Do you like a good and compelling story with fantastic music to accompany it? Do you like good and/or eccentric characters? How about a very good boi? Do you like puzzles with interesting mechanics and solutions? Do you enjoy Shu Takumi's work? If you don't know who that is, its the man who made Ace Attorney also worked on Dino Crisis 1 and 2. While I think this remaster is really great in all regards I did see some weird stuttering in animations with a certain character on screen.

I love this game so much. This game is a cult classic a reason. Don't sleep on this game people!

First things first, I am an EXTREME Breath of the Wild hater. There was not a single thing about that game I liked other than its music. Unfortunately for me, this style is apparently what Zelda will be going forward so I will curse botw to my dying day. I'm gonna miss the traditional zelda formula. So why did I even play this one? My friend got sent two copies so he gave me one which means I didn't end up spending my money on this game thankfully.

With that out of the way, I did actually have some positives coming away from Tears of the Kingdom. At the end of the day I did have more fun with this game over its predecessor though thats not a hard thing to do. It kept my attention for easily double if not triple my playtime with botw. Link with his hair grown out and down is hot and it almost made me consider not wearing headgear like a massive idiot. I corrected that real quick. Stats > Fashion, Set Bonuses > Aesthetic, keep the hylian hood up at all times. Fashion first folks have no rights and don't talk to me if you are one of them.

When Link cooks he also hums music from the previous games which I think was a very nice touch. I could only place a couple since some are pretty hard to hear and real short and what I think I heard might not be correct but I'm certain I heard Saria's Song, the Main Theme and The Ballad of the Wind Fish.

The map seemed to have more going on this time and I enjoyed that cuz going around the first game's map was so goddamn boring. Make no mistake this one is still boring to traverse as its always the worst part of any game with a big map but it took like 10 hours for that boredom to come in instead of 1. Being able to make vehicles to speed up traversal, even if its limited by your batteries and they will disappear after a certain amount of time depending on how you built them, is generally a good thing. The increased enemy variety also helped with that but you're still fighting the bokoblins and moblins 75% of the time.

I still hate the weapon durability on a fundamental level and its not inherently better in this game compared to botw. The weapons are still made of wet tissue paper, however the fusion system makes it a bit more bearable. One of the largest issues with botw's durability was that fighting lower tiered enemies with anything but early game weapons was a net loss. They'd break after a couple swings and you'd get a stick or club in return. Now those awful weapons that they drop can be fused with their own monster parts or ones from your inventory, other weapons on the ground or assorted items. Now you can get something comparable to an unfused mid tier weapons with that stick. Breaking something like a silver lynel weapon on a red bokoblin is still a net loss however and I found myself not fusing weapons to each other past the early game. Just using monster parts and other materials seemed better all around.

There were a couple, what this game would call, dungeons. Keeping with the trend that the water temple is the worst of the bunch. In my opinion they are a large step up from the divine beasts of old but are still not as interesting as actual full length dungeons as they are quite short and are just "open x amount of locks". When you boil it down older zelda dungeon were "get keys to open doors to find the boss key to open the boss door" but there was a lot more stuff you had to do in between those as opposed to here where its one central gimmick in a handful of rooms/floors. A real shame that shrines are just dungeon rooms plopped on the map cuz these could have used a couple.

I thought its performance wasn't bad most of the time but when I activated the ultrahand in areas like the wetlands I had some pretty bad drops. There was also times where the game froze when I dove into the depths cuz it was loading it in. Like Link was just motionless in the air while all the effects from diving were still going. This was on a launch switch that never leaves the superior docked mode. Most of you are just a bunch of overreacting pc gaming babies who bleach your eyes when a game drops to 59.99 frames to justify your overpriced machines.

Music is still great but its a Zelda game and thats a requirement.

This is where my positives about the game end.

I don't know how anyone can spend 100+ hours on this game without being bored to tears of the kingdom. Once I got to 50 hours I was hoping my remaining main story quests were the last of it and thankfully they were. Its the definition of repetitive trying desperately to distract you with other repetitive tasks that by comparison to what you were just doing for the 30th time that hour as you go across this map, make it seem like its an oasis in the desert. At the end of the day I guess thats my fault for doing as much side stuff I did. The difference between a game like totk vs other games I like who also suffer from large map disease is the other aspects of them have main, progression related aspects I enjoy wholeheartedly and look forward to interacting with unlike here.

I still think you have way too many abilities out of the gate. I like unlocking things, I like the progression that comes with that. Theres like 4 or 5 unlockables (half of which are just your tablet features) here depending on if you count an upgrade of a specific other ability as a whole new thing. Don't know if some of those are technically missable or not as I just stumbled upon them as side quests and the game kind of pushes you in the direction to follow one. The main progression once again is just your hearts, stamina and the enemy scaling.

Exploration is still just as unrewarding. Chests are mostly just arrows or shields and weapons that will break during your next fight that most of the time I just left in the chests or rupees though I found those to be very rare by comparison. Once again nothing makes me want to spend that time getting to the top of a cliff instead of just ignoring it on my way to my objective. They game could also use more weapon variety. You have the one handed moveset, the two handed move set, the spear moveset, the magic scepter versions of the 3 above types where the largest difference is you don't throw the weapon but shoot magic, and boomerangs where its the one handed weapon unless you throw it. Fusing doesn't change its moveset but it does increase durability and changes its look, reach, elemental attribute and damage depending on what you use.

I am not a creative person when it comes to what a video game's systems allow you to do, as they are themselves limited by the developers code and its not feasible to program for every conceivable thing a player could want to do. Being plopped in a map and being told to "do whatever you want" doesn't do it for me. I like structure, I like linearity. When I play stuff like Minecraft, my house is a basic large square or rectangle with maybe a second floor or basement if I'm feeling adventurous and I've never fucked with redstone. The building in this game was not something I enjoyed but only did it for its convenience or necessity to progress. I do not play Zelda to get my Garry's mod fix. I found it rather cumbersome to get things lined up the way I want since stuff moves only in 45 degree angles. My auto build was only full of contraptions to help with traversal since I hate how the horses control in this duology even at full bond. I made vehicles for land, water, air, the desert and some stuff to help with climbing like hot air balloons. I've seen the Metal Gears people build but I don't care about doing cool things for the sake of it and I can't be bothered to put in that time when my sword and bow are more than enough.

The shrine and Korok problems persist. The shrines lack variety despite the garry's mod gimmick and somehow I kept getting repeat gimmicks back to back at times. I'll ignore that a lot of them can be outright skipped with rocket shields as you can't use zonai items from your inventory so its your deliberate choice to go that route. However when you have some that just are a treasure chest rooms without being tied to quests to get them open then I think you could have cut some out. As for Kokoks, most of their minigames I remember from botw were here and some new ones but they are still just as repetitive. There was also this rather frequent one (mostly cuz they are visible in the overworld) that is made to get you interact with the building system where you gotta move this stupid lazy korok who got separated from his friend. More than half the time I could just grab him with the ultrahand and walk him there instead of wasting my resources building something to get over there. The sheer amount of both of them makes me never want to get them all.

I find the action of upgrading your batteries, which powers your builds that use zonai parts, to be super tedious and gave off the feeling of padding. The ore itself is easy to get and it respawns like everything else, its getting the condensed charges that takes time. If you want charges outright you either convert the ore at forges and then wait for them to restock either by just doing something else or leaving the depths, going to sleep to get past midnight in game and coming back or go around the depths and fight the bosses down there that like everything else respawn during a blood moon. These bosses drop like 20-30 condensed charges except for special cases that I won't spoil here but are a one time reward. It takes 100 charges per individual charge of a battery so you need 300 for a full one.

The depths mentioned above I hated. I hate everything about its existence. Its dark as all sin down there until you activate lightroots. Its like those shitty horror games that think "you can't see" or "your light source is limited" is scary when its just annoying. I'm just firing arrows fused with my hundreds of stockpiled brightbloom seeds almost every 5 seconds to light it up so I don't step in "the gloom" which reduces your maximum hearts until you either get to a lightroot, get to the surface or eat a meal made with sundelions. Most of the the enemies down here also inflict you with gloom on hit. There is a set or armor that can give you some bonus hearts to take the gloom hits but its also inherently tedious due to it taking place in the depths which requires you to collect hundreds of poe souls to get it all (which are found in clumps of varying amounts with their values being 1, 10 or 20 and yes respawn).

I didn't care for the story just like in botw and I just really don't like this iteration of Zelda as a character. Then again I am comparing her to one with such a great relationship with Link as Skyward Sword's, nevermind the fact she is the best iteration of Zelda, then botw/totk zelda has no chance. I don't care what a diary says, I WANT TO SEE IT HAPPENING not read about it. The story is mostly told through flashbacks again. Can we stop doing this? Whats wrong with having it be done the normal way? The almost all post dungeon cutscenes are like 80-90% the same between them with some dialogue being outright repeated. Solving puzzles, I guess you could call the geoglyphs that, for these breadcrumbing flashbacks also aren't a worthwhile reward nor do they fill the void of an engaging story.

I almost forgot to write about the sky islands cuz they are just nothing. They are Tiny, tiny, tiny, chunks of land in the sky outside of the one large one thats tutorial island. Maybe there will be a shrine there or an enemy or its just a prebuild contraption to get you to the other islands. If you're lucky you'll find a minigame or a literal gacha machine (capsules and all) for zonai parts for your machines. I think that for two of the dungeons the act of getting around the sky islands is supposed to be considered as part of the dungeon cuz of how small it is (yes one of those is the water temple). If you removed the sky islands or just had a few larger ones as opposed to the splattering approach I don't think you'd be missing out on anything. More isn't always best but thats something this industry has forgotten, among so many other things.

TLDR: If I gave botw a 3/10 then this is a 5/10. I enjoyed the game more than the first one but thats not a hard thing to do. Link with long hair is great and the music is as always, beautiful. Unfortunately most of my problems were not fixed and and those that were are nothing more than band aids on broken arms. I found its new systems such as building jank machines and doubling down on the whole "player freedom" angle to be uninteresting. The weapon durability will never not be ass even with the fusion mechanics. Theres still too many shrines and koroks with too many repeats of gimmicks and too many abilities given on tutorial island. The story being told mostly though sometimes repetitive flashbacks is a narrative killer and the story wasn't good at all. Exploration was still unrewarding. This is not even a contender for my goty and I don't see what the "masterpiece" claims stand on.

I was waiting until I had beaten at least one game of each entry before giving my full thoughts, and the game specific critiques. The collection itself I think is very well done. The games themselves are just the gameboy games with the bonus content now accessible or returned such as the Boktai crossovers and Patch/item cards which give you a bunch of things like navi programs, items and chips. This also includes their faults just as their encounter rates, glitches and translation errors. Outside of the games got the jukebox, an art gallery full of nice art (I'm bias cuz I adore the BN artsytle) and a 3D Megaman talking to you on the screen. I liked when he congratulted me for beating games. Oh theres multiplayer too I guess but I never intended to touch that. Buster max mode is the "qol" addition this game has. No save states or god mode, just makes the buster do 100x more damage and yes it does stack with the buster upgrades to at buster level 5 you're doing 500 damage a shot. While it doesn remove most challenge it is not a be all end all. Any enemy thats resistant or immune to it will still not take damage so don't neglect your chips. Buster Max will make chip grinding a lot easier as well since you'll end battles in 1 to 2 seconds but you're gonna have a hard time getting S ranks since those tend to require mutli deletions. Don't be adverse to using it and make sure ot save often, there is no autosave and you can get jumped by a boss' ghost if you're not careful. I'm battle networked out right now so I don't intend to return for Tema Protoman or Falzar anytime soon, but they aren't out of the question. 4 can fuck off, that game sucks and I hate its existence. I think Battle Network might be my favorite iteration of the Megaman series now.


Battle network 1:
Very basic but it is the start of the series and layed a fine foundation for whats to come. The general chip selection was pretty basic as was its story, auto healing after each battle was wild and didn't return in the sequel and not being able to run without a chip was tedious.

Battle Network 2:
An improvement from 1 in every single way. Better chips, better story, better internet layout. It also introduced the style system which is fantastic. Megaman will gain a new style depending on how you play which gives him new abilites like hyper armor, a shield, more selectable chips etc and unlike in the sequel BN3 he can hold 2 styles at a time. The element you get is random though an that would carry over to BN3. That Freezeman section fucking sucks though and really hurts the game. So much running around between several points, sometimes right next to each other in the overworld causing constant jack ins and outs to avoif the high encounter rate, and needing to get a 10 or S rank in a specific random encounter for the reward to progress. Those internet run around sections are often considered the worst parts of each game.

Battle Network 3:
Versions played, Blue and White: The only one of the series I had played for a significant time prior to this collection, though as a kid my carts battery died in the final dungeon so I never beat it until many years later. Another improvement over the predessecor and introduced Navicust which are programs you can install into megaman in a tetris looking box to give him abilites like more hp, more buster damage etc. This pairs well with the style change system, which as I said above now you can only hold 1 style at a time. Now as you level up the style you gain navicust programs which you can then install and use when you're in your normal or different style (provided the color is compatable). The internet was also more refined, the areas look a lot more different from each other and the "main paths" to the squares are made a lot more notciable. the introduction of the in internet metro also speed up traversal. This game also has a couple of "get me some chips to progress" moments but unlike in 2 you only need a mid grade which is most likely the one you get without even trying. Plus for a specific chip later you can get a navicust program to force that virus type to spawn a lot more frequently. Even its Freezeman like sequence of running around the whole internet is nowhere near as bad as in 2 due to the inclusion of the aforementioned internet metro. Honestly if the series ended here, it would have been a great ending. Virus breeding was also introduced though there was no breeding whatsoever, just feed them to make the summon chip stronger and get the "boss virus" in the postgame and it didn't seem to come back unfortunatly.

Battle Network 4:
Version played, Red Sun: You go from 3 to this? How is that even possible? You have to make deliberite choices to get these results. The story is non existant, worse sprites as a whole and megaman got squished with an inflated head in the overworld, the game is now 3 tournaments of random opponents with random shit you have to do before running back and fighting your enemy navi where half the time they are either a generic good navi or a heel navi. There were 3 actual dungeons in the game you'll experience in a single playthrough, the rest of the time you're doing "the ever so loved /s" run around the internet missions in place of it for majority of the game. The internet design is also worse, really leaned into the isometric angle and hid critical plot items under them that you'd not know if you so much as walked on the correct side. Hidden items in the earlier games were extra things like HP memories. The soul system is a mix of navi chips (summon other characters for a single action) and style (changes megaman's look, elemental properites and charged buster attack) and is the worst of both with limited turns, non permenant gameplay changes to megaman, it required specific chips to enter into and not was as strong as a standard navi chip. You also need to play the game 3 times to get all the souls to reach the post game area, and due to that since it also increases the difficulty, your chips from your first time through are horribly weak due to the general virus level since you're not gonna be running into the V2 and V3 viruses until new game plsu. This game also introduced dark chips which are really strong chips that show up as a comeback mechanic but come with a cost, a permenant reduciton of your max hp by 1. Yes permeneant, you cannot get it back and the game makes sure this is known. All this did was make me not interact with it at all. Do you know how expensive hp memories are? And that they're limited unless I wanna use the patch cards? I think its too steep of a punishment. At the very least the ost was good, especially the internet theme. This set my expectations low for the following games

Battle Network 5:
Version played, Team Colonel: A complete improvement on and utter trouncing of that trash that was battle network 4. Its night and goddamn day. This game had more plot in the first 30 minutes than 4 did in its entirety. Artstyle is the same but the chips were still a bit wack. The internet is SO MUCH BETTER than in 4 as well. No longer is it that MC Esher stuff 4 attempted, its closer to the older games (2 and 3) where they are distinct but simple. Still backtracking a good bit, a lot more in the overworld than in the net it seemed. There were also plenty of actual dungeons this time around although most didn't end in a boss navi fight, seems the liberation missions took that spot. The liberation missions were interesting at first, thank god theres only like 6 of them though cuz once traps were added it was no longer fun. Really felt like every single space was rigged to either blow you up or paralyze you (the worst option). I still don't like the soul system over styles but at least there was also a way to fuse with the dark chips so you could actually use them without worrying about your alignment or hp. In that Chaos unison mode its now a skill check, release the charged buster at the right time and get the full dark chip attack but release it wrong and not only do you get taken out of the transformation but your dark soul appears on the other side and tries to fuck you up until you either beat the battle or outlast his timer. The series has returned to from with this entry and I have high expectations for 6 since I hear its the second best behind 3.

Battle Network 6:
Version played, Cybeat Gregar: I see why this one is generally considered the second best behind 3. In general I thought it as a very solid entry. The overworld maps were a good size, the internet areas were easily distinguishable with some shortcut points added outside of the usual warps. The fact they decided on this final entry to make such a big change to setting was smart in my opinion, not that I had grown tired of ACDC town these past few weeks or anything. The Cross system is also much better than the double soul one from the past games as well. No more chip sacrifice, instead you do a task controlling a different navi, then fight them and unlock that form. Its permeneant except getting hit by the weakness. Dark chips also were gone and repalced with the beast soul which is where the turn limit comes back in, by default Mega has 3 turns in it and its VERY powerful. Still not as good as styles but its a close second. Something I didn't like however was how some paths were locked behind those other navis I talked to eariler so in order to open them you gotta go to their specific computer and then run all the way through the internet from that access point to the shortcut you wanna open. Felt kinda needlessly lengthy sometimes, megaman should have been able to do it himself once he unlocked the form imo. And the several times where I had to do those navi treks through the internet just felt like padding. I don't know how different Falzar is but I can't imagine going into this one if you didn't play Team Colonel.


TLDR
The collection is solid, I think you get a good value here. The game's rankings are 3>6>5>2>1>4 and I'm not up for debate. If you want a good collection of mostly solid, shorter, card battler jrpgs then I don't think you can go wrong with this collection.

I remember barely anything about the first Octopath Traveler so some things I praise or complain about here might just be holdovers.

When I played the first game I only went through it with my chosen 4 members, this time I went through the game with everyone on top of just going for the whole platinum so that means all sidequests, locations and whatnot on top of getting everyone all the job skills for the hell of it. Unlike the first game, if I'm remembering correctly, you need to go through everyone's stories in order to hit credits. Speaking of credits, it was a really nice ending without going into spoilers. It honestly got to me, maybe I'm just continually softening up as I get older.

The battle system is mostly the same as the first entry but now they added passive abilities and limit breaks I mean latent powers which add enough to the combat flow. Ochette is been the beastmaster job I have wanted in jprgs for a long time. You catch a monster and (barring some special cases) you can use it in every single battle and will not leave your roster until you choose to get rid of it. To balance that she can only carry 8 non story related ones. Her latent power I think was was the best cuz has versatility. Do you want an aoe, high single target damage or an aoe debuff? She got it all

In terms of story, like the first game, they are unfortunately still very much isolated. You might as well not even have a party and it should have been done in in the way of Live A Live where its all separate until the end. They tried to alleviate it by having optional banter you can view depending on story progression, location and party composition which are unvoiced. There are also these paired stores between 2 characters where they actually speak to each other, interact, the whole 9 yards. Great, should have been the whole game. Then the epilogue has all 8 actually exist on screen at on time and speak to each other! I couldn't believe it! Again this should have been the whole game.

Still no bench party experience so I was dreading going through the more unused characters but it was pretty painless especially when my stronger characters could carry them through thing easily. Not that the game itself was difficult outside of maybe 3 or 4 fights and only cuz of those bosses being really annoying and doing things like giving themselves extra turns, bonus turns after brining a party member to 1 hp, and locking out basic actions like healing (both via magic and item), attacking (via regular action and skill) and blocking boosting. You also needed to go to a tavern to swap characters which was annoying. There were things in the world map that required certain characters so if they weren't with you then you had to either come back later or if you're like me and worry you'd forget, go back to a town, swap characters, walk ALL the way back to where it was and through the considerable high encounter rate this game has even with the reduced encounter skill to get back to it. The fact the option to swap party members out via the menu was locked to the epilogue is cruel and unusual punishment.

Speaking of skills, the game outright tells you what skills don't stack. Limited the fun a bit but I appreciate the game telling me it won't work so I wouldn't waste time. Since the game was so upfront about labeling things as unstackable, I assumed the items that don't have the disclaimer stacked as they should. Considering how often I was running into the metal slime equivalents while wearing the increasing items as I was power leveling for the last bit of the game, they were working. I also liked that there was an npc who only did the exp/jp buffs, so that way I didn't have to play russian roulette with the dancer class and have a chance to wipe my party.

Music was phenomenal, I adored the night versions of the tracks. This was another Xenoblade situation where I listened to everything at both times of the day. Partitio's theme is GOATED, fantastic and I'll be considering buying the ost just cuz of it. The whole time I've been writing this review I've been sitting in a tavern in game with it on loop.

I am also not tired of the HD2D style, its just so beautiful. Granted I did skip the more recent releases like triangle strategy and diofield chronicle so I haven't been as exposed to it as some others. Can't wait for that Dragon Quest 3 HD2D remake.

So given my, admittedly, lacking memory of the first game from what I remember I think this game is an all around improvement. I recommend it, unless you're a tryhard who only cares about difficult cuz then you have nothing here. Only things I ask in the future is, if they can't feasible have more interaction between the characters in each of their stories due to the sheer amount of variable its openness comes with, then do it like Live a Live and have everything be completely separated until they meet up at the end. The second ask is please allow bench exp, even if its at a reduced rate. It doesn't have to be from the get go, you could have that happen after you beat the character's story since you do have set levels of the encounters for each sequence. The third is allow party swapping from the menu or at save points. There is no good reason to not have it to lock it to the tail end of the game.

Nature being the cold hearted bitch she is decided to threaten me with power outage potential weather so I had to forgo my "one game at a time rule" to not run the risk of potentially losing progress in Octopath 2. Really this is the only thing the switch is good for.

Anyway this was my first time playing Return to Dreamland so I don't know whats different about this release other than the graphical changes, some new powers and a new mode from what I remember from the trailer. Its a kirby game, not really much else to say. You played a standard kirby game before? Then you know 90% of what to expect there. No suplex in the game it gets points reduced.

The big new mode is ok I guess. I was hoping something more along the lines of Milky Way Wishes but I got something akin to a Meta Knightmare. Asset reuse and recoloring with bosses getting their elements changed along with some new attacks. At the very least it didn't have another 100+ collectables but it could artificially inflate its time in other ways. I don't give a damn about the minigames or its little mask rewards. I did planet cracking once and never went back to that place.

I can see why it was so lauded back on the original wii release but I can't say I'd be replaying this over Super Star Ultra

I had first learned of this game back around the time I started Yakuza 6 and ever since I had hoped that one day, due to the series' popularity exploding in the west after 0, it would come over. Needless to say my excitement when this was announced was through the roof. Sadly I cannot say I enjoyed the game as much as I would have liked. Even the worst (mainline) Yakuza game is great by gaming standards so its not like it was terrible, but it just never really landed for me.

Out of the way, its combat was fun as always. I do enjoy the style systems, Wild Dancer was probably the most fun for me as Brawler just felt absurdly weak, Gun was too run around and Sword was rather stiff. However it did get old by the end but that is something every game can run into as they grow in length. I really liked how the leveling up the skills was handled. The standard "get orb upon level up for skills" remains but rather than just the standard ones you get from a standard level up, you also get on for specifically the style that you ALSO leveled up (which maxes out at 25). Those style orbs can be swapped with the generic orbs in a slot which allows you to spend that generic on on a different skill entirely.

The story meandered at times, but thats common in the series and I found the busywork before the very end to be rather stupid. Take a walk around the city and do these minigames and fights these guys again (except for one who was the only new fight). That soured it and maybe if I knew more about Japanese history I would have been more interest. I did like that I could complete all the substories without gambling or fighting Amon, so I think this is the first game I actually did do all substories. I don't even know if he's in the game but he always seems to be so he must be hiding somewhere.

My biggest issues comes from getting money. Because of how much this game relies on weapons compared to the previous games, aside from 7 and one character in 5, you need to interact with grinding resources and making weapons more than usual. They are expensive, not as expensive as I remember weapons costing in Yakuza 7 but also you do not get money anywhere near as fast in Ishin. The whole Second Life subgame was clearly intended to be the go to for money outside of gambling but its not fast enough. The crops grow in real time, and even with the max level fields and using fertilizer (which has a cool down unless you interact with the order book) the best stuff takes 20 minutes. What you need for orders and how much you get for rewards goes on a rotation and from what I saw range from 2000 gon to 1.1 ryo (which if my math is correct 1 ryo is 10k gon) and that 1.1 was strictly for ginseng. Making weapons and armor costs both money and resources and the best stuff can cost hundreads of ryo which means over a million each item. You also need to level up the blacksmith to make the better stuff and making weapons barely even increases it at low levels nevermind higher. The best way was donating so you're either spending resources making weapons to donate or you're going to the arms dealing and buying the cheap weapons in bulk to donate both which will cost you A LOT of money as weapon drops from enemies didn't happen unless they were story bosses or found in the battle dungeons which in of themselves are monotonous.

No wonder everyone says you better learn how the chicken races work. I hate gambling to the point where if a game forces me to then I usually knock the game down a half point so I initially wasn't gonna even touch them but unless I wanted to rely on my packaged in dlc weapons the whole game or use unupgraded stuff. I went in there and used the exploit (available at the time of writing this) to basically get free money since it allowed the bet to be removed but still pay you out like it was active. I never had to worry about money after that and just used the golden gun as my gun equip the whole game after that.

The trooper system was also something I did not care for or wanted to interact with much. Trooper cards are cards that allow you to activate special abilities such as shooting a big fire beam or stealing health from enemies and give you bonuses such as an HP increase passively and attack increases if they are in the commander slot. I could no be bothered to want to level them up so I just used the free dlc ones and was almost entirely for the health bonus until bosses themselves started using similar attacks to them.

TLDR: I was excited for this one but unfortunately it just didn't really land. Combat was fun until the final dungeon where it became dull, story didn't grab me, and the game has a money wall problem that would grind it to a halt if I didn't learn of the ways to mitigate it as early as I did. I don't think its the worst but it also ain't gonna be in the top 5. I like it more than 6 but probably not more than 3 (I don't hate Blockuza as much as the average Yakuza fan). Also Sega I don't care that you changed the name in the west to be the same as in Japan, I'm gonna keep calling this series Yakuza due to not only due to reflex but my own stubborness.

This fangame/romhack whatever this is was great. Had a lot of good things going for it. The custom sprites were fantastic, so many were so beautiful however not all pokemon have that same level of care. Usually the lower end evolutions outside of those really liked pokemon such as the starters, first route bird, legendaries and eeveelutions to name a few. Sandshrew also had like fantastic sprite after fantastic sprite. I'm not complaining, the little guy deserves the world and more but it just seemed odd how consistent those were lol. Those that don't have the custom sprites have ones ripped right from the online fusion generator. Even the order you choose the fusion materials changes how it'll look and its stats which is too intricate for me to go in here. Even fusing two of the same pokemon together can give you a totally new sprite like Gastly and Tyranitar, which the latter I was able to get as soon as I got to Fuscia city so thank you creator for letting me use my favorite pokemon before end/post game.

The game has 3 difficulty options regular pokemon difficulty(easy), normal and hard. I played on baby easy cuz I actually like the permanent exp all and I hate EV training. You can get that exp all by itself as well on the other difficulties and turn it off if you want. The game also lets you save in multiple save slots. Its story isn't entirely just the gen 1 story, you're still following team rocket but their goals are means are different cuz fusions and whatnot. The game uses a somewhat gen 4 look. You'll be going to new areas that just didn't exist and the maps in general are redone. I found a new exit in rock tunnel and found a legend of zelda reference with ofc yielded a honedge.

Its post game was also fun, if a bit hectic with how much it has you jump around. You go to johto 3 years before the events of gen 2. Its not the johto you remember, and you're even allowed to go there as early as beating team rocket in saffron.

Tms are infinite use, hms can be deleted without needing the move deleter and there's items you can get that just outright replace the HMs. I didn't need to keep trash like rock smash and flash at the ready after getting those items so make sure you explore and do the sidequests. The post game superboss was also done so well. How you get there, the events that occur. I'm not gonna say anymore but if you play this, you would be remiss to not go all the way through to that. I can't remember the last post game that was this worthwhile.

If you like pokemon and its romhacks, this will test your type matchup, moveset knowledge and ability to discern fused names. This romhack is probably second only to Crystal Clear to me.

Where to begin with such a contested release? By saying I just found out that this is the same studio that made Dragon Ball Z Sagas. Do with that information what you will.

Exploring Hogwarts and the lands outside are probably the best thing about it. Hogwarts has a large amount of activities and simple puzzles to do with the main story trials having more difficult ones for at least someone as puzzle inept as me, conversations and flavor encounters to experience such as the humming knight, and more secrets than you could shake your wand at. Outside its a lot of nice vistas such as green hills, sparsely forested areas, the rather dreary coast and the forbidden forest with hamlets dotting your way down the roads. You'll find your fair share of enemy encounters outside of the settlements along with various simple Merlin trials and wildlife you can capture for your vivarium for resources. Unfortunately the Merlin trials have about as much variety as the korok puzzles in botw. You have about 7 or 8 versions and things are just placed more spaced out to "change it up". I don't go "wow" often but when I was riding the hippogriff over the water, it was definitely a beautiful site.

The game has a gear and loot system which I grow more tired of seeing in games by the day, but its not gear vomit levels like Nioh were you're getting 30 pieces of gear per encounter with .00000000001% parameter increases on them. Its inventory space does not condone itself to it enough. I don't know the exact number of slots you start with but it can't be much more than 25 and it maxed out at 40. I had to go to Hogsmead regularly to sell my stuff for paltry amounts of money, unless you're on playstation and do its exclusive quest at the time of writing this for an extra 10% selling bonus, like you get 60-200 a piece where things on average are a lot more than that to buy. You can upgrade your gear but it doesn't do much stats wise, the traits are really what matters when it comes to that which you have to find in chests or as rewards from challenges. You can transmog anything into any style of gear you've picked up or unlocked from challenges. I just wore the knights armor for the majority of my time. Not that I liked how my character turned out anyway. You can only choose from presets for the face with no option for actual editing from what I saw and I hated every single one. I'll also never understand not having a raw color picker for customization as its not like they were limiting themselves to "natural" hair colors here. The room of requirement, your personal resource farming center for stuff to craft potions and upgrade gear if you don't want to explore though you can't grow everything such as those damn horklumps, unfortunately doles things out in real time and does not progress while the game is off. Things can take between a few seconds to 30 minutes with the latter seemingly being exclusively for animal breeding. Placing items in the RoR also takes a specific resource called Moonstone that you can either generate yourself at a maximum of 30 a time every 10 minutes, if you place all 3 generators, or find outside while exploring which do refresh but I don't know how long that takes to happen. I spent a lot of time in the vivarium with the magical creatures, and you can find shinies of them in the wild. I haven't found many but I got a couple shiny birds which had shiny kids and a shiny giant toad. My amount of progression per session went down drastically once it unlocked but I knew this would happen and was looking forward to it. Nifflers are precious, must be petted and given all the love.

The story is easily its weakest aspect. Its was just so bland the entire time, and most of the side quests weren't much better. Honestly the only thing worth a damn writing wise was Sebastian's questline. The devs must have been slythrin sorted cuz they have so much more work put into them than the gryffindor or hufflepuff's and ravenlcaw's might as well not exist cuz you blink and miss him. I feel like the game also was intended to have companions follow you while you explore the world. Several times now have I strolled on up to a goblin or bandit camp and my character said something along the lines of "Theres a lot of them, and I'm without my friends" or "This will be tough since I'm alone". It must have been cut deep in development. Your main character is just a bland self insert with choices that lean towards the "good thing" or a little bit rude to get some extra money from quests but outside of that they're nothing. The vocal pitch you can adjust at the time of writing this is terrible as well. Move it anywhere from the middle and you're talking out of a tin can. The whole premise about ancient magic just never lived up to what it could have cuz this "ancient magic" just amounted to 5 to 6 finishers I was able to do outside of seeing what the painting people did with it when they were alive.

The combat wasn't asking much of me outside of color recognition and enemy awareness. Its kind of stiff and twitchy with not a lot of enemy variety and can be a bit hectic. Goblins have their several variants, dark wizards have theirs with just varying degrees of aggressiveness with maybe one unique spell to their name, spiders, wolves, big frogs and suits of armor of 3 sizes are what you'll run into outside of students in the dueling room. The enemy tracking is also absurd where the enemies will snap the distance between you, we're talking like 30 feet in a blink. Reminded me of Dark Souls' 2 absurd tracking. In terms of spells you have 5 damage types with one being exploration/puzzle focused (Control, Force, Damage, Utility, Curses) to choose from in the list of 27 and will need to memorize colors for shield breaking. "The game only has 27 spells! Skyrim has 100!" Yes it does and it is less than I expected I will agree but they are spells with vastly different properties and combo potential. Lift them up, slam them down, set them a blaze, freeze in place, stun after countering (with a perfect guard system), curse them for bonus damage and damage all cursed targets at one time to name some. How many of skyrim's spells are just strength progression of the 5 levels from novice to master and offer little else? I understand the mainstream is full on size queens and plenty of you want any reason to tear this game down but actually think about something other than size for once. Instead of having an arbitrary slot on incendio level 2, you just use the talent tree to give it its added ring of fire effect. Having to change spell loadouts mid combat is also kind of cumbersome as you need to hold down the cast button and then hit the corresponding dpad button to change. Better memorize all 4 loadouts of your 4 set spells once you unlock them. Odds are you're gonna find one combo that works and stick with it but you'll be hard pressed to actually be able to land it all unless you're fighting one on one.

I do wish the basic casting was more than a 4 hit where most of your damage from it comes from the final hit. You also have other items like chinese chomping cabbage (which are surprisingly strong), mandrakes, venemous tentacula and various potions to use during combat. Using the unforgivable curses was fun, and the devs almost didn't puss out on Avada Kedavra. That one shots anything and everything even with a shield including every boss enemy that I used it on with the exception of the final boss and a specific beast. There are multiple sectioned life bar enemies but I didn't run into any other than the final boss after getting the spell so I do not know how it interacts with them and if you have the "effects all cursed enemies" talent, it kills everyone afflicted. Sure it has a lengthy cooldown but there's plenty of talents and potions to reduce it. Speaking of the talent tree, you cannot get all talents from it unfortunately so plan accordingly. Leveling speed also drops hard at higher levels, requiring near 100% completion of all story, side quests, challenges and collectables to get to the max level of 40. Theres A LOT of collectables here, 1126 according to many. While its not even half of DK64, that still a lot especially since its required to get to max level, nevermind just as a completion percentage.

The flying controls seem to be a point of contention for a lot of people. Took me a bit to get used to especially since they aren't inverted out of the gate. The left stick controls your left and right turning while the right stick controls your up and down while the triggers are a speed up and a limited boost on top of the gear shift L3 click. This means you only have access to the x axis of the camera and can make things like the time trials more annoying to reorient should you miss a ring or trying to look and see what all the commotion is under you as you fly through the lands. I don't think they are awful by any means, I've gotten very used to them and can effortlessly do what I set out to but I do think either the triggers should have stayed where they are and the verticality be placed on the shoulder buttons or vice versa.

I had heard and seen video claiming the game was buggy and full of performance issues but I didn't run into much 0f anything. Other than the loading in after fast traveling, the frame rate was stable the whole time. In terms of glitches, I didn't get the quest locking or chest one. Other than clothing physics related ones that happened maybe once a session. I got stuck between a ruin wall and a cliffside and wasn't able to open the menus so I had to restart the game, but the game autosaves often so I had plenty of close saves to choose form and only lost like 30 seconds. I played unpatched on PS5 as well so nothing was fixed. So much when I played Scarlet, I either got lucky and rarely saw any issues or people are blowing it out of proportion.


TLDR: While it might not come off that way, I generally a fun time. Getting to run around a fully realized Hogwarts brought back memories of playing Chamber of Secrets on the PS2. This game right now is what I remember Chamber of Secrets being, just with a nondescript bland main character cuz self inserts and whatnot instead of loosely following a movie plot. The combat could have used more enemy variety, the story and other characters needed Sebastian levels of care, but the general act of exploring the world, uncovering secrets, petting your magical creatures and unleashing a killing curse on your foes surpasses that. Its not a 10/10 but certainly not a 1/10, probably a 6 or so maybe 7 if I'm feeling generous. Peeves is lucky he's already a poltergeist or he'd be on the receiving end of a Avada.

EDIT: I am dropping the score by half a star. This single player game would not let me even start it without downloading its newest patch at the time of writing this. There is no good reason to force an update in a purely single player title unless it fixes a gamebreaking bug. This update made the game run worse. I had literal slideshows and puzzle room not visually updating so I was just walking through blocks despite having little to no issues whatsoever on the unpatched game. I get stopping multiplayer connectivity without it but I have never seen a single player game just full on stop me without a patch before. Usually I can play while it downloads or just delete the update and play on my current version. I pray this isn't a sign of things to come. Might just never connect my stuff the internet from now on unless I'm buying a digital title and see how far I can get.

Persona 3 FES is my favorite JRPG of all time so Persona 3 Portable had some giant shoes to fill, that was an impossible task at the end of the day. I never knew it existed back when my psp was still functional and hearing about the changes made me skip it when I thought about emulation. Fast forward to now in 2023 where I'm playing this rerelease. Its been awhile since I've last played FES though I was with my brother during his initial journey through it. I had one of the biggest smiles on my face when Want To Be Close played for the first time during this playthrough.

Story wise it is pretty much the same no matter the route with some minimal changes here and there, but one very large change if you max a specific S-link on the FEMC's route that I hate cuz it ruins a massive emotional moment. I still think this has the best story of the Persona games I've played, which is 2 through 5, and you'll still get that here despite that massive mistake. Tartarus is something you either love or hate. Think of it like Mementos in Persona 5 for all you new fans but you're going up instead of down. Music is still fantastic though FEMC has several different tracks from Male MC's route. She does not get the best JRPG battle theme of all time, Mass Destruction, so her route is automatically inferior although Way of Life and Time are fantastic tracks exclusive to her. She does however get a link with best boy Koromaru so that another positive for her. In general you get to see a lot of new interactions with the cast, both female and male, with her and her very different personality from the Male MC, which in turn gives you a new perspective on his own growth. Male MC is still unfortunately auto dating every girl he maxes out just like in the original but FEMC isn't forced into a relationship when max ranking with the guys prospect. Don't know why they couldn't have done that their either. You had VAs back in the studio for new lines for the female route already. Controlling the party members is the main reason why people place it higher. Yes, it is nice to do so but the game was clearly not designed for it or the persona 4 bonus actions that were added. The ai in FES is also not as unwieldy as the Marin Karin memes lead you to believe. Anyone who uses that excuse never played FES and/or never touched the tactics menu to adjust her and cried about it. Its not up for debate. The MC's are also locked to a single weapon now instead of Male MC being able to use multiple types like in FES. Male MC is locked to one handed swords, albeit they are different from Mitsusru's one handed swords, and FEMC is locked to Nagitama. At the very least FEMC's is a brand new thing. Depending on who you ask, it not having the Answer is a good thing. I am one of those people. I HATE The Answer. I think it ruins a lot of Persona 3's ending.

What I think it does the worst is presentation. The anime cutscenes from the ps2 release were removed which removes a lot of the tone and every big moment is neutered. At the beginning of the game they actually recreated the awakening scene with the psp models, so they could have done it but instead they gave up. Instead the rest of those cutscenes are full on visual novel like, meaning the character models are not acting out the scene alongside the dialogue boxes. Instead of having a full on scene, you stare at a static background shit while a sound effect plays and/or the character images. Sure did love just seeing a big JPEG shake violently during the big moment instead of an actual animated scene. This completely kills the moment. You also cannot walk around the maps outside of dungeons, its just an image of the location you are in like the school and using a cursor. Many will say "oh it doesn't matter" but I disagree as it is another case of the tone and progression of the world removed cuz things change along with the story. In a genre where story is the main focus and an rpg, it needs to be visually stimulating which I do not think VN style ever is. PSP limitations were an excuse for it back then, it is not one anymore. At the time of playing there is also not a way to select the skill inheritance so you're gonna be backing out of fusions until the right ones are selected. If you want more than one? Good luck getting both, instead see if you can get skill cards and save yourself some sanity. However if you wanna get skill cards copied, you gotta mash cancel as the inari randomly selects from your pool. Why they couldn't have implemented a menu selection I have no idea and it takes 5 in game days to get your card as well.

These presentation hits do more harm to the game for me than the improvements it gives and thats why, despite the most important things like the story and characters being mostly the same, I will never place Persona 3 Portable above FES. The best version of Persona 3 would be FES with the Portable content and changes added in. However, I have heard that FES' source code is a mess so we are stuck with Portable without a full on remake. I'll take that excuse over the poor archival issues that have been increasing in number these past few year.

I would very much recommend to not use this as your first experience with Persona 3, play FES first then play Portable as FEMC however I can't control what you do. If you wanna have a diluted experience, you are only doing yourself a disservice.