i really wanted to like this game more than i did.

borrowing from staples of the survival horror genre, signalis combines resident evil's inventory management system with the atmosphere of silent hill (in particular i was reminded of silent hill 3, owing to both games portraying a lone female protagonist, as well as sharing some choices in enemy design). whether or not signalis actually innovates on these concepts is... another matter entirely.

we'll get to that. i have something much more pressing to talk about first.

which would be the story.

the story feels... vague. you'd miss most of it if you weren't stopping to read every note and document strewn about the game's vast levels, which is fine, but even with poring over every single piece, the plot feels half-baked. i arguably got the best ending of them all, (of which there are four, including a secret ending) and it still felt like there was so much missing.

you play as an android named elster, who is trying to find her partner. that's as much as you have to go on initially, and you never really get much more. for a game so lauded for it's story and characters, it insists on telling you the bare facts without showing why you should care about the characters and their relationship. as a player, you have to want to find ariane because elster wants to. there was little else to compel me, and i wanted to be compelled. i wanted to get invested in the tragedy of these characters :c their little dance scene was cute, at least

there's also a plot detail (arguably a twist?) that happens very close to the end that i don't think is convincingly written or explained. it just happens, as so much of the game does. much of the story is also just left open to interpretation which is fine, and admittedly elster and ariane are just part of a larger plot with many moving pieces. but nothing about the characters felt distinctive enough for me to even wonder much about the wider themes at play, especially since those thematic elements felt more than a little derivative. even the gestalt/replika terminology used is nothing new.

the gameplay i can't fault it for; it's fun, satisfying, and the puzzles are mostly great (i did kinda feel sad that the tarot card puzzle just... gave you the answer). the weapons felt good and i liked having the ability to burn away the corpses of particularly annoying enemies, preventing them from reanimating. the flare gun added an interesting twist to the gameplay as it could be swapped between firing flares and grenades, making inventory management more complex and layered from swapping in and out more types of ammunition.

while it borrows much from its predecessors, signalis' major gameplay innovation lies in its radio-tuning mechanic, which is equal parts fun and clunky. i liked the story significance it has - one small concession i will allow for the writing in this game - and it leads to some interesting puzzle solutions and enemy design. it just, unfortunately, has to contend with some jank in its execution (why quick tuning is not the default operating mode, i have no idea). i wish the game relied on it a little more, though.

the visuals and aesthetics of signalis were what initially drew me in, and i think remain its strongest asset, with well-realised, intentionally low-poly models evoking a nostalgia that seems key to the post-apocalyptic setting. the facilities you explore are largely empty, populated only by a few survivors - several of whom are already fatally injured when you encounter them - and the deteriorating androids that roam the halls, now mindless husks of their former selves. an eclectic mix of cultural inspiration also suffuses the game's atmosphere - a lot of cutscene text is in german, many of the characters have distinctly asian names and the world is saturated in soviet propaganda posters and imagery. i think you could easily make an argument for the intentionality of signalis and all of its idiosyncrasies as an art piece, particularly given that it has such strong aesthetic sense.

while signalis is a fun experience on a surface level, though, i cannot help but feel a little disappointed by so much of the discussion around the game centring on aspects that i personally found to be underwhelming and uninspired.

also i was promised space lesbians and they didn't even kiss

full disclosure: this is the first persona game i have ever beaten. i've tried 4 and 5 but never gotten more than a few dungeons in. i didn’t dislike what i played of them, but they just didn’t feel compelling or… fun.

but because i never learn, i bought persona 3 reload anyway :3

i've had some trouble piecing together my thoughts thus far because i feel that nearly every aspect i loved about this game had some glaring exception to the rule. sort of that, 'when it's good, it's great, when it's bad, it's really bad' feel. those are the games i have difficulty categorising.

one of the most egregious examples of this is the character writing. the main cast is generally very strong, but the social links are extremely hit-or-miss. which is a problem because the ‘daily life’ segments of persona games makes up a significant portion of the gameplay and are extremely important for building better personas for the dungeon-crawling sections.

some of the social links were objectively sweet or touching, like fuuka's or kamiki's, which unfortunately just exacerbated how completely obnoxious other ones were. i would be helping bebe with his sewing, or yuko with coaching kids on the track team, only to then be blindsided by the abrupt return to the long, long fat joke that is suemitsu’s social link. and that’s not even going into tolerating kenji’s attempts to date his teacher, maya gushing about having a creepy crush on one of her students (what is WRONG with the teachers in persona) or tanaka’s sleazy business practices.

this isn’t to say that this is a moral failing on the part of atlus or that games can’t portray bad people. however, for a game with a core message about forging bonds with people, it seems pretty content with forcing you to enable their poor decisions and bad behaviour. i’m not able to tell an NPC that he shouldn't risk permanent injury because it makes him like me less than if i tell him to just man up. i can’t tell maiko to live with her mother and not her father who i know has hit her before, because she likes me less. and i need people to like me so i can fuse stronger personas at a reasonable pace within the game’s rigid day-to-day structure.

and to be honest, that just sucks.

thankfully, i found the writing of the main cast to be much stronger, especially as the plot progressed. the characters themselves are just plain fun too, and this review certainly would not be complete without mentioning aigis in particular, whose design i loved - admittedly, it drew me to the game in the first place - and who immediately became my favourite character. her storyline admittedly isn’t very original, as indeed most of the main characters’ plotlines aren’t, but damn, do i love a good “android learning to feel” trope. other standouts were elizabeth (second only to aigis), junpei and chidori. basically i fell in love with anyone goofy or weird in a fun way, and i believe this is where persona 3 reload truly shines.

while the plot itself doesn’t break much new ground, it’s largely uncompromising in its portrayal of the core themes of existentialism and mortality. suicide-related imagery is prevalent throughout, represented in a kind of microcosm by the protagonists' use of evokers. these small, gun-like devices enable the summoning of a persona in battle by having the users simulate the act of shooting themselves in the head, thus confronting their fear of death.

it’d be a heavy metaphor in any game, but if anything, i wish reload would have committed to it more. makoto is haunted by death throughout the game, in both a figurative and literal sense, and his succumbing to it at the end of the game feels like a fitting end to a story that so starkly lays out its ethos at the opening. which is why it's such a disservice to the story that a certain character can be revived from death if you just... do enough of the hangout events. as much as i adored said character, it feels contrary to the story that's being told.

it’s one of the few holdovers from FES that i wish they had thought to leave out, given that reload is supposedly a remake of the original P3. it’s confusing where atlus have drawn the line on several decisions, not least with regards to selling 'the answer' as part of an expansion pass DLC (which contains nothing else but cosmetic outfits and music), and the complete absence of femc.

i cannot help but feel that remaking a game is the perfect opportunity to create a 'complete' edition with all the previous content included. i would not have been against this game taking longer to come out if they needed more time - but let’s be honest, it’s a corporate decision to force players into paying an extra £30 on top of the baseline £70 that triple-A games cost now. which is stupid.

a few quick-fire points i won't go too into but that i wanted to mention:

+ tartarus feels fun and rewarding; the gameplay loop of advancing through the floors, picking up tarot cards and returning next time with more advanced social links and stronger personas was satisfying

+ the art is stylish and well-realised, though the background NPCs can look a little wonky. (in the scene where fuuka is being bullied, it also kiiind of gave it away that natsuki would become important to the story)

+ the theurgy animations are amazing. i especially love aigis and junpei's second ones

+ elizabeth gets her own bullet point because i love her. fuck you

- no exp sharing in a party-based RPG where characters will sometimes be unavailable as dictated by the plot feels a bit unfair. i used mitsuru, yukari and aigis as my main team, and had mitsuru and aigis disappear one after the other :c i also would have liked to swap people out more often

- locking aigis' best weapon behind finishing ken's hangouts. just why

i’ve criticised a lot about this game, so it might feel weird to now rate it so highly, but there's so much i haven't even mentioned; boss designs, music, the tarot/arcana theming, anything to do with elizabeth and her hangouts. also the much, much needed updates that i haven't talked about and just how funny much of the game's humour is.

but i have probably yapped enough. so, thank you for reading c: