ethan: urgh…damn it…what the FUCK is happening in this village…

heisenberg screeching over the intercom: ethAN wintERS. have you ever desired a man carnally?

three years late but whatever. stinks. simultaneously the least charismatic and most self-serious entry in a series that usually threads a better needle with respect to its tone than whatever’s presented here. ethan is an unlikeable psycho, thoroughly unenjoyable riff on the ‘it takes a village’ proverb. forgets to be an action game for half the game and then when you get to that part you’re mostly doing a bunch of eighth gen arena strafing with minimal target feedback. semi-competent machine games campaign but lacklustre resi title and every insistence the game makes on deriving aesthetic and mechanical inspiration from re4 falls totally flat while the rest of the game is too much of a ‘greatest hits’ reel to really have much of an identity of its own. between resi 7 and resi 8 the guys over at capcoms resi team need to seriously consider couples therapy. may have been more charitable if i was from eastern europe 👍

I finally did muster through Super Mario Sunshine after about three and a half years of leaving it on the backburner, and I must say I still don't get it. It's not all bad but it's like, not very fun to me at all. I found its best moments to be pretty decent, and put up against Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy I don't really think it stands a chance in most if not all fields. I did not gel with the aesthetic, controls, or level design nearly as much as in either of them.

The biggest thing that irks me about Sunshine, though, is it doesn't feel as open as it lets on. You can beat the game with a minimum of 50 shines (I completed it with 53), but rather than a basic threshold to close off the final level, like how you can get any 70 stars in 64 to reach the end, you are required to do all the first seven missions of each level. In order, too. You can't go out of order like you can in 64, you have to do mission 1, then mission 2, etc. This works fine in Galaxy because the level design reflects it better, it's already more linear to begin with in its design and progression. Sunshine's level design does not reflect its linearity, it presents itself as a lot more open and implies a lot more freedom than you're actually provided. The end result takes away the feeling of free exploration, and it begins to feel more like crossing off a checklist than finding things yourself and reaping the rewards for doing so. Some of these required missions are frankly quite awful as well. A few of the bosses (Petey Piranha 2, Manta) are super tedious and slow, and some other missions littered around are bordering on unacceptable. I could not locate any enjoyment to be found in the "chuckster" mission, for example, and there's just no way to get around it without enduring it. If you have a star in 64 you really hate, chances are you can just work around it, but such is not the case this time.

I figure you can warm up to this with enough playthroughs, but the first is deeply unsatisfying and unrewarding. A competently made and designed game for the most part, but mundane and unenjoyable especially in comparison to the high points surrounding it in the series. Why would I want to play it some more in order to warm up to it if the first playthrough was so consistently rough? How often do you want to replay something you thought was lame, especially with people breathing down your neck about how you're wrong? I dunno, man. It just doesn't really make sense to me. I really see now why this seems to be the most divisive of the 3D Mario entries, and try as I might to enjoy myself during its runtime, I can't seem to do so often enough to really call it something I like as an overall experience. I'm just glad I at least have it off my back now.

the world dies. but it doesn’t stop existing. its post-mortem is a decaying place, where demons full of different desires and wandering souls full of regrets roam around. the world is the way it is because a conception occurred. it’s on stand-by, waiting for someone with strong will to create a new world based on their reasons. “reason” is an individual’s inner philosophy. it’s not the first time that an individual with a “reason” creates a new world. it will not be the last. someone will always want to change the status quo. so the cycle continues, a new world dies and a new world is reborn, as god intended.

shin megami tensei: nocturne is a videogame about cycles.

it follows this idea to its core: kagutsuchi, the center of this universe, probably “god”, follows the cycle of the moon. it starts as a new phase, until it becomes “full” and goes down until it becomes new again, thus continuing the cycle. this translates to in-game events that vary according to kagutsuchi phases, as enemies becoming stronger or specific items being acquired once the it is in its “full” phase.

the concept of “reason” to continue the samsara is also something very important in-game. it is the mechanic of “alignments” from shin megami tensei but contextualized to nocturne’s setting, where your choices affect the course of the game’s narrative and leads you to a specific ending. each character represents a “reason” and is very interesting to see how each reason has its own implications on society (and i assume that early 2000s japanese society is the biggest parameter) and character’s motivations, as well some political ones (hikawa wants a world of peace where humanity will cease to desire. thus, there will be no evil. still he drops the equivalent of a nuclear bomb in a place to achieve his goals). as the game goes, the characters progressively get deeper into their ideals until abandoning their humanities (philo-phsyi-cally) and becoming ideas themselves.

you don’t have to go further, you can go back.

in the middle of all of this, there is a single character that is the most interesting one for me: yuko takao. she’s your school teacher that you visit in the hospital at the beginning of the game and, together with hikawa, she triggers the conception in order to create a new world. however, she regrets what she did: she does not believe in the reason of shijima. she believes in something else. what? well, she doesn’t know. still, she lives searching for her truth. what enchants me about her is how she doesn't sink into ideology, becoming only a vessel for a “reason”, but keeps struggling, searching for her own truth with hope in her heart that she will create a better world. she’s the most human character in this game.

and, while you have to be a human to create a new world, you must summon a god and become one with them in order to conceive a new world. believing in someone that keeps struggling the way she is to achieve her goals is the true way to break the status quo? or perhaps you are just regressing to the old world? is the old world really that bad?

you don’t have to follow the cycle. you can break it.

there’s also the enigmatic figure of a blonde boy/oldman with an old/young lady in black, who gives you “magatama” in order for you to become the demi-fiend and has its own views on the situation. following their path will lead you to the labyrinth of amala, where you commit the worst sin: search for knowledge. suffering through the most head-wrenching dungeons will lead you to the truth, even if you have to follow a dark path. the blonde wants to break the cycle, but instead of having hope, he is full of hate for being submitted to the eternal cycle of life and death of the universe. maybe it is the time for the oppressed to go against the oppressor, breaking the status quo, defying the great will and starting a new world where they are the ones that rule.

shin megami tensei: nocturne is a videogame about cycles.

it does not blame you for following the cycle and choosing a reason and does not blame you for the reason you choose. however, it presents you with the choice of breaking the cycle and following a different path. it does not matter which path you follow anyway.

someone will always want to kill the world you created.

I'VE BEEN WAITIN FOR THIS

Before you come to me with torches for giving this game a 7/10 let me explain myself
I don't think that the game is bad
It's still Persona 3 for crying out loud
I just think that in the middle of making this remake they kinda forgot that it's a remake of... well Persona 3
Everything is just too colorful for the dark and gritty plot of the game (especially the dorm) the dialogue box art also lost it's iconic look being replaced by some high quality but really bland art
The substitute voice actors are trying their best to fill the blank but some of them just don't sound really good
The OST still has massive bangers tho (even if they changed some of the songs ugh)
That being said i still really like this game the gameplay loop is still fun as hell
Have fun shootin yrself in the head ya edgelords :/