It's fantastic. Having already played the game a decade ago, I decided to put it down half way through this version despite it clearly being the best version of the game now. There's too much else I want to play, but I love what they did here. All of the improvements to the visuals, the UI, the navigation, and the battles are greatly appreciated. I hope they do it to Persona 4 as well.

Persona 3 probably has the strongest overall tone/atmosphere of the three games. I appreciate how dark it feels. The cast as a whole is really strong, too. I just don't particularly care for any of the characters individually as much outside of Mitsuru and Akihiko being awesome. Persona 3 feels more mature in its writing than 4/5. The characters come off as older even though they aren't.

Regardless, I still think it's the weakest of "the 3" Persona games. 4>5>3. It's still a 10/10 though.

Control is my Roman Empire. Not a day goes by where I don't think about this game and all of its concrete and weirdness. It has had such a colossal impact on my life. I love it so, so much. However, it is not my favorite game. I hate to say it, but there's a few big issues I have with Control that drag it down and keep it from being an all-time masterpiece in my eyes.

Gameplay:
Control is a third-person shooter that takes place in a government building that is not as it seems, to say the least. You play as Jesse Faden, a woman with supernatural powers on a mission to find her brother. However, upon entering his place of captivity, Jesse finds herself among a devastating outbreak of a force known as the "Hiss", and she is promptly tasked with eliminating the threat after unknowingly accepting the position as director of the Federal Bureau of Control. This premise forms the gameplay loop, as you'll be venturing through this impossibly large and ever-shifting building while eliminating the threats possessed by the Hiss.

Your primary weapon is a pistol that is just as weird as the environment around you. The pistol can be upgraded to take different shapes, becoming a shotgun or a machine gun or a heavy, armor piercing gun that fires slowly. It's a neat concept and gives the player different ways to approach combat. Each mode has different amounts of ammo that refills on its own, which is pretty unique from a lot of other games. As the game goes on, Jesse unlocks new supernatural powers to use in combat. The most useful is her telekinesis, which can be used to throw objects at enemies and other things. It's a great addition, that adds nice variation to combat. There's also other abilities like a dash, a shield, a short-ranged telekinetic blast, mind control, levitation. Your mileage may definitely vary on the use you get out of these abilities (except for levitation because it is like... the second most useful thing), but they're cool to have around. All of this combined with the decent enemy variety makes for a pretty good gunplay experience that I was certainly impressed with when I first played the game. Though, for as good as the gunplay is, I do find that the combat gets quite repetitive after a while. There's only so many times I can spam R2 and L1 on the same handful of enemy types before I'm over it. I'm not sure what they could have done to remedy this without destroying the tone of the game (no pun intended), but MAN, it just gets stale.

Control takes place in the Oldest House, a seemingly generic government building full of concrete, concrete, and more concrete. You wouldn't initially think it would be a compelling place to explore, but you'd be wrong. The Oldest House's supernatural nature leads to some endlessly fascinating level design. There's something to find or fight in every office space, containment room, or quarry in another dimension. The most notable thing to find are the documents or recordings laying around. Again, your mileage my vary, but I personally found them to be really neat. I usually hate these kinds of collectibles in games, but the documents and voice recordings in Control are genuinely interesting. Sometimes they're just charming notes, but other times they're fascinating records that provide context to the Oldest House and its weirdness. Either way, they help to really flesh out the world. Another thing you can find by going off the beaten path is side quests. Side quests can range from dull to really interesting. I unfortunately found a lot to be on the dull side, which initially made me hesitant to pursue them, but you can miss some really cool moments by not doing so. They (and the main quests too) will also reward you with points to upgrade Jesse's supernatural abilities. The guns can be strengthened too with materials you find my defeating enemies or checking containers. Both abilities and weapons can be modified with... sigh... mods. This is an issue I have with more games than just Control, but I hate the way mods were handled. They are so annoying. For one, you have limited inventory space for them. Two, you can only equip a couple at a time, which would be okay if you didn't literally find hundreds throughout the game. The effects they give are so small that they're barely even worth caring about to begin with. They're at least not integral to your gameplay experience (unlike some other game with the exact same issues... I am looking at you, Horizon Zero Dawn), but it is irritating nonetheless since they are items you find literally everywhere. Another thing I really don't like is the alert missions! They pop up at random once you get to a certain point in the game, but you never really get to do them because they usually show up while you're doing something else.

Overall, I find Control's gameplay to be kind of weak. Whenever I think about the game, I never find myself looking back on the combat or side content very fondly. It's just not as compelling as I feel like it could be. The elements fail to come together and make for a progression system that's truly fun to pursue. But, regardless of its shortcomings, Control still provides some unforgettable battles in some amazing set pieces, and it uses its level design to help tell a story and build a world that is really cool.

Story, Characters, and Setting:
I already went over the game's basic premise, but there's a bit more to it. As you progress through the game, meeting new characters and coming closer to finding Jesse's brother, you'll uncover the truth behind the Hiss's existence. Uhhh I'll admit, this is kind of where the plot's details get fuzzy to me. Jesse's motivations and backstory are clear, but I'm not really sure I completely understand the power struggle that is supposed to frame the events of the story. There was like this thing going on with the previous director, Zachariah Trench, and the main scientist guy, Dr. Darling, and I think they were debating on whether or not they should prepare for the Hiss because I guess they knew it was coming. The people who followed Darling survived and those who followed Trench didn't, but also both Trench and Darling are dead??? I DON'T KNOW. Maybe I should have read up on it before I wrote this, but I also think it's important to express my genuine confusion about what this game is actually about, because I've played through it twice and I still don't really get it. The story unfortunately feels really unsatisfying by the end because of this. It's certainly not helped by the fact that the game lacks a real final boss.

Luckily, the characters do more heavy lifting than the plot. Jesse Faden isn't the craziest protagonist in the world, in fact she's a bit of a wet sandwich at times, but her clear motivations and inner monologue make her easy to connect to. Getting to hear her thoughts directly made for some interesting moments, especially in relation to her friendship with the entity that provides her with her powers, Polaris. Throughout the game you get to learn a lot about Jesse, and you come to find that she really is just a lady with superpowers who's just trying to find closure. I personally really like Jesse. There's just a compelling relatability to her character that I think is neat. I will say once again though, your mileage may vary.

The supporting cast is definitely an interesting bunch. The surviving employees you meet throughout the game aren't exactly the most dynamic or memorable, but they serve their purpose in fleshing out the world and progressing the story. They paint a picture of what working for the Bureau is like and... boy, it sure is weird. There's also Ahti, a janitor that directs Jesse on her journey through the Oldest House. He's quite the interesting character, though not for the reasons you might initially expect. Another character you'll run into often is the Board, which appears as an upside down triangle and speaks to Jesse occasionally through weird, cryptic subtitles. It's frankly barely a character, but it's interesting and has enough of a personality to deserve a mention. Another character that likes to show up and be cryptic is the previous director, Trench, communicating from beyond the grave. Though his primary function seems to just be to give exposition through short, fragmented sentences, he actually gives much longer optional monologues that can give the player a lot more context and insight, should they choose to listen to them. The last but certainly not least character I want to talk about is Dr. Darling. He shows up throughout the game in entertaining little training videos on topics you definitely don't want to miss. His personality is charming, and the way the videos are directed is fun, which is good because they are valuable resources when it comes to making sense of the weird world of the Oldest House.

I usually don't bother to dedicate space to discussing the settings of the games I review, but frankly, Control deserves it. The Oldest House might be my favorite setting of any video game. Control might not be a horror game, but this place horrifies me on a visceral level. It feels like walking through a museum or office building but there is something deeply wrong. The lighting is cold. The hallways are empty. The previously living inhabitants are now hovering limp near the ceiling. It is a disturbing, uncanny environment, but it is absolutely brilliant. The Oldest House itself is an ever-expanding building that is far bigger than it looks on the outside. It has the anomalous trait of being unable to be acknowledged unless it wants to... which makes me wonder how anyone ever consistently shows up to work there... But anyway, it is home to the Federal Bureau of Control, a branch of government dedicated to researching and containing anomalous objects and phenomenon. It's practically the SCP Foundation, and no that is not hyperbole. It really just feels like Remedy Entertainment wanted to make their own version of the SCP Foundation. They've got their own version of SCPs and everything. That's not to say that the FBC feels unoriginal though, as it's got plenty of its own interesting stuff going on.

Sound and Visuals:
D-does Control have music..? I mean, I know there's the obvious stuff (if you've played the game, you'll know what I mean), but does Control have music in regular gameplay? runs to Youtube ...Oh my gosh it does. It's all very subtle stuff that blends in with the atmosphere though. For that reason, and others that I don't want to spoil, I'd say the soundtrack is pretty dope. Speaking of atmosphere, the sound design is drowning in it. This game freaks me out for a lot of reasons, but I'd say the sound design is one of the biggest ones. So much of it is stained into my brain, it is so good. The most notable example is the sound of the Hiss possessed people quietly babbling nonsense almost everywhere you go. It's a noise that gives me chills every time.

There was a crazy amount of effort put into this game's presentation. Control has a phenomenal visual style. Though the graphics lean heavily into hyperrealism, there is absolutely no shortage of creativity in the art direction. The brutalist environments are loaded with attention to detail. The mixture of darkness and harsh lighting creates an atmosphere that is as ominous as it is beautiful. There's so many really cool set pieces that are permanently etched into my brain because of how well they were set up visually. Another thing that adds to the presentation is the common use of live action segments. It's really cool and not something I had seen done in a video game before at the time I first played Control.

Conclusion:
This is probably the most arbitrarily long review I've ever written or will ever write, but hey, it's been good to finally get all of my thoughts about this game out. I love Control. Though I find its gameplay and plot to be rather weak, its storytelling and presentation transcends anything I've experienced in the vast majority of games I've played, only being truly topped recently by Alan Wake 2. If the cool parts of this game sound appealing to you, then I'd definitely recommend it. It's a weird, creepy, surreal, and unique experience.