>Shitty story
>Shitty characters
>Shitty villain
>Shitty dungeons
>Cryptic ass way to get the ending for some reason and in the rest of the game you never do something similar
>Half the content being a carbon copy of the previous game with bad qol changes
>Cards shuffles are broken as shit (You can get an izanagi with 99 stats in everything easily)
>Unlike previous game, no punishment for farming
>Everyone knew this game is ass before and made fun of its fans
>Suddenly, when it came to PC everyone started to lick this game ass
I fucking hate pc gamers

Now that the franchise is plagued with a bunch of Silent Hill 2 imitators, it's striking and quaint to see how quickly its direct sequel distanced itself from many of SH2's touted hallmarks that seemed like the success formula to exploit from then on. Silent Hill 3 doesn't waste much time with preambles, knowing already what you came here to see, and presents itself as the most predatory entry in the series, with highly aggressive and pursuing enemies, unlike the more passive and slow moving foes of SH1 and SH2, a very limited item and ammo count that forces you into a constant fight-or-flight response state that wasn't present in the series before, and more expansive and disorienting spaces to trudge through that more often than not have you staring into deep darkness as you scramble for a way out with monsters bitting at your heels.

Silent Hill 3 takes the unrelenting nature of the Historical Society stretch in SH2 and extends it into a full game. The Otherworld is ramped up even further as one of the most nightmarish settings every produced in videogames, filling it with bloody and rusty metal, grotesque disfigured monsters, dream-like disturbing visions, and disquieting noises that constantly make you feel like something is about to come out of the walls. The soundscape of SH3 might be Yamaoka's best work in the series, shifting the indiferent and somber tone of the previous entries into a much more hostile and invanding presence that assaults your ears constantly. Of the trilogy, SH3 is without a doubt the deliberately scariest one of the bunch, and bluntly makes its case as to not be fucked around it.

Which is why it's fascinating how much the main protagonist undercuts that vicious horror with her disinterested personality and musings on the whole ordeal. Beyond having a natural knack for making every interaction with the antagonists feel like a sitcom during cutscenes, Heather's charismatic remarks and quips during exploration create a certain detachment between her and the player's control, that wasn't as present in Harry's passive voyeurism or Jame's ambivalent resignation. SH3 puts tremendous effort in its oppression of the player, and yet Heather ain't having none of that shit. It's easy to understand why SH3 doesn't enjoy the same prestige and adoration that its prequel does, and I can't really blame people for that. SH2 interweaves both text and subtext so seamlessly that interpretation becomes highly accessible for anyone who experiences it, unlike SH3's more metatextual concepts that can easily be ignored if you just take the plot at face value.

But if your take away after playing the whole game, and witnessing Heather abort a God inside a church at the end, is that Silent Hill 3 disappointingly doesn't contain psychological horror and is just another devil cult story with little substance, then I'm afraid you missed the forest for the trees. There's an ever present underlying theme that permeates most of SH3 of imposed expectations of young women, that extends beyond its devil cult plot and impregnates with meaning the institutionalized settings of the game and its towering and stalking monsters that constantly harrass Heather. And having such an ubiquitous character push back the assaulting nature of SH3, mocking and making light of its villains, and in the process the Silent Hill concept itself, makes for a very refreshing and compelling subversion of what came before it.

We will never know what Silent Hill 3 could have been if it had gone the same route as Silent Hill 2. Hell, we will never know what it could have been if it had been a rail shooter, like intended. But this is the Silent Hill 3 we got, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Nocturne is Shin Megami Tensei distilled and evolved. It strips the series' mythology down to its bare essentials, giving you a barren world and a distant echo of a story to hold onto as you try to figure out your demi-fiend's place in this game's interstitial world. This sort of arms-length approach to storytelling usually doesn't do all that much for me, see my opinions on Dark Souls for that, but here it felt really purposeful. Here is an event that turns all participants into potential kings, of course human nature would push the few humans apart so they can try and achieve that power.

As a sort of inverse to the simplicity of Nocturne's aesthetic and story, the gameplay has been deepened significantly from the previous installments. Magatama now acts as both a replacement for equipment and a sort of Final Fantasy V-esque job system. The press-turn system is introduced here and it turns the challenging-but-flawed battle system of games past into a locked-tight, competitive-feeling system that makes every boss encounter feel like a genuine triumph. I could sit here for days trying to explain just how amazing this system is, and how its steadfast set of rules perfectly make the game easy to understand and soul-crushing when you slip up. It's brilliant stuff.

I spent like 70 hours on this thing over like two and a half weeks and I'm feeling a sort of withdrawal from it days after. It's an utterly fascinating and exciting experience and I'm so excited to explore the rest of the series to see where it's gone from this crystallized gem of a game.

Note: I did play this for the first time on the HD remaster, and yes it has some pretty big flaws that your mileage will surely vary on. Personally, I didn't care that much about the frame drops or whatever but I did find the compressed music and DLC situation a huge bummer. The portability on switch and skill inheritances for demons pushed this version over the edge for me though, so that's why I'm here and not on the PS2 page. My score reflects my feeling on the game itself though and not the port. I do hope Atlus has learned something from this port and tries to do better on (hopefully) more ports in the future.

So, apparently Drakengard is considered a real bad game and even fans of the series hate it.
I see.
I loved it.
I'm not interested in the series in the slightest way, I didn't care about the story nor the characters, I literally was in for the gameplay.
Like, I'm not that into musou games, I played very few of them, but this one was really good. Probably most of the hate comes just from it being musou, but I think it's not even that repetitive.
Sure, you have just really basic combos, but there's so many weapons that play completely different from each other and finding ways to do ridiculously long combo chains was great fun.
So fun that 20 hours of pressing Square didn't bore me in the slightest way.
And let's be real for a moment. How many of these games there were in 2003? I can only think of the very firsts Dynasty Warriors games, and honestly Drakengard is way better than DW2 (the only one I played so far).
This kind of gameplay also makes very sense to the story, as you control a character who's devoured by his bloodlust and keeps perpetrating pointless killings. You're literally living what Caim lives, and honestly that's awesome.
And then there are the air levels.
Those are simply awesome, and you don't have to like musous to enjoy them.
You have a badass dragon with a magic attack that creates an earrape, you have many kinds of enemies that must be approached in different ways, and on top of that they're really short, unlike the musou levels.
But, that's not entirely true, as you can actually complete them really fast too if you don't care about levelling up weapons and you just aim for the targets (I admit I did so in the free expeditions).
Then, about the story.
I thinks it's not THAT great, but the way it's told is really fancy. And yeah, the endings are very good.
I don't have much else to say about it, as I didn't care most of the time, but it's definitely enjoyable.
Oh, and the music.
Yeah, that's really good. It does take its time to grow on you, but when it does you just can't take it out of your mind.
It's repetitive and weird, but as the game progresses it just keeps getting better and better, so here I am thinking of buying the CD after saying that it wasn't that good.
And yeah, the final level is simply GREAT,

Or maybe it's just that I like videogames a bit too much

Played basically in one chunk so obviously it's fun. Largely very enjoyable set pieces particularly in the front half. Closer now to the story beat style of the RE movies where its just one thing to another with no real logic, other than 'something violent or crazy should happen next', however lacking the spectacle and spiritual depth of the movies. Americans continue to be horrible at writing and voice acting games, random man in black driving the car at the end was the most convincing character. The way Resident Evil has transitioned into the sad rustic violin Last Of Us-God Of War Remake brand of emotional grizzled father ethos is very offputting, not least because the game series lifeblood has traditionally been full sadism (particularly in the fantastic RE7) but because like TLOU the hokey familial sentimentality just does so little to get anyones (or at least my) blood pumping. The dearth of horrific imagery in the majority of this (save the incredible puppeteer's house) is a big problem. The Corpse Bride looking aesthetic of this in general is horrible and it seems to me that there's a widespread spiritual sickness in the world today considering the way the internet responded to the vampire woman