Applies half-learned lessons about level design and class-based customization from the Soulslike genre with junky looting and spammy battle systems from the MMO genre and creates a pretty hysterical mutation out of the two of them. Likely more fun to get a group to laugh at/with but also just on the side of being too easy and silly to feel embarrassed to be playing this in this day and age (even if just because you have a PS+ Extra account for now) to try even random rooms. The type of game where you can discover a wind spell will blow away poison gas, but the arbitrary lava you have to get across isn't affected by spells but instead stopped by destroying the statue it's pouring out of.

Good surprise metroidvania entry for the year, maybe parallel to what little I played of the Prince of Persia one but achieves its own sense of look and feel, and the battle system and traversal being tied together in pretty effective binary powers feels pretty good! Some of the gated exploration is pretty obvious for a game like this, sometimes reliant on an arbitrary traversal that then gets forgotten by the game for a while, and the arena fighting gets a little spongey in the end stretch (there's an especially annoying poisonous enemy). None of the optional traversal challenges are that difficult either outside of some cheap shots.

Enjoyed it enough to play through it but a hard sale on the "better than some say" front because I still agreed with some reservations and there are some that don't even necessarily reward your patience to get its best elements. Just to start it off: it's not that badly written, it just starts off on absolutely the worst foot for the first two hours with constant quips to a bewildering setting and a slow pace, and a framing device that admittedly barely coheres even in the end. When you get past it though, there are elements of actual minor character development and some serious turns that are "fine" if not height of game writing even now. Feels like a first draft to its lead's development that finds itself as it goes along, when it should've just cut some of the treacle and filled in the world you spend most of your time in moreso.

The biggest problem is an engine that only sporadically knows what its best elements are, and mostly there for the gamer to pick and choose in a spread-out open world, and in such a way that it's not necessarily a preference to any given newer Assassin's Creed game outside of being shorter. The battle system varies on a whim (even within its own magical sections) from snappy and satisfying loops to just feeling like throwing snowballs at sponges, and even its biggest success in the parkour movement system takes longer to get some of its best elements and takes most of the game to get to areas that use it well. And by then? You're almost done and there's very little reason to max out or explore more. As fair as the game warns you enough that it's not much beyond a time-waster, it still could've presented that better.

My first actually completed Persona game and I went from being assured early it just wasn't my thing to now a fan who's encouraged to check out more, though if the score remains less enthusiastic it's because this entry still feels a little base and the dungeon crawling was pretty rudimentary and uninteresting to me. More fun level design and more intriguing stories seem to be the promise of some later entries however, so I'll be eager to catch up.

But the story, and the real meat of the game being the relationship balancing and building, really got to me more than I expected. More than some other JRPGs I've really sunk into, the hours of investment feels essential to getting the most out of the grace notes and moments of drama. In theory you could read the story as a merely rote high school drama, but when lived in and given their slow burns, I found a lot of touching elements to building the relationships I did and finding out what happened in the way that I could call my own, separate enough if only arbitrarily from another persons playthrough. This probably all sounds obvious to a hardcore fan, just my confession to say now I "get" it.

Giving this a last chance before it leaves Gamepass but also because I've been getting increasingly into Persona 3 Reload despite some glaring stuff that clearly proves it's "not for me," yet that ones storylines and world building eventually uses its slow burn and setup for eventual rewards. What I'm getting at is there's no reward or reveal to SH2, the supposed merits are out in front in a dungeon crawler that while not as rudimentary as P3 is still pretty simply crafted and despite its cyberspace aesthetic ends up looking like a lot of blank space or office buildings and railways. Then the combat is just Persona all over again but with less of the elements of connection to story, which I can't say I'm giving nearly as much of a chance.

NMH has quite the interesting case of a series downfall in that technically these games are getting "better" but in doing so is losing the novelty of the original's semi-satirical game design as well as just leaning into Suda's indulgence despite not having the same heady intrigue of a Kojima or Remedy production (read: just a lot of talk about Miike films). Some rough goings in how some of the bosses aren't varied enough in fight styles from the busywork fights you have to do beforehand, and when they are it's usually just as simple a minigame as the other minigames.