Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse was a wild ride. This game does some things a lot better than SMT IV but also some things worse. Regardless of what I say here, I really enjoyed the game, but some things definitely did kill it for me at times (especially at the end but we'll get to that).

The story is alright? I don't really have anything to say about it besides the fact that the routes are either 'screw friendship' or 'with the power of friendship!' I just feel like its inferior to SMT IV, especially when things can just revive themselves and we have to fight the same bosses like three times throughout the course of the game. There weren't any standout points in the story, but I don't think there needed to be because the story was not this games strongpoint, the games strongest point is definitely the gameplay.

The gameplay was great. They gave skills new smirk effects and just made it better overall (I think I also started to switch my demons a lot more in this game so thats probably also a plus). I like how they handled App Points in this game compared to other games, but man the world map still sucks. At least this time I completed every side quest, and they were really enjoyable.

The characters in this game.. The only one I enjoyed was Hallelujah, the rest just miss in multiple ways. Gaston is a snob but he does get better the further you get in the story, same as Navarre. Toki and Asahi get caught up in a love triangle with the protagonist and I just dont care for them, especially Asahi who is extremely annoying at times. I just don't like anything about Nozomi, honestly. The best thing about her character was probably Danu, but that's about it. My top three in this game are probably Hallelujah, Isabeau, and Flynn, and that's saying something considering one of them isn't even really with you for most of the game.

The dungeons.. There was some I liked, like the Fairy Forest (except the maze bit). But I need to talk about the final dungeon. What were they THINKING? I was WALKING AROUND for 45 MINUTES trying to get out of the First Stratum. I then decided to get a guide and NOPE that just made me want to cry even more. How can you make such an awful final dungeon and completely screw over my motivation to finish the game? Besides that dungeon, I actually don't think I have any other complaints.

As always, the music continues to slap, and I like the designs of new demons and THANKFULLY THEY REDESIGNED LUCIFER! Definitely liked the variety of demons in this game compared to IV, and definitely enjoyed them in the main story, sub-quests, and new areas.

Overall, I will say that I pleasantly enjoyed my time with the game, no matter how crazy it actually was. Gameplay was great, demons were great, and some characters were amazing. Story can be improved a bit, same with some characters, but I don't think I will be replaying this game because of that god awful final dungeon.

one of the best. ever.

saya no uta uses perspective brilliantly, to make you empathize with the terrible protagonist, while not glorifying his actions. it's a masterful portrayal, and it's also heart-wrenching. good music too. the entire experience is very disturbing, but it does a very good job at depicting the darkness of fuminori's psyche.

it can feel like delving into the mind of epstein and this is exactly what makes it so captivating. there is some seriously good symbolism too.

raw.

Shin Megami Tensei IV was a great entry into the series for me. Although I played some of SMT V, I gave up on it early on, but I decided to give the series another chance with SMT IV, and I am thankful that I did. This game is great in all aspects. I've fallen in love with the battle system, the story, the characters, the demons, everything, and it has made me go on a binge through every SMT game.

I like how the story revolves around a Chaos and a Law route (there also being a Neutral route) with one character that is a symbol of each route. I will say that if Neutral wasn't such a pain to get (without a guide), I would've went with that, but I decided to go with Walter and Chaos, and I actually liked that route. Although a bit cliche, I enjoyed the story a lot, I liked the contrast of the above-ground Kingdom of Mikado, and then the underground city of Tokyo, separated by the bane of my existence, Naraku. The conflict between the Ashura-kai and the Ring of Gaea was interesting. I will say that I was somewhat confused during both the Blasted and Infernal Tokyo segments, but they were enjoyable enough. The final boss being against either Merkabah or Lucifer was also enjoyable, even if it made me stay up until 2:30am because of how many game overs I was getting.

I enjoyed the main cast of characters for this game, with Walter and Isabeau being the highlights. Jonathan I have no opinions on because I just didn't agree with his path alignment, and Navarre can suck it. Characters like Skins and Fujiwara are confusing because they just appear out of nowhere and I just don't care about them. It was fairly obvious how the game was going to handle Issachard after he failed to become a Samurai, so no surprises there. Hikaru was interesting because I did not think she was going to turn out to be Lucifer out of all things, and thought she was just another random character. Also, Burroughs is so annoying after a really intense conversation she's like 'You've completed this mission.'

As for the gameplay, I like how this series uses the Press Turn system to encourage striking weakness, while also encouraging the use of buffs like Sukukaja to make enemies lose their press turns. I need to talk about why this game doesn't have a 5 star rating, and that is because of Naraku. I think I almost wanted to ragequit in Naraku and that made me turn the difficulty down to the lowest difficulty (I turned it back up later). The amount of gameovers I had in Naraku was unbelievable and I wanted to cry because of it. Other then that, I enjoyed how the game made me utilise buffs more than I have ever had to in Persona. I also found it enjoyable fusing a bunch of different demons in the Cathedral of Shadows. A very rewarding system which was one of the reasons why I fell in love with the series.

While I enjoyed getting to walk around Tokyo on a map, it was so annoying not knowing where to go sometimes. Coupled by the fact that I decided to stop doing sidequests because of how pissed off the random encounters on the world map was making me, and I never got the levitating function so the world map remained an annoyance for me. I did do most of the quests and they were quite enjoyable, involving different demons, and some were unique, such as running away from Seth in Naraku.

I have so much love for this game, and coming off from Persona 3 Reload was no easy feet, but it did deliver a great game that I thoroughly enjoyed.

EDIT: What on earth did the devs do Lucifers sprite? Also, now I know what getting SMT’ed is now, pain.

I'm going to preface this review with a complaint: Any game that finishes on a four phase bossfight and follows that up with a multi-faceted escape sequence that can end in a game over if you move slightly too slowly through its intended sequence deserves a strongly worded letter and discerned frowny face. Parasite Eve, here is your frowny face :(.

Parasite Eve was one of those games that I had been greatly interested in but had long escaped me because I didn't grow up with or embrace the Playstation ecosystem until the PS4 came out so I could jump on the FF7R bandwagon. This means I lost out on a lot of the mid to late 1990's classics and favorites from developers in their golden ages, in this case that was Square Soft and the nearly endless hits it seemed to release. Parasite Eve, a JRPG horror game with much of its development DNA being rooted in Final Fantasy was an immediate piqued interest to me. I knew absolutely nothing about the gameplay going into it, zero as to what the story was about, and again very little about runtime. What I got out of finally playing the 1998 classic was a quick and easy b-movie with a simple (yet enjoyably so) gameplay loop.

Taking place over six days, Parasite Eve's story revolves around a parasitic growth named Eve who is hellbent on creating and perpetrating the reign of the "Ultimate Lifeform." Unfortunately this story does not involve Shadow the Hedgehog's origin story. What begins as an NYPD cop named Aya Brea going on a date to the opera quickly morphs into a race against the clock to save Manhattan, and in turn the world. Aya begins her investigation immediately after the entire opera house is morphed into gloop by the demonic Eve on stage. Collaborating with the lead detective in her NYPD precinct, the military, and a Japanese scientist she embarks on a desperate mission to understand the mystery of Eve's origin and goals so that peace can be restored. I appreciate the limited scope of the story, as I mentioned previously this title only takes place in the one borough in New York, allowing for the story to move at a hastened yet measured pace. There's no moment where you think you should be in a zone longer than you are, and you don't miss out on anything by only hitting a few of the marquis locations within Manhattan. In your investigation you'll visit the zoo, the Museum of Natural History, the Statue of Liberty, and the Chrysler Building should you choose. I've said it before, and as a fan of Metal Gear Rising I'll say it again, games that pace themselves well are a dime a dozen and it's a severely underrated way to craft a solid game.

Gameplay in Parasite Eve is fairly basic, with combat utilizing a classic Final Fantasy ATB system where you can choose to either use special PE powers or simply shoot your gun at the opponent. The PE powers cover all the bases like healing yourself, giving Brea a shield or speed buff, and eventually moves that do devastatingly large amounts of damage to the opposition. These moves are strong and bolster your survival arsenal quick a bit, but need to be built up over time in battle. I liked this balance, forcing you as the player to dish out damage in the random encounters and boss fights while you're PE gauge built up and you could add some survivability into your kit. Because the game stayed at a lower level of difficulty throughout, I never felt like the system of running around in a fight to build up my gauge felt unfair or busy. World encounters (which are random to an extent) are often remedied through simply gunfights, but the bosses will require more planning and usage of the paranormal.

Weapons in Parasite Eve are limited in diversity but do give you an interesting way to complete the game. There's a few categories of guns you get: Pistols, rifles, machine guns, shotguns (I think,) and grenade launchers. Each come with their boons like how rifles have a longer range and machine guns have a higher rate of fire, but also have their cons that seem to balance them out. Rifles with that range have a lower rate of fire and maybe a smaller clip size, whereas machine guns dish out more shots but do less damage per shot and aren't as effective from further away. This leads to a chief complaint I had with PE, and that's how customizing rate of fire on your weapon felt rather... pointless? This is because the more shots you get in your "turn" to attack, the less damage each shot does. I remember upgrading one of my weapons to have seven shots per turn, only to find out I was doing twelve damage per shot. I was mystified and thought I'd reached some random difficulty spike, but I soon discovered that my error lied in trying to do more damage per turn. Though there is some reasoning you could give to have more shots per turn, I felt like the ability to blast through the opposition as quickly as possible with fewer, high damage blasts felt a lot better.

Playing PS1 era games nearly thirty years after they've come out is often a crapshoot because of how far visual fidelity has come. Even within the genre, think about how expansive the differences in Final Fantasy VII and its Remake title are. Even though Parasite Eve shows its age on the polygonal front, the FMV cutscenes that it hangs its laurels upon are to this day still pretty impressive. Many horror games from the 1990's simply don't "feel" scary because they can't impart an actual element of visual horror on the player, but Parasite Eve goes to an incredible extent to make the disgusting transformations, deaths, and general grime of its cinematics feel visceral. Multiple times through my playthrough I made an exhausted uneasy face at what I was seeing, coupled with impressive soundtracking work to make the moment feel eerie. Square since time immemorial has known how to do work in the CGI space and its vindicating to go back and see how great they've always succeeded in that space. Nearing conclusion, I felt like I played a grotesque version of Final Fantasy VIII.

I do want to shoutout the legendary Yoko Shimomura here for her OST. For a game this short, it's filled with certified BOPS and BANGERS that make each area and moment feel distinct right from the opening crawl all the way to the end credits. It may be an interesting take for a lot people to hear but I think this is her best work yet, even in a career that includes Kingdom Hearts, FFXV, Live A Live, and Super Mario RPG.

Before I close, one thing that nearly ruined this game for me is that I named my protagonist "Gherkin." I don't like pickles... as a matter of fact I hate them but for whatever reason when the chance came to name my protagonist I thought of a sloppy, large, green gherkin. I couldn't stop laughing any time her name came on screen, and anytime I told my buddies I was going to go "Gherk" it erupted myself into cacophonous laughter. I guess my lesson here is that most players should probably keep their first name as "Aya" or go with something less abrasive. It reminds me of when I named my Tidus "Chad" in FFX and completely forgot his name wasn't Chad for months after I played.

Parasite Eve is a quick and fun JRPG experience that should not be missed if anyone still has a Playstation 1 around. I recommend this game to anyone with a knack for the golden age of JRPG's or the older Resident Evil title.

A wonderful (and much needed) breath of fresh air from the franchise.

The new cast are all incredibly likeable. The gameplay is vastly improved from Y6 as the Dragon Engine feels a lot more polished and there are all new techniques you can pull off with Yagami that helps his combat stand out and the new detective features, while not the most fleshed out, do it's job good enough.

Don't really have much to complain about here besides the first chapter being a bit too long. Just a fantastic game all around.

"We are the Yakuza 4!" - Kiryu, Akiyama, Saejima and Tanimura

Alright, this one's gonna be a bit shorter. I liked Yakuza 4. In fact - I liked it very much.

Gameplay wise - very similar to Yakuza 3, but just... better. The combat feels smoother (no more blockuza) and gives you a lot more options. The four characters don't really feel that different (don't expect DMC5 level variety) but they're all enjoyable in their own right. I just need to say, they made Kiryu feel like a beast in this game and I love it. Oh, and they made the chase sections better. They're kinda fun now.

They added underground and rooftop sections to Kamurocho (TOTK?), but they really aren't that interesting. Not much to say here.

The game looks a bit better than 3. Animations are definitely improved and there is some added detail here and there, but it's still a PS3 game.

Story-wise... well. The game does feel a bit unfocused, thanks to the campaign being split between 4 different characters, but they make it work. It feels like there's a lot happening, but when you think about the story is actually kinda simple? There's a big conspiracy in the background, sure, but in terms of what actually happens in-game - not much. I do like the new characters, especially Akiyama, voiced by Koichi Yamadera. As a Cowboy Bebop enjoyer I was very happy to hear him. In general the story was fun, definitely had it's fair share of hype moments towards the end.

Coming up, Yakuza 5. There sure is a lot of people on the cover.

I get the feeling that this game's theme is "Dreams". But I don't know why.

This one took me a WHILE. It's such a big game. Overwhelming even. I think it could be the best in the series if it didn't have so much bloat. As it stands it's basically Yakuza 4 with a much better story, that is unfortunately stretched over 5 campaigns over around 40 hours of gameplay, better combat feel and more locations (5 cities? Guys.).

The best part of the game is definitely the finale. It has an uninterrupted, well-flowing story-stretch, it's fair share of absolutely hype moments, a lot of cool combat scenarios. It's a real snippet of what Yakuza 5 could have been without the fodder.

Let's see what Yakuza 6: The Song of Life has in store. Hopefully not as much.