destructible environments are actually pretty cool. excited to see this one get updates and evolve in the future.

2024 update. got into several civ holes for about 2 months in dec/jan and had a lot of fun. the game is more fun now with expansions and mods. yippee!

Great Persona experience. Fun and engaging story, relatable characters, excellent music, visuals, presentation and voice acting. Classic MegaTen combat which doesn't get old. Very worth playing for newcomers or veterans of the series.

Two complaints which knock this title down by one star:
1. Its annoying that I cant complete all the social links without hyperspecific planning ahead and potentially spoiling myself (I didn't play original release) on a first playthrough. At the end of the game I had 4 incomplete social links, even though they were my main priority, with my second priority being linked episodes and social stats. It feels even more annoying when the last two months of the game you have so many free evenings with fuck all to do.

2. Tartarus kinda sucks. There isn't really anything to make it interesting or enjoyable. Halfway through my ascent I was already starting to feel burned out on it, and by the last two months I was completely over it and just started to skip most battles altogether. It gets even worse when every shadow is a reskin of every other shadow, which makes general combat by the end of the game feel extremely dull. Considering this was a full on remake of P3, I think there was room for improvement to Tartarus that was not explored. For example: add puzzles, challenges. Add more setpieces. Connect the current area of Tartarus with current events in the story. Add movement mechanics, like Persona 5's grappling hook, or maybe lite platforming. And obviously add a bigger variety of shadows. All of this could be doable and still keep the spirit of the original Tartarus. Unfortunately the core gameplay of exploring Tartarus falls extremely short of most modern RPG standards.

basically a perfect game. this game borrows extremely heavily from souls but does it in the right way, and makes some of those borrowed elements better by giving them their own unique twist. it's as hard as it needs to be and the parry window is as wide as it needs to be. nice backstory and great characters, not mindblowing but good enough for this game. originally i thought that the themes here (pinocchio steampunk type stuff) were a bit corny but they grew on me eventually as i explored krat.

the combat simply makes you feel like you are Him especially after you get the dragon katana. the weapon system is super creative and a lot of weapons are really fun, and all the enemies keep the game interesting. and the bosses are just great and i would say at the same level as fromsoft.

i take off half a point in the rating because while the game is great, it simply lacks that bit of that souls magic that makes them so special. the environments, while beautifully crafted an detailed, feel same-y after a few hours (compare krat and yharnam and notice how yharnam feels a lot more varied in its design). same with the enemies, a lot of them are just humanoid guys with different movesets. and the level design is a bit too linear and there's not a lot of places to get lost in. these are small complaints and very subjective, but when you borrow so heavily from another series you have to be judged against it.

overall a fantastic game.


This review contains spoilers

there's a lot of negative reviews on here so lets start out with what sucks about this game, to feed the fire:

planets are weird and repetitive, companions are often kind of annoying (barrett is my boi though), performance on PC sucks ass if you dont have an AMD card, funny bethesda glitches, base building is awkward, exploration feels hollow with it being just selecting planets from menus, inventory management is a pain. whatever, the game is certainly far from perfect.

now lets talk about the cool stuff (SPOILERS BELOW):

- landing on a moon of a ringed planet and seeing the planet and its rings in the sky
- infiltrating a pirate organization and finding literal space treasure in the wreckage of a spaceship
- the aesthetics. bethesda calls it "nasa-punk" which i think is a corny ass name, but its such a cool concept and it's simply never been done at this scale and with this detail. maybe one of the best examples of retrofuturism in a video game ever.
- determining the fate of colonists lost in a spaceship stranded for 200 years.
- meeting a rogue AI in a ship and discussing AI rights with it.
- finding a colony of clones of historical figures. i helped FDR kill Genghis Khan and it was awesome.
- going to fucking NASA in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the decrepit ruins of earth, and learning about the fate of earth in this universe.

all of these little moments is what makes this game really special. the worldbuilding here is classic Bethesda, and that's really what makes it so good. Skyrim in space is good, guys.

FromSoft doing the goddamn thang once again and coming out with the GOTY.

Extremely fun movement and customization and even PVP was fun in this one. This was my first in the AC series but did not disappoint. Fun mission design and absolutely incredible boss battles that had me screaming at how cool and how satisfying they are to complete.

Also, I'm the type of game that hates replaying games but NG++ is absolutely worth it for the new missions and the cool bits of lore and story that you get to experience. I'm still not a fan of replaying missions but at least they go relatively quickly since you know exactly what to do and you get better at the game. Some of the moments in NG+ and NG++ completely rocked my shit. I love this game.

Thank you Armored Core!

late review about 2 years after first playing this.

pretty good :)

the pacing of this game is so goddamn awful. you will have a 40 minute combat session with 5 minute cutscenes sprinkled in, immediately followed by a 20 minutes of straight cutscenes. this is by far the absolute worst part of this game and it drove me insane. when i was finally relieved to not be watching cutscenes anymore, i was them somehow just bored with how long and repetitive combat sections are.
combat is FINE but everything takes forever to die (small guys should die in one combo but for some reason it takes like 3 combos instead) and you don't really have much of a say in your build other than summon abilities. was not a highlight for me.
story was also FINE but didn't draw me enough to carry on with this game.
if both the main gameplay (combat) and story are mid, neither will carry the game to be good. extremely disappointing.
also fuck ffxiv

unfortunately this game sucks after you've played all the later souls entries, and doesnt feel nearly as good.

i hate halting to a stop when i heal, i hate how easy i am to knock over and how long it takes to get back up using light/medium builds, i hate how the medium and heavy roll feel. the slow, weighty combat still feels good in some parts but it can be so stop-and-go that it becomes tedious a lot of the time.

most bosses are also just straight up bad and/or not fun. shout out bell gargoyles, ornstein and smough and the DLC bosses. bed of chaos, four kings, centipede demon, go to hell. every other boss is just mid, at least mechanically and how fun they are to fight. most bosses are at least thematically interesting and cool.

5/5 for vibes and how cool of a game it is, 2/5 for general gameplay and how annoying it often is in so many aspects.

they really had huge balls to remake a game this faithfully (including keeping all the annoying bullshit of the original) and then push it out as a ps5 release title.

i had 3 hard walls with this one
the runback to tower knight which made me shelf this for 3 years
flamelurker (dude takes nooooo damage at all without magic)
maneaters. do i gotta say anything else.

the faithfulness of the remake at least makes you appreciate how far the series has come and while its not as fun as later titles its still very satisfying.

also one of the most visually beautiful games ive ever played and runs fantastic on ps5 at 60fps

3/5 for the actual game experience, 5/5 for the quality of the remake and the visuals


feels bad to be 8 years late to this masterpiece from fromsoft.

the coolest setting in all the entries and some of the coolest bosses with really fast fun and fluid combat.

DLC really rounds out the game and i dont think it wouldve been as good as it is without it.

surprised at how much i liked it when i played it

my favorite zelda ever... vibes are crazy.