junebugparadise
2009
I first played Demon’s Souls in 2021 right after the remake first came out. I think at the time I gave the game something like a 7/10, but in actuality I really just did not like that game and I was being nice. I lied! I'm sorry…
Demon’s Souls on PS3 was a really interesting experience for me. To be entirely honest, I'm not sure what made me want to replay the game. The game just has this weird pull to it unlike other fromsoftware games, save for BloodBorne. I knew i wanted to get the Platinum Trophy (we will fucking get to this i promise) but I really dont even know why i wanted that either. Well, whatever the reason, I'm glad I went and revisited the game. The PS3 version makes it a lot easier to meet the game on its level. The art direction is just simply more cohesive than in the remake, which does a whole more than you would think in terms of pulling you into its world. The game definitely devolves into a slideshow at points… but what PS3 game doesn't have an awful framerate? It's a part of the charm. The PS5 version has a lot more issues to it than just the art direction, being honest. Not only is the look of the game just really generic and very distinctly NOT fromsoftware, it also creates a really peculiar juxtaposition between cutting edge ultra extreme graphics and gameplay that is genuinely the exact same in both feel and function to the 2009 original. I’ve seen people complain about the gameplay in the remake and the art direction separately but not how they intersect to create a game that just feels wrong. This is not to say that the original is at all bad, but like i mentioned earlier, it's a lot easier to meet the game on its own level with the original rather than the remake. When i first played the remake i honestly just took it for a really mediocre souls game that didn't do much interesting and had terribly just insane design choices attached to it. There's still a few things I definitely still dislike about Demon’s Souls and I want to talk about what I appreciate about the game more now.
To start, I think it's incredible just how much they got right with this game. This is genuinely their first try at creating an entire game sub-genre and despite its faults, they did a great job. What Demon’s Souls does right, it REALLY does right. The level design is intricate and meaningful, and while the game is very linear within its individual levels, it allows you to tackle them in any order you wish (for the most part), giving a sort of Link to the Past style of player freedom. The combat is very simple, but it allows them to design enemies that provide a meaningful obstacle for the player. I’m still fairly mixed on a lot of the bosses, but one thing I praise the most of them for is the way in which the bosses actually interact with the arena in which you fight them. The bosses aren't like the boss's you'd find in a game like Dark Souls III, and instead are more focused on some sort of central gimmick that the player must exploit. As an example, a lot of bosses have separate AI patterns depending on how the player chooses to approach the fight. The Tower Knight will take the player head on in a grounded fight but if the player chooses to get to the higher vantage points of the arena to use magic/a bow the tower knight will instead fire soul arrows continuously at the player. I think this is really cool and works in some cases, but unfortunately, 99% of these boss fights are solved by simply using magic. Being a spellcaster makes this game genuinely trivial. There are a few bosses that are more akin to those of the rest of the series, and they’re pretty underwhelming to be honest. I really like Penetrator, since he has a huge polearm he stabs you with in a horizontally challenged arena. It bridges the gap between more gimmicky yet interactive fights and more interesting fights that challenge player skill, but the rest of them are either copy pasted into its sequel, (man eater becomes the gargoyles in dark souls 1) super underwhelming (flame lurker), or really cool but can permanently lower your level (Allant). Relating to the bosses, I STILL think the boss runbacks in this game are absolutely fucking dreadful. Some of them require you to run an olympic marathon with dumb fucking idiot skeletons that fucking hate you only to fight a stupid boss that is either the easiest shit of your life if you use magic or one of the worst video game experiences if you have with a strength build (the correct way to play these games). I would really like to know what the fuck happened here. A fair few of the bosses have really nicely made shortcuts that make for simplified but still engaging runbacks, but some of them just dont have shortcuts and they fucking SUCK. I would really like to see boss runbacks return to the series because they're honestly a really interesting and underrated aspect to the game design of these games but if a game as popular as Elden Ring is willing to forgo them I doubt we will ever see them again. I think the last truly negative i have on this game is the healing items, but honestly who fucking cares. Use the dupe glitch like the rest of us. It's fine. Everyone has already talked about how much it sucks, but it's really not even that bad without the glitch.
This paragraph is reserved for talking about the platinum trophy experience. OH my GOD this platinum sucks. Honestly, at first it's not too bad. If you make sure to follow a guide and get unique weapons as you go through the levels and pay attention to world tendency, it's pretty fun. It only gets fucking awful once you get close to beating the game. Since it's a 100% run, you have to do all the crafting bullshit before you go and finish up with the final boss. The crafting system in this game is so insanely obtuse and fucking stupid i cannot possibly imagine that not a single person in this design room didnt think it was ridiculously contrived and a massive time waster at least a little bit. Honestly most of the materials aren't that bad to get as it's likely you can get most of them just by playing normally, but the real problem is with pure greystone. I spent 5 hours farming for this shit and that seems like a godsend compared to some of the horror stories you can find about it. The rest of the stuff you have to farm for took me 10 minutes so they get a pass. You also have to do specific weapon crafting and fusion that is hardly explained by the game and is really contrived for the unique weapons trophy. Once you get past all of that stupid crafting bullshit you have to make sure you can get pure white character tendency so you can get a ring for the ring achievement. Doing this in a game that has its servers forever shutdown is really stupid, because there's only 5 red phantoms per save file and it means that if you mess up even a little bit you need to go and replay the game all over again. World Tendency and character tendency are honestly fine mechanics but their biggest issue is that they refuse to actually tell you in clear wording what the tendency actually is. BEcause of this you’re entirely left up to comparing screenshots of pictures of peoples TVs from like 2012, since all the search results are flooded by the remake. I actually managed to take advantage of the private server fans have made and had some absolutely lovely people let me kill them like 5 times so I could get the ring I needed, but even though I did legitimately do it on a PS3, it kind of falls into an unofficial limbo that I can't expect everyone to be willing to try. Overall I think the platinum was really rewarding but for the love of god please do not fucking do this to yourself.
If you haven't played Demon’s Souls on PS3, I think you should really give it a shot. It’s definitely flawed but it's a great game and I think it's a whole lot better than the remake, which honestly is just a really confusing product. If it was on PC it would make a bit more sense, but as is it's a just as inaccessible version of the game that seems to fundamentally misunderstand what the game is and what it was trying to be back then. I think it’s a little silly to say this after a whole review of me pointing out what I appreciate about Demons Souls, but I still think the game is a 7/10, I just mean it a whole lot more now. If you're wondering, yes, i finished platinuming the game on 4/20, and I did get so high i forget what happened next after finishing the game. If there are any typos in this review i will cry. I didnt capitalize my Is, im so sorry
Demon’s Souls on PS3 was a really interesting experience for me. To be entirely honest, I'm not sure what made me want to replay the game. The game just has this weird pull to it unlike other fromsoftware games, save for BloodBorne. I knew i wanted to get the Platinum Trophy (we will fucking get to this i promise) but I really dont even know why i wanted that either. Well, whatever the reason, I'm glad I went and revisited the game. The PS3 version makes it a lot easier to meet the game on its level. The art direction is just simply more cohesive than in the remake, which does a whole more than you would think in terms of pulling you into its world. The game definitely devolves into a slideshow at points… but what PS3 game doesn't have an awful framerate? It's a part of the charm. The PS5 version has a lot more issues to it than just the art direction, being honest. Not only is the look of the game just really generic and very distinctly NOT fromsoftware, it also creates a really peculiar juxtaposition between cutting edge ultra extreme graphics and gameplay that is genuinely the exact same in both feel and function to the 2009 original. I’ve seen people complain about the gameplay in the remake and the art direction separately but not how they intersect to create a game that just feels wrong. This is not to say that the original is at all bad, but like i mentioned earlier, it's a lot easier to meet the game on its own level with the original rather than the remake. When i first played the remake i honestly just took it for a really mediocre souls game that didn't do much interesting and had terribly just insane design choices attached to it. There's still a few things I definitely still dislike about Demon’s Souls and I want to talk about what I appreciate about the game more now.
To start, I think it's incredible just how much they got right with this game. This is genuinely their first try at creating an entire game sub-genre and despite its faults, they did a great job. What Demon’s Souls does right, it REALLY does right. The level design is intricate and meaningful, and while the game is very linear within its individual levels, it allows you to tackle them in any order you wish (for the most part), giving a sort of Link to the Past style of player freedom. The combat is very simple, but it allows them to design enemies that provide a meaningful obstacle for the player. I’m still fairly mixed on a lot of the bosses, but one thing I praise the most of them for is the way in which the bosses actually interact with the arena in which you fight them. The bosses aren't like the boss's you'd find in a game like Dark Souls III, and instead are more focused on some sort of central gimmick that the player must exploit. As an example, a lot of bosses have separate AI patterns depending on how the player chooses to approach the fight. The Tower Knight will take the player head on in a grounded fight but if the player chooses to get to the higher vantage points of the arena to use magic/a bow the tower knight will instead fire soul arrows continuously at the player. I think this is really cool and works in some cases, but unfortunately, 99% of these boss fights are solved by simply using magic. Being a spellcaster makes this game genuinely trivial. There are a few bosses that are more akin to those of the rest of the series, and they’re pretty underwhelming to be honest. I really like Penetrator, since he has a huge polearm he stabs you with in a horizontally challenged arena. It bridges the gap between more gimmicky yet interactive fights and more interesting fights that challenge player skill, but the rest of them are either copy pasted into its sequel, (man eater becomes the gargoyles in dark souls 1) super underwhelming (flame lurker), or really cool but can permanently lower your level (Allant). Relating to the bosses, I STILL think the boss runbacks in this game are absolutely fucking dreadful. Some of them require you to run an olympic marathon with dumb fucking idiot skeletons that fucking hate you only to fight a stupid boss that is either the easiest shit of your life if you use magic or one of the worst video game experiences if you have with a strength build (the correct way to play these games). I would really like to know what the fuck happened here. A fair few of the bosses have really nicely made shortcuts that make for simplified but still engaging runbacks, but some of them just dont have shortcuts and they fucking SUCK. I would really like to see boss runbacks return to the series because they're honestly a really interesting and underrated aspect to the game design of these games but if a game as popular as Elden Ring is willing to forgo them I doubt we will ever see them again. I think the last truly negative i have on this game is the healing items, but honestly who fucking cares. Use the dupe glitch like the rest of us. It's fine. Everyone has already talked about how much it sucks, but it's really not even that bad without the glitch.
This paragraph is reserved for talking about the platinum trophy experience. OH my GOD this platinum sucks. Honestly, at first it's not too bad. If you make sure to follow a guide and get unique weapons as you go through the levels and pay attention to world tendency, it's pretty fun. It only gets fucking awful once you get close to beating the game. Since it's a 100% run, you have to do all the crafting bullshit before you go and finish up with the final boss. The crafting system in this game is so insanely obtuse and fucking stupid i cannot possibly imagine that not a single person in this design room didnt think it was ridiculously contrived and a massive time waster at least a little bit. Honestly most of the materials aren't that bad to get as it's likely you can get most of them just by playing normally, but the real problem is with pure greystone. I spent 5 hours farming for this shit and that seems like a godsend compared to some of the horror stories you can find about it. The rest of the stuff you have to farm for took me 10 minutes so they get a pass. You also have to do specific weapon crafting and fusion that is hardly explained by the game and is really contrived for the unique weapons trophy. Once you get past all of that stupid crafting bullshit you have to make sure you can get pure white character tendency so you can get a ring for the ring achievement. Doing this in a game that has its servers forever shutdown is really stupid, because there's only 5 red phantoms per save file and it means that if you mess up even a little bit you need to go and replay the game all over again. World Tendency and character tendency are honestly fine mechanics but their biggest issue is that they refuse to actually tell you in clear wording what the tendency actually is. BEcause of this you’re entirely left up to comparing screenshots of pictures of peoples TVs from like 2012, since all the search results are flooded by the remake. I actually managed to take advantage of the private server fans have made and had some absolutely lovely people let me kill them like 5 times so I could get the ring I needed, but even though I did legitimately do it on a PS3, it kind of falls into an unofficial limbo that I can't expect everyone to be willing to try. Overall I think the platinum was really rewarding but for the love of god please do not fucking do this to yourself.
If you haven't played Demon’s Souls on PS3, I think you should really give it a shot. It’s definitely flawed but it's a great game and I think it's a whole lot better than the remake, which honestly is just a really confusing product. If it was on PC it would make a bit more sense, but as is it's a just as inaccessible version of the game that seems to fundamentally misunderstand what the game is and what it was trying to be back then. I think it’s a little silly to say this after a whole review of me pointing out what I appreciate about Demons Souls, but I still think the game is a 7/10, I just mean it a whole lot more now. If you're wondering, yes, i finished platinuming the game on 4/20, and I did get so high i forget what happened next after finishing the game. If there are any typos in this review i will cry. I didnt capitalize my Is, im so sorry
2003
Drakengard is one of the most interesting games I have ever played. At its first glance and in its opening hours, it seems like the standard RPG affair, and it's not until after the first of the games 5 endings did the gears start turning in my head. Drakengard’s thesis statement might as well be to subvert the players expectations at every turn after that first ending, and it's honestly one of the most ethereal gaming experiences I have ever witnessed. To be honest, I’m having trouble even formulating all of my thoughts in an even slightly coherent manner, because this game is so fucking good. I think it is inevitable that in a few months I will find anything I say in this review somewhat shallow but that's the beauty of interpretive art like this. I didn't truly understand Evangelion after I first watched it at 15 and I think my Metal Gear Solid 2 review is extremely surface level now but I leave it up as a digital time capsule. Can you tell this review is going to be a lot of yapping?
The game is a deconstruction of RPG and general fantasy tropes in such a brilliant way, at first seeming to give into them. However, as you go on and dig under the surface of these characters and realize their complexities you start to understand and appreciate Drakengard that much more. Caim at first looks the part of your standard pure of heart RPG protagonist, even going mute at the very beginning of the game to mimic this. However, you very quickly realize that Caim is an absolutely bloodthirsty maniac. He is purely fueled by blind rage and bloodlust, yet will still protect his sister because he knows he's supposed to care for her. The game calls you out on this constantly but you must continue the bloodshed in order to press on with the game…
His sister Furiae seems to be your standard pure and innocent “damsel in distress” character, but this presentation of her character early on is almost like a red herring of sorts. Her lack of development is a critique of that archetype in and of itself. She purposefully keeps the less savory parts of her locked away, and it's not until the end that it's revealed more. Her feelings for Caim are just subtly incestuous which serve to drive home the point that despite her surface level appearance as your standard pure damsel in distress, that's really not what she is. Every character is like this really, Verdelet constantly accosts Caim for his bloodshed yet he is the one that drives him to action most often and routinely benefits from it. Inuart seems like the standard best friend character but gets consumed by jealousy and a pursuit of power to protect his lover, almost acting like the protagonist of a story that's not his. The greatest thing about the complexities of these characters is that it's never too particularly in your face about it either. I absolutely love how this game urges you to dig deeper into its themes. Other than the deconstructive elements of the plot, I feel like Drakengard is a story about hatred, revenge, the things we lose, the importance of love and what a lack of love can do, and the inherent faults of humans. In endings A B and C, Caim loses those closest to him due to his endless conquest of bloodshed. He ends with less things than he started. Ending A he not only loses Furiae and Inuart, but Angelus as well. Ending B he loses not just the three mentioned but the world is doomed and it seems like whatever battle that comes next won't be one Caim survives. Ending B in particular really brings things full circle for Furiae to me as well. After an entire game where she gets minimal screen time or development, the world is filled with grotesque clones of her that doom the world. She no longer has any love for Inuart or even Caim, after Inuart obsesses over protecting her. In Ending C Caim is forced to kill Angelus with his own two hands, the final price of his senseless killing is killing one who he holds the most dear. In each of these first three endings Caim is explicitly punished for his bloodshed. None of these endings are happy, and when I was playing I thought that surely endings B and C would be happier endings than ending A. However, Drakengard does not feel compelled to do this and each ending gets even more bleak than the last. You could take this as the game just being edgy, but I think to do so would be to blindly deny the game of its narrative qualities. Ending D sees the world caught in a permanently frozen state, but not before Caim dies in the end. It's so bleak and just so ethereal. Ending E is the most out of left field one. Caim and Angelus end up in fucking Shinjuku where they play a rhythm game to beat the final boss before being shot down by two missles from the Japanese defense force. The atmosphere is just so chilling and the imagery of Angelus being impaled on top of Tokyo Tower is one of the coolest things ever. The point I'm really trying to make here though is that every ending ends in varying degrees of misfortune for Caim as a result of his blind rage. Even in D and E where he tries to save the world and do a good deed he is punished with death. In attempting to save the world he also dooms it. Another core theme I find with this game is love. You see this a lot with Manah, who is seemingly manipulated by The Watchers/The Gods into thinking she is loved by them, as she received no love from her own mother and was abused by her. This sends her on a path to creating the apocalyptic scenarios that appear in basically every ending. In the end of ending A, she begs for death from Caim yet neither of them think she deserves such a release. She ends with no one left to give her love, not even The Gods. Inuart constantly tries to look for love from Furiae, completely misunderstanding her at every turn, eventually blaming Caim for his own infidelity and seeking revenge on him. These two themes come together to show that the world is this way because of the faults of mankind. Caim is only a coldblooded killer because of his parents death during the war and the attempted reconstruction of the world is due to the easily manipulated nature of humans especially those that are young and not cared for. In the more abstract, things are this way because of the genre that this story is. There is war, there is untold amounts of bloodshed because this is a fantasy RPG. Caim kills because he needs to level up and continue with the story. Which brings me to the gameplay.
The way people talk about the combat of this game makes it seem like the biggest piece of dogshit ever crafted, but really it's not that bad. The systems present in this game are fine enough and far from what I would call bad. However, the combat in Drakengard IS monotonous, but I think this serves a thematic purpose. You’re not meant to enjoy all the senseless killing, and as I said earlier Caim is punished for the indiscriminate bloodshed. However, this is a video game and you must do what the game says to keep going. You must kill even when you don't want to, to continue the game. It's a commentary on the genre in the sense that in RPGs and most video games in general you are rewarded for bloodshed. You are rewarded for killing senselessly and are never called out on it simply because it's a video game. Drakengard breaks this mold and goes as far to try and make the killing itself unenjoyable. I think it’s a really cool aspect of the game that gets overlooked by some because they simply write the combat off as bad and don't interact with it in a ludonarrative sense. The flying missions are awesome though I cant lie. They do also get a bit grueling at times so the ludonarrative cohesion remains intact but they’re definitely more fun than the ground missions.
The last thing I really want to talk about is the music in this game. Drakengard has the most interesting soundtracks in any game I've ever played. It has the sound of what you would expect from a high fantasy game, except it doesn't. Every song in the game uses samples from famous composers in really interesting ways. From Mozart to Tchaikovsky to Holst, you're bound to recognize some of these composers when you see them in the credits but it's doubtful that you'll actually recognize the songs as they appear in game. The game will often loop the same very short sample over and over to create songs that sound traditionally orchestrated but still have a distinct electronic feel to them. I’ve never heard anything like it— I wouldn't necessarily say that the songs are good in a traditional sense but as far as experimental music goes it's really unique and fun to listen to. The best of these songs is the ending B credits theme, “Growing Wings”. Give it a listen if you'd like to see an example of what I'm talking about.
I think that's about all I have to say about the game at this time. This is a serious contender for one of my favorite games of all time and I implore you to play it if you haven't. This probably isn't the case if you read this spoiler tagged review but the point still stands. This game is a masterpiece
The game is a deconstruction of RPG and general fantasy tropes in such a brilliant way, at first seeming to give into them. However, as you go on and dig under the surface of these characters and realize their complexities you start to understand and appreciate Drakengard that much more. Caim at first looks the part of your standard pure of heart RPG protagonist, even going mute at the very beginning of the game to mimic this. However, you very quickly realize that Caim is an absolutely bloodthirsty maniac. He is purely fueled by blind rage and bloodlust, yet will still protect his sister because he knows he's supposed to care for her. The game calls you out on this constantly but you must continue the bloodshed in order to press on with the game…
His sister Furiae seems to be your standard pure and innocent “damsel in distress” character, but this presentation of her character early on is almost like a red herring of sorts. Her lack of development is a critique of that archetype in and of itself. She purposefully keeps the less savory parts of her locked away, and it's not until the end that it's revealed more. Her feelings for Caim are just subtly incestuous which serve to drive home the point that despite her surface level appearance as your standard pure damsel in distress, that's really not what she is. Every character is like this really, Verdelet constantly accosts Caim for his bloodshed yet he is the one that drives him to action most often and routinely benefits from it. Inuart seems like the standard best friend character but gets consumed by jealousy and a pursuit of power to protect his lover, almost acting like the protagonist of a story that's not his. The greatest thing about the complexities of these characters is that it's never too particularly in your face about it either. I absolutely love how this game urges you to dig deeper into its themes. Other than the deconstructive elements of the plot, I feel like Drakengard is a story about hatred, revenge, the things we lose, the importance of love and what a lack of love can do, and the inherent faults of humans. In endings A B and C, Caim loses those closest to him due to his endless conquest of bloodshed. He ends with less things than he started. Ending A he not only loses Furiae and Inuart, but Angelus as well. Ending B he loses not just the three mentioned but the world is doomed and it seems like whatever battle that comes next won't be one Caim survives. Ending B in particular really brings things full circle for Furiae to me as well. After an entire game where she gets minimal screen time or development, the world is filled with grotesque clones of her that doom the world. She no longer has any love for Inuart or even Caim, after Inuart obsesses over protecting her. In Ending C Caim is forced to kill Angelus with his own two hands, the final price of his senseless killing is killing one who he holds the most dear. In each of these first three endings Caim is explicitly punished for his bloodshed. None of these endings are happy, and when I was playing I thought that surely endings B and C would be happier endings than ending A. However, Drakengard does not feel compelled to do this and each ending gets even more bleak than the last. You could take this as the game just being edgy, but I think to do so would be to blindly deny the game of its narrative qualities. Ending D sees the world caught in a permanently frozen state, but not before Caim dies in the end. It's so bleak and just so ethereal. Ending E is the most out of left field one. Caim and Angelus end up in fucking Shinjuku where they play a rhythm game to beat the final boss before being shot down by two missles from the Japanese defense force. The atmosphere is just so chilling and the imagery of Angelus being impaled on top of Tokyo Tower is one of the coolest things ever. The point I'm really trying to make here though is that every ending ends in varying degrees of misfortune for Caim as a result of his blind rage. Even in D and E where he tries to save the world and do a good deed he is punished with death. In attempting to save the world he also dooms it. Another core theme I find with this game is love. You see this a lot with Manah, who is seemingly manipulated by The Watchers/The Gods into thinking she is loved by them, as she received no love from her own mother and was abused by her. This sends her on a path to creating the apocalyptic scenarios that appear in basically every ending. In the end of ending A, she begs for death from Caim yet neither of them think she deserves such a release. She ends with no one left to give her love, not even The Gods. Inuart constantly tries to look for love from Furiae, completely misunderstanding her at every turn, eventually blaming Caim for his own infidelity and seeking revenge on him. These two themes come together to show that the world is this way because of the faults of mankind. Caim is only a coldblooded killer because of his parents death during the war and the attempted reconstruction of the world is due to the easily manipulated nature of humans especially those that are young and not cared for. In the more abstract, things are this way because of the genre that this story is. There is war, there is untold amounts of bloodshed because this is a fantasy RPG. Caim kills because he needs to level up and continue with the story. Which brings me to the gameplay.
The way people talk about the combat of this game makes it seem like the biggest piece of dogshit ever crafted, but really it's not that bad. The systems present in this game are fine enough and far from what I would call bad. However, the combat in Drakengard IS monotonous, but I think this serves a thematic purpose. You’re not meant to enjoy all the senseless killing, and as I said earlier Caim is punished for the indiscriminate bloodshed. However, this is a video game and you must do what the game says to keep going. You must kill even when you don't want to, to continue the game. It's a commentary on the genre in the sense that in RPGs and most video games in general you are rewarded for bloodshed. You are rewarded for killing senselessly and are never called out on it simply because it's a video game. Drakengard breaks this mold and goes as far to try and make the killing itself unenjoyable. I think it’s a really cool aspect of the game that gets overlooked by some because they simply write the combat off as bad and don't interact with it in a ludonarrative sense. The flying missions are awesome though I cant lie. They do also get a bit grueling at times so the ludonarrative cohesion remains intact but they’re definitely more fun than the ground missions.
The last thing I really want to talk about is the music in this game. Drakengard has the most interesting soundtracks in any game I've ever played. It has the sound of what you would expect from a high fantasy game, except it doesn't. Every song in the game uses samples from famous composers in really interesting ways. From Mozart to Tchaikovsky to Holst, you're bound to recognize some of these composers when you see them in the credits but it's doubtful that you'll actually recognize the songs as they appear in game. The game will often loop the same very short sample over and over to create songs that sound traditionally orchestrated but still have a distinct electronic feel to them. I’ve never heard anything like it— I wouldn't necessarily say that the songs are good in a traditional sense but as far as experimental music goes it's really unique and fun to listen to. The best of these songs is the ending B credits theme, “Growing Wings”. Give it a listen if you'd like to see an example of what I'm talking about.
I think that's about all I have to say about the game at this time. This is a serious contender for one of my favorite games of all time and I implore you to play it if you haven't. This probably isn't the case if you read this spoiler tagged review but the point still stands. This game is a masterpiece
2015
A great prequel entry held back by an intensely grueling leveling system and some questionable writing choices with one of the villains. Wonderful music and satisfying combat-- tied together with a story that really understands the essence of Yakuza despite some of its faults. A great entry into the series, but i would still recommend the first game on ps2 as a starting point over this one.
Too many of my tears were shed due to this game... A somewhat misunderstood entry of the franchise in my eyes. The combat is extremely clunky and the leveling system is made by an insane person but It's also some of the most fun I've had in the entire series. Wrapped together with a beautiful but bittersweet story, Yakuza 6 is amazing.
2019
it’s insane how each entry in this series just keeps getting better and better. this game tells an utterly massive story, with so many different plot threads that all somehow come together perfectly to create my favorite ending so far. Yakuza 5 is a story about what it means to pursue a dream, what it means to pass on that dream, and what it means not to give up. presented absolutely beautifully, somehow we’ve reached new heights in a series that already soars to those of the highest sky scrapers. I couldn’t begin to organize all of my thoughts on this game— it’s one of the biggest i’ve played in my life. It’s worth every second of it though, there really isn’t a truly bad moment here. the best iteration of the combat so far in the series, and as mentioned, an absolutely wonderful story. I have no further notes… it was kino
For the sake of how much I give a shit about this review, this is specifically a review of Megami Tensei II. Megami Tensei is alright too I guess if you’re that curious about how I might feel about it but i don’t have much to say about it beyond that really. Onto the actual review:
Megami Tensei II is often referred to as “SMT 0”, and honestly, there couldn’t be a more apt description of this game. A lot of the things that would go on to be series staples got their start in this game, and it’s pretty cool to see if you’ve played a bunch of other megaten games before this. The post-apocalyptic setting and rich atmosphere found in this game is one for the history books, and although games directly after it vastly improved on the idea that this game had for its setting, what's here is still something worth appreciating. It's also worth mentioning that it was literally the first to ever do something like this. Most RPGs on the system didn’t have contemporary settings like this, and those that did like Mother didn’t exactly have the whole post apocalyptic nuclear fallout vibe that this one did. While the actual plot itself is a little bit dry, it would be silly to expect too much more out of a nearly 1:1 snes remake of an nes game. What’s presented still remains enjoyable, especially towards the end, so I can’t really complain. While many RPGs will have the main characters fight some sort of god-like entity, few will go as far as having the player face off against the God, even to this day. It’s a really decent, if a little bit minimalist, post-apocalyptic sci-fi story.
In terms of gameplay, the game is pretty solid. it’s your standard first person classic Megami Tensei game, and it’s a huge step up from the first Megami Tensei. While the first Megami Tensei was confined to a tower with a series of dungeons one after the other, Megami Tensei II spans across all of Tokyo, and even the demon realm, Makai. Exploring Tokyo, Makai, and the dungeons in them is really pleasant, and the dungeon crawling is just as smooth as you would expect from other Megaten games of the era. One definite criticism I have, however, is how bland some of these dungeons are. While they are pretty generally enjoyable, they never really ramp up in difficulty or get interesting. There are almost no dungeon gimmicks, save for a few pitfalls that are barely present and a dark room here or there. There’s only one warp maze in the whole game, and it’s at the very end, and it only lasts about 10 minutes. I know a lot of people feel that pitfalls, trapdoors, and warp mazes are nothing but a headache, but without them you just get a game filled with dungeons that are all point A to point B simulators. Even the first Megami Tensei had more going on with its dungeons, and while I wouldn’t say said gimmicks are fun, they at least spice up the dungeons a bit and make it a bit more interesting. I still had fun with the dungeons in Megami Tensei II, but by the end they started to feel more like a chore than anything else. It doesn’t help that this game blasts you right up the ass with encounters almost every step. I can be pretty tolerant when it comes to high encounter rates in RPGs but even I can only take about 10 minutes of demons trying to massage my asshole every step before I start fucking tweaking. Not every area of the game is so bad to the point where it’s actually every step, but a fair bit of them really are that bad, especially in some of the final dungeons. The combat itself is more or less the same as the last game, as is the demon fusion. It's a simple system, but an effective one, and I had a decent amount of fun with it.
The last thing I can talk about is the music. I’m aware that the original Famicom version has the superior sound quality, but the ost as heard in Kyuuyaku still sounds really good. It’s some really good stuff, especially the normal battle and boss themes. The dungeon themes never really got too stale for me, which is something I can't say for the arcade street theme in SMT I, as much as I like that game. As mentioned before, the Famicom ost is definitely better, but don’t let that make you think the version of it in Kyuuyaku is bad by any means. You can go play the original, but know that it means you’ll be playing the whole game without an automapper or anything.
That’s about all I have to say about Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei II. If you’re a fan of other Megami Tensei games of this era and haven’t played MTII in any capacity, I definitely recommend checking this game out. Even if you don’t have it in you to finish it, it’s worth at least messing around with for a little bit. It makes me appreciate what both SMT I and II did a little bit more, and in a way those games are just a much more fleshed out retelling of this one. Though I have my gripes with it, this is a really short and sweet entry into the franchise that I had a decent amount of fun with.
Megami Tensei II is often referred to as “SMT 0”, and honestly, there couldn’t be a more apt description of this game. A lot of the things that would go on to be series staples got their start in this game, and it’s pretty cool to see if you’ve played a bunch of other megaten games before this. The post-apocalyptic setting and rich atmosphere found in this game is one for the history books, and although games directly after it vastly improved on the idea that this game had for its setting, what's here is still something worth appreciating. It's also worth mentioning that it was literally the first to ever do something like this. Most RPGs on the system didn’t have contemporary settings like this, and those that did like Mother didn’t exactly have the whole post apocalyptic nuclear fallout vibe that this one did. While the actual plot itself is a little bit dry, it would be silly to expect too much more out of a nearly 1:1 snes remake of an nes game. What’s presented still remains enjoyable, especially towards the end, so I can’t really complain. While many RPGs will have the main characters fight some sort of god-like entity, few will go as far as having the player face off against the God, even to this day. It’s a really decent, if a little bit minimalist, post-apocalyptic sci-fi story.
In terms of gameplay, the game is pretty solid. it’s your standard first person classic Megami Tensei game, and it’s a huge step up from the first Megami Tensei. While the first Megami Tensei was confined to a tower with a series of dungeons one after the other, Megami Tensei II spans across all of Tokyo, and even the demon realm, Makai. Exploring Tokyo, Makai, and the dungeons in them is really pleasant, and the dungeon crawling is just as smooth as you would expect from other Megaten games of the era. One definite criticism I have, however, is how bland some of these dungeons are. While they are pretty generally enjoyable, they never really ramp up in difficulty or get interesting. There are almost no dungeon gimmicks, save for a few pitfalls that are barely present and a dark room here or there. There’s only one warp maze in the whole game, and it’s at the very end, and it only lasts about 10 minutes. I know a lot of people feel that pitfalls, trapdoors, and warp mazes are nothing but a headache, but without them you just get a game filled with dungeons that are all point A to point B simulators. Even the first Megami Tensei had more going on with its dungeons, and while I wouldn’t say said gimmicks are fun, they at least spice up the dungeons a bit and make it a bit more interesting. I still had fun with the dungeons in Megami Tensei II, but by the end they started to feel more like a chore than anything else. It doesn’t help that this game blasts you right up the ass with encounters almost every step. I can be pretty tolerant when it comes to high encounter rates in RPGs but even I can only take about 10 minutes of demons trying to massage my asshole every step before I start fucking tweaking. Not every area of the game is so bad to the point where it’s actually every step, but a fair bit of them really are that bad, especially in some of the final dungeons. The combat itself is more or less the same as the last game, as is the demon fusion. It's a simple system, but an effective one, and I had a decent amount of fun with it.
The last thing I can talk about is the music. I’m aware that the original Famicom version has the superior sound quality, but the ost as heard in Kyuuyaku still sounds really good. It’s some really good stuff, especially the normal battle and boss themes. The dungeon themes never really got too stale for me, which is something I can't say for the arcade street theme in SMT I, as much as I like that game. As mentioned before, the Famicom ost is definitely better, but don’t let that make you think the version of it in Kyuuyaku is bad by any means. You can go play the original, but know that it means you’ll be playing the whole game without an automapper or anything.
That’s about all I have to say about Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei II. If you’re a fan of other Megami Tensei games of this era and haven’t played MTII in any capacity, I definitely recommend checking this game out. Even if you don’t have it in you to finish it, it’s worth at least messing around with for a little bit. It makes me appreciate what both SMT I and II did a little bit more, and in a way those games are just a much more fleshed out retelling of this one. Though I have my gripes with it, this is a really short and sweet entry into the franchise that I had a decent amount of fun with.
2024
A remake of my favorite game of all time. Not enough stars to express how I feel about this one
2018
This review contains spoilers
I was really excited to start Yakuza 3 when I first bought it. I never took the time to write full reviews on this site for Yakuza 1 and 2, but I had a lot of fun with those games, especially Yakuza 2. Y2 was a near perfect evolution of the prior game in all aspects. A better feeling and more in depth combat system, more areas to explore other than Kamurocho, an even better narrative, and slightly a better soundtrack. To me, Yakuza 2 was an ideal sequel to the first game. I wouldn’t consider myself the world's biggest Yakuza fan, but Y2 was a damn good game. I guess I wasn't expecting the same kind of evolution from Y2 to 3, but unfortunately, Yakuza 3 is a downgrade from Yakuza 2 for me.
The most glaring issue with the game for me is probably the combat, and it’s what causes a majority of my negative feelings on the game. It's been said thousands of times online but the “Blockuza 3” shit is real. Normal enemies aren’t a problem, and the game’s combat really shines there. It feels just as if not even more smooth than Yakuza 2, and once you start getting some upgrades going you get new combo enders and heat actions which really spice up an already great system. The issue with Y3’s combat is not with how it feels, it's really just the boss battles. Full disclosure: I am not a pro Yakuza gamer. However, the boss AI in this game is kind of ridiculous. I’m aware that the issues I'm about to describe are partially the fault of the remastered version from my understanding, but the bosses in Yakuza 3 constantly block. They do not stop. Normally, when enemies were spamming block in the last two games you could pretty reliably grab them and your issue was solved, but it was seldom a problem in the first place, and you could also deal with this in other ways. But in Y3, half the time you even attempt to grab a boss you get a huge chunk of health off for even attempting it, and like i said, these guys just will not fucking stop blocking. Lots of people say you're supposed to just quickstep behind them and get a full combo, but unfortunately in my experience this almost never works. Quickstepping is kind of awkward at times and it almost never travels enough distance to reliably get behind an enemy to hit their back before they can turn around and start blocking again. I’ve been told the short quickstep is a product of the remaster doubling the framerate without adjusting the animation, resulting in a quickstep that goes half the distance. This could be totally wrong (Quade told me tho so it's probably true), but it definitely makes sense if that's the case. So, what are the other options for dealing with the bosses? My favorite and honestly most used option was to build up my heat gauge with items or blocking/spamming attacks on their block, and then picking up the nearest chair and slamming it over the boss's head with a heat action. This would do some pretty decent damage, and if i was lucky i would get an object with one of the heat actions that prompts me to mash Square or something. Those ones would net me a REALLY nice chunk of health, since I’m a self-proclaimed pro masher. But when there was no reliable way to fill up my heat gauge, every boss was more or less a 20-minute slap fight where i would cycle between spamming attacks on block to do chip damage, trying to bait and punish attacks so I could get one or two hits in before they start immediately blocking again, and trying to throw them which i would say worked about 1/10 times i would try it. This would lead me to seriously dread every single time I knew a boss fight was coming up. This really sucks, because the boss fights in Yakuza 2 were all pretty awesome. And I bet the ones in Y3 would have been lots of fun too if they didn't block the entire time. To be clear, I do think that Y3’s combat is in general pretty fun, but these boss fights really drag it down quite a bit. I do like the added arms dealer who sells reusable weapons, but I almost never used it because of the hassle required to go and fix my weapon every single time it broke, since it would only last a fight or two. Neat concept but I’d love to see it expanded upon in future games.
The plot of Yakuza 3 is sort of weird to talk about for me. I had a lot of knee jerk negative reactions to some of it at first but now sitting down trying to articulate everything I feel like I should have been more fair to it. Yakuza 3 has a mostly pretty good-decent narrative but with a few issues. First of all, this game has really weird pacing. I really like how in this game Kiryu is stepping away from the Yakuza life for real. It’s really caused him nothing but trouble, and honestly, I just wanna see this guy happy. I love the decision to have Kiryu start an orphanage in Okinawa. Not only does it provide a change of scenery compared to the bustling cities of the last two games, it just makes you feel good. The opening hours of the game helping out at the orphanage are pretty awesome, and I like that you actually spend a pretty significant portion of the game with the kids, because it really ends up making you care about them too. However, I do think that the pacing in these early sections is a bit slow. Not that it really overstays its welcome, but it just feels like a lot of it takes longer than it needs to. At the very least, Okinawa looks pretty good so it's not a bad place to be looking at for a while. Once you get to Kamurocho though, it feels like the game moves at breakneck pace. Yakuza 3 is already not a very long game, so it feels like you're only really in Kamurocho for a little bit before it's suddenly the end of the game. On the subject of Kamurocho, although this is not related to the plot, I can't help but feel like Kamurocho has lost some of its grandiosity from the last two games. Yakuza 3 is a good looking game, but I wouldn't say it looks better than Y2. The free third-person camera works really well in Okinawa, but it just doesn’t really do Kamurocho any favors. The fixed camera angles in Y1 and Y2 offered a really great sense of scale to the streets of Kamurocho, and I can't put my finger on it, but something about the ambiance of the city feels off compared to the prior games in Yakuza 3. Moving on though, I do really like most of the Kamurocho section of the game. The new characters introduced are all pretty interesting for the most part, and following the mystery of the guy who looks exactly like Kazama might be is really intriguing. It only really falls apart for me in Chapter 9, which is after all of the leads you were following before-hand dried up and it seems like there really isn't anywhere else to go from here. Titled “The Plot '', it certainly doesn't waste time telling you exactly what it sets out to do. It’s just a 30 minute exposition dump chapter that is just kind of ridiculously boring, because it has to figure out where the game is even going to go next, and answer the question of who the guy who looks like Kazama is. There’s only one fight the whole chapter, and then it ends. Wow. Awesome. I think most of my problems with the game's plot stem from this very chapter. The game needed a new villain character, and of the new characters introduced, Kanda already died and Hamazaki had effectively exited the plot, so all that was left was Mine. I don’t think he's as bad as I felt he was directly after finishing the game, but I still think Mine is a relatively weak villain compared to the ones from the past two games. For starters, he just kind of asserts himself into the plot in the last third. Sure he was there before, but he didn't really do much or present himself as a threat or really do anything until he killed Kanda. The game has to spend what little time left trying to develop his character, and while I don't think he's a bad character, he just feels kind of rushed. He’s meant to be a mirror of Kiryu… like how the last two games' main villains were. OK. I just wish they had done something different instead of the same thing as the last two times, because it just sets Mine up to be directly compared to the last two, which really doesn’t do him any favors. The final fight with Nishiki worked so well because it was built up the whole game, and Nishiki was partially great because of his personal connection to Kiryu, with the two of them essentially being brothers.Nishiki isn’t especially complex or anything but he was interesting pretty much from the get go because we also got a glimpse of his relationship with Kiryu prior to when he shot Dojima. Along with this, the parallels between him and Kiryu were also shown the symbolic nature of their back tattoos. Sure, he could have been more developed, but Nishiki really worked for what Yakuza 1 was. Ryuji was great because he pretty much embodied everything great about a rival character in video games. He was threatening, but most important of all he was really fucking cool. Every scene with him in it, he commands such a uniquely threatening presence which makes him a convincing villain almost immediately. Once again, the back tattoos have great significance to his character and his relationship with Kiryu. While Kiryu and Nishiki tattoos more-so told a story of an inevitable duel between fated rivals, Ryuji and Kiryus were direct parallels– both of them being dragons. Furthermore, both Ryuji and Kiryu had the same nickname, “The Dragon of Dojima” and “The Dragon of Kansai.” I don’t need to talk about how great Ryuji is that much, but it's pretty easy to see how the face off between him and Kiryu was so good. While we’re on the subject of tattoos, the way tattoos are done in Yakuza 3 bothers me a little bit. They were really meaningful in Y1 and 2, and usually shirtless fights were reserved for ultimate clashes of ideals, so pretty much only in the final battle. In Yakuza 3, everyone is constantly pulling off their shirts and showing their tattoos. It really cheapens the whole tattoo thing in the first place for me. If everyone is just going to pull their shirts every time they get into a minor street brawl then why does this shit even matter anymore? And despite how much everyone wants to pull their shirt off, there is no emphasized symbolism between Kiryu and Mine’s tattoos. There totally could be, but I don't know shit about Japanese art and shit like that, so that's kind of my bad i’ll admit. But anyways, In comparison to the last villains, Mine doesn’t really have the same kind of immediate appeal as a character meant to mirror Kiryu. Sure, they were both orphans, and Mine is obviously just kind of supposed to be a version of Kiryu who had a really warped worldview and grew into a much worse man than him, but he just really doesn’t have enough time to develop for me to find him convincing. The most jarring thing is in the last mission when Haruka comes to Kamurocho with Kiryu and they start talking about how Kiryu “knows that this is the end for him”. And it's like… I've only seen this dude like two or three times at this point in the plot and nothing he’s done has made him seem like a genuine threat to Kiryu's life. He fucked up Kanda pretty bad and had his goons behead him, but Kiryu also completely fucking dogged on that jobber beforehand. It just feels kind of weird for them to suddenly spring on that Kiryu thinks this might be his last battle, because pretty much none of the game has been building to that kind of moment. Before I talk about the very end of the game though, I do want to say I do like most of this last stretch. I really like the scene of Rikiya's death, and especially the performance that Takaya Kuroda gives in this scene. Dude sounds like he's legitimately bawling his eyes out in the recording booth, it's just a great scene. I haven’t talked about Rikiya the whole review, because honestly I don't really have much to say about him. He’s not a bad character, I just don’t really care. Other than that, the scene of the orphanage getting destroyed is great, and is probably one of the only things that makes Mine at least a little bit convincing as a villain. Moving on to the final confrontation, after you fight through Mine’s goons, you have to fight CIA agents who are really part of the U.S crime syndicate Black Monday. I didn’t mention Black Monday before because they really just feel like an afterthought in the plot, especially since you’re introduced to them in that huge exposition dump chapter I mentioned before. I think they’re pretty weak as an antagonistic force but I do really like their ring leader, Andre Richardson. To be honest, I just think it's funny to have this one guy speaking English while everyone else is speaking Japanese. The final showdown itself is just kind of ok, Mine pretty much explains everything I’ve said about him previously and then you square off. I don’t know what happened here, but Mine barely blocks, like at all. You would think this is a good thing but it leaves the whole fight pretty anticlimactic, since all I did in this one was spam square square square triangle triangle and heat actions till he died. I pretty much already said my problems with Mine, so I'll avoid sounding like a broken record. I will say, the relationship he had with Daigo that was briefly hinted at was kinda interesting, but that's the only thing i really have left to say about him. After you beat him he jumps off the roof with Richardson, killing them both. Sad! All that's left is the final cutscene, and to be honest I really hated this scene when I first saw it. I still don't like it, but I just kind of dont care about it now. Hamazaki (I forget his name every time i write about him in this review and i have to go on google to figure it out every time btw) basically just approaches Kiryu on the street and tells him how much he fucked up his life. Kiryu tries the whole “It’s not too late to change your ways” thing he did with Mine and then Hamazaki stabs him, and then credits roll. To me this is just a really cheap shock value ending that contributes almost nothing. I know it's supposed to show that not everyone is willing to change and you have to use your judgment to figure out who's worth believing in but I just don't really like the way this was done. Even if there weren't multiple Yakuza games after this with Kiryu’s face on the cover I wouldn't have believed this death because it's just stupid. It honestly did nothing but leave a bad taste in my mouth.
That’s pretty much all I have to say. I said a lot of negative things about the game in this review but i dont think Yakuza 3 is a bad game. You could do much worse, and overall the game is pretty enjoyable. It just has a lot of glaring flaws to me and is a pretty clear downgrade from the last two entries in the series. I haven't gotten to the rest of the series yet but I definitely don't think you should go out of your way to skip this one, there's definitely some good stuff here still if you liked the last two games. Maybe play the original ps3 version if that version doesn't have the quickstep issue, or play on pc if you can so you can use mods to fix it. Also i didn't know where to put this but the karaoke minigame is awesome
The most glaring issue with the game for me is probably the combat, and it’s what causes a majority of my negative feelings on the game. It's been said thousands of times online but the “Blockuza 3” shit is real. Normal enemies aren’t a problem, and the game’s combat really shines there. It feels just as if not even more smooth than Yakuza 2, and once you start getting some upgrades going you get new combo enders and heat actions which really spice up an already great system. The issue with Y3’s combat is not with how it feels, it's really just the boss battles. Full disclosure: I am not a pro Yakuza gamer. However, the boss AI in this game is kind of ridiculous. I’m aware that the issues I'm about to describe are partially the fault of the remastered version from my understanding, but the bosses in Yakuza 3 constantly block. They do not stop. Normally, when enemies were spamming block in the last two games you could pretty reliably grab them and your issue was solved, but it was seldom a problem in the first place, and you could also deal with this in other ways. But in Y3, half the time you even attempt to grab a boss you get a huge chunk of health off for even attempting it, and like i said, these guys just will not fucking stop blocking. Lots of people say you're supposed to just quickstep behind them and get a full combo, but unfortunately in my experience this almost never works. Quickstepping is kind of awkward at times and it almost never travels enough distance to reliably get behind an enemy to hit their back before they can turn around and start blocking again. I’ve been told the short quickstep is a product of the remaster doubling the framerate without adjusting the animation, resulting in a quickstep that goes half the distance. This could be totally wrong (Quade told me tho so it's probably true), but it definitely makes sense if that's the case. So, what are the other options for dealing with the bosses? My favorite and honestly most used option was to build up my heat gauge with items or blocking/spamming attacks on their block, and then picking up the nearest chair and slamming it over the boss's head with a heat action. This would do some pretty decent damage, and if i was lucky i would get an object with one of the heat actions that prompts me to mash Square or something. Those ones would net me a REALLY nice chunk of health, since I’m a self-proclaimed pro masher. But when there was no reliable way to fill up my heat gauge, every boss was more or less a 20-minute slap fight where i would cycle between spamming attacks on block to do chip damage, trying to bait and punish attacks so I could get one or two hits in before they start immediately blocking again, and trying to throw them which i would say worked about 1/10 times i would try it. This would lead me to seriously dread every single time I knew a boss fight was coming up. This really sucks, because the boss fights in Yakuza 2 were all pretty awesome. And I bet the ones in Y3 would have been lots of fun too if they didn't block the entire time. To be clear, I do think that Y3’s combat is in general pretty fun, but these boss fights really drag it down quite a bit. I do like the added arms dealer who sells reusable weapons, but I almost never used it because of the hassle required to go and fix my weapon every single time it broke, since it would only last a fight or two. Neat concept but I’d love to see it expanded upon in future games.
The plot of Yakuza 3 is sort of weird to talk about for me. I had a lot of knee jerk negative reactions to some of it at first but now sitting down trying to articulate everything I feel like I should have been more fair to it. Yakuza 3 has a mostly pretty good-decent narrative but with a few issues. First of all, this game has really weird pacing. I really like how in this game Kiryu is stepping away from the Yakuza life for real. It’s really caused him nothing but trouble, and honestly, I just wanna see this guy happy. I love the decision to have Kiryu start an orphanage in Okinawa. Not only does it provide a change of scenery compared to the bustling cities of the last two games, it just makes you feel good. The opening hours of the game helping out at the orphanage are pretty awesome, and I like that you actually spend a pretty significant portion of the game with the kids, because it really ends up making you care about them too. However, I do think that the pacing in these early sections is a bit slow. Not that it really overstays its welcome, but it just feels like a lot of it takes longer than it needs to. At the very least, Okinawa looks pretty good so it's not a bad place to be looking at for a while. Once you get to Kamurocho though, it feels like the game moves at breakneck pace. Yakuza 3 is already not a very long game, so it feels like you're only really in Kamurocho for a little bit before it's suddenly the end of the game. On the subject of Kamurocho, although this is not related to the plot, I can't help but feel like Kamurocho has lost some of its grandiosity from the last two games. Yakuza 3 is a good looking game, but I wouldn't say it looks better than Y2. The free third-person camera works really well in Okinawa, but it just doesn’t really do Kamurocho any favors. The fixed camera angles in Y1 and Y2 offered a really great sense of scale to the streets of Kamurocho, and I can't put my finger on it, but something about the ambiance of the city feels off compared to the prior games in Yakuza 3. Moving on though, I do really like most of the Kamurocho section of the game. The new characters introduced are all pretty interesting for the most part, and following the mystery of the guy who looks exactly like Kazama might be is really intriguing. It only really falls apart for me in Chapter 9, which is after all of the leads you were following before-hand dried up and it seems like there really isn't anywhere else to go from here. Titled “The Plot '', it certainly doesn't waste time telling you exactly what it sets out to do. It’s just a 30 minute exposition dump chapter that is just kind of ridiculously boring, because it has to figure out where the game is even going to go next, and answer the question of who the guy who looks like Kazama is. There’s only one fight the whole chapter, and then it ends. Wow. Awesome. I think most of my problems with the game's plot stem from this very chapter. The game needed a new villain character, and of the new characters introduced, Kanda already died and Hamazaki had effectively exited the plot, so all that was left was Mine. I don’t think he's as bad as I felt he was directly after finishing the game, but I still think Mine is a relatively weak villain compared to the ones from the past two games. For starters, he just kind of asserts himself into the plot in the last third. Sure he was there before, but he didn't really do much or present himself as a threat or really do anything until he killed Kanda. The game has to spend what little time left trying to develop his character, and while I don't think he's a bad character, he just feels kind of rushed. He’s meant to be a mirror of Kiryu… like how the last two games' main villains were. OK. I just wish they had done something different instead of the same thing as the last two times, because it just sets Mine up to be directly compared to the last two, which really doesn’t do him any favors. The final fight with Nishiki worked so well because it was built up the whole game, and Nishiki was partially great because of his personal connection to Kiryu, with the two of them essentially being brothers.Nishiki isn’t especially complex or anything but he was interesting pretty much from the get go because we also got a glimpse of his relationship with Kiryu prior to when he shot Dojima. Along with this, the parallels between him and Kiryu were also shown the symbolic nature of their back tattoos. Sure, he could have been more developed, but Nishiki really worked for what Yakuza 1 was. Ryuji was great because he pretty much embodied everything great about a rival character in video games. He was threatening, but most important of all he was really fucking cool. Every scene with him in it, he commands such a uniquely threatening presence which makes him a convincing villain almost immediately. Once again, the back tattoos have great significance to his character and his relationship with Kiryu. While Kiryu and Nishiki tattoos more-so told a story of an inevitable duel between fated rivals, Ryuji and Kiryus were direct parallels– both of them being dragons. Furthermore, both Ryuji and Kiryu had the same nickname, “The Dragon of Dojima” and “The Dragon of Kansai.” I don’t need to talk about how great Ryuji is that much, but it's pretty easy to see how the face off between him and Kiryu was so good. While we’re on the subject of tattoos, the way tattoos are done in Yakuza 3 bothers me a little bit. They were really meaningful in Y1 and 2, and usually shirtless fights were reserved for ultimate clashes of ideals, so pretty much only in the final battle. In Yakuza 3, everyone is constantly pulling off their shirts and showing their tattoos. It really cheapens the whole tattoo thing in the first place for me. If everyone is just going to pull their shirts every time they get into a minor street brawl then why does this shit even matter anymore? And despite how much everyone wants to pull their shirt off, there is no emphasized symbolism between Kiryu and Mine’s tattoos. There totally could be, but I don't know shit about Japanese art and shit like that, so that's kind of my bad i’ll admit. But anyways, In comparison to the last villains, Mine doesn’t really have the same kind of immediate appeal as a character meant to mirror Kiryu. Sure, they were both orphans, and Mine is obviously just kind of supposed to be a version of Kiryu who had a really warped worldview and grew into a much worse man than him, but he just really doesn’t have enough time to develop for me to find him convincing. The most jarring thing is in the last mission when Haruka comes to Kamurocho with Kiryu and they start talking about how Kiryu “knows that this is the end for him”. And it's like… I've only seen this dude like two or three times at this point in the plot and nothing he’s done has made him seem like a genuine threat to Kiryu's life. He fucked up Kanda pretty bad and had his goons behead him, but Kiryu also completely fucking dogged on that jobber beforehand. It just feels kind of weird for them to suddenly spring on that Kiryu thinks this might be his last battle, because pretty much none of the game has been building to that kind of moment. Before I talk about the very end of the game though, I do want to say I do like most of this last stretch. I really like the scene of Rikiya's death, and especially the performance that Takaya Kuroda gives in this scene. Dude sounds like he's legitimately bawling his eyes out in the recording booth, it's just a great scene. I haven’t talked about Rikiya the whole review, because honestly I don't really have much to say about him. He’s not a bad character, I just don’t really care. Other than that, the scene of the orphanage getting destroyed is great, and is probably one of the only things that makes Mine at least a little bit convincing as a villain. Moving on to the final confrontation, after you fight through Mine’s goons, you have to fight CIA agents who are really part of the U.S crime syndicate Black Monday. I didn’t mention Black Monday before because they really just feel like an afterthought in the plot, especially since you’re introduced to them in that huge exposition dump chapter I mentioned before. I think they’re pretty weak as an antagonistic force but I do really like their ring leader, Andre Richardson. To be honest, I just think it's funny to have this one guy speaking English while everyone else is speaking Japanese. The final showdown itself is just kind of ok, Mine pretty much explains everything I’ve said about him previously and then you square off. I don’t know what happened here, but Mine barely blocks, like at all. You would think this is a good thing but it leaves the whole fight pretty anticlimactic, since all I did in this one was spam square square square triangle triangle and heat actions till he died. I pretty much already said my problems with Mine, so I'll avoid sounding like a broken record. I will say, the relationship he had with Daigo that was briefly hinted at was kinda interesting, but that's the only thing i really have left to say about him. After you beat him he jumps off the roof with Richardson, killing them both. Sad! All that's left is the final cutscene, and to be honest I really hated this scene when I first saw it. I still don't like it, but I just kind of dont care about it now. Hamazaki (I forget his name every time i write about him in this review and i have to go on google to figure it out every time btw) basically just approaches Kiryu on the street and tells him how much he fucked up his life. Kiryu tries the whole “It’s not too late to change your ways” thing he did with Mine and then Hamazaki stabs him, and then credits roll. To me this is just a really cheap shock value ending that contributes almost nothing. I know it's supposed to show that not everyone is willing to change and you have to use your judgment to figure out who's worth believing in but I just don't really like the way this was done. Even if there weren't multiple Yakuza games after this with Kiryu’s face on the cover I wouldn't have believed this death because it's just stupid. It honestly did nothing but leave a bad taste in my mouth.
That’s pretty much all I have to say. I said a lot of negative things about the game in this review but i dont think Yakuza 3 is a bad game. You could do much worse, and overall the game is pretty enjoyable. It just has a lot of glaring flaws to me and is a pretty clear downgrade from the last two entries in the series. I haven't gotten to the rest of the series yet but I definitely don't think you should go out of your way to skip this one, there's definitely some good stuff here still if you liked the last two games. Maybe play the original ps3 version if that version doesn't have the quickstep issue, or play on pc if you can so you can use mods to fix it. Also i didn't know where to put this but the karaoke minigame is awesome
freaky friday but you cant understand what anyone is saying while the coolest music youve ever heard plays. makes you feel like the coolest bad ass detective guy in the world while in real life youre just some pretentious hipster white girl who gives games released in languages you cant understand a 10/10. play this one it fucking rocks
Serial Experiments Lain has always been one of those pieces of media that's trapped in this weird limbo of simultaneously being niche but also not niche due to its recognition in certain circles. The Lain anime has taken off significantly in recent years, whether it be due to Lain replanting herself in a lot of memes and what not or general social media influence. Point is, at this point, lots of people have watched Serial Experiments Lain. But significantly less people have played Serial Experiments Lain for the Playstation; let alone even know what it is. Even just looking at this website, there are only 75 reviews of this game on here. Not that backloggd is the be all end all of how well known a game is, but it's still somewhat worth mentioning.
PSX Lain was actually my very first exposure to the series. I remember sitting in my room scrolling on my computer on a school night when I saw a youtube video titled: “Serial Experiments Lain (PSX) FINAL CUTSCENE” I ended up watching it and was met with a video of a girl with brown hair committing suicide on a rainy day. I don't think I have the right words to describe the way I felt after seeing that. All i knew is that i had to know what the fuck Serial Experiments Lain was. I took it to google and ended up finding out about the anime, which I promptly watched all of within the next two days. I was definitely confused after finishing because there was no graphic suicide like the video i had seen, so eventually i did end up finding out that there was a playstation game of the same name, but i never actually took the plunge and played it myself until recently.
PSX Lain is one of the most interesting works of art I have ever experienced. Lain isn't so much of a game as it is an interactive CD ROM. Getting wrapped up in the story of Lain feels more like sneaking around somewhere you shouldn't be than having a story told to you. It feels like you're accessing the traces of what someone left behind, and unraveling this sort of horrific secret as the subject matter of the game gets darker and darker as it goes on. Many say the game actively discourages a linear style of progression, which is somewhat true, but to a certain extent that only heightens this feeling more. Taking the story linearly is completely possible, however. At times playing PSX Lain feels no different than snooping around someone’s computer files that you’ve hacked into. The gameplay (or lack thereof) is certainly a hard sell at first, but once you start to get into it you feel compelled not to stop.
It’s worth noting that the story present in PSX Lain is completely different from the one present in the anime. They touch on similar themes, but the story told here is a much more personal one. Understanding both Lain and her therapist Touko– as well as the relationship between the two– is crucial to understanding the plot of Serial Experiments Lain. PSX Lain is less confusing than the anime, due to its much less abstract (albeit still extremely non-conventional) approach to storytelling. This game has the most thorough depiction of mental illness in ANYTHING I’ve ever seen. It’s sort of incredible how in depth this game goes with it without letting it take over the whole narrative. Lain touches on mental health in lots of depth, it's even arguably the focal point of the story; but that is not all Lain is about. It delves into technological existentialism and the digital age, the relationships between others; be it romantic, platonic, or parental, and abusive workplace culture. PSX Lain talks about all of these things gracefully with extreme tact while still managing to have them be important to the story.
Playing this game is to truly get to the core of what Serial Experiments Lain is as a series. Lain and Touko aren't just simply characters, by the end of the game they feel like real people that you've known at some point in your life. The Lain anime certainly has similar vibes to the game; but PSX Lain feels like the original vision of what Lain is. I’ve already slightly spoiled this game but I absolutely implore you to take the plunge and experience who Lain is. Definitely be warned about the graphic depictions of violence and suicide as well as the heavy subject matter, and most importantly take your time with this one. You don’t want to rush through this one and take all of it in in a short period of time. If you’re a fan of the anime, playing this game will do nothing but increase your enjoyment of Lain as a series and make you appreciate it that much more. There really isn't anything else out like there quite like Serial Experiments Lain for the Playstation.
PSX Lain was actually my very first exposure to the series. I remember sitting in my room scrolling on my computer on a school night when I saw a youtube video titled: “Serial Experiments Lain (PSX) FINAL CUTSCENE” I ended up watching it and was met with a video of a girl with brown hair committing suicide on a rainy day. I don't think I have the right words to describe the way I felt after seeing that. All i knew is that i had to know what the fuck Serial Experiments Lain was. I took it to google and ended up finding out about the anime, which I promptly watched all of within the next two days. I was definitely confused after finishing because there was no graphic suicide like the video i had seen, so eventually i did end up finding out that there was a playstation game of the same name, but i never actually took the plunge and played it myself until recently.
PSX Lain is one of the most interesting works of art I have ever experienced. Lain isn't so much of a game as it is an interactive CD ROM. Getting wrapped up in the story of Lain feels more like sneaking around somewhere you shouldn't be than having a story told to you. It feels like you're accessing the traces of what someone left behind, and unraveling this sort of horrific secret as the subject matter of the game gets darker and darker as it goes on. Many say the game actively discourages a linear style of progression, which is somewhat true, but to a certain extent that only heightens this feeling more. Taking the story linearly is completely possible, however. At times playing PSX Lain feels no different than snooping around someone’s computer files that you’ve hacked into. The gameplay (or lack thereof) is certainly a hard sell at first, but once you start to get into it you feel compelled not to stop.
It’s worth noting that the story present in PSX Lain is completely different from the one present in the anime. They touch on similar themes, but the story told here is a much more personal one. Understanding both Lain and her therapist Touko– as well as the relationship between the two– is crucial to understanding the plot of Serial Experiments Lain. PSX Lain is less confusing than the anime, due to its much less abstract (albeit still extremely non-conventional) approach to storytelling. This game has the most thorough depiction of mental illness in ANYTHING I’ve ever seen. It’s sort of incredible how in depth this game goes with it without letting it take over the whole narrative. Lain touches on mental health in lots of depth, it's even arguably the focal point of the story; but that is not all Lain is about. It delves into technological existentialism and the digital age, the relationships between others; be it romantic, platonic, or parental, and abusive workplace culture. PSX Lain talks about all of these things gracefully with extreme tact while still managing to have them be important to the story.
Playing this game is to truly get to the core of what Serial Experiments Lain is as a series. Lain and Touko aren't just simply characters, by the end of the game they feel like real people that you've known at some point in your life. The Lain anime certainly has similar vibes to the game; but PSX Lain feels like the original vision of what Lain is. I’ve already slightly spoiled this game but I absolutely implore you to take the plunge and experience who Lain is. Definitely be warned about the graphic depictions of violence and suicide as well as the heavy subject matter, and most importantly take your time with this one. You don’t want to rush through this one and take all of it in in a short period of time. If you’re a fan of the anime, playing this game will do nothing but increase your enjoyment of Lain as a series and make you appreciate it that much more. There really isn't anything else out like there quite like Serial Experiments Lain for the Playstation.
2023
A great step forward for the franchise. Fantastic ARPG combat that feels consistently engaging and deep without being Devil May Cry levels of complex. This game constantly one-ups itself in terms of visual spectacle and feels like the first game on the PS5 that truly feels next-gen. I think the story drops the ball in the second half of the game and ends up not really having much interesting to say when all is said and done, but at least this game has a decent enough story to keep you engaged in whats going on. Most importantly: when playing this game, it felt like Final Fantasy was BACK. FFXVI is exactly what we needed after FFXV. Maybe in the future we'll get an FFXVII with a more fleshed out cast of characters and a better story along with fantastic combat and visuals, but for now this was enough for me.
This review contains spoilers
Metal Gear Solid 3 takes a super different approach on the series compared to what 1 and 2 were. MGS 2 was extremely innovative in its own ways, but gameplay wise, it was extremely similar to 1 in terms of its mechanics. Obviously some of the game's structure is meant to be similar to MGS 1 as part of the plot, but mechanically it's just 1 with more depth and more attention to detail. Guards don't have the intelligence of a mole rat anymore, they can spot you if your foot is poking past a wall, they call for backup, they notice if you downed/killed their comrades and make everyone go on alert, etc. It’s a natural evolution of the stuff that was in 1.
MGS 3 ups the ante a little bit in terms of stealth mechanics. The first thing any first time player will notice is that they took away your soliton radar. When i was playing it thought that this would just be for the beginning couple of hours before they said sike and gave you the real thing, but once the game got into full swing i started to get really confused why they took my radar away. “How do they expect me to sneak around if I can't see anything coming my way?” was my first thought, and I was stuck in that mindset for the first couple hours of playing. I was using the top down camera angle that the original Snake Eater used rather than the third person free roaming camera that Subsistence added, and I was frequently getting annoyed and upset early on in the game. I was trying so hard to play it like the old games that I was limiting myself. Playing MGS 3 like 1 or 2 will get you nowhere, and once you realize this, the real beauty of MGS 3 starts to be clear. The environments are ridiculously detailed, and demand the player pay attention to their surroundings. The camo index is a wonderful mechanic, because it just serves to make the core design of the game more prevalent. Snake has to survive in this place. He has to use everything at his disposal to stay on top. You don’t heal with rations anymore, instead your health automatically regenerates relative to your stamina meter, and Snake has to hunt for his own food to keep that meter up. You have to rely on first person mode a lot more to see where your enemies are, and, overall, you have to be a lot more methodical when it comes to your stealth. Enemy AI sees even more improvements from what was in MGS 2 as well. They’re a lot more aware of your footsteps now and in general give you a harder time. There's also a lot of improvements present in the boss fights. Metal Gear boss fights have always been kinda zany, and MGS3 keeps that tradition up, but I feel that their design philosophy fits the series a whole lot more now. A lot of them actually require you to use stealth now. Most of the time, you can get the leg up on a boss if you stay hidden. Even in a boss fight like The Fear where stealth isn't an option, you still have to use your knowledge of the new mechanics to your advantage if you want a chance at winning. Of course there are outliers, Volgin’s first fight feels kind of like an MGS 2 boss, and the fight against the Shagohod is pretty clearly just for spectacle (which isn't a bad thing). This design philosophy is best realized in the final fight, though. As far as final bosses go, MGS has had it pretty good. Metal Gear Rex was climactic and interesting enough for a conclusion to MGS 1, and Solidus was cool in MGS 2 because you got to use the sword. However, despite both of these fights being cool, they don’t fit the gameplay of the rest of the game particularly well. That doesnt mean they’re bad, (same for the rest of the bosses in MGS 1 and 2) but they don't even come close to a final fight like the one vs. The Boss. The Boss has it all. A beautiful battle arena, emotional weight and buildup, and a decent challenge. The fight against The Boss perfectly encapsulates the design philosophy of MGS 3, and it's easily one of the best final bosses in gaming. Even if the fight wasn't a perfect blend of stealth and close quarters combat, it would be up there for the build up alone. I'll say more on that when I talk about the story, though. The only significant complaint I have about this game is that it really does not run well. I played this on my ps2, and there's A LOT of frame rate issues. Anytime there's a lot of shit on screen I feel like I can hear my ps2 begging me to just put it out of its misery. MGS 3 is VERY good looking for a ps2 game, but it definitely doesn’t come without a price. Fights like The Pain and The Fury are particularly bad. It’s not quite a powerpoint slide show, but it's pretty bad at times. I also can't help but feel like MGS 3 is most likely best experienced in HD. The game looks great, but when the stealth so heavily relies on seeing decently far ahead of you and paying attention to your surroundings, the 480p resolution of the ps2 starts to become a real hindrance. I don’t mean to undermine how good MGS 3 looks though, because it looks amazing. There's a lot of beautiful work here, and honestly im almost impressed this shit runs on a ps2 at all. The fight against The Sorrow, looks INSANE for the hardware. I definitely don’t think you'll have a bad time playing the game on hardware, i did it and it was just fine, but if you have a ps3 I think it's best to pick up the HD collection there, or to play the game on an emulator or something.
As far as the story goes, MGS 3 is a lot less “in your face” compared to MGS 2. 3 is still very focused on the story, but you won't find cutscenes that are gonna last 10-20 minutes at a time as often as you did in 2. Not that this was a bad thing in 2 at all, it's just nice that they reeled it back before they got even more insane (or so I hear) in MGS 4. MGS 3 also has less mindfuck “what the fuck am i watching” type shit in it, so its a lot easier to digest. Again, not that that's a bad thing, in fact it's what I love so much about the ending hours of 2, but 3 just tells a much simpler story. There’s less thematic density here, but that's not to say there isn’t any at all. I mean fuck, its Metal Gear. You can’t get out of one of these games without at least a little bit of political/social commentary. MGS 3 tells the origin story of Big Boss, the guy who Snake is a clone of in case you forgot, and It’s really interesting to play as him and have him be the good guy since he was the villain for both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2. One of the best things about MGS 3 that gets set in early on is Snake’s relationship with The Boss. They’re almost like Mother and Son. Snake clearly has a lot of love and adoration for her, just not in a romantic way. I also feel like it's pretty apparent in her death scene where she reveals the snake scar across her chest and says “this is proof that i was once a mother.” It makes her defection to the Soviet Union all the more painful for him, considering he just spent the last 10 years learning everything he could from her. Oh yeah, speaking of the Soviet Union, MGS 3 makes sure you know some world history in case you fell asleep during 10th grade history class or something. I always find stuff like this pretty cool, and it's even cooler that the game starts like 2 weeks or so (I think) after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Anyway, Snake and The Boss’s relationship is built up throughout the entire game, and that final fight is the perfect conclusion to it all. Throughout the whole game you get shown Snake getting his shit kicked in by the Boss in every close quarters fight, and the boss fight itself doesn’t disappoint in this regard. Other than Snake’s relationship with The Boss, Eva is also super interesting. She serves as this game's love interest, but compared to Meryl in the past, she's way more interesting. I'll be honest, I'm still not quite sure what to make of her eventual betrayal, as well as her being one of The Philosophers in the end, but at least the relationship between her and Snake feels earned. A lot of the scenes with her and Snake have their fair share of horny bait, but Eva and Snake have a lot of chemistry. (I seriously devoted extensive thoughts trying to think of some sort of thematic reason as to why you’re allowed to go into first person mode to look at her tits in every single cutscene she's in, and couldn’t think of any other conclusion besides that Kojima was writing this game with this dick in his hand strokin his shit or something IDK. if this is a bad reading of the games narrative then go ahead and make fun of me but i seriously think he was just really fucking horny) The scene at the end where they get about as close to having sex as they can on the ps2 feels rewarding, because its really nice to see these two finally have their happy ending … Or so Snake thinks. Yeah, speaking of Eva’s eventual betrayal, the end of the game is pretty crazy. I’ll spare the exact details, because that's honestly not really what this review is for, but it's super melancholy. At its core. Metal Gear Solid 3 tells a story of how the Government will do nothing but stab those who respect it the most in the back. They destroy at their own convenience, and allow the ones who did the most to protect be remembered as criminals. They will use anyone and anything as a scapegoat, so long as they can cover their own ass. There’s truly nothing like the ending cutscene of MGS 3, and it makes it clear to see why Big Boss ends up going against the U.S Government in games that take place later in the timeline. I have never seen a video game character have as much emotion in their face as Big Boss in that final cutscene, even with all the technological advancements in video games today. MGS 3 really humanizes Big Boss in a way that Metal Gear 1 and 2 couldn't. MGS 3’s story is an absolute masterpiece. I haven’t even mentioned characters who are key to the narrative like Ocelot and Volgin either. I could fluff this up a whole lot more by going into those two if I felt like it, but I feel like I've said enough about the core themes of this game and what makes it so good already. If you’ve read this far into the review and you still haven’t played the game then go and form opinions on the whole thing yourself.
Play Metal Gear Solid 3 if you haven't. It’s a good starting point for the franchise (although i think you should play 1 and 2 first, it's just not the end of the world if you don't.) and a phenomenal game all around. Shout outs to the credits song for being so good too. 10/10
MGS 3 ups the ante a little bit in terms of stealth mechanics. The first thing any first time player will notice is that they took away your soliton radar. When i was playing it thought that this would just be for the beginning couple of hours before they said sike and gave you the real thing, but once the game got into full swing i started to get really confused why they took my radar away. “How do they expect me to sneak around if I can't see anything coming my way?” was my first thought, and I was stuck in that mindset for the first couple hours of playing. I was using the top down camera angle that the original Snake Eater used rather than the third person free roaming camera that Subsistence added, and I was frequently getting annoyed and upset early on in the game. I was trying so hard to play it like the old games that I was limiting myself. Playing MGS 3 like 1 or 2 will get you nowhere, and once you realize this, the real beauty of MGS 3 starts to be clear. The environments are ridiculously detailed, and demand the player pay attention to their surroundings. The camo index is a wonderful mechanic, because it just serves to make the core design of the game more prevalent. Snake has to survive in this place. He has to use everything at his disposal to stay on top. You don’t heal with rations anymore, instead your health automatically regenerates relative to your stamina meter, and Snake has to hunt for his own food to keep that meter up. You have to rely on first person mode a lot more to see where your enemies are, and, overall, you have to be a lot more methodical when it comes to your stealth. Enemy AI sees even more improvements from what was in MGS 2 as well. They’re a lot more aware of your footsteps now and in general give you a harder time. There's also a lot of improvements present in the boss fights. Metal Gear boss fights have always been kinda zany, and MGS3 keeps that tradition up, but I feel that their design philosophy fits the series a whole lot more now. A lot of them actually require you to use stealth now. Most of the time, you can get the leg up on a boss if you stay hidden. Even in a boss fight like The Fear where stealth isn't an option, you still have to use your knowledge of the new mechanics to your advantage if you want a chance at winning. Of course there are outliers, Volgin’s first fight feels kind of like an MGS 2 boss, and the fight against the Shagohod is pretty clearly just for spectacle (which isn't a bad thing). This design philosophy is best realized in the final fight, though. As far as final bosses go, MGS has had it pretty good. Metal Gear Rex was climactic and interesting enough for a conclusion to MGS 1, and Solidus was cool in MGS 2 because you got to use the sword. However, despite both of these fights being cool, they don’t fit the gameplay of the rest of the game particularly well. That doesnt mean they’re bad, (same for the rest of the bosses in MGS 1 and 2) but they don't even come close to a final fight like the one vs. The Boss. The Boss has it all. A beautiful battle arena, emotional weight and buildup, and a decent challenge. The fight against The Boss perfectly encapsulates the design philosophy of MGS 3, and it's easily one of the best final bosses in gaming. Even if the fight wasn't a perfect blend of stealth and close quarters combat, it would be up there for the build up alone. I'll say more on that when I talk about the story, though. The only significant complaint I have about this game is that it really does not run well. I played this on my ps2, and there's A LOT of frame rate issues. Anytime there's a lot of shit on screen I feel like I can hear my ps2 begging me to just put it out of its misery. MGS 3 is VERY good looking for a ps2 game, but it definitely doesn’t come without a price. Fights like The Pain and The Fury are particularly bad. It’s not quite a powerpoint slide show, but it's pretty bad at times. I also can't help but feel like MGS 3 is most likely best experienced in HD. The game looks great, but when the stealth so heavily relies on seeing decently far ahead of you and paying attention to your surroundings, the 480p resolution of the ps2 starts to become a real hindrance. I don’t mean to undermine how good MGS 3 looks though, because it looks amazing. There's a lot of beautiful work here, and honestly im almost impressed this shit runs on a ps2 at all. The fight against The Sorrow, looks INSANE for the hardware. I definitely don’t think you'll have a bad time playing the game on hardware, i did it and it was just fine, but if you have a ps3 I think it's best to pick up the HD collection there, or to play the game on an emulator or something.
As far as the story goes, MGS 3 is a lot less “in your face” compared to MGS 2. 3 is still very focused on the story, but you won't find cutscenes that are gonna last 10-20 minutes at a time as often as you did in 2. Not that this was a bad thing in 2 at all, it's just nice that they reeled it back before they got even more insane (or so I hear) in MGS 4. MGS 3 also has less mindfuck “what the fuck am i watching” type shit in it, so its a lot easier to digest. Again, not that that's a bad thing, in fact it's what I love so much about the ending hours of 2, but 3 just tells a much simpler story. There’s less thematic density here, but that's not to say there isn’t any at all. I mean fuck, its Metal Gear. You can’t get out of one of these games without at least a little bit of political/social commentary. MGS 3 tells the origin story of Big Boss, the guy who Snake is a clone of in case you forgot, and It’s really interesting to play as him and have him be the good guy since he was the villain for both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2. One of the best things about MGS 3 that gets set in early on is Snake’s relationship with The Boss. They’re almost like Mother and Son. Snake clearly has a lot of love and adoration for her, just not in a romantic way. I also feel like it's pretty apparent in her death scene where she reveals the snake scar across her chest and says “this is proof that i was once a mother.” It makes her defection to the Soviet Union all the more painful for him, considering he just spent the last 10 years learning everything he could from her. Oh yeah, speaking of the Soviet Union, MGS 3 makes sure you know some world history in case you fell asleep during 10th grade history class or something. I always find stuff like this pretty cool, and it's even cooler that the game starts like 2 weeks or so (I think) after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Anyway, Snake and The Boss’s relationship is built up throughout the entire game, and that final fight is the perfect conclusion to it all. Throughout the whole game you get shown Snake getting his shit kicked in by the Boss in every close quarters fight, and the boss fight itself doesn’t disappoint in this regard. Other than Snake’s relationship with The Boss, Eva is also super interesting. She serves as this game's love interest, but compared to Meryl in the past, she's way more interesting. I'll be honest, I'm still not quite sure what to make of her eventual betrayal, as well as her being one of The Philosophers in the end, but at least the relationship between her and Snake feels earned. A lot of the scenes with her and Snake have their fair share of horny bait, but Eva and Snake have a lot of chemistry. (I seriously devoted extensive thoughts trying to think of some sort of thematic reason as to why you’re allowed to go into first person mode to look at her tits in every single cutscene she's in, and couldn’t think of any other conclusion besides that Kojima was writing this game with this dick in his hand strokin his shit or something IDK. if this is a bad reading of the games narrative then go ahead and make fun of me but i seriously think he was just really fucking horny) The scene at the end where they get about as close to having sex as they can on the ps2 feels rewarding, because its really nice to see these two finally have their happy ending … Or so Snake thinks. Yeah, speaking of Eva’s eventual betrayal, the end of the game is pretty crazy. I’ll spare the exact details, because that's honestly not really what this review is for, but it's super melancholy. At its core. Metal Gear Solid 3 tells a story of how the Government will do nothing but stab those who respect it the most in the back. They destroy at their own convenience, and allow the ones who did the most to protect be remembered as criminals. They will use anyone and anything as a scapegoat, so long as they can cover their own ass. There’s truly nothing like the ending cutscene of MGS 3, and it makes it clear to see why Big Boss ends up going against the U.S Government in games that take place later in the timeline. I have never seen a video game character have as much emotion in their face as Big Boss in that final cutscene, even with all the technological advancements in video games today. MGS 3 really humanizes Big Boss in a way that Metal Gear 1 and 2 couldn't. MGS 3’s story is an absolute masterpiece. I haven’t even mentioned characters who are key to the narrative like Ocelot and Volgin either. I could fluff this up a whole lot more by going into those two if I felt like it, but I feel like I've said enough about the core themes of this game and what makes it so good already. If you’ve read this far into the review and you still haven’t played the game then go and form opinions on the whole thing yourself.
Play Metal Gear Solid 3 if you haven't. It’s a good starting point for the franchise (although i think you should play 1 and 2 first, it's just not the end of the world if you don't.) and a phenomenal game all around. Shout outs to the credits song for being so good too. 10/10
will do a real one of this one soon too but yeah this duology changed my life
2019
My relationship with persona 5 has always been a toxic one. From loving it the first time i played it when i was 13, to relentlessly hating on it soon after because that was what was cool at the time. I still think P5 is extremely flawed, but it’s not some heaping pile of garbage. maybe one day i’ll do some real kind of review on this game that’s more in-depth, but for now i’ll put it like this:
the story:
most of it is ass. kamoshida’s arc is good, but it’s downhill from there. Persona 5 never fully commits to its themes ever, and most characters get sidelined as soon as their arc is over. Character development is relegated to social links, which is a problem because there’s only like 3 good party member social links. (ryuji, yusuke, haru) Even then, it’s impossible for the devs to know if the player did these social links, so their development remains stunted in the main story regardless of your progress in the social links. Generally, the dialogue in this game is very corny and it doesn’t do anything particularly original with its themes or premise. It’s all about societal reform, but it comes with none of the interesting layers of morality. The Phantom Thieves are vigilantes, plain and simple. Despite this, there is never a point in the game where they question their actions. They’re always in the right, and when something bad happens seemingly as a result of their actions, instead of any kind of doubt in themselves they all just collectively go “daaaaaamn that sucks we did everything right tho” in the end. It doesn’t ask any interesting questions. Aren’t the PT ALSO controlling society by enacting their own sense of justice? Are they wrong for forcing society to live in a way that falls in line with their vision, rather than letting people be truly free? The player may ask these questions, but the game will never explore these things. Because at the end of the day, the plot present in the original Persona 5 is extremely shallow.
… Third semester, however, is a completely different story. It’s like they flipped a switch. It has a compelling villain, and the kind of philosophical questions that the Megami Tensei franchise is supposed to be known for. It has emotional moments that actually make me care. It’s honestly one of the best parts of the modern trilogy, and it’s a shame the rest of the game couldn’t be that good because it’s amazing. Royal’s existence is justified simply for the fact that Third Semester exists.
The gameplay of P5 has always been good. It probably has the best dungeons in the franchise within the last 10 years, and the combat system is fun. It’s a lot of qol and balancing compared to what was in the past 2 modern persona games, but that’s all it needed. I also really like the darts mini game because it has the kichijoji theme from smt I and it just makes me go “yeesssss brooo yessss 🤩🤩”
that’s all i have to say play this game if you wanna i guess it’s alright the gameplay makes up for 90% of the story being complete ass and the last 10% is really good
the story:
most of it is ass. kamoshida’s arc is good, but it’s downhill from there. Persona 5 never fully commits to its themes ever, and most characters get sidelined as soon as their arc is over. Character development is relegated to social links, which is a problem because there’s only like 3 good party member social links. (ryuji, yusuke, haru) Even then, it’s impossible for the devs to know if the player did these social links, so their development remains stunted in the main story regardless of your progress in the social links. Generally, the dialogue in this game is very corny and it doesn’t do anything particularly original with its themes or premise. It’s all about societal reform, but it comes with none of the interesting layers of morality. The Phantom Thieves are vigilantes, plain and simple. Despite this, there is never a point in the game where they question their actions. They’re always in the right, and when something bad happens seemingly as a result of their actions, instead of any kind of doubt in themselves they all just collectively go “daaaaaamn that sucks we did everything right tho” in the end. It doesn’t ask any interesting questions. Aren’t the PT ALSO controlling society by enacting their own sense of justice? Are they wrong for forcing society to live in a way that falls in line with their vision, rather than letting people be truly free? The player may ask these questions, but the game will never explore these things. Because at the end of the day, the plot present in the original Persona 5 is extremely shallow.
… Third semester, however, is a completely different story. It’s like they flipped a switch. It has a compelling villain, and the kind of philosophical questions that the Megami Tensei franchise is supposed to be known for. It has emotional moments that actually make me care. It’s honestly one of the best parts of the modern trilogy, and it’s a shame the rest of the game couldn’t be that good because it’s amazing. Royal’s existence is justified simply for the fact that Third Semester exists.
The gameplay of P5 has always been good. It probably has the best dungeons in the franchise within the last 10 years, and the combat system is fun. It’s a lot of qol and balancing compared to what was in the past 2 modern persona games, but that’s all it needed. I also really like the darts mini game because it has the kichijoji theme from smt I and it just makes me go “yeesssss brooo yessss 🤩🤩”
that’s all i have to say play this game if you wanna i guess it’s alright the gameplay makes up for 90% of the story being complete ass and the last 10% is really good
2020
Omori is a really fun indie rpg that doesn’t fall into a lot of the same traps many others do. it’s combat system doesn’t try and reinvent the wheel and make it “not boring”, it fully embraces that it is a turn based rpg. Fun fact, if you make an rpg while hating rpg combat systems because they’re “boring and not fun”, your combat system will probably suck ass. Omori isn’t very hard, but it’s combat is simple yet very fun. Story is good too and the horror is surprisingly very effective.