As far as my enjoyment of this game, giving it a five even though there's some elements of it that aren't perfect.

I think the gameplay is improved from the previous game. They fixed a lot of the pathing issues so character's aren't getting caught on guard rails. They also added the ability to move your character around on their turn and AoE indicators which is a much needed QoL. They also made cars not run you over outside of combat so you're not constantly getting knocked about.

Overall this had some strong character moments in it but the plot itself was much weaker, some good ideas but executed in a way that it wasn't particularly engaging or really connected to our heroes.

Certainly a game to pick up if you liked the previous game. It did make me look forward to what they have in store in the next entry.

Bit of a rough one to revisit. It held up a lot better in my nostalgia fueled memory than it did to replay it. I think the concept is still pretty solid between playing the MMO but still interacting with the forums and the 'real world' all while trying to solve the mystery of the game.

But it's a pretty slow start and Haseo can be a bit annoying the way he acts given his history, but him and the rest of the characters have pretty good arcs. Music is good overall, it has some great opening tracks.

Gameplay is kind of where it falls apart, it's pretty grindy and repetitive visiting randomly generated dungeons with similar environments and enemies over and over again. It's also very very easy with you mostly using skills/mashing attack. The cutscenes of the game still hold up well but the actual in game assets are pretty bland now a days.

It's an interesting experience but honestly after replaying the games it would be kind of hard for me to recommend vs many other RPG titles. I think it would be a good candidate for a real remake though, smooth out some of the plot points. Fix and improve the gameplay so it feels fresher and more dynamic and tone down the grind. Then you may have something pretty serviceable.

I think as far as a remake goes, they pretty much did everything right. However I also remembered the plot and characters being better and boy was my memory wrong.

Overall gameplay wise, it's pretty fun, simple action-lite combat where your characters have two skills equipped at first and then you can have access to 4 in total. Magic users can just cast any spell equipped via menu. I found the combat generally easy on the normal difficulty. Though there were times when an enemy would just wipe you easy if you didn't pay attention, very much a game where everyone tends to be glass cannons.

There's also the crafting system which while it's optional is pretty fun (and can be very busted) it's actually cool in that you can control your experience if you want to make the game easier by engaging into it early on. Though it can be RNG dependent which compelled me to save scumy so I can get what I wanted without wasting materials.

Graphics look great, they kept the sprite based look and while I don't know if this qualifies as 2D-HD like Octo, it's got that similar vibe. Overall it was a good decision to keep it like that. Music is also great and I liked the newer arranged tracks.

Which leads to QOL, they added a fast travel system and where you can see the pending personal actions or side quests which is handy. Enemies are now visible on the map so you can avoid/fight easier. And they made it so skill and crafting points are separate and easier to get which means you can break the game easier if you wish. You can also swap back to the older art in the menu of the other releases or the original sound track.

What didn't age well for me though was the plot and characters. While the character's aren't bad, they all have some interesting points, they tend to just fade into the background due to the fact that you can only recruit so many. So once you pass their important plot function they rarely say or do much of anything. And there wasn't any private actions added which means that affinity control has to be artificially done via items if you're going for certain endings.

The plot was kind of all over. It starts out simple enough but then it just kind of jumps the shark without smoothly transitioning from point to point, and the fact that the characters just roll with it just didn't make it believable within the context of the game or make it come together.

Overall though it's a fun JRPG and I mostly played a bit before bed. But it's not one you play for the plot but the gameplay and vibes.

Overall this is a nice little SRPG that was pretty enjoyable. It has inspiration of Ogre Battle and Fire Emblem. The artwork is a treat for the eyes, as per Vanillaware. The combat is real time strategy where you can pause, issue commands then unpause and everyone starts moving. Units are constructed with up to 5 characters eventually allowing you to create different builds. You can make flying anti cav units or heavy shield anti infantry builds.

Additionally it has a FF12 like gambit system, you can define what order a character attempts to use abilities and decide what conditions. This adds a ton of depth and unfortunately it can be a bit obtuse on what the eventual outcome is. When you fight a unit you can shuffle things around but sometimes it isn't exactly clear why this change caused your unit from getting heavily damaged to wiping out the enemy by swapping a couple of units.

Story/character wise it's pretty vanilla. Most characters don't play any significant part in the story, there really is no growth or characterization. Most of the flavor you get is from the rapport (bonding) system's events. Much like FE it throws a ton of characters with you but since most are optional it does nothing with them.

I also enjoyed that unlike most FE games it feels like a war where you're taking territory on the world map. Which is a nice little element I appreciated instead of just going from a menu stage to another menu stage.

It's a game you play for the gameplay. The difficulty wasn't too high, I played on tactical and really had no issue and there's story and normal mode below it for an easier time. It's a good SRPG to fill in the cracks waiting for the next FE game.

It's exactly what was promised and kickstarted, a Suikoden successor. It is very much Suikoden with a lot of same great things and the same not so great things. I enjoyed it at the end of the day but hope a sequel can just improve on it.

+ Nice cast of characters
+ Sprite work is great
+ Camera work with the 2D/3D works really well in some areas.
+ Duels were great moments but wish there were more.
+ A lot more voice acting that I expected, almost everything is voiced.
+ Fun bosses
+ You can't really miss recruits due to timing like Suikoden just a point of no return near the end of the game to have collected everyone.

- Story is fine but I find myself saying Suikoden 2 did it better.
- Other than bosses combat is kind of w/e. There is combo attacks that are basically useless for their cost. Magic outside of party healing is not super useful, and single target healing is a static value which is weird.
- A couple of recruits are hard locked behind the Beyblade and cooking minigames. Both which are very long winded and not enjoyable due to poor balancing. Making getting these recruits pure chore.
- Technical problems, particular with shadow rendering leaving artifacts.
- The 3D colors/textures don't really mesh with the 2D sprites a lot of the time.

I finally dug this out after having bought it when they were going to be delisting it due to the music license.

Overall, it's a product of it's time. I can see where maybe back in 2010 it would have gotten more praise. The narrative is enjoyable and is written well but it was also relatively predictable and by the end of episode 3/start of episode 4 you have all the pieces of what happened and basically what will be happening. It ends up making the last couple of episodes feel a bit more like a slog.

Which is partially due to the gameplay which never really evolves past shine flashlight on enemy to break their shield and then shot them and by Episode 2 you've seen the entire arsenal that the game gives you and every enemy type. By the end the game is mostly just throwing more enemies at you in various combinations. I found myself just dropping flares or flashbangs mostly to get to the next checkpoint and skip all the enemies.

I'm not sure how the remaster was changed but I'd say if you're interested in Control or Alan Wake 2.. go find a summary of this game and save yourself 10-12 hours. It's not necessarily a bad experience but it's not entirely enjoyable.

I won't say it's bad, but it's also not really grabbing my attention from the characters or world and I'm just not super invested after about 6 hours in. While I appreciate the idea of the card combat it just feels a bit sloggy and isn't interesting enough for me. You can build a deck but that interaction is kind of small and you have to actively time the card uses in the middle of battle and draw them so is different than say MTG or Hearthstone type games.

As a remaster I think it's mostly good, you have options to increase the speed up to 3x for in combat and out of combat separately and if you really want to just play for the story you can turn on 1 hit KO or turn off encounters as you do a bunch of back tracking for side quests. My only real complaint is that these options can only be toggled out of combat via pause menu, I wish the speed up was like Trails where you can hold down a trigger and speed up as you want.

While it's a Monolith Soft game it doesn't appear Tetsuya Takahashi has any credits on the game (writer/director/producer) so if you were going in there expecting to have a somewhat similar vibe to the Xeno games (any of them) then I don't think you'll find it.

It's an interesting take on the survival gathering game. Your car is your lifeline and your mobile base. Early on it's interesting but there was a certain lack of variety in the gameplay. And just some friction.

Partly why I stopped playing is that I needed to complete a mission, but you can't just go from your base to the mission, you have to go from map to map. For this one I had to go 3 maps deep and I ultimately end up failing the mission due to something popping out of the ground I couldn't avoid. Ultimately wrecking my car and losing quite a bit of stuff I had spent the last 90 minutes collecting. And the game wasn't grabbing me enough to do it again.

A toolbelt would have also helped, half my inventory was just tools.

The concept is neat but it could use some iteration to keep it interesting after the first few hours. The story has been done before and the concept of voices over the radio explaining everything isn't particularly compelling.

It's been a pretty fun game with friends I'd like to see where the devs take it. It's rough in some elements like I'd like to see more diversity in the environments and maybe some more in game tips that actually tell you what the heck the things you buy actually do.

Also not sure if the game has any real staying power but at the price point if you can get a good couple of days with your buddies then it's worth it but it starts to get a bit stale like Phasmaphobia as you start to understand how the system works and it starts to get repetitive.

This was made during version 40.

Overall pretty fun on the gamplay front. The Emblem and Break systems felt pretty good and gave some thought and variety to the combat. Much of the other sub systems (Skill Points, emblem weapon upgrades, etc) were half baked and other elements lacked transparency (character stat growth, when you actually should be promoting people). Had good map variety in the main story and paralogues. The paralogues were callbacks to old FE maps which means nothing if you're a relatively new player.

Story was pretty meh. It was straight forward without much to it but it served its purpose of giving you a reason to do the map and because of permadeath mechanic being a thing a lot of characters would stop showing up in the story once you recruited them.

Characters are colorfully designed but very one note with one or two defining traits that constantly appear in their support skits which starts to feel samey after enough times. Static endings for supports makes it not worth doing the skits other than your main combat force.

the TLDR is that this is the anti-3 Houses. The gameplay is better but the social elements are weaker. Still worth a look if you're into tactical/strategy RPGS.

I think this game had a lot of potential but there's an incompleteness to the last couple of acts and the large amount of visual, ui and quest killing bugs that holds it back.

On the positive the game really captures the WH40K feeling with the way the characters and environments look and with the writing you can tell that they researched it.

The combat can be fun but there's a lack of choices, particularly near the end, when it comes to builds. For instance you only have 4 starting classes to choose from and once you've chosen one, you're locked in. Compared to Pathfinder where you have a large amount of flexibility to mix and match. But the game does allow you to respec freely so once you find something you like you can change things around as needed.

The systems hold up better than the pathfinder games. The colonies are optional but do give you rewards. Ship battles while not fantastic are better done than Wrath's crusade system.

I think where the game falls apart though is that the last couple of acts were not fleshed out and tested enough. I went heretical and it didn't seem to really impact anything from the story, I was walking around with a Chaos Marine and no one cared at the end, no one commented. It was very disappointing. Also the story wasn't written tight enough at the end and lost a lot of the initial steam in the game, not fitting well together.

And the bugs, as of this review on 12/25 there are so many bugs that hopefully they fix that really effects the enjoyment and I'll have to ding my rating for it.

Overall I feel like this game needs to go back into the oven for another year, do a lot of bug squashing and do some revision/expansion on the story and the paths. It has a lot of potential but the execution at the end of the day is subpar.

As a remake of OG P3 I think they did alright. They added some QoL stuff that did make the game a lot easier for the most part compared to the OG but I'd say it's comparable to P5R in that sense of difficulty. But even with the QoL going up Tartarus is a rough and relatively dry experience.

I did like the linked events they had for the guys, I guess it was a fair compromise. I think the stories in them overall I might say I liked better than most of the social links, but at the same time they're heavily time gated and limited. This did allow them to actually attach themselves to the story and the emotional impact of the story. However missing one hoses you over, so I can't necessarily advocate for something similar in a future Persona game but I think if they weren't linked to power (getting a fusion at the end) I might be ok with something similar in addition to social links.

Will say that the actual plot is probably the slowest of the modern games so I'm glad they've improved the pacing. The first half of the game nothing much happens or is explained, it's really the back half where things pick up. Where I think something like P5 also didn't really pick up with plot until later, it was more character centric that filled in those gaps.

Theme wise I enjoyed it, it's definitely a bit heavier. But I'm ok with that, really I'm totally fine if the Persona games want to be philosophical and social commentary. Interested what they'll do with P6 on that front.

But the TLDR, still Persona, holds up pretty well, I still think P5R is an overall better experience even if I don't think the ending hits as hard as P3R does. But it's still worth picking up if you generally enjoyed the Persona games.

Overall I thought the game was just ok. It was a short experience that serves as a bridge between Yakuza 6 and Like a Dragon. There's quite a bit of side content that the game really wants you to do because the main story is very short and they needed the padding to justify the price but most of it's optional in the end.

The combat was eh, after Yakuza 0 and Lost Judgement it's ultimately a step back. But it's a little fun to rag doll enemies after the JRPG system.

The story is just mostly ok, though the final chapter is pretty good particularly if you played Like a Dragon.

It's a little hard to justify paying full price for this, I don't think it really brings anything new to the table for the series that you haven't already done or seen before and the story while it fills in some blanks on what Kiryu is up to after 6 going into 7 (and sets up 8 at the end) it isn't particularly critical for the overall story.