An ambiguous story that flips a lot of the hero-dependent narratives of the period on their head. I get the whole Yoko Taro story structure thing has been done to death now that we live in a post-Nier world, but it's pretty fresh here. I dig this.

Playing this game will kind of make you want to die, but honestly it's pretty disorienting in the most captivating way possible.

I see a lot of people form the conclusion that this game is "bad on purpose" but I sort of resent the implication of that. I feel like this game was good on purpose. Often games are reduced to being either "fun" or "not fun" and that's so boring. Let a game make you feel like shit once or twice, you'll be better for it (and cooler, more badass etc. etc.)

Nocturne is such an immersive experience, I always feel a strong sense of isolation and danger at every moment and like I'm really fending for myself in that treacherous ruined world. It has my favorite turn based combat system of all time, which has so many possibilties that it makes every other JRPG I play feel slightly disappointing. With the way buffs work there's rarely ever a need to truly grind, if you bring a good strategy you can win, at least when doing the normal endings. There are countless memorable and epic boss battles with easily the most consistent lineup in the Megatens I've played. Everything about the game from aesthetics to concepts to soundtrack is just so metal and brutal and raw. Even when it's really putting me through my paces or beating me down again and again, I'm never too frustrated for long because another idea occurs to me and something awesome happens again. I first completed it on the remaster on TDE, and it probably goes without saying that this PS2 version has better moodier lighting. This run I skipped the Amala Labyrinth entirely and felt the vanilla content had a much better flow and variety to it, but TDE has some of the best boss fights and extreme difficulty too so it's worth trying it once. I just adore this game :)

In a lot of ways P3R is as good as you could wish for a remake to be, but its visual and auditory shortcomings are hard to ignore. Still this is one of the most fun RPGs you can play and I barely put it down since release.

First thing you'll notice is that the UI and character animations / art are mostly incredible, I love the ocean blue aesthetic for the menus and it doesn't feel too much like a copy of P5's. Gameplay is amazing, incorporating the best mechanics of newer games like the Baton Pass but now with actual balancing. The "Showtime"-esque mechanic with flashy special attacks isn't completely braindead and adds new strategies. This is pretty easily the best combat in the Persona series and every boss fight has been upgraded a lot in terms of gimmicks and challenge, making them stand out more from one another. Tartarus has also been fleshed out considerably speeding up the levelling process. You can mix and match all party members without anyone falling too far behind. P3 already had the best written story but certain characters with less screen time in the original have been given way more attention, and the male members of SEES can be hung out with giving their own bonuses. Finally QOL changes mean the average player will see much more of what the game has to offer in the side content. So both gameplay and story are a huge success here!

Sadly Reload didn't even try to be a definitive version of P3. Besides the obvious missing FES content (likely getting added as expensive DLC) and Portable, there's much more terrible decisions. The most insane is obviously the remixed music. The P3 OST is one of the most beloved of all time and not even having it as an OPTION in the remake is downright criminal. WIthout exception every remix has worse mixing and less power than its original, and the sound effects are weaker too. The vocalist doesn't fit P3's vibe and sounds like she's straight up struggling with the songs. New tracks are decent but again don't fit the mid 2000s vibe and were clearly made without Meguro's involvement. Presentation is also all over the place. It can look really nice in the day sections with the 60fps and raytracing implemented. but a lot of Dark Hour scenes look horrible now. How is it even possible for a PS2 game to have better lighting than a PS5 one? My last major complaint is the new anime cutscenes. Any sense of the raw edginess and symbolism of the original is gone for a much more sterile direction, and the scenes chosen to be 2D animated are randomly chosen like the awesome awakening scene which is now animated in engine and it just kinda sucks.

It doesn't replace FES for me which still reigns supreme in terms of SOVL but it could maybe have been perfect had it been given more time and budget. Now we have 3 completely different versions of P3 :D

I absolutely love this oft maligned addition to Persona 3. While I agree that most criticisms of this game are factually accurate - not having a demon compendium does make gameplay and team composition much more difficult and sometimes tedious, yukari’s characterization in this game does make her a difficult character to sympathize with, etc. - I honestly think that these qualities are what makes this game so unique and so wonderful.

This is a game primarily concerned with how people deal with grief and more specifically how they deal with it in a social setting. The social aspects of grief, how people retroactively understand and define their relationship with the deceased in the context of that person's other relationships, can often be very messy. In my experience, this social element of grieving can take many forms (not all mentioned here of course) - some people find comfort in the presence of others, some people seek isolation, and some people become quite jealous and possessive over their relationship with the deceased and quite suspicious of the motivations and intentions of other mourners. People aren’t always perfectly rational or even fair or kind in these situations. With that said, Yukari’s characterization in this game - while at times frustrating - is entirely believable to me, especially knowing her characters back story. One of the most beautiful things about this game is how it challenges and encourages us to empathize with and forgive Yukari. The game guides us towards this with the way we see her relationship with Aigis evolve and heal throughout the game.

The conflict between Yukari and Aigis in this game also serves to highlight the really unconventional and beautiful romance Makoto can develop with Aigis through their social link and how that might relate to a potential romance with Yukari. I’ll explain what I mean. One of P3’s flaws IMO is the player’s inability to max social links with female characters without romancing them. As someone who is generally a completionist this is kind of an annoying and immersion breaking part of the game. One of the happy accidents of this feature, however, is the players ability to romance one of the conventional options - like Yukari for instance - and also engage in the unconventional romance arc with Aigis. This combination, IMO, feels entirely believable and is somewhat supported by the writing of The Answer. Makoto’s relationship with Aigis, if you compete their social link is kind of strange. It’s not traditionally sexual - possibly by necessity from what the game portrays but it’s also possible this just isn’t the character of their relationship - and it’s also not traditionally romantic, instead existing in a strange space between platonic and romantic. It certainly doesn’t bear the hallmarks of the traditional monogamous and heterosexual relationships Makoto can develop with other characters in the game. Makoto’s relationship with Aigis, however, is deeply affectionate - significantly more affectionate than the romances he can develop with other characters.

The way Yukari talks about Makoto in the answer strongly implies that she was either secretly in love with him or in a defined relationship with him. It’s also strongly suggested that Yukari was aware of Makoto’s unusual and deeply affectionate connection to Aigis and was jealous of both that as well as Aigis being present at the time of his death instead of her. Part of the narrative of the answer involves Yukari coming to terms with this and letting go of her animosity towards Aigis. If the player goes into this assuming that Yukari was just secretly in love with Makoto this is a rather straightforward narrative of someone letting go of feelings of jealousy and inferiority. If player goes into this assuming that Yukari was in a relationship with Makoto - a possibility definitely supported by The Answer - this instead becomes a narrative of Yukari accepting that Makoto’s feelings towards her and his feelings towards Aigis aren’t incompatible and don’t invalidate each other. Why do I lean towards this instead of thinking the narrative would be Yukari coming to terms with Makoto cheating on her? Given Yukari's characterization throughout Persona 3 it seems incredibly unlikely that she would be able to come to terms with this whole situation so quickly if she viewed what was going on as cheating. The only option then, in my mind, is that Yukari viewed the Makoto's relationship with Aigis as something other than cheating and was able to come to terms with it on those grounds. This certainly isn’t the definitive reading of the game but it certainly is A reading that the game allows for, which I think is really cool in the way it represents the very complicated and multifaceted nature of romance and affection - the way these feelings often don’t conform with traditional expectations and aren’t invalid just because the conventional understating is that they should be. I also think its really cool that The Answer is able to raise these questions and get the player thinking about these topics regardless of whether or not this was the intention of the developers. As someone who practices non hierarchical polyamory - primarily for the emotional and romantic freedom it allows - this potential reading of the game immediately leapt out at me and it definitely made me think of my own experience coming to terms with what romance and affection means to me and how strong feelings towards different people aren't necessarily invalidating.

The gameplay of the Answer, while more difficult and more of a slog than the rest of P3, is for me a fun challenge and also fits the tone and themes of the game really nicely. When a new player starts The Answer they’ll quickly notice a few substantial changes from vanilla P3. 1: You of course play as Aigis and therefore don’t have access to Makoto’s collection of personas. 2: Aigis’s and all the party members’ progress is reset. They’re now all at level 1, which causes them to lose HP and SP as well as all the moves their personas learned throughout the base game. They also lose any weapons or armor collected from the base game. 3: There’s no persona compendium when using the Velvet Room as Aigis, which makes optimizing persona builds very difficult without substantial grinding. 4: The Answer’s default and only difficulty setting is P3’s hard mode. Realizing all of this can definitely feel like a big setback, and the player will probably find themselves wishing they could just continue their progress from P3 instead of having to cope with all of these changes. Aigis and the rest of the characters in the answer are similarly forced to go through the difficult process of coping with hardship and continuing on with their lives without Makoto. The Answer demands that the player cope with and overcome the gameplay changes brought on by Makoto’s death and makes this experience accordingly arduous and difficult to adjust to. By the end of the Answer; the player will have leveled up their party and learned to adjust to changes from the base game just as the characters have been forced to grow as people and learn to face their own world without Makoto.

Overall I think this is a really wonderful and thematically consistent addition to the P3 story despite being a difficult one both emotionally and gameplay-wise. I get that most people don’t really like the answer but I would highly recommend giving it another chance if you replay P3FES. I ended up finding it to be really unique and impactful - especially regarding its portrayal of the social aspects of grief, which aren't often explored in videogames. Hopefully this review gives a nice perspective on some of the positives and unique qualities of this game and maybe even gets some people to replay it or reconsider their opinion on it.

N.B. - Also grateful to this game for giving us the door-kun meme, which tbh makes me laugh whenever I remember it.

A speedrunner's paradise intended to be replayed over and over for the most optimal movements, Neon White is an impeccably designed puzzle-platformer-shooter thing that never stops throwing the most fun gameplay ideas at you. Some of these levels legit blew my mind! The complaints about bad writing are so overblown to the point it's all I heard about the game till now, and I missed out on one of the best of last year. While yes the story is wildly different quality to the actual core gameplay, it should absolutely not put you off when it can be entirely skipped and isn't important at all. Love the character designs at least