The praise this game gets confuses me. Breath of the Wild itself was nothing particularly earthshattering, and this game is just Breath of the Wild again. The problem is that what made BOTW novel is not anymore. We've seen this type of expansive open world before. It's not impressive anymore.

Of course, more land was added, but what was added is half as much of what was worth exploring in BOTW. The skylands mostly exist for dungeons and chests, nothing more or less. There isn't enough landmass up there aside from the tutorial zone for it to feel like a whole new second map. The underground zone too is stagnant, introducing an annoying gimmick with an intense difficulty spike that makes exploring it a pain.

I understand that the new building system is technically impressive. I'm a game designer, I see this. However, just because something is impressive does not make it good. The fusing system itself does allow for a bunch of interesting puzzles, but it's the same gimmick reused for every single puzzle. Eventually, this mechanic too has its novelty wear off, and unless you have a degree in engineering or loved Banjo Kazooie Nuts 'n' Bolts too much, you won't be getting a lot out of it. Yes, it is impressive what it can do and that it functions at all, and the possibilities available to players is commendable. It is a feat in design that a lot of these puzzles have more than one solution. Yet the game does not force you to create anything super outside the box. While I said most puzzles have more than one solution, it is made very clear that there is 1 "right" way and every other solution is a player either a: intentionally breaking the game or b: not understanding the signs. Nowhere are you challenged to make an army of inter-continental strike drones. You can, and those who know how will, but this will never cross the mind of the average player. Had this game pushed the bounds of what this system could do perhaps I could find more praise for it. But they don't, it exists as simply a gimmick to justify the long development time and to show off a shiny new tech thing.

With this games announcement we were promised a much heavier story focus. We got slightly more story than BOTW. What we got was quite decent honestly, but it was the same egghunt from before to find all these things. This time, you just couldn't skip the intro story segment. What they gave us simply didn't carry the weight it should.

The intense amount of continuity errors are annoying too. The game hints to why this may be, but it simply does not make sense. This game likes the idea of being a direct sequel while also being too caught up in trying to rewrite it's own history. Where are the Divine Beasts? Where are the Guardians? Where is the fucking Shrine of Resurrection? Things vital to BOTW have vanished without a trace and the game refuses to explain itself. It should have, anyone who played BOTW would have noticed all of this immediately. There needs to be a reason for the sudden disappearance, and I sure would have liked to see it totally explained than just hoping I will take "time travel shenanigans" as an answer.

Tears of the Kingdom looks at what Breath of the Wild did well and misunderstands why it did well. The open world was good because it was so vast and nothing like any game had had before. Now, we have the same open world with minor variance, causing less desire to explore, and the marvel of such a vast world is now lost since it was done before. Of course, following up something like BOTW would prove to be a monolithic task regardless. Instead of improving the things BOTW did wrong, like the dungeons and puzzles, to try and succeed it's predecessor, it simply creates new things that solve nothing. Tears of the Kingdom prays its rehashed world with new zones will be enough to entice the player for the same hundreds of hours we all dumped into BOTW.

This game will forever be shadowed by it's predecessor. Not because the task was too big, but because they did not focus on the right things. Perhaps if Breath of the Wild never released, this game would be far better. Instead, it is a expansion in disguise as a $70 videogame. Shameless.

Just like Polyphia, just because something is hard to do does not immediately justify a perfect score. In a vacuum, the new system is very good, but the game simply does not allow for it to be as good as it can be, and in an attempt to perfect this feat in physics engineering and simulation, Nintendo seemingly forgot about the other aspects that make a Zelda game a Zelda game.

For a lot of my time being aware of Persona as a series my friends who love it have begged me to play Persona 3: Portable specifically, claiming it to be A: the game I would like the most and B: possibly the best the series has to offer. Around the time Portable came to Steam, rumors of a remake were floating around, so naturally, I waited.
Reload eventually does come around. It looks good, sounds good, the combat is modernized, and it's even on Gamepass. No reason to not touch it.

Persona 3 is a bold attempt at creating the most realistic possible environment for the average 16-year-old JRPG protagonist. In some ways, it works. In many, its formula wears thin. Yet the story and message is compelling enough to justify pulling through it. Reload, however, does very little to improve the base game, only damaging its presentation and trivializing whatever challenge existed.

Ultimately, I feel that this game is too fucking long. Not frequently am I against long games, and neither is ~60 hours criminally long, but the way P3 is structured with its life-sim gameplay loop makes the game drone on for what feels like forever. The first few months I found this system quite novel, and as a college student with nearly not enough spare time on their hands I appreciated the whole "make the best of the time you have" notion. Yet, around November-December (late game) the system begins to wear extremely - you simply run out of things to do. At this point you simply do not have a need for any of the day-to-day facilities / activities. Money is not an issue, and all of your social skills are maxed out, so the only thing really of value are the Social Links.
The problem with the Social Links was, at this point, I had completed all the links I cared about. Sure, I could have skipped the day, but with such a heavy emphasis on completing the links, I felt a need to attempt at enduring the Moon and Magician links. At this point I’m not engaging with the story anymore. I have no active interest in these stories, all I want is the reward that comes with them. Obviously, this will vary from player to player, but it feels antithetical to have a message about valuing each person in your life and then encouraging the player to engage with characters they have no value for.
Granted, this is a very small handful of social links. Many of them are very likeable and interesting. The Star, The Sun, and the Hierophant, for instance, are all relatively compelling (the sun especially) and are worth reading. The character progression felt natural, and the messages they wanted to send were good. The issue is that at some point it’s too much reading. I stop caring because I just finally fused Thanatos last night in Tartarus and want to get to evening ASAP so I can actually use him.
Had the runtime been cut by 10-20 hours, I feel this loop would have gone a lot better. I liked it at first quite a bit, but it overstays it’s welcome by a lot. The story itself does not warrant a runtime this long, because unlike most RPG’s most of this games runtime isn’t directly advancing the plot. I’d much prefer a 60 hour game like Xenoblade Chronicles where those 60 hours are traversing new environments, rather than 60 hours of simulating my life with a side of ripping up demons with my entourage of Sick Mythology Ghosts.
The actual gameplay, the turn-based JoJo’s inspired combat, is a fun as a turn-based RPG will get in my opinion. I’m not a big fan of turn-based games, say it’s Pokemon trauma or simply that it’s a dull medium, but I liked the way this game did it. Again, in the early hours it was fun attempting to figure out the best way to stun the enemy in front of me with my limited ability set and seeing how I could chain moves together. Eventually though, much like the LifeSim gameplay, it too gets stale. By endgame you are more than reasonably strong, and have enough Personas in your arsenal to consistently topple any enemy in front of you. The challenge doesn’t scale well with the player’s own strength. Rather, the system itself can’t scale with the player, because the way this game creates difficulty is by having enemies that simply break the rules of the game, either attacking more than once a round (Reaper) or having access to every element in the game at once to consistently buttfuck your team. It doesn’t exactly feel like a challenge, just that you are getting screwed. This is really the only way to make difficulty because the new systems in place, being Theurgy and the lack of Tactics, makes you unbelievably strong. While I understand the removal of Tactics, Theurgy does nothing but make the game trivial. You should not have access to a move that will one-shot both the final boss and the Reaper (the normal superboss). Not before NG+, at the very least. Endgame personas like Alice, Messiah, and Helel are already so powerful there is simply not a need for something like Armageddon to exist. Nothing justifies its existence.

The story Persona 3 offers is the actual reason I wanted to play this game, and aside from the day-to-day formula fucking up the pacing, I liked it a lot. There is a lot this game wants to say, and many of the themes hit very close to home. Some of the ideas are relatively simple, like valuing the people in your life and putting trust in them, while others are more thought-provoking, such as asking the player what they want to actually do with their time and, later, life. I think these ideas only hit as hard due to the gameplay – had I not been making dozens of connections with seemingly random NPC’s and plotting out how I use my day to get the most out of it I don’t think these ideas would have been driven home so hard.
However, those are the points the gameplay tells. The actual story tells something much more moving and personal. The main cast of P3, SEES, is a substandard group of teens who, for the most part, have been consistently dealt the worst cards possible in life. Each one of them has something that haunts them and thus an equal reason to be in the fight. It's a lot about losing and learning to work through that loss. That through each other we all find purpose and meaning, and that's more than enough to keep going. The emotional apex of P3 revolves around these characters choosing to stand against impossible odds for the sake of each other, staring the literal human version of death in the eyes and crying "I want to live." It's very much about the struggle of being. It's hits home in ways I can't describe. It's very powerful. But in the moment, watching this unfold, I barely cared.
Why? The games pacing. With how long it actually takes to get to that point, I had emotionally checked out. It wasn't that I was never invested, because I found Aragaki's arc very emotional and impactful, and mostly because during that midpoint the game's story moved. By the time I had reached the end, the game stretched itself so thin I was just waiting for it to be done. When the wheels on Persona 3 spin, it drives its point way in. But the moment it starts to slow, it loses all of its impact and never gets it back.
SEES themselves are relatively enjoyable and have distinct ideals/motives and personalities. Their writing is good, believable, and you get to witness their arcs transform them very smoothly and believably, save for Aigis and Mitsuru. It feels rare to see a main cast this big and have them all be so notably diverse. Fuck, it’s rare to have a character that is literally a Normal Dog and have them be equally as nuanced as every other human without saying a literal fucking word. It’s impressive.


Here’s a critique that’s Reload specific.
This game FUCKED with the art direction and tone of the original. Colors in Reload are far more saturated than they should be, starkly contrasting with the games relatively darker tone. The original game’s color palette consisted of a lot of darks. It’s much harder to convey the weight of trying to stop the world from ending as a group of teens when the living room is plastered bright greens and blues rather than the dark greens and greys of the original. I shouldn’t have to open the settings menu and turn the brightness slider down 3+ notches to achieve a fitting tone.
The artstyle itself also got terribly generic. P3’s artstyle was pretty damn distinct when it came out, and the emotion expressed in each sprite was unparalleled. Reload released with an artstyle that is a slightly updated version of what Persona 5 has been preaching, and the charm the original once held is completely lost. This itself doesn’t detract much, the art is still good, but it’s a shame to see P3 stripped of it’s original identity in turn for something that looks like everything else.
Something about the lack of FEMC and Epilogue can go here too.

Persona 3’s greatest sin is simply that it is too long. A lot of my enjoyment was retracted by this games length. And as a remake, it doesn't do much to improve it's predecessor. Otherwise, it’s alright. A lot of the things this game hopes to achieve I truly believe were done better in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Xenoblade Chronicles.

If this is the best Persona has to offer, I don’t think I’m interested in what else it has in store.

i fucking love xenoblade chronicles. both 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games of all time, and i hail 1 as one of the greatest games ever made.

This game is short of either. It is far from the masterpiece anyone tells you it is. It is a lukewarm 60% at BEST and it baffles me that anyone can say it's something more than that.

Everything that the series has been known for narratively has been absolutely diminished, the antagonists suck, the main characters story arc sucks, and the game holds back from being soul crushingly depressing.

It could have been good. Everything is right there! Yet somewhere, somehow, it just fucking sucks. The only thing this game has going for me is A: the graphics/artstyle, B: the really well rounded main cast, and C: the gameplay, and thats a kind of.

I could go on for fucking ever on how this game has disappointed me immeasurably, but I don't really want to. Lord pray that the DLC is on the same par as Torna.

Death Stranding is my favorite game of all time. However, I firmly believe this game is not for everyone and is also not perfect.

At it's core, Death Stranding is a game about delivering packages and bringing people together. It's a social-exploration game. But, it's also a horror game, a 3rd person war shooter, and a stealth-action game. Death Stranding is Kojima's attempt at creating something new, and also making every game Konami didn't let him finish, to both the games benefit and detriment.

Ultimately, most of the time Death Stranding feels like Kojima picked up the bones of PT/Silent Hills and MGSV and a third mysterious new game and tried to make it all work. Isolated, each of these elements work. When the game introduces itself, it's this survival horror game where Sam must deliver packages and face The Horrors of the abyss. And it's really cool. But then 1/3 in, the game goes "Well now you're literally in WW1. Go crazy." and suddenly the focus is about being a weird MGS, and abandons the horror elements by letting you fight the horrors very effectively. Then 1/3 later the game decides to be it's own thing and let's itself be Death Stranding. All with this underlying gameplay about connecting others. Alone, each of these portions work quite well. However, playing the game out feels quite jarring. The game tells you "Avoid BT's, don't shoot people" then later you're told "Actively kill BT's, shoot people." In the latter half I found myself missing the mystery and general horror of the BTs, and the actual threat they faced. Yet, I still found myself heavily enjoying the game overall. The point is, when this game chooses to be itself, it is very good, but most of the time it is remnants of something else and feels half-baked.

This all works for Kojima's meta narrative, which is about him leaving Konami and starting over. He sets up a game that puts you through what could have been Silent Hills, back through something vaguely Metal Gear, and then shows you something entirely new. So I get why he did it. But I don't entirely think he should have, since the actual story tells this underlying narrative quite well.

Regardless, there are other things outside of the core gameplay that are worth touching on.

The games overall presentation is very, very solid. Yes, it's very movie-game, but it works out quite well. Since most of the game has you walking, the presentation is very important, so going for the Generic Sony Movie Game route works well since you always have something nice to look at. The licensed music choices are very solid, the atmosphere is fantastic, and the overall world looks very good and is insanely engaging to traverse. Which is good, because most of this game is traversal.

The story, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. While MGS2 and 3 are very well written critiques of war and culture, Death Stranding comes to be far more personal. This isn't the pitfall though. The pitfall is how it's written. Most of the worldbuilding is sent through major exposition dumps from DefiningCharacterTrait-Man and the dumps are so heavy in load it becomes hard to process what's being said to you, and most of the time it feels like Kojima doesn't even know what he's talking about. I have a very intimate understanding of this game and I still can't concretely tell you what the fuck an "Extinction Entity" is, because I don't think Kojima does either. Most of these exposition dumps don't even need to be in the game. The whole point of the Death Stranding (the event) is that nobody properly knows what it is, and so having a character explain jargon to you makes the game more confusing and kills the overall mystery and tone. And if something isn't explained to you by mouth, you'll have to read pages and pages of shit via the in-game logs.

This isn't to say the writing is bad, because it isn't. For the first time I firmly believe Kojima has written a good female character. Really, most of the characters are very well rounded. Sure, there are a few ExpositionDump-Man's, but Sam, Higgs, and Fragile are all very interesting, likeable, and well written. When this game chooses to show you things rather than just outright tell, it does so very well, and is very memorable. All 3 of those characters arcs are very interesting to watch play out. Sam, as the main character, gets the most notable growth and the game shows this change in a very kosher way through BB. BB and Sam's dynamic is very fun, I'll probably touch on that later.

Though, other character don't exactly get much time to fully flesh out. For instance, Mama (yes, that's literally her name), has an arc, that is mildly interesting, but the game halts itself to focus on it and feels somewhat forced, and doesn't add much to the overarching story. There's also Mads Mikkelson's character, who's role is half as important as the game wants you to think, who feels weirdly forced into the narrative. While he is integral to the plot, his presence feels very out of left field and the game has to develop his character very quickly to make him work as a central character. It becomes hard to understand why he's doing the things he's doing, but I also give his character a pass because he's cool as shit and is very fun to see in action, and once you get past his rough introduction he becomes a very solid component to the story.
 
The pacing is also pretty bad, the game will go for multiple hour stretches telling you nothing then dump 30 minute cutscenes back to back, but that isn't super important to me because that's the shit I came for.

There are other things worth mentioning, the Kojima-isms, the inventory management, the symbolism, but as of writing this its 4:00AM and I have better things to do. I'll probably edit this review later, but I think I've talked about everything worth talking about.

This game is special to me, it's very different, its very fun, but it's also very polarizing and very rough. It's probably a 7/10 objectively, but as the saying goes, a 7/10 can be better than any 10/10 you've played.

In short, if you like MGS and want to play this because Kojima made MGS, you will either like it or not. If you like MGS for the narrative, you'll probably like this a lot. If you like MGS for its gameplay, then you probably won't like this as much.