Clearly, people have had wildly different experiences with this game. Obviously having played Suikoden to understand what this game is trying to do helps, but even if you're intimately familiar with the Suikoden series, you may come away from this game disappointed. It suffers from an extremely noticeable lack of polish. Bugs aplenty, many cases of written dialogue not matching up with the voice acting, and many elements of the game seem suspiciously unfinished as if they ran up against time or budget constraints. There are a lot to very reasonable critiques to be made of this game.

But fuck everything I just said because this game is a masterpiece. The amount of heart you can feel in every aspect of the design makes this a very successful attempt at a love letter to the Suikoden series. The game is mostly very polished in the areas that really matter. The combat is flashy and fun with excellent art and animations. Recruiting characters is almost always a joy as each newcomer adds something new to the experience. Town development drags towards the end of the game but it's very easy to unlock the important quality of life features and important side content, with the rest being mostly for fun.

Overall, if you like the Suikoden series, you owe it to yourself to play this game. Full stop. You may not love it, but the amount of passion on display here should be enough to convince anyone that this is a genuine effort to revive one of the most beloved (and almost entirely forgotten) RPG series of all time.

Persona 3 Reload: An amazing remake plagued by modern monetization practices and horrible balance.

This review comes from a perspective of someone who played FES up until May and has experience in all mainline modern persona games, so my experience as a Persona player and experiencing the world of 3 essentially for the first time plays heavily into my review.

Before I get into the story (spoilers ahead), let me answer a question for people wanting to play this game:

It's a great game that I highly recommend you buy. The story is great, the QoL changes they add into the gameplay is a breath of fresh air and is one of the main reasons why I couldn't really finish FES (and also the really really slow pace of the game at the start). However, It's a game that doesn't really provide any incentive to replay in NG+ other than finishing up some trophies you missed on your first playthrough. The content after finishing your first playthrough is non-existent, and if I were to buy this game, I would wait for a sale, because it definitely is not worth $70.

Now let's move onto the better part of this game, the story (spoilers ahead, you've been warned):

I love the underlying themes of this game, they're so good and well-written, alongside each of the characters. Unlike the other themes like in 5 that talked about fate and rebellion, 3 talked about death and your convictions. Tackling the theme of Death in a video game can be difficult, but ATLUS does it perfectly, and the eerie and dark color scheme that comes with Tatarus, the Dark Hour and the overall atmosphere of the game in general complements the events that transpire throughout the game.

Everything is written beautifully. Each event that happens in the main story doesn't feel like a cliché, it felt like every event happened for a reason and had a purpose in the plot.

Each of the main characters (the party members) get their own time in the spotlight of the game. The developments I enjoyed most were Junpei's and Aigis', I felt like their character breakthroughs were much stronger in their convictions and in the development/build-up to the climax of their character arc. However, Aigis' development as a character is kind of unfair because she gets like 5 months of screentime dedicated throughout the game to develop as a character.

Again, the theme of Death was explored amazingly. If it eventually happens, why don't we just give in to being zombies and forget everything? It's the same question Takaya and Nyx were repeating for the entirety of at least the end of the game. If you ever wondered why we live our lives on this chaotic planet called Earth, I think P3 has the answer (haha, get it?).

Okay, now with the story out of the way, let's talk about gameplay:

Gameplay differs from FES (which I will be talking about mostly because I never touched portable) in the sense that they have removed fusion spells for special attacks known as Theurgy's. Theurgy's are special moves you charge up over time, and these moves range from powerful damaging attacks to overpowered support skills.

Theurgy's are absolutely broken and in a bad way. They are a trump card to many of the game's bosses, and you can usually cop out of hard situations by using these skills. The reason for this is because Theurgy's are scaled based on the persona that is equipped. This means the damage scales on the Persona's St and Ma stats, and also accounting for any Amp/Boost skills along the way (and for some reason Charge/Concentrate!). This makes most attacks do way more damage than they are supposed to, and the fact that they ignore resistances makes it even more encouraging to spam it on any enemy you see.

The balance in this game is horrendous. Who on god's green Earth thought it was a good idea to add Crit Rate Boost/Amp into the skill pool? These skills combined with a high crit skill like Brave Blade/Heaven's Blade and Apt Pupil means you are NEVER missing a crit, and since a crit is essentially the same as hitting a weakness, you will be doing nothing but farming one more's and all out attacks once you learn about making a phys skill persona with crit rate boost/amp.

However, I have to give credit where credit is due. ATLUS tried to lessen the grind in this game by adding the Great Clock, which in my mind is an absolute godsend. The Great Clock allows you to select up to 2 party members to level up until the MC's current level (with a maximum of 13 levels per clock). This helps your party members that you have been perma benching in a Tartarus run not slack behind, and when you need that party member for an important boss fight, you don't need to spend another 1-2 hours leveling them up just to progress in the game's main content. However, the pacing of levelling in this game I think is spot on. If you prioritized EXP cards in Shuffle-Time throughout the entirety of your run, you shouldn't need to spend extra time grinding because you're underlevelled for a boss. Some may argue that grinding to match the level of a boss should be a staple of a JRPG, but in my opinion, it's just an unnecessary waste of time that the devs can fix by tweaking some numbers.

QoL is also a huge plus with Reload. However, most of it is a given considering the QoL we got in P5R, with the addition of the Town Map showing every available Social Link, but alongside some new additions, like the Shared Computer in the Iwatodai Dorm (I think? I don't recall using it in FES).

Overall, the experience I had with this game was positive, and I would definitely recommend it to a friend wanting to dive into Persona or the JRPG Genre. However, I don't think it's the coveted masterpiece of a remake I think some fans are making it out to be. The story is definitely one of the strongest out of the Persona games, but the balancing and lack of endgame/NG+ content does not justify purchasing this game at its full price tag of $70. The fact that The Answer is coming to Reload as DLC rather than as a complimentary side-story on release is also a slap in the face and another occurence of the shitty DLC practices ATLUS have been using for years. If you want to play The Answer, just emulate FES on PCSX2.

(80 Hours Played)

4/5

EDIT: I wanted to give quick insight into the Music/Art Direction of Reload. The music has produced some of the best vocal tracks I have ever listened to. It's Going Down Now and Color Your Night are some of my favorite tracks. They're both catchy, and they fit the atmosphere and environment that the player is in when the song is played. The Art Direction I believe is kind of mixed. I've heard from people that played FES and Portable that the Art Direction sucks and steers away from the magic and mood present in past iterations, but I wanted to give my own objective opinion on the Art Direction of Reload as someone that didn't play/finish FES: The character sprites look amazing and are a huge upgrade from 5's character sprites. The character's faces look more like their 2D Portraits, more effort and care is given to the animation of characters for in-game cutscenes (with the dialogue boxes, not the full renders). However, I think I noticed that the overall atmosphere of the Dark Hour outside of Tartarus felt more washed out in color and more dull than it was in FES. I'm not an artistic guy so I don't really know how to explain it, but it felt like something was off. In addition, I definitely noticed the lack of anime cutscenes throughout the game. Until I know where these anime cutscenes were, I can't really say if I have a preference for one or the other, but the one I do know about is the MC's awakening, and by far the FES awakening that used anime instead of an in-game render (Reload) conveyed much better tension and felt more emotionally powerful than Reload was. Anyways, that's my take on the music and art direction or Reload.

As an avid JRPG enthusiast, this game scratched all the itches I could have ever asked for from the spiritual successor to Suikoden. It's a bit rough around the edges at times, but it's more than charming enough, and the pacing is more than acceptable. I've heard a lot of complaints about it being too similar to Suikoden, but at the end of the day if the spiritual successor to Suikoden WASNT like Suikoden it would have been dead in the water.

It's a great experience, enjoyable story, and nostalgic throwback. All with maybe TOO much side content.

Strong contender for the best game ever made. It's crafted with so much love and care that it's easy to overlook its many flaws, and its central message just propels it to an impossible level of achievement. Why this isn't as celebrated as some other, similarly off-kilter and narratively rich games I don't know.

My one major gripe with this game is the voice dubbing. It actually sucks. Like the dubbing is really, really bad. Except for Laura's english voice actor, she does a fine job (granted, she has like, two lines in the game).

The gameplay really works with me. The gameplay is a combination of on-rails shooting, jrpg random encounters, third-person exploration, hunting simulation, point and click adventure segments, puzzle solving, and resource management. This all sounds like a lot, but it's honestly pretty easy to get the hang of.

Of course, the main draw of the game is the story. It's a strange, slow paced, high stakes horror that takes inspiration from the works of Lovecraft, John Carpenter (mainly The Thing), and David Lynch. And it ends with one of the most hopeful, yet sobering endings I have ever seen. Overall, I highly recommend this, but it may take some time to adjust to the game's slow pace.

Happy New Year 2000.

end roll purified my water supply, revived my crops, cured my depression, and brought a genuine spark of joy into my life. that is probably the most misleading statement to make in relation to the mood and story of this game, but i mean it completely unironically. it gave me meaning. i just found this site. i registered because of end roll

i played it a few months ago via a recommendation to omori fans (an amazing game which i'd also recently gotten into) and BOY could i have never seen the sheer mental impact of this game coming. end roll is the definition of 'hurts so good' imo. it weighs on your heart, makes you wish things were better and would become better despite knowing that it won't, and yet there's a distance to it that can actually distract from one's own pain in favor of just... feeling for russell and all the pain in those surrounding him, in my experience at least—it probably varies from person to person, of course. i would die for russell. i would go to hell for him. i would gladly step into the lion's mouth and let myself be eaten for the mere illusion of him. i would also do the same for chris, who is possibly the most lovable and underrated barely present side character i can imagine. i would live for them

amazing art, amazing story, amazing soundtrack, amazing characters, amazing game. it's an entire experience created by a single person, and you can play it entirely for free

Incredible game. The gameplay has improved from MGS1, especially with the new first-person mechanics. Even though it still has some of tedious stuff that was also in MGS, stuff like backtracking feels way better in here (probably related to how the whole main area of the game is designed). The story in this game is also top notch, and probably my favorite in any game I've played thus far (obviously, the twist at last third of the game kinda carries it but that's besides the point). Absolutely terrifying how it still holds up today and even better than ever. The cast of characters, although probably inferior to MGS1, are still good here as well. I feel as if the game gets better after the mid-way point, or at least that's how it felt when I played it but even before that I still found it decently enjoyable, and of course everything in the last third of the game was just amazing.

I don't get the Raiden hate, he's cool.