how poorly considered some parts of the game are. it's a double-edged sword because i truly enjoy when a game manages to challenge me in a way that forces me to reach a skill threshold that i was unconfident in reaching; such a moment was learning how to handle the 20 RAY fight without dying or malding. other sections like olga or solidus are just brick walls of tedium to me. and, yes, we do have to mention the sniper bridge section. holy hell. definitely not the most frustrating thing in the game, but the sniper rifle's controls are so exceptionally bad that it dizzies me. this game deserves a lifetime achievement award for worst sniper rifle controls in a game. there's sway, and then there's just randomly swinging around like an infant has control of my analog stick every 1.4 seconds.
still, i find it rarer with each passing day that i can find a piece of art this old and say the phrases "i admire this" and "i enjoy this" at the same time. 2 decades removed and this game still feels culturally relevant. the fact that it manages to also be a game i can sing the praises of and enjoy at my own leisure makes it a special treasure. again, this is a game with a shitload of baggage associated with it, so much that it makes it nigh impossible to even broach an even-handed review of the game. for all my gripes with its shortcomings and all the individual moments i wanted to do unspeakable things to kojima (doing all 510 of those VR missions took me 45 hours. 45.), i think very few could say they made a piece of art this evergreen, this timeless, this refined. the PS2 was a very special system to get so many hallmark games on it, and i am going to echo the thousands of voices who called this a must-play. this is a game that means a lot of things to a lot of people, and regardless of your enjoyment with it, you will walk away from it with meaning.
even with the mentality of "i know what to expect", i still was able to greatly appreciate what this game was doing, both on a literal and subtextual level. on the literal level, MGS2 is a fantastic sequel to 1 that elevates the gameplay in so many distinct ways, whether it be in control, the variety of different options you now have (some of which you have to discover for yourself), or even something as simple as movement. raiden controls smooth as butter, and getting acquainted with the new control scheme doesn't take too long, meaning you'll be exploring every nook and cranny of your environments with ease. the enemy AI has been complexly structured as well, meaning that some enemies will be sentry guards that report to HQ every so often, some will be much more aggressive when interrogated, etc. etc. MGS1 already had an interesting layered detection system, so adding on the complexities of the AI to that makes MGS2 feel like a stealth game that observes your every move and adjusts accordingly. it's great.
that said, i think my largest complaint with the game is how little of the stealth gameplay you actually get before the game veers off in another direction. once you've found ames, you basically have no more stealth left in the entire game besides the one room after the torture sequence that has nothing of value in it and you can do in like, less than a minute. this is supplemented by the gigantic quantity of VR missions that most versions of the game now come with, sure, but part of me wonders if we couldn't have gotten maybe a little bit more time in the game where we're still doing standard stealth. the systems lend themselves naturally to more exposure, and there's parts of the map that never go explored, so it makes you want more. whether that's by design or a limitation of the dev time is hard to say, because the game otherwise feels designed in exactly the way it's meant to be.
i find my largest problems with this game come down to some questionable game design at moments. this game just did not hold up for me on extreme. you can accuse me of poisoning my own well on this one, but parts that i didn't think were that bad on normal mode became nightmareishly tedious on extreme mode. i'm not necessarily saying "playing this game on extreme made me like it less", it just opened my eyes to how poorly considered some parts of the game are. it's a double-edged sword because i truly enjoy when a game manages to challenge me in a way that forces me to reach a skill threshold that i was unconfident in reaching; such a moment was learning how to handle the 20 RAY fight without dying or malding. other sections like olga or solidus are just brick walls of tedium to me. and, yes, we do have to mention the sniper bridge section. holy hell. definitely not the most frustrating thing in the game, but the sniper rifle's controls are so exceptionally bad that it dizzies me. this game deserves a lifetime achievement award for worst sniper rifle controls in a game. there's sway, and then there's just randomly swinging around like an infant has control of my analog stick every 1.4 seconds.
still, i find it rarer with each passing day that i can find a piece of art this old and say the phrases "i admire this" and "i enjoy this" at the same time. 2 decades removed and this game still feels culturally relevant. the fact that it manages to also be a game i can sing the praises of and enjoy at my own leisure makes it a special treasure. again, this is a game with a shitload of baggage associated with it, so much that it makes it nigh impossible to even broach an even-handed review of the game. for all my gripes with its shortcomings and all the individual moments i wanted to do unspeakable things to kojima (doing all 510 of those VR missions took me 45 hours. 45.), i think very few could say they made a piece of art this evergreen, this timeless, this refined. the PS2 was a very special system to get so many hallmark games on it, and i am going to echo the thousands of voices who called this a must-play. this is a game that means a lot of things to a lot of people, and regardless of your enjoyment with it, you will walk away from it with meaning.
the traversal builds upon what the first game established and still feels good, the game has really goofy but fun setpieces, and the story is well told, sure, whatever. it's just hard to feel passionate about this game when on a gameplay level, it still feels very safe. stealth is still brainless and i hope everyone who called combat better in this game enjoyed the endorsement check they got from sony. unfortunately, much like borderlands 2, this is a game i really wish i hated but begrudgingly admit is competent to outright good in multiple ways.
at the end of the day, it's been like 15 years and we're still reinventing arkham asylum. i honestly expect more from a game with this much money and effort put into it.
at the end of the day, it's been like 15 years and we're still reinventing arkham asylum. i honestly expect more from a game with this much money and effort put into it.
it was a pleasant surprise to replay this game and actually really enjoy my time with it. having played this on PS2 and in the PS3 collection, both my playthroughs were marred with boredom and tedium. and while the tedium was still present at times, something about this game as a deckbuilder really clicked for me. making a deck around specific strategies and sleights is fun to me now in a way that i couldn't appreciate as a teenager and younger adult. it got to a point where i was running two different decks (one for mobs, one for bosses) that utilized entirely different strategies. and managing both felt fun and engaging to me in a way that elevated my experience with the game.
the problems are, of course, still there. i can verbalize in better detail what this game desperately needs: QOL and convenience features. as fun as dice-rolling in moogle shops can be, the game deeeeesperately needs a way to get specific cards. maybe have a card recycler where you toss away three junk cards to get a slightly better one (i.e. chip traders in mmbn)? or add a system where you can specifically say "hey i want this card at this value" and the game will let you buy it with moogle points (with an obvious upcharge to keep the system balanced). or shit, i dunno, add a system where you can change the value of an existing card for a price. just. . . this game needs something to streamline the creation process a bit better. the deckbuilding and editing process is one of the strongest points of the game, but actually getting to that point is tedious. you're holding me back from really digging into your gameplay loop, recom, and that is such a shame.
and map cards are just. . . there's a lot of potential there, but, as basically anyone who's played the game will tell you, there will eventually be a point in your playthrough where you need to grind for a specific map card (or multiple), and it will be very tedious agony because the game will sit you in time-out until you do it. i don't mind grinding at all in this game, but i hate when any video game forces me to grind. it's such a paradigm shift from "i'm playing this game and progressing my build" to "oh christ this game's making me do homework". i think this game could've benefited from reworking either how map cards work or increase the limit on them. 99 map cards is just too low of a cap considering you'll want several for specific situations, and the cap feels arbitrary in that fake difficulty kind of way.
ultimately, the biggest shame about this game is that we're never getting a sequel. "what the fuck? yes we did, the series is still ongoing" okay sure, kingdom hearts II was a sequel in the story, but i'm talking about the gameplay formula established here. the series never revisits this card-based gameplay ever again, and it's a huge disappointment considering this would likely be one of those shaky first entries to a series that could build on itself and improve in all the ways i've just mentioned. i already like what is here in spite of the god awful story (vexen and larxene need sora to accomplish their plan, which is why they actively antagonize and try to kill him) and the recycled assets. i just also see a sequel that could've taken this concept further and made it so much better. it reminds me of how pokemon games will establish new and interesting gameplay mechanics in each entry and then ditch them instead of building on them. i like variety, but i also crave refinement! give me more of something that worked in a better capacity! feed meeeeee.
ah well. i have a lot of problems with this game, but for the majority of my playtime, i really enjoyed myself here. i can't necessarily recommend it even though there's a good system trapped in a labyrinth of bad plot and tedious game mechanics, nor do i begrudge anyone who gets filtered by that. i think i've just come around from seeing this system as simply "novel" and instead have come to appreciate the complexity and depth to it. it's edged me in that "fuck, i really wanna play another deckbuilder" kind of way, for better and for worse.
the problems are, of course, still there. i can verbalize in better detail what this game desperately needs: QOL and convenience features. as fun as dice-rolling in moogle shops can be, the game deeeeesperately needs a way to get specific cards. maybe have a card recycler where you toss away three junk cards to get a slightly better one (i.e. chip traders in mmbn)? or add a system where you can specifically say "hey i want this card at this value" and the game will let you buy it with moogle points (with an obvious upcharge to keep the system balanced). or shit, i dunno, add a system where you can change the value of an existing card for a price. just. . . this game needs something to streamline the creation process a bit better. the deckbuilding and editing process is one of the strongest points of the game, but actually getting to that point is tedious. you're holding me back from really digging into your gameplay loop, recom, and that is such a shame.
and map cards are just. . . there's a lot of potential there, but, as basically anyone who's played the game will tell you, there will eventually be a point in your playthrough where you need to grind for a specific map card (or multiple), and it will be very tedious agony because the game will sit you in time-out until you do it. i don't mind grinding at all in this game, but i hate when any video game forces me to grind. it's such a paradigm shift from "i'm playing this game and progressing my build" to "oh christ this game's making me do homework". i think this game could've benefited from reworking either how map cards work or increase the limit on them. 99 map cards is just too low of a cap considering you'll want several for specific situations, and the cap feels arbitrary in that fake difficulty kind of way.
ultimately, the biggest shame about this game is that we're never getting a sequel. "what the fuck? yes we did, the series is still ongoing" okay sure, kingdom hearts II was a sequel in the story, but i'm talking about the gameplay formula established here. the series never revisits this card-based gameplay ever again, and it's a huge disappointment considering this would likely be one of those shaky first entries to a series that could build on itself and improve in all the ways i've just mentioned. i already like what is here in spite of the god awful story (vexen and larxene need sora to accomplish their plan, which is why they actively antagonize and try to kill him) and the recycled assets. i just also see a sequel that could've taken this concept further and made it so much better. it reminds me of how pokemon games will establish new and interesting gameplay mechanics in each entry and then ditch them instead of building on them. i like variety, but i also crave refinement! give me more of something that worked in a better capacity! feed meeeeee.
ah well. i have a lot of problems with this game, but for the majority of my playtime, i really enjoyed myself here. i can't necessarily recommend it even though there's a good system trapped in a labyrinth of bad plot and tedious game mechanics, nor do i begrudge anyone who gets filtered by that. i think i've just come around from seeing this system as simply "novel" and instead have come to appreciate the complexity and depth to it. it's edged me in that "fuck, i really wanna play another deckbuilder" kind of way, for better and for worse.
having been fucked off from finishing this ever since the end of episode 4 basically cemented "none of your choices have ever nor will ever matter", the most positive thing i can say about this episode is that it was semi-neat that your choice in vault hunters was limited by your choices made throughout the game. but then it loses all immediate value once you realize that your choice in party members doesn't actually matter and just slightly changes a cutscene. boooooooo.
what is there to say about this that i didn't already beat like a dead horse in prior reviews. illusion of choice, all moments with emotional sincerity get deflated with unfunny marvelshit quips, mediocre structured/choreographed action, bad graphics for a PS4 game, etc. etc. but what baffles me most is that there was a huge community that liked this game. pardon my french, but what the fuck is here worth celebrating? at least with something like the walking dead, it was new, and it had the momentum of choices seemingly mattering (until we slowly discovered they didn't). tftb doesn't even hide the artifice and it feels like it's going through the motions. i just don't get how i'm supposed to feel passionate about this. i dislike this, but not even that much. i'm apathetic to it. isn't that one of the worst possible things a story can evoke: apathy?
what is there to say about this that i didn't already beat like a dead horse in prior reviews. illusion of choice, all moments with emotional sincerity get deflated with unfunny marvelshit quips, mediocre structured/choreographed action, bad graphics for a PS4 game, etc. etc. but what baffles me most is that there was a huge community that liked this game. pardon my french, but what the fuck is here worth celebrating? at least with something like the walking dead, it was new, and it had the momentum of choices seemingly mattering (until we slowly discovered they didn't). tftb doesn't even hide the artifice and it feels like it's going through the motions. i just don't get how i'm supposed to feel passionate about this. i dislike this, but not even that much. i'm apathetic to it. isn't that one of the worst possible things a story can evoke: apathy?
2023
invasions are worse than towers of time. they double down on the FOMO and are just world of light but somehow more boring and bullshit. this game is bad and should not get sequels. i hope mortal kombat never gets another entry. bye.
the AAA game to remind me of why AAA games rarely interest me. something about this just feels so safe in that calculated way, you know what i mean? maybe it's the cynical side of me, but i see stuff like the "black lives matter" mural moment that the game literally freezes miles in profile on after having a game dedicated to "cops are always the good guy and prisoners are always evil violent thugs!" and i get a little grossed out. it just feels some sort of manipulative. the story is undercooked and phin as a character is such a high level of "i don't give a shit about this person" to me. and "the tinkerer" is such a bad name, holy shit. like i get it, you have to reference some old spider-man villain because we can't have new ideas or if we do they have to be wrapped up in nerd cred nostalgia, but the first time i heard it reminded me of https://youtu.be/wXBrQnn88co?si=Xmvkf7OfkSmUjhR6&t=3492 .
i don't feel very strongly about this game. it was fine. it was acceptable. the combat is largely the same in that it can be fun in a "doing math homework" kind of way. stealth is even more brainless than last game because you now have invisibility that has no cost or punishment for overusage. collection side quests still deliver dopamine to my stupid skinner box addled brain. but there's so much more we could be asking of our games. i felt so listless when i played this. it's hard to imagine feeling passionate either way about something that feels like it has so much nothing to say. eco terrorism is bad because it's bad to care about the environment at all? it's better to trust the established avenues of retribution than to ever try to do anything on your own? tepid take. i have predominantly negative things to say about this game because all the positive things are either things i take for granted now or were already established from the first game. this builds very little off of the previous entry, it's a very obvious DLC campaign shoved out the door to try and sell PS5s, and i will likely forget i played it within a week.
vote kucinich 2024.
i don't feel very strongly about this game. it was fine. it was acceptable. the combat is largely the same in that it can be fun in a "doing math homework" kind of way. stealth is even more brainless than last game because you now have invisibility that has no cost or punishment for overusage. collection side quests still deliver dopamine to my stupid skinner box addled brain. but there's so much more we could be asking of our games. i felt so listless when i played this. it's hard to imagine feeling passionate either way about something that feels like it has so much nothing to say. eco terrorism is bad because it's bad to care about the environment at all? it's better to trust the established avenues of retribution than to ever try to do anything on your own? tepid take. i have predominantly negative things to say about this game because all the positive things are either things i take for granted now or were already established from the first game. this builds very little off of the previous entry, it's a very obvious DLC campaign shoved out the door to try and sell PS5s, and i will likely forget i played it within a week.
vote kucinich 2024.
2023
This review contains spoilers
persona 3 portable is a celebration of persona 4, and i mean that in a highly negative way that would likely surprise you. this game does not play like persona 3. it plays like a persona 4 fanmod. persona 3 portable is a version of persona 3 that sheds all identity in favor of appealing to the (at the time) newfound popularity of persona 4. even if i liked persona 4, there would be no getting around the fact that this is the least essential way to play persona 3. i could not recommend against playing this game harder, especially if you have not played persona 3 to begin with.
as is tradition with my persona reviews, i do need to throw up a disclaimer and state the following: i love persona 3 FES, it is one of my favorite games of all time. i am reviewing this game purely as "what does it add to the base persona 3 experience and how does it modify that, for better or worse". in essence, i am not reviewing P3, i am specifically reviewing the new content in portable because it is easier to delineate the two in my brain.
so, with that said, i also have to state upfront that i came into this game wildly biased against it. for that, i blame years of hearing how portable was the "best" way to play persona 3 due to having "more content" (as we all know, more is always better) and direct control as an option. i think we can all be adults here and now admit to ourselves that maybe the playstation portable was not the most graphically advanced system nor would it ever be preferable to playing on a PS2. but how does the PSN version hold up? well, having actually physically played the PSP version, it's a marked improvement in two areas. one, there's no UMD to screech like nails on a chalkboard if you're playing on PSN. second, the load times are quite literally 3-4x quicker. outside of that? they're the same game. glad we cleared this up.
it's hard not to have an axe to grind with this game because it just butchers so much of persona 3's presentation, aesthetic, style, and feel. it may sound like i just described some relatively intangible feelings-based terms, but work with me. so much of the UI is changed to match 4's, fast travel is now given a dedicated button like in 4, you can now directly equip party members whenever instead of having to speak with them, etc. these sound like nitpicks, and it's because they are. these aren't things that inherently destroy the spirit of persona 3 to me. what does is the sad fact that portable can't host any of the FMVs (besides openings) that the game desperately needs. we're robbed of FMVs of critical moments, like shinjiro's death FMV that swirls in on a ken who becomes overwhelmed with the reality of losing all meaning in his life. i think maybe the most egregious of all of these is the moonlight bridge showdown between aigis and ryoji, which near-perfectly juggled exposition explaining the events of aigis sealing death inside the protagonist, but also showing aigis' full-fledged attempt and subsequent failure to kill ryoji. sure, you could have a text log saying this, but ryoji effortlessly halts aigis after stern warnings not to test his power in a way that doesn't translate nearly as effectively or persuasively as actually seeing it does.
it's the basic "show, don't tell" rule. you rob that moment of all its power when you have to have a text box explain what happens instead of elegantly demonstrating it. so many of these moments' subtleties are lost. even without the FMVs, the lack of cutscenes with player models hurts so hard. remember when chidori dies and the last thing she does is stroke junpei's face, then her hand slowly falls down to indicate her passing? not in portable! hell, even the part where akihiko is mourning shinjiro and starts slamming his fist on the memorial to show his frustration? it's so much more effective to see it than to read "akihiko slams his fist out of frustration." it's insulting and i hate knowing that a non-insignificant portion of players will be exposed to this version as their primary exposure to persona 3. you lose the nuance when you water down the presentation this bad, and it's truly horrid to turn P3 into nothing more than a visual novel with occasional combat.
speaking of combat, the badness doesn't stop there! is it still a hot take, nearly a decade and change later, to tell you all that the lack of controlling your party members in P3 was the point? yes, i'll be the first to admit that sometimes it could be frustrating to have yukari set to heal/support and see her never use charmdi or use diarama on someone instead of mediarama on everyone. the lack of specificity with buffing/debuffing for aigis and akihiko respectively could also be frustrating. sure, i acknowledge and agree with this. but, by and large, this system created an identity for persona 3 that was wholly unique to it and elevated the gameplay to integrate with the story. these characters are real people who have their own ideas and you can only loosely guide them rather than control them like chess pieces. yes, i am really going to rail this hard against direct control. sure, its inclusion is optional, but when the game all but begs you to use it, you essentially invalidate the original design ethos of persona 3.
"just don't use it then" okay, but the game has been persona 4-ified such that using AI suggestion is now extremely risky. remember how persona 3 showed you the turn order and then persona 4 reduced it to "you only can see who's next"? guess what portable does! i can't adequately do any planning on my turn if i don't know when mitsuru is getting her turn and thus if i need to be the one doing x y or z. more importantly, this game very sloppily copy/pastes persona 4 mechanics into persona 3 that just do not work. this is very obviously a game that was not designed with dizzy as a mechanic, so it often breaks the game wide open to be able to hit an enemy for downed damage more than once per downing. also, being able to use any item with your party members (sans fusion spells) utterly assfucks so many of the boss fights. i literally cannot recall how many fights i invalidated by just spamming something like mazio gems on bosses weak to zio. square peg, square hole, sure, but persona 3 originally had failsafes around this by making it harder to use these dominant strategies and balancing the game around the player's limitations.
the persona 4 emulation doesn't stop there though. we now also have SP management being added in probably the most lazy way possible. now SP doesn't recover automatically on the first floor of tartarus but instead you have to recover it. . . by paying a meager amount of money, just like in persona 4. and while SP management was still easily broken in half in many ways, at least you could say that 4 had the advantage of the fox's SP recovery having somewhat steep pricing in early game. here, i never once had to sweat paying for SP recovery, and the removal of becoming tired the night of exploration means you are essentially given the greenlight to ignore that gameplay mechanic entirely and just run through entire blocks in one night. by trying to make persona 3 more like persona 4, you not only lose the very specific niche persona 3 had that captivated its audience, but you also just get a very braindead JRPG that's extremely easy to bruteforce. it's just so disappointing that on every level, portable seems embarrassed of the game it's supposed to be a remake of.
i think the last of the big points worth touching on in portable is the addition of playing as a girl. i don't know a gentle way to ease into this idea so i'm just going to come out and say it: this mode feels like it's not designed for girls, but instead for boys who want to play as a girl. please forgive the clumsy wording, but work with me. when you play as the female protagonist, it feels as though the game reminds you every 3-5 minutes that, hey, you're a girl! every social link rank up unique to the female playthrough feels explicitly gendered in a way that comes off more as condescending than real to life. were there social links as a boy that came off as "just me and my guy friend"? of course. but they felt organic and true-to-life. i just really can't escape that it feels like atlus knew the majority of its audience would be men and wanted to design the female protagonist around that rather than trying to appeal to another demographic.
i don't necessarily hate the female-specific social links, but even if you get out of the voyeuristic nature of them, some of them are just. . . really shittily written. i was actually kind of on-board with rio as a character in her "i'm pushing people away by doggedly pursuing my goals and need to learn how to socialize better" problem, but then that gets sidetracked to introduce kenji, who is now a "speak when spoken to" misogynist that rio inexplicably is enamored with, which just fucked me off so hard. and saori is. . . just a weird social link on several levels. her whole arc is learning not to be a doormat, but the resolution is her doing one assertive thing and then disappearing forever. also, the stuff about her uncle potentially sexually assaulting her and then killing himself quite honestly comes out of left field entirely and is frankly fucking bizarre to drop at the end of the link.
my most contentious take about the persona series is that party member social links are the worst thing to happen to the narratives of these games. persona 3 mostly skirts around this by making the only 3 party member social links be girls your character ends up dating instead of hiding plot-critical character development behind them. hell, that's one of the best parts of persona 3; the character arcs are slow-burned and baked into the plot of persona 3 and not just hidden behind rank 8 of their social link to be addressed maybe twice then never again. portable adds a bunch of party member social links that try to do this, but they largely fail because they either never organically fit into the story (why can junpei learn that women are people too in fucking january after his arc's been completed?) or are relatively unnecessary (if you don't date akihiko, his social link is such a nothingburger).
and i don't want to be entirely negative, because i think the social links with shinjiro and ken do give a lot more insight into these characters in a meaningful way (ignore the fact that atlus was like "what if we let you romance an 11 year old ken amada", which is maybe the most nauseating thing in the series). hell, even koromaru's social link managed to surprise me in a positive way. i don't hate what's on paper here, i just think the answer wasn't "give these characters social links", but instead to do something like FES did with the bonus recording footage events (some of which was terrible, dgmw) and find a way to let the player see these moments in a truncated fashion.
more is not more. less is more. i don't need to see ken defend me from bullies who call me a hag (as 🤪 as that moment was). to beat a dead horse, it's taking the persona 4 method on a problem with a persona 3 answer. i'm trying to be my most fair and even-handed here, but i don't like that the female protagonist route is a loose attempt to add minor character details to existing characters instead of creating new compelling ones to be interested in. rio and saori fall completely flat compared to literally any of the male protagonist's social link options because they're dull, lifeless, and have poorly told stories. ken and shinjiro benefit from being characters i already liked and wanted to know more about. in many ways, i feel myself being way too demanding with portable, and, in large part, maybe this is too grand an expectation. but why even bother with making a female protagonist then? why even bother making portable if you're going to half-ass it so fucking hard?
portable is the least essential way to experience persona 3. i opened with this statement, and, hopefully, you can see why it's something i will assert to my dying breath. the visual novel presentation is subpar for a story that can and has been told in a grander scale. the gameplay is a downgrade that apes persona 4 without having the design intricacies to accommodate its already loosey-goosey mechanics. and the writing of the portable specific stuff is just lackluster. i don't think it's that unreasonable to say that persona 3 deserved a better port/remake than this. it's a special game to not only myself but to thousands of other people. portable feels downright insulting by comparison. i get that this was made to make a quick buck and profit off of the popularity of persona 4, but jesus.
basically, the game embodies this to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoO_q4uFH2o
as is tradition with my persona reviews, i do need to throw up a disclaimer and state the following: i love persona 3 FES, it is one of my favorite games of all time. i am reviewing this game purely as "what does it add to the base persona 3 experience and how does it modify that, for better or worse". in essence, i am not reviewing P3, i am specifically reviewing the new content in portable because it is easier to delineate the two in my brain.
so, with that said, i also have to state upfront that i came into this game wildly biased against it. for that, i blame years of hearing how portable was the "best" way to play persona 3 due to having "more content" (as we all know, more is always better) and direct control as an option. i think we can all be adults here and now admit to ourselves that maybe the playstation portable was not the most graphically advanced system nor would it ever be preferable to playing on a PS2. but how does the PSN version hold up? well, having actually physically played the PSP version, it's a marked improvement in two areas. one, there's no UMD to screech like nails on a chalkboard if you're playing on PSN. second, the load times are quite literally 3-4x quicker. outside of that? they're the same game. glad we cleared this up.
it's hard not to have an axe to grind with this game because it just butchers so much of persona 3's presentation, aesthetic, style, and feel. it may sound like i just described some relatively intangible feelings-based terms, but work with me. so much of the UI is changed to match 4's, fast travel is now given a dedicated button like in 4, you can now directly equip party members whenever instead of having to speak with them, etc. these sound like nitpicks, and it's because they are. these aren't things that inherently destroy the spirit of persona 3 to me. what does is the sad fact that portable can't host any of the FMVs (besides openings) that the game desperately needs. we're robbed of FMVs of critical moments, like shinjiro's death FMV that swirls in on a ken who becomes overwhelmed with the reality of losing all meaning in his life. i think maybe the most egregious of all of these is the moonlight bridge showdown between aigis and ryoji, which near-perfectly juggled exposition explaining the events of aigis sealing death inside the protagonist, but also showing aigis' full-fledged attempt and subsequent failure to kill ryoji. sure, you could have a text log saying this, but ryoji effortlessly halts aigis after stern warnings not to test his power in a way that doesn't translate nearly as effectively or persuasively as actually seeing it does.
it's the basic "show, don't tell" rule. you rob that moment of all its power when you have to have a text box explain what happens instead of elegantly demonstrating it. so many of these moments' subtleties are lost. even without the FMVs, the lack of cutscenes with player models hurts so hard. remember when chidori dies and the last thing she does is stroke junpei's face, then her hand slowly falls down to indicate her passing? not in portable! hell, even the part where akihiko is mourning shinjiro and starts slamming his fist on the memorial to show his frustration? it's so much more effective to see it than to read "akihiko slams his fist out of frustration." it's insulting and i hate knowing that a non-insignificant portion of players will be exposed to this version as their primary exposure to persona 3. you lose the nuance when you water down the presentation this bad, and it's truly horrid to turn P3 into nothing more than a visual novel with occasional combat.
speaking of combat, the badness doesn't stop there! is it still a hot take, nearly a decade and change later, to tell you all that the lack of controlling your party members in P3 was the point? yes, i'll be the first to admit that sometimes it could be frustrating to have yukari set to heal/support and see her never use charmdi or use diarama on someone instead of mediarama on everyone. the lack of specificity with buffing/debuffing for aigis and akihiko respectively could also be frustrating. sure, i acknowledge and agree with this. but, by and large, this system created an identity for persona 3 that was wholly unique to it and elevated the gameplay to integrate with the story. these characters are real people who have their own ideas and you can only loosely guide them rather than control them like chess pieces. yes, i am really going to rail this hard against direct control. sure, its inclusion is optional, but when the game all but begs you to use it, you essentially invalidate the original design ethos of persona 3.
"just don't use it then" okay, but the game has been persona 4-ified such that using AI suggestion is now extremely risky. remember how persona 3 showed you the turn order and then persona 4 reduced it to "you only can see who's next"? guess what portable does! i can't adequately do any planning on my turn if i don't know when mitsuru is getting her turn and thus if i need to be the one doing x y or z. more importantly, this game very sloppily copy/pastes persona 4 mechanics into persona 3 that just do not work. this is very obviously a game that was not designed with dizzy as a mechanic, so it often breaks the game wide open to be able to hit an enemy for downed damage more than once per downing. also, being able to use any item with your party members (sans fusion spells) utterly assfucks so many of the boss fights. i literally cannot recall how many fights i invalidated by just spamming something like mazio gems on bosses weak to zio. square peg, square hole, sure, but persona 3 originally had failsafes around this by making it harder to use these dominant strategies and balancing the game around the player's limitations.
the persona 4 emulation doesn't stop there though. we now also have SP management being added in probably the most lazy way possible. now SP doesn't recover automatically on the first floor of tartarus but instead you have to recover it. . . by paying a meager amount of money, just like in persona 4. and while SP management was still easily broken in half in many ways, at least you could say that 4 had the advantage of the fox's SP recovery having somewhat steep pricing in early game. here, i never once had to sweat paying for SP recovery, and the removal of becoming tired the night of exploration means you are essentially given the greenlight to ignore that gameplay mechanic entirely and just run through entire blocks in one night. by trying to make persona 3 more like persona 4, you not only lose the very specific niche persona 3 had that captivated its audience, but you also just get a very braindead JRPG that's extremely easy to bruteforce. it's just so disappointing that on every level, portable seems embarrassed of the game it's supposed to be a remake of.
i think the last of the big points worth touching on in portable is the addition of playing as a girl. i don't know a gentle way to ease into this idea so i'm just going to come out and say it: this mode feels like it's not designed for girls, but instead for boys who want to play as a girl. please forgive the clumsy wording, but work with me. when you play as the female protagonist, it feels as though the game reminds you every 3-5 minutes that, hey, you're a girl! every social link rank up unique to the female playthrough feels explicitly gendered in a way that comes off more as condescending than real to life. were there social links as a boy that came off as "just me and my guy friend"? of course. but they felt organic and true-to-life. i just really can't escape that it feels like atlus knew the majority of its audience would be men and wanted to design the female protagonist around that rather than trying to appeal to another demographic.
i don't necessarily hate the female-specific social links, but even if you get out of the voyeuristic nature of them, some of them are just. . . really shittily written. i was actually kind of on-board with rio as a character in her "i'm pushing people away by doggedly pursuing my goals and need to learn how to socialize better" problem, but then that gets sidetracked to introduce kenji, who is now a "speak when spoken to" misogynist that rio inexplicably is enamored with, which just fucked me off so hard. and saori is. . . just a weird social link on several levels. her whole arc is learning not to be a doormat, but the resolution is her doing one assertive thing and then disappearing forever. also, the stuff about her uncle potentially sexually assaulting her and then killing himself quite honestly comes out of left field entirely and is frankly fucking bizarre to drop at the end of the link.
my most contentious take about the persona series is that party member social links are the worst thing to happen to the narratives of these games. persona 3 mostly skirts around this by making the only 3 party member social links be girls your character ends up dating instead of hiding plot-critical character development behind them. hell, that's one of the best parts of persona 3; the character arcs are slow-burned and baked into the plot of persona 3 and not just hidden behind rank 8 of their social link to be addressed maybe twice then never again. portable adds a bunch of party member social links that try to do this, but they largely fail because they either never organically fit into the story (why can junpei learn that women are people too in fucking january after his arc's been completed?) or are relatively unnecessary (if you don't date akihiko, his social link is such a nothingburger).
and i don't want to be entirely negative, because i think the social links with shinjiro and ken do give a lot more insight into these characters in a meaningful way (ignore the fact that atlus was like "what if we let you romance an 11 year old ken amada", which is maybe the most nauseating thing in the series). hell, even koromaru's social link managed to surprise me in a positive way. i don't hate what's on paper here, i just think the answer wasn't "give these characters social links", but instead to do something like FES did with the bonus recording footage events (some of which was terrible, dgmw) and find a way to let the player see these moments in a truncated fashion.
more is not more. less is more. i don't need to see ken defend me from bullies who call me a hag (as 🤪 as that moment was). to beat a dead horse, it's taking the persona 4 method on a problem with a persona 3 answer. i'm trying to be my most fair and even-handed here, but i don't like that the female protagonist route is a loose attempt to add minor character details to existing characters instead of creating new compelling ones to be interested in. rio and saori fall completely flat compared to literally any of the male protagonist's social link options because they're dull, lifeless, and have poorly told stories. ken and shinjiro benefit from being characters i already liked and wanted to know more about. in many ways, i feel myself being way too demanding with portable, and, in large part, maybe this is too grand an expectation. but why even bother with making a female protagonist then? why even bother making portable if you're going to half-ass it so fucking hard?
portable is the least essential way to experience persona 3. i opened with this statement, and, hopefully, you can see why it's something i will assert to my dying breath. the visual novel presentation is subpar for a story that can and has been told in a grander scale. the gameplay is a downgrade that apes persona 4 without having the design intricacies to accommodate its already loosey-goosey mechanics. and the writing of the portable specific stuff is just lackluster. i don't think it's that unreasonable to say that persona 3 deserved a better port/remake than this. it's a special game to not only myself but to thousands of other people. portable feels downright insulting by comparison. i get that this was made to make a quick buck and profit off of the popularity of persona 4, but jesus.
basically, the game embodies this to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoO_q4uFH2o
kingdom hearts has a reputation that precedes itself. for as many fans and diehards of the series that you could find, i could show you an equal amount of detractors and otherwise "the series stopped being good after II" ex-fans. i've always found myself to be a mix of both camps, but admittedly more of the latter. i haven't played every KH game, but i've played enough to get a feel that the series really did have a natural conclusion with II and, outside of the teasers for sequels, didn't have anywhere to go with its characters. keep in mind that i don't even particularly like II.
if anything, i've always seen myself a prisoner of kingdom hearts in that the first game in the series is a perfectly self-contained story that has never truly needed sequels and could stand perfectly on its own. it helps that the game is a microcosm of how square was slowly inching its way towards experimentation, as we'd later see with games like FFXII. this isn't my first exposure to final mix, as i played the PS3 version around 7 years ago. but, it's been a while since i revisited this game with fresh eyes and a willingness to really critically examine it as both a game and a narrative. i've always sort of taken for granted that this is one of my favorite games of all time, and thus the critical thought sort of just turns off when i think back on my experiences with kingdom hearts. i'm pleased to report that this game does hold up, just not quite in the way i was expecting or even wanting.
i started up this game about a week ago going with a staff build on proud mode and had maybe one of the most unpleasant experiences with a kingdom hearts game i've ever had. i went staff because, by endgame, it's objectively the best stat-wise, and had always wanted to try it out. in this decision, i discovered one of the worst shortcomings of this game: this is not an action game. sure, it masquerades as one, but it does not feel satisfying to play as an action game in the way that later entries do. the FOV you get with this game's camera is truly lacking if you're playing this as a "any damage you take could've been dodged" type action game. further, guard is a practically necessary skill to make the most of this game's combat, which is a huge issue considering it has a variable arrival time for players. scan is also something borderline required to make accurate assessments about enemy health and damage management, and it also has the same fate as guard.
so in this staff playthrough, i hit a lot of brick walls. sure, offensive magic is good, but even when it's boosted, bosses will hard wall you a lot in damage mitigation. do i know now that you should be grabbing thunder early so you can trivialize trickmaster? of course. but fighting him with the staff build and having nothing but fire, blizzard, and wimpy kingdom key's stats is agony, especially if you consistently try to dodge his projectiles (remember: you do not get guard until much later in a staff playthrough). kingdom hearts' greatest failing is that it has the seeds of good action game combat, but it utterly drops the ball on making it both cathartic and achievable for most of the runtime. by endgame, you will be having a better time, but, speaking from personal experience, it's a harrowing and tedious journey to get there.
i got to the end of neverland and i decided something must be wrong with me. this isn't the game i remember. i'm not having the fun time i usually do with this game. to say that kingdom hearts was a cornerstone of my childhood as a gamer would feel like an overstatement, but it would also be a completely accurate statement. revisiting this and having such a dogshit time was giving me, unironically, a bit of an identity crisis. so, i decided to see if it was just me. i dumped that playthrough, and i started over this time as a shield build with a bigger emphasis on item usage and less on damage mitigation.
and you know what?
it fucked. i was back in.
i won't go too deeply into why shield is my preferred way of playing the game, but the shortlist is that you get guard early and defense is a much more vital stat than offense in earlygame. this was my kingdom hearts! this was the game i'd sunken so much time into as a child, teen, and adult. it just felt. . . right.
i immediately understood something i'd taken for granted. the builds matter so much more to how you play the game than i'd originally thought. the best way i can break it down is that it's ultimately like playing different genres. when you pick sword, you're playing the game like a hack-and-slash. you get your modifiers early, you close distances quicker and sooner, and you're basically smashing everything with melee until it stops moving. staff plays more like an action game, to its detriment. i don't necessarily think staff is a wholly incomplete or flawed build to go with, but it doesn't jive for me, and it illuminates problems with the gameplay i'd otherwise be blissfully ignorant of. lastly, shield plays like a neo-JRPG, like a proto-FFXII. damage isn't necessarily meant to be wholly avoidable, but wholly mitigated. is the boss doing an attack that's hard to dodge and hurts a lot? having aero will help with that. is that area of effect attack really slapping you and your party members' shit in? a mega-potion can quickly heal them. where i look for traditional answers in avoidance, this game provides them instead in remedies. that's something i never quite understood until this playthrough.
and, in some ways, it is still a failing of the game that your blind and uninformed choice in the first minute of gameplay will have such a long-lasting impact on your playthrough. but, it's also something i've come to respect, in a strange way. you get such vastly different experiences with the game depending on your build, and it does lend credence to the idea that this game was designed with multiple playstyles in mind. it's impressive, not only for early PS2, but also for such an experimental genre-blending game.
lastly, i think the narrative is something a lot of people tend to dog on when it comes to KH games, but i would and still do stand by this game having a pretty near-flawless narrative. you can take it at face-value and say "this is a story of tragedy where characters are thrown through ordeals and overcome it with the power of their bonds", or you can look at it allegorically and say something along the lines of "this is a story that broadly tackles the idea of maturing out of your home and established circle of friends, ultimately resulting in life separating you through cruel circumstance". i think KH works best when you take a mix of these approaches. sometimes, when taken literally, KH is silly. but when you look at it as something greater than the sum of its parts, as a sort of "coming of age meets the tragedy of growing up meets hero must save the world meets hero must sacrifice everything for the world", you can get something coherent and resonant out of KH that very few other narratives approach. i honestly could write so much more about why i love this game's narrative in particular, but i'd be echoing a tidal wave of voices.
as a refresher back into the series, i do have hope that maybe i'll be able to find more positive and wondrous things to see in the later games. on the one hand, i'm very much not looking forward to some of the stupid shit these games are gonna throw at me (KHII atlantica not only being a retcon but a bad rhythm game, why), but i am excited to see if maybe fresh eyes can lead to a new conclusion. i want to be able to say that this series has more hits than just this game (and 358/2 Days if you can get over the jank). this game has given me a retroactive hype for the sequels, and, as miniscule as it is, that's something i'm going to hold onto and use as fuel to get me through this series replay. i have low expectations, but that's only because i want to be impressed again.
if anything, i've always seen myself a prisoner of kingdom hearts in that the first game in the series is a perfectly self-contained story that has never truly needed sequels and could stand perfectly on its own. it helps that the game is a microcosm of how square was slowly inching its way towards experimentation, as we'd later see with games like FFXII. this isn't my first exposure to final mix, as i played the PS3 version around 7 years ago. but, it's been a while since i revisited this game with fresh eyes and a willingness to really critically examine it as both a game and a narrative. i've always sort of taken for granted that this is one of my favorite games of all time, and thus the critical thought sort of just turns off when i think back on my experiences with kingdom hearts. i'm pleased to report that this game does hold up, just not quite in the way i was expecting or even wanting.
i started up this game about a week ago going with a staff build on proud mode and had maybe one of the most unpleasant experiences with a kingdom hearts game i've ever had. i went staff because, by endgame, it's objectively the best stat-wise, and had always wanted to try it out. in this decision, i discovered one of the worst shortcomings of this game: this is not an action game. sure, it masquerades as one, but it does not feel satisfying to play as an action game in the way that later entries do. the FOV you get with this game's camera is truly lacking if you're playing this as a "any damage you take could've been dodged" type action game. further, guard is a practically necessary skill to make the most of this game's combat, which is a huge issue considering it has a variable arrival time for players. scan is also something borderline required to make accurate assessments about enemy health and damage management, and it also has the same fate as guard.
so in this staff playthrough, i hit a lot of brick walls. sure, offensive magic is good, but even when it's boosted, bosses will hard wall you a lot in damage mitigation. do i know now that you should be grabbing thunder early so you can trivialize trickmaster? of course. but fighting him with the staff build and having nothing but fire, blizzard, and wimpy kingdom key's stats is agony, especially if you consistently try to dodge his projectiles (remember: you do not get guard until much later in a staff playthrough). kingdom hearts' greatest failing is that it has the seeds of good action game combat, but it utterly drops the ball on making it both cathartic and achievable for most of the runtime. by endgame, you will be having a better time, but, speaking from personal experience, it's a harrowing and tedious journey to get there.
i got to the end of neverland and i decided something must be wrong with me. this isn't the game i remember. i'm not having the fun time i usually do with this game. to say that kingdom hearts was a cornerstone of my childhood as a gamer would feel like an overstatement, but it would also be a completely accurate statement. revisiting this and having such a dogshit time was giving me, unironically, a bit of an identity crisis. so, i decided to see if it was just me. i dumped that playthrough, and i started over this time as a shield build with a bigger emphasis on item usage and less on damage mitigation.
and you know what?
it fucked. i was back in.
i won't go too deeply into why shield is my preferred way of playing the game, but the shortlist is that you get guard early and defense is a much more vital stat than offense in earlygame. this was my kingdom hearts! this was the game i'd sunken so much time into as a child, teen, and adult. it just felt. . . right.
i immediately understood something i'd taken for granted. the builds matter so much more to how you play the game than i'd originally thought. the best way i can break it down is that it's ultimately like playing different genres. when you pick sword, you're playing the game like a hack-and-slash. you get your modifiers early, you close distances quicker and sooner, and you're basically smashing everything with melee until it stops moving. staff plays more like an action game, to its detriment. i don't necessarily think staff is a wholly incomplete or flawed build to go with, but it doesn't jive for me, and it illuminates problems with the gameplay i'd otherwise be blissfully ignorant of. lastly, shield plays like a neo-JRPG, like a proto-FFXII. damage isn't necessarily meant to be wholly avoidable, but wholly mitigated. is the boss doing an attack that's hard to dodge and hurts a lot? having aero will help with that. is that area of effect attack really slapping you and your party members' shit in? a mega-potion can quickly heal them. where i look for traditional answers in avoidance, this game provides them instead in remedies. that's something i never quite understood until this playthrough.
and, in some ways, it is still a failing of the game that your blind and uninformed choice in the first minute of gameplay will have such a long-lasting impact on your playthrough. but, it's also something i've come to respect, in a strange way. you get such vastly different experiences with the game depending on your build, and it does lend credence to the idea that this game was designed with multiple playstyles in mind. it's impressive, not only for early PS2, but also for such an experimental genre-blending game.
lastly, i think the narrative is something a lot of people tend to dog on when it comes to KH games, but i would and still do stand by this game having a pretty near-flawless narrative. you can take it at face-value and say "this is a story of tragedy where characters are thrown through ordeals and overcome it with the power of their bonds", or you can look at it allegorically and say something along the lines of "this is a story that broadly tackles the idea of maturing out of your home and established circle of friends, ultimately resulting in life separating you through cruel circumstance". i think KH works best when you take a mix of these approaches. sometimes, when taken literally, KH is silly. but when you look at it as something greater than the sum of its parts, as a sort of "coming of age meets the tragedy of growing up meets hero must save the world meets hero must sacrifice everything for the world", you can get something coherent and resonant out of KH that very few other narratives approach. i honestly could write so much more about why i love this game's narrative in particular, but i'd be echoing a tidal wave of voices.
as a refresher back into the series, i do have hope that maybe i'll be able to find more positive and wondrous things to see in the later games. on the one hand, i'm very much not looking forward to some of the stupid shit these games are gonna throw at me (KHII atlantica not only being a retcon but a bad rhythm game, why), but i am excited to see if maybe fresh eyes can lead to a new conclusion. i want to be able to say that this series has more hits than just this game (and 358/2 Days if you can get over the jank). this game has given me a retroactive hype for the sequels, and, as miniscule as it is, that's something i'm going to hold onto and use as fuel to get me through this series replay. i have low expectations, but that's only because i want to be impressed again.
2023
This review contains spoilers
square enix is the devil. what's worse, being a company of continual failures and NFT integration, or being that company that also occasionally manages to produce diamonds in an abyss of coal? they've done it again, they've given me reason to finally care about the final fantasy series again. i can't just say "final fantasy is dead and has been dead to me ever since they released XIII". no, with the release of this game, i finally have something tying me back to the series after repeated failure after repeated failure. the worst, most damning thing i can say about this game is simultaneously the highest praise it could've gotten: this game proves to me that there are still good final fantasy games that can be made.
i will admit i went into this game with the lowest of expectations possible. game of thrones meets devil may cry, probably serving mediocre attempts at both? pass. for some, that assessment's on the money and where the review can end. but, i think this game does a great job at having influences without wholly emulating. this game has enough to distinguish itself from other character action games like DMC and Bayonetta so it doesn't feel like it's stuck in their shadow. and sure, this game has copious amounts of politics interspersed with sex, death, and swearing, but those moments are earned. one of the standout moments of sheer brutality for me was when clive cut off hugo's hands. it was a simultaneous "holy shit, they really did that in a final fantasy game?" and "that's fucking sick i love it!!" moment. this game has an identity, and as much as it can lean into the euphoria of violence and spectacle, it takes just as much time to establish and develop its characters and supporting staff in the way that you would expect of a final fantasy game. this isn't a JRPG, no, but it is still a final fantasy game, and it shows.
as far as the characters go, the cast is definitely a grower that i came to appreciate more on the second playthrough than the first. the clive/jill interactions especially took some some time for me to warm up to, and while i would have preferred immensely if they removed the part with young clive being stated to view jill "as a sister", i do feel that their romance works for me in a very down to earth and less flashy way. jill especially is a character i found underwhelming at first, but upon re-inspection, discovered her to be much more compelling. her trauma and years of abuse made her sullen and withdrawn in a way that immediately reads more as boring than it does engaging in that way a lot of fictional stories tend to write these characters as. but, when you examine the totality of her character, you see the underlying persona beneath her hardened exterior, and it makes sense why we get so few opportunities to see it in the harsh world of valisthea. when we do get those moments of emotional climax for jill (i.e. when she kills her abuser, or when she reacts to clive's death in the credits), they're standouts because they're built up and earned moments for her. as for clive himself, i like him as a main character, and though his story starts out a bit muddled, taking the classic "power of friendship" trope and re-imagining it in this dismal world worked for me. there's a nice integration of gameplay and story in that clive does genuinely become more powerful by getting help from others, whether it be in obtaining their eikons or from renown (which often harbored the best rewards in the game).
far and away the largest problem with both the story and the gameplay is the pacing, though oddly in different ways for each respect. for the story, it frankly takes way too fucking long to get to the neo-hideway, which is when the game really starts to pick up the pace. at the same time, you do absolutely need that build with young clive + cid prior to his death to establish these characters and the setting. it's just far too bloated in that respect, because it's very fair for players to think the game is going to drag this much ass the entire time. that fight with benedikta needed to happen like 2 hours sooner than it does so players could be introduced to the main form of progression much sooner. XVI does a very poor job at starting as it means to go on, and this is a problem we saw with just as disastrous a consequence with XIII. telling someone that the game "really opens up" at around 20 hours in is less than enticing and hides the better part of the gameplay loop from players for far too long.
on the gameplay side of things, the downtime tends to overstay its welcome. i love the intense thrill that the story fights can deliver, but they're outweighed by how much low-stakes combat and item retrieval you have to do in between them. side quests get this the worst, which is a shame because late-game side quests have some of the best story/character content in them, but, by the point the player reaches them, they'll likely have been conditioned to skip the dialogue, go to the points on the map that they need to go to, and miss out on the meaningful story beats they add. i can safely say this because my first playthrough, i did exactly that, and when i actually sat my ass down and paid attention to the side quests in full in my second playthrough, i got a lot more out of them. are there still the occasional "grab 20 goat horns for me" or "oh no kill these bombs that are making my bath water too hot!" type quests? yes, but their presence has been overstated by critics (imo).
in spite of all this game's supposed flaws, i won't deny that this combat engine is hugely fucking fun, both to learn and to master. i'm so unbelievably glad this game didn't stick to the illusion of being a JRPG, because it soars higher than it would have otherwise. sure, jill and cid and whoever might join your party, but you don't have to micromanage their AI or health bars and you can focus solely on clive. no more of the "characters take forced damage when you don't control them" issue that VIIR established; you're only going to have to manage one character, and you are given a large amount of freedom to do so. the progression system gives you a lot of room for experimentation as do the arete stones and opportunity to respec for free, so you have no excuse to not mess around with all your abilities in some capacity. combine that with how fluidly abilities tend to synergize together (one of my favorites was how impulse would leave random mob enemies incapacitated long enough to use dancing steel and get a relatively free level 5 zantetsuken), and the game just plays smoothly like butter. having just gotten done with two full playthroughs of the game, i am already planning a replay where i go through the game using entirely different abilities to milk the variety out of this game. i spent 130 hours of the span of two playthroughs and still want to play this game more. that's something very rare, for me.
and i would be remiss to not mention how cathartic the game feels in its big moments. "to sail forbidden seas" is a fucking all-timer of a boss theme and the game sells these climactic fights with grandiose attack animations and combat that feels so damn satisfying to get right. it does get muddled by the occasional QTE, but i found these QTEs much less intrusive and more organic when playing on Final Fantasy mode, which removes the prompt and instead expects the player to know based on the context what to do. so many of the boss fights in this game are just thrilling to experience too, and while i have my complaints for some (the barnabas fight is great but holy fuck are gungnir and blinding steel really dumb attacks sometimes), they always deliver on spectacle and it's rare when the gameplay doesn't keep up. even the relatively simple ifrit fights manage to keep me engaged just because of the immensity of everything. one of the highlights of the game by far is the fight against titan when ifrit is running through the desert and then eventually up his arm. it has this gargantuan scale that not only amazes me, but feels remarkable to witness. i could spend several paragraphs talking up my favorite fights in the game, and it's truly tempting to do so. even smaller-proportion affairs like fighting benedikta have this great momentum to them that makes a fight that could be considered low-stakes compared to later bouts still register as a standout. and the fight against hugo in the rosaria throne room and later crypt? by far my favorite fight in the game, a series bookmark for me.
still, the story might have great fights, but it did leave me wanting on writing and payoffs. the most egregious example to me was how the sanbreque arc played out. we spend all this time building up dion as this conflicted character and anabella as this political temptress witch with her own agenda and sylvestre as this potential national wrecking ball due to his imperialistic tendencies. . . and then the sanbreque arc ends at the midgame with the latter two dead (at least sylverstre's death is pretty sick), and dion relegated to being a supporting cast character that occasionally says/does something. anabella i especially had high hopes for because i thought she could've ended up being a stellar endgame villain. my personal bet was that she was going to be a dominant for ultima or something likewise as shocking. but to have her get deleted from the plot after stewie griffin gets speared is just so underwhelming.
i would also be remiss not to mention that this game doubles down on a lot of the misogyny that was present in XV, and, yet again, women are centered as either a caregiver/mother figure to protect or an evil shrew to defeat. i say this liking most of the female characters in the game: XVI is a story where men are the actors and women are the reactors. even supposedly proactive characters like benedikta and anabella are largely just being manipulated by other figures in their life (barnabas and ultima, respectively). i'm not looking for steel magnolias nor do i think the game needed more feminist focus testing or whatever other bad faith accusation you can think of. it just shouldn't be this difficult to have a female character in a video game who has a personality outside of "evil shrew" or "caregiver". where are characters like yuna and ashe, who not only had character arcs, but defied both of these labels? the closest character we get is jill, and even then, she still has issues wrt being clive's love interest more than her own character at times. when it comes to the misogyny in XVI, am i surprised? truthfully, no, but i sure as hell am disappointed that we've gone back so many steps after X and XII.
ultimately, it's hard to truly encompass everything i want to say and felt about this game. brevity is the soul of wit, and it's truly hard to capture it without omitting any significant thoughts or feelings. regardless of how you feel about this game, it's very difficult to deny the production values of this game. occasional frame rate chugs aside, this game is gorgeous, the gameplay engine stands out as a positive for almost anyone who's played it, and, again, this game really sold me on the final fantasy series still having more juice left in the tank. i was married to my cynicism with final fantasy and maybe even modern gaming as a whole, so to have something like this punt me out of it was refreshing. there's much more room to grow here, and i pray like fuck that XVII fixes some of the larger overarching issues we've seen over the past few FF games (misogyny, pacing), i do have hope for the final fantasy series again.
huh. wouldn't you look at that. "i do have hope for the final fantasy series again.". that's a sentence i never imagined i'd be typing on here.
i will admit i went into this game with the lowest of expectations possible. game of thrones meets devil may cry, probably serving mediocre attempts at both? pass. for some, that assessment's on the money and where the review can end. but, i think this game does a great job at having influences without wholly emulating. this game has enough to distinguish itself from other character action games like DMC and Bayonetta so it doesn't feel like it's stuck in their shadow. and sure, this game has copious amounts of politics interspersed with sex, death, and swearing, but those moments are earned. one of the standout moments of sheer brutality for me was when clive cut off hugo's hands. it was a simultaneous "holy shit, they really did that in a final fantasy game?" and "that's fucking sick i love it!!" moment. this game has an identity, and as much as it can lean into the euphoria of violence and spectacle, it takes just as much time to establish and develop its characters and supporting staff in the way that you would expect of a final fantasy game. this isn't a JRPG, no, but it is still a final fantasy game, and it shows.
as far as the characters go, the cast is definitely a grower that i came to appreciate more on the second playthrough than the first. the clive/jill interactions especially took some some time for me to warm up to, and while i would have preferred immensely if they removed the part with young clive being stated to view jill "as a sister", i do feel that their romance works for me in a very down to earth and less flashy way. jill especially is a character i found underwhelming at first, but upon re-inspection, discovered her to be much more compelling. her trauma and years of abuse made her sullen and withdrawn in a way that immediately reads more as boring than it does engaging in that way a lot of fictional stories tend to write these characters as. but, when you examine the totality of her character, you see the underlying persona beneath her hardened exterior, and it makes sense why we get so few opportunities to see it in the harsh world of valisthea. when we do get those moments of emotional climax for jill (i.e. when she kills her abuser, or when she reacts to clive's death in the credits), they're standouts because they're built up and earned moments for her. as for clive himself, i like him as a main character, and though his story starts out a bit muddled, taking the classic "power of friendship" trope and re-imagining it in this dismal world worked for me. there's a nice integration of gameplay and story in that clive does genuinely become more powerful by getting help from others, whether it be in obtaining their eikons or from renown (which often harbored the best rewards in the game).
far and away the largest problem with both the story and the gameplay is the pacing, though oddly in different ways for each respect. for the story, it frankly takes way too fucking long to get to the neo-hideway, which is when the game really starts to pick up the pace. at the same time, you do absolutely need that build with young clive + cid prior to his death to establish these characters and the setting. it's just far too bloated in that respect, because it's very fair for players to think the game is going to drag this much ass the entire time. that fight with benedikta needed to happen like 2 hours sooner than it does so players could be introduced to the main form of progression much sooner. XVI does a very poor job at starting as it means to go on, and this is a problem we saw with just as disastrous a consequence with XIII. telling someone that the game "really opens up" at around 20 hours in is less than enticing and hides the better part of the gameplay loop from players for far too long.
on the gameplay side of things, the downtime tends to overstay its welcome. i love the intense thrill that the story fights can deliver, but they're outweighed by how much low-stakes combat and item retrieval you have to do in between them. side quests get this the worst, which is a shame because late-game side quests have some of the best story/character content in them, but, by the point the player reaches them, they'll likely have been conditioned to skip the dialogue, go to the points on the map that they need to go to, and miss out on the meaningful story beats they add. i can safely say this because my first playthrough, i did exactly that, and when i actually sat my ass down and paid attention to the side quests in full in my second playthrough, i got a lot more out of them. are there still the occasional "grab 20 goat horns for me" or "oh no kill these bombs that are making my bath water too hot!" type quests? yes, but their presence has been overstated by critics (imo).
in spite of all this game's supposed flaws, i won't deny that this combat engine is hugely fucking fun, both to learn and to master. i'm so unbelievably glad this game didn't stick to the illusion of being a JRPG, because it soars higher than it would have otherwise. sure, jill and cid and whoever might join your party, but you don't have to micromanage their AI or health bars and you can focus solely on clive. no more of the "characters take forced damage when you don't control them" issue that VIIR established; you're only going to have to manage one character, and you are given a large amount of freedom to do so. the progression system gives you a lot of room for experimentation as do the arete stones and opportunity to respec for free, so you have no excuse to not mess around with all your abilities in some capacity. combine that with how fluidly abilities tend to synergize together (one of my favorites was how impulse would leave random mob enemies incapacitated long enough to use dancing steel and get a relatively free level 5 zantetsuken), and the game just plays smoothly like butter. having just gotten done with two full playthroughs of the game, i am already planning a replay where i go through the game using entirely different abilities to milk the variety out of this game. i spent 130 hours of the span of two playthroughs and still want to play this game more. that's something very rare, for me.
and i would be remiss to not mention how cathartic the game feels in its big moments. "to sail forbidden seas" is a fucking all-timer of a boss theme and the game sells these climactic fights with grandiose attack animations and combat that feels so damn satisfying to get right. it does get muddled by the occasional QTE, but i found these QTEs much less intrusive and more organic when playing on Final Fantasy mode, which removes the prompt and instead expects the player to know based on the context what to do. so many of the boss fights in this game are just thrilling to experience too, and while i have my complaints for some (the barnabas fight is great but holy fuck are gungnir and blinding steel really dumb attacks sometimes), they always deliver on spectacle and it's rare when the gameplay doesn't keep up. even the relatively simple ifrit fights manage to keep me engaged just because of the immensity of everything. one of the highlights of the game by far is the fight against titan when ifrit is running through the desert and then eventually up his arm. it has this gargantuan scale that not only amazes me, but feels remarkable to witness. i could spend several paragraphs talking up my favorite fights in the game, and it's truly tempting to do so. even smaller-proportion affairs like fighting benedikta have this great momentum to them that makes a fight that could be considered low-stakes compared to later bouts still register as a standout. and the fight against hugo in the rosaria throne room and later crypt? by far my favorite fight in the game, a series bookmark for me.
still, the story might have great fights, but it did leave me wanting on writing and payoffs. the most egregious example to me was how the sanbreque arc played out. we spend all this time building up dion as this conflicted character and anabella as this political temptress witch with her own agenda and sylvestre as this potential national wrecking ball due to his imperialistic tendencies. . . and then the sanbreque arc ends at the midgame with the latter two dead (at least sylverstre's death is pretty sick), and dion relegated to being a supporting cast character that occasionally says/does something. anabella i especially had high hopes for because i thought she could've ended up being a stellar endgame villain. my personal bet was that she was going to be a dominant for ultima or something likewise as shocking. but to have her get deleted from the plot after stewie griffin gets speared is just so underwhelming.
i would also be remiss not to mention that this game doubles down on a lot of the misogyny that was present in XV, and, yet again, women are centered as either a caregiver/mother figure to protect or an evil shrew to defeat. i say this liking most of the female characters in the game: XVI is a story where men are the actors and women are the reactors. even supposedly proactive characters like benedikta and anabella are largely just being manipulated by other figures in their life (barnabas and ultima, respectively). i'm not looking for steel magnolias nor do i think the game needed more feminist focus testing or whatever other bad faith accusation you can think of. it just shouldn't be this difficult to have a female character in a video game who has a personality outside of "evil shrew" or "caregiver". where are characters like yuna and ashe, who not only had character arcs, but defied both of these labels? the closest character we get is jill, and even then, she still has issues wrt being clive's love interest more than her own character at times. when it comes to the misogyny in XVI, am i surprised? truthfully, no, but i sure as hell am disappointed that we've gone back so many steps after X and XII.
ultimately, it's hard to truly encompass everything i want to say and felt about this game. brevity is the soul of wit, and it's truly hard to capture it without omitting any significant thoughts or feelings. regardless of how you feel about this game, it's very difficult to deny the production values of this game. occasional frame rate chugs aside, this game is gorgeous, the gameplay engine stands out as a positive for almost anyone who's played it, and, again, this game really sold me on the final fantasy series still having more juice left in the tank. i was married to my cynicism with final fantasy and maybe even modern gaming as a whole, so to have something like this punt me out of it was refreshing. there's much more room to grow here, and i pray like fuck that XVII fixes some of the larger overarching issues we've seen over the past few FF games (misogyny, pacing), i do have hope for the final fantasy series again.
huh. wouldn't you look at that. "i do have hope for the final fantasy series again.". that's a sentence i never imagined i'd be typing on here.
2021
i'll be frank: this game is the epitome of a nothingburger to me. there was so much potential here and it's almost entirely squandered. deathloop promises so much, both on a gameplay and narrative level, yet it fails to deliver anything even remotely up to par for an arkane game. even death of the outsider still had moments. this? this gives me nothing to contemplate or remember.
i want to start out by saying that this game isn't a bad idea in conception (for the most part, at least). you can very easily see this same concept done better by none other than arkane themselves with prey's DLC, mooncrash. while that DLC may have been criminally overlooked, i was hopeful that it would mean deathloop would expand on the already great ideas presented in that experience. instead, deathloop shrinks itself in complexity for the worse and, as a result, ends up feeling about a quarter as mechanically engaging as mooncrash. even if you ignore the mooncrash comparisons, the sense of progression in this game is just not great. residuum almost immediately stops having any sort of value, especially when the game practically throws it at you. infusing your weapons, buffs, and powers SHOULD be this feeling of "aha! i'm getting stronger and more deadly!" but the game starts out on easy mode and never escalates. if anything, it descends precipitously once you get aether, and when you get the ghost upgrade for aether, the game might as well give a big flourish and have a "THE END" screen pop up, because gameplay functionally stops having any challenge.
but, if the gameplay isn't challenging, then what is it? well, it's. . . boring! i like the idea of exploring these four different areas at four different times each and learning how they change, but the game barely goes out of its way to make any of the different times distinct from each other. and the actual worldbuilding itself is a low for arkane, especially after prey's interconnected and realistic to-a-fault world design. in updaam, there's an apartment that just straight up has no way to enter it besides through a window. in karl's bay, people will just be sitting on rooftops that they have no ability to get up normally. i know it sounds like i'm harping on very minute details, but these things matter in an immersive sim, and, more importantly, these are things arkane has done consistently correctly in their previous titles. the world feels so video game-y, and while that can, at times, be interesting, there's very little to do in these areas besides kill enemies and collect residuum. i don't find blackreef to be an interesting place to explore because so much of it lacks a story; it doesn't feel lived-in.
as far as the narrative goes, i kept waiting for it to go somewhere, but the main twist of the game is something you could literally predict by looking at the cover, and the game basically has no tricks left up its sleeve after that moment. i think what's more annoying is how many vital questions are left unanswered. how did all of the visionaries meet? did they know each other previously or did they somehow meet up for this common goal? why are julianna and colt immune to the memory wiping effect of looping but literally everyone else isn't? that last one is probably the most infuriating because the game does draw attention to it, yet offers nothing to satisfy that question. i'm fine with open-ended "draw your own conclusion" type of mysteries, but this is a central one that borders on "i need this information to even care about the characters", if it isn't already at that point.
speaking of julianna, can i just say that whoever thought having invasions in a single player immersive sim should never be allowed to have any input on development of a video game ever again? the AI will just sit on rooftops and spam an infinite supply of grenades and sniper rifle ammo at you, and she adds nothing to the game but irritation. once i learned how to deal with her consistently (aether obliterates her AI and she is allergic to the shotgun), she stopped being even remotely interesting and just turned into a consistent time-wasting nuisance. i genuinely want to know: what positive value does she add to the game? if the rumors are to be believed, the invasion mechanic actively made the game worse because it meant that the systems had to be simplified to accommodate PVP balance (i.e. melee was going to be more varied and the player was going to have access to all powers at any time like in dishonored). you could argue she's providing the role of the horror game stalker, but a. this isn't a horror game, nothing in this game elicits fear b. her presence is always televised with "OH NO JULIANNA IS HERE OH SHIT SHE BLOCKED YOUR TUNNELS" that you would have to be not paying attention to be even surprised, no less scared by her and c. she doesn't actively stalk you, most of the time her AI will camp on rooftops. i don't mean to harp on this for so long, but she is objectively one of the worst parts of the game and i can only hope this was a publisher directive to push for multiplayer rather than a sincere attempt at something from arkane.
obligatory positives paragraph: i really liked that part with aleksis' party where he has a meat grinder that he sends any unfunny stand-up performers to via trap door (though the game's definition of "stand-up" comes off so bizarrely that it's like a cultural mistranslation. it's been suggested that this is less of a "stand-up routine" situation and more of a "let's brag about how evil we are" situation, but that's not conveyed at all considering you'll be traveling through the party and out of nowhere you'll hear the first person talk about "I FUCKING LOVE SMOKING YEAH!!!!".). i almost liked the idea of getting to know the visionaries and their patterns, and found myself endeared to a few of them. on the whole, though, they felt same-y and hard to distinguish. oh, so frank and fia are both hoity toity artists up their own ass? and egor and wenjie are both antisocial scientists who have failsafes in their bases if they get attacked? stop, the diversity here is overwhelming. i think the absolute best thing i can say about this game is that by and large i can tell this was a passion project for a lot of arkane. i can see the gears turning in the devs' heads and see them going "okay, so if you sabotage this thing, then this will happen, and if you fuck with this character, they'll do this". that sort of cause-effect relationship was probably really fun to map out and iron out the details to, and i wish the joy i could see from a development side had translated as well into gameplay.
2.0/5.0 might seem a bit harsh, but this game rarely elicited joy out of me. the comedy falls flat, the gameplay feels mechanically barren, progression isn't rewarding, the narrative doesn't deliver, and it just ultimately felt like a waste of time to play this game. i take away very few positive things from my time with deathloop, and a lot more negative ones. it's nice to see that so many others had managed to find some type of entertainment out of this, and i don't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers this to any of the prior arkane games. for me though, i prefer something with more meat on its bones, and this game just made me want to turn back the clock. audience boos and throws knives at me until i am dead
i want to start out by saying that this game isn't a bad idea in conception (for the most part, at least). you can very easily see this same concept done better by none other than arkane themselves with prey's DLC, mooncrash. while that DLC may have been criminally overlooked, i was hopeful that it would mean deathloop would expand on the already great ideas presented in that experience. instead, deathloop shrinks itself in complexity for the worse and, as a result, ends up feeling about a quarter as mechanically engaging as mooncrash. even if you ignore the mooncrash comparisons, the sense of progression in this game is just not great. residuum almost immediately stops having any sort of value, especially when the game practically throws it at you. infusing your weapons, buffs, and powers SHOULD be this feeling of "aha! i'm getting stronger and more deadly!" but the game starts out on easy mode and never escalates. if anything, it descends precipitously once you get aether, and when you get the ghost upgrade for aether, the game might as well give a big flourish and have a "THE END" screen pop up, because gameplay functionally stops having any challenge.
but, if the gameplay isn't challenging, then what is it? well, it's. . . boring! i like the idea of exploring these four different areas at four different times each and learning how they change, but the game barely goes out of its way to make any of the different times distinct from each other. and the actual worldbuilding itself is a low for arkane, especially after prey's interconnected and realistic to-a-fault world design. in updaam, there's an apartment that just straight up has no way to enter it besides through a window. in karl's bay, people will just be sitting on rooftops that they have no ability to get up normally. i know it sounds like i'm harping on very minute details, but these things matter in an immersive sim, and, more importantly, these are things arkane has done consistently correctly in their previous titles. the world feels so video game-y, and while that can, at times, be interesting, there's very little to do in these areas besides kill enemies and collect residuum. i don't find blackreef to be an interesting place to explore because so much of it lacks a story; it doesn't feel lived-in.
as far as the narrative goes, i kept waiting for it to go somewhere, but the main twist of the game is something you could literally predict by looking at the cover, and the game basically has no tricks left up its sleeve after that moment. i think what's more annoying is how many vital questions are left unanswered. how did all of the visionaries meet? did they know each other previously or did they somehow meet up for this common goal? why are julianna and colt immune to the memory wiping effect of looping but literally everyone else isn't? that last one is probably the most infuriating because the game does draw attention to it, yet offers nothing to satisfy that question. i'm fine with open-ended "draw your own conclusion" type of mysteries, but this is a central one that borders on "i need this information to even care about the characters", if it isn't already at that point.
speaking of julianna, can i just say that whoever thought having invasions in a single player immersive sim should never be allowed to have any input on development of a video game ever again? the AI will just sit on rooftops and spam an infinite supply of grenades and sniper rifle ammo at you, and she adds nothing to the game but irritation. once i learned how to deal with her consistently (aether obliterates her AI and she is allergic to the shotgun), she stopped being even remotely interesting and just turned into a consistent time-wasting nuisance. i genuinely want to know: what positive value does she add to the game? if the rumors are to be believed, the invasion mechanic actively made the game worse because it meant that the systems had to be simplified to accommodate PVP balance (i.e. melee was going to be more varied and the player was going to have access to all powers at any time like in dishonored). you could argue she's providing the role of the horror game stalker, but a. this isn't a horror game, nothing in this game elicits fear b. her presence is always televised with "OH NO JULIANNA IS HERE OH SHIT SHE BLOCKED YOUR TUNNELS" that you would have to be not paying attention to be even surprised, no less scared by her and c. she doesn't actively stalk you, most of the time her AI will camp on rooftops. i don't mean to harp on this for so long, but she is objectively one of the worst parts of the game and i can only hope this was a publisher directive to push for multiplayer rather than a sincere attempt at something from arkane.
obligatory positives paragraph: i really liked that part with aleksis' party where he has a meat grinder that he sends any unfunny stand-up performers to via trap door (though the game's definition of "stand-up" comes off so bizarrely that it's like a cultural mistranslation. it's been suggested that this is less of a "stand-up routine" situation and more of a "let's brag about how evil we are" situation, but that's not conveyed at all considering you'll be traveling through the party and out of nowhere you'll hear the first person talk about "I FUCKING LOVE SMOKING YEAH!!!!".). i almost liked the idea of getting to know the visionaries and their patterns, and found myself endeared to a few of them. on the whole, though, they felt same-y and hard to distinguish. oh, so frank and fia are both hoity toity artists up their own ass? and egor and wenjie are both antisocial scientists who have failsafes in their bases if they get attacked? stop, the diversity here is overwhelming. i think the absolute best thing i can say about this game is that by and large i can tell this was a passion project for a lot of arkane. i can see the gears turning in the devs' heads and see them going "okay, so if you sabotage this thing, then this will happen, and if you fuck with this character, they'll do this". that sort of cause-effect relationship was probably really fun to map out and iron out the details to, and i wish the joy i could see from a development side had translated as well into gameplay.
2.0/5.0 might seem a bit harsh, but this game rarely elicited joy out of me. the comedy falls flat, the gameplay feels mechanically barren, progression isn't rewarding, the narrative doesn't deliver, and it just ultimately felt like a waste of time to play this game. i take away very few positive things from my time with deathloop, and a lot more negative ones. it's nice to see that so many others had managed to find some type of entertainment out of this, and i don't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers this to any of the prior arkane games. for me though, i prefer something with more meat on its bones, and this game just made me want to turn back the clock. audience boos and throws knives at me until i am dead
This review contains spoilers
i must confess that for as thick and lengthy of a game disco elysium is, i have vanishingly few things to say about it that wouldn't either be summary or regurgitation of other opinions. i can fairly confidently say that disco elysium is the funniest game i have ever played in my entire life. such praise really is easy to heap when i can think of at least three separate times where i went into an uncontrollable laughing fit that no other game's writing has been able to match, not even the likes of psychonauts or other established "pinnacle of comedy" games.
at the same time, there's a large elephant in the room for me in that i don't think disco elysium maximizes the medium of being a video game in the way it should. after you realize there's never a reason to not reload dice rolls, suddenly skill checks become unimposing unless they're nestled deeply in conversations. in general, the gameplay/build options feel a lot more overstated in importance than they actually are, and when i realized that, i felt very disconnected from the game's mechanics. what does it matter if i have low suggestion if i have clothing i can put on at any time that can boost it by like 2 or 3 points? i essentially have no weaknesses at that point. the game mechanics fail to enrich this game in the way that i think they needed to for me to truly appreciate the gameplay.
i also feel like i'm going to sound like a huge shit idiot for saying this, but the game is frankly too long and thick. there's a staggering amount of content and detail here, and while it's impressive, it's also excessive. it's not padding or filler in the way that you would accuse an overly long game like [insert basically any modern RPG of the past 5-10 years] of being, but it's unnecessary. some tangents go on for a lot longer than they should (see: the sunday friend, the church sidequest, etc.), and ultimately i think the game would benefit from being a leaner experience. hell, you could probably just straight up delete some characters like siileng and cindy with basically no plot impact. lastly, i do have plot/writing nitpicks, probably the most damning one being that this game presents itself as a whodunnit and the culprit is quite literally someone you can only meet in the last hour of gameplay. i could go into more, but nothing really tops how much that one irks me, especially considering how much the game tries to hook you on the idea of finding lely's killer and solving it organically.
i did largely enjoy my time with disco elysium and it had some truly outstanding moments that will stick with me for a long time (i.e. the volition check with klaasje). i just wish it hadn't felt like i was smothered to death in content to get there. this review has been almost entirely negative, yet i still think this is easily one of the strongest indie releases in a long time and will likely be a game that people will still be playing and referencing for years to come. for me, i just have my own opinion on how it could've been morphed from "indie game i really respect and enjoy" to "one of my favorite games of all time". the pieces were there, and i can't help but imagine what could've been.
at the same time, there's a large elephant in the room for me in that i don't think disco elysium maximizes the medium of being a video game in the way it should. after you realize there's never a reason to not reload dice rolls, suddenly skill checks become unimposing unless they're nestled deeply in conversations. in general, the gameplay/build options feel a lot more overstated in importance than they actually are, and when i realized that, i felt very disconnected from the game's mechanics. what does it matter if i have low suggestion if i have clothing i can put on at any time that can boost it by like 2 or 3 points? i essentially have no weaknesses at that point. the game mechanics fail to enrich this game in the way that i think they needed to for me to truly appreciate the gameplay.
i also feel like i'm going to sound like a huge shit idiot for saying this, but the game is frankly too long and thick. there's a staggering amount of content and detail here, and while it's impressive, it's also excessive. it's not padding or filler in the way that you would accuse an overly long game like [insert basically any modern RPG of the past 5-10 years] of being, but it's unnecessary. some tangents go on for a lot longer than they should (see: the sunday friend, the church sidequest, etc.), and ultimately i think the game would benefit from being a leaner experience. hell, you could probably just straight up delete some characters like siileng and cindy with basically no plot impact. lastly, i do have plot/writing nitpicks, probably the most damning one being that this game presents itself as a whodunnit and the culprit is quite literally someone you can only meet in the last hour of gameplay. i could go into more, but nothing really tops how much that one irks me, especially considering how much the game tries to hook you on the idea of finding lely's killer and solving it organically.
i did largely enjoy my time with disco elysium and it had some truly outstanding moments that will stick with me for a long time (i.e. the volition check with klaasje). i just wish it hadn't felt like i was smothered to death in content to get there. this review has been almost entirely negative, yet i still think this is easily one of the strongest indie releases in a long time and will likely be a game that people will still be playing and referencing for years to come. for me, i just have my own opinion on how it could've been morphed from "indie game i really respect and enjoy" to "one of my favorite games of all time". the pieces were there, and i can't help but imagine what could've been.
2023
This review contains spoilers
i'm going to reserve rating this game until later, for now this review is just going to be about MK1's story mode. usually it takes me a while to meditate on how i feel about a fighting game in totalality, but i do have thoughts i want to share about the narrative they're trying to craft.
okay so did they really and sincerely want us to not laugh at that one cutscene where they're about to do infinity war and then liu kang says MLK's "the arc of the universe bends towards justice" quote? there's such a definite point where this game's story goes from "self-serious and dramatic" to "tom and jerry x scooby doo crossover". on the one hand, it's fucking jarring and threw me off so hard. on the other hand, it's incredibly fucking funny in that way that you know NRS is in on the joke and wants you to laugh. it's disappointing that the tonal shift has to come out of left field due to me actually being relatively invested in a lot of these character stories that go nowhere, and i imagine this was a game meant to establish more than develop a setting.
i think my largest complaints come from the fact that, outside of the campy nature of the last like 20% of the game, the game is largely incredibly unfunny yet tries desperately to be so. i think i laughed one time (at kitana's reaction to johnny being like "OMG you're 1000 years old?!"), but basically every other joke fell flat or went on for too long. despite never having seen an MCU movie, so many lines made me go "MARVEL SHIT". the crowd of normies that NRS wants is obvious. either way, i was interested in seeing where the game was going to go with the switchup of liu kang and raiden but it kind of just. . . doesn't do anything with that? there's other fun character wrinkles, like sindel not being evil or having killed jerrod, or mileena managing to reverse her transformation that makes her tarkatan, but these are more treated as status quo than reveals. the game has these changes, but they're not played with in any significant way. like i said, it's more interested in establishing than developing.
beyond that, this story feels very safe in that it doesn't kill off any characters besides sindel (who will probably come back in a sequel, probably as DLC because "jerrod saved her soul", whatever that means) and capitalizes on the title being Mortal Kombat 1 so it can try and nab as many newcomers as possible. MK1 is so much more appealing as a title to an outsider than MK12, so i can't blame them. i just wish the story ended up having more of a point. things largely end where they start with only a few characters (raiden, kenshi) having meaningfully changed by the conclusion of the story. again, i get it, you want the lore and setting to be established without alienating newcomers that this game is invariably trying to wrangle in, but the story didn't need to feel so empty and nothing to accomplish that same goal. newcomers want to be impressed by your story, they will feel emotions for these characters if you establish the context and make the relationships clear. this was your opportunity to make newcomers care about longstanding themes in the series, like the rivalry between mileena and kitana. instead, it's acknowledged like once or twice and then nothing ever comes of it. no head, no resolution, it just fades into the ether.
and yeah, "at least the game looks good and fights are choreographed well", but this game very clearly wants to present as a movie in the same way that 11 did, and where 11 largely suceeded, 1 fails. i'll withhold some of my assholeish comments about frame rate chugging or some animations looking goofy because i would rather games look worse and dev teams be crunched less than the inverse. but there's more that could've been done here. we could've had more from this story, and resetting the timeline with this many differences had such fun potential. i feel ultimately this story fails to live up to what we could've had with this premise and these characters. it squanders so many characters that i wanted to know more about, like smoke, reiko, tanya, etc. and there's no large emotional beats that i can attach to. i said it in my review of X, but even having little frame of reference for the lin kuei/shirai ryu conflict, i still felt something when scorpion and sub-zero mended that wound. no such moment could be found in this game's story.
i would rank the modern MK stories as 11 > X > 1 > 2011 (god i fucking LOVE NRS's titling for this stupid series). 1 doesn't fall flat entirely, but it doesn't evoke many positive feelings out of me. NRS has been able to do better in both the entries above it having more against them (pre-existing lore, entirely new characters to introduce to newcomers and oldies, etc.), so i'm hopeful that this is just a misstep.
okay so did they really and sincerely want us to not laugh at that one cutscene where they're about to do infinity war and then liu kang says MLK's "the arc of the universe bends towards justice" quote? there's such a definite point where this game's story goes from "self-serious and dramatic" to "tom and jerry x scooby doo crossover". on the one hand, it's fucking jarring and threw me off so hard. on the other hand, it's incredibly fucking funny in that way that you know NRS is in on the joke and wants you to laugh. it's disappointing that the tonal shift has to come out of left field due to me actually being relatively invested in a lot of these character stories that go nowhere, and i imagine this was a game meant to establish more than develop a setting.
i think my largest complaints come from the fact that, outside of the campy nature of the last like 20% of the game, the game is largely incredibly unfunny yet tries desperately to be so. i think i laughed one time (at kitana's reaction to johnny being like "OMG you're 1000 years old?!"), but basically every other joke fell flat or went on for too long. despite never having seen an MCU movie, so many lines made me go "MARVEL SHIT". the crowd of normies that NRS wants is obvious. either way, i was interested in seeing where the game was going to go with the switchup of liu kang and raiden but it kind of just. . . doesn't do anything with that? there's other fun character wrinkles, like sindel not being evil or having killed jerrod, or mileena managing to reverse her transformation that makes her tarkatan, but these are more treated as status quo than reveals. the game has these changes, but they're not played with in any significant way. like i said, it's more interested in establishing than developing.
beyond that, this story feels very safe in that it doesn't kill off any characters besides sindel (who will probably come back in a sequel, probably as DLC because "jerrod saved her soul", whatever that means) and capitalizes on the title being Mortal Kombat 1 so it can try and nab as many newcomers as possible. MK1 is so much more appealing as a title to an outsider than MK12, so i can't blame them. i just wish the story ended up having more of a point. things largely end where they start with only a few characters (raiden, kenshi) having meaningfully changed by the conclusion of the story. again, i get it, you want the lore and setting to be established without alienating newcomers that this game is invariably trying to wrangle in, but the story didn't need to feel so empty and nothing to accomplish that same goal. newcomers want to be impressed by your story, they will feel emotions for these characters if you establish the context and make the relationships clear. this was your opportunity to make newcomers care about longstanding themes in the series, like the rivalry between mileena and kitana. instead, it's acknowledged like once or twice and then nothing ever comes of it. no head, no resolution, it just fades into the ether.
and yeah, "at least the game looks good and fights are choreographed well", but this game very clearly wants to present as a movie in the same way that 11 did, and where 11 largely suceeded, 1 fails. i'll withhold some of my assholeish comments about frame rate chugging or some animations looking goofy because i would rather games look worse and dev teams be crunched less than the inverse. but there's more that could've been done here. we could've had more from this story, and resetting the timeline with this many differences had such fun potential. i feel ultimately this story fails to live up to what we could've had with this premise and these characters. it squanders so many characters that i wanted to know more about, like smoke, reiko, tanya, etc. and there's no large emotional beats that i can attach to. i said it in my review of X, but even having little frame of reference for the lin kuei/shirai ryu conflict, i still felt something when scorpion and sub-zero mended that wound. no such moment could be found in this game's story.
i would rank the modern MK stories as 11 > X > 1 > 2011 (god i fucking LOVE NRS's titling for this stupid series). 1 doesn't fall flat entirely, but it doesn't evoke many positive feelings out of me. NRS has been able to do better in both the entries above it having more against them (pre-existing lore, entirely new characters to introduce to newcomers and oldies, etc.), so i'm hopeful that this is just a misstep.