Man I absolutely love this series.

I was introduced to Persona with Persona 5, which came out 7 years ago (good lord), and it, along with Royal, is my favorite game of all time. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to go back to play 3 & 4 without all the QOL improvements. So when a remake of Persona 3 was announced I was so excited.

The story overall is phenomenal. To me P5s story was bombastic and arguably the biggest part of the game itself. P3 a story is a more down to earth story about people and their relationships and ultimately how everything does come to an end. The main story is much lower key so that the team dynamics and social links can shine.

The main characters are top notch. I eventually settled into a team i liked using, but personality wise I enjoyed every character. Their social links/linked episodes and their daily life events in the dorm make them feel so authentic.

The gameplay is so improved from the original. While I do prefer the dungeons of 5, 3 Reload made Tarturus not near as boring as it seemed in the originals. Plus the battling feels top notch.

The social links were decent. I really loved some, like Miyamoto, Akinari, Bebe, Mutatsu, of course the main cast. Some of them definitely fall flat though. The gourmet king and the kid that wants to date his teacher are some low lights.

The music is absolutely incredible. Atlus somehow made the remixes as good or even better than the original.

I really enjoyed the cut scenes, both animated by WIT and the CG ones.

Overall my only criticism of the game comes from the social links. You have a few that fall flat and then only 2/20+ that are available at night. Once you max social stats out and finish Tanaka and Mutatsu’ arcs there is nothing to do at night. While during the day I’m scrambling to finish all of them (ultimately I didn’t finish Fuuka, Chihiro, and Keisuke).

Still all in all, a phenomenal entry in a series I adore.

Time to beat: 79 hours
Date beaten: 2/21/24
Trophies obtained: all but the platinum and maxing out social links.
Persona Compendium %: 96%

Metroid is a series I never played growing up. I remember watching my cousin or uncle playing it and it looking really cool (Prime specifically) but I never played one until Super Metroid on the SNES Classic back when it came out. I was terrible, but I did beat it and could tell it was special. A few years later Metroid Dread came out and I absolutely adored that game. I constantly think about playing it again… if it weren’t for my backlog. The Prime trilogy always intrigued me but I was turned off by the 1 stick controls of the GameCube release and the motion controls of the Wii release. Well lo and behold Nintendo released a remastered edition for the switch with twin stick controls. Okay now I’m game.

And what a game it was. I constantly was in a fantastic mood playing Prime 1. It is such a well-put together and polished game. It is an incredibly rewarding experience throughout the game. Some may dislike the backtracking that the story and unlockables entail, but I personally loved exploring Tallon 4, finding something I couldn’t access and then that “a-ha!” Moment going off when I got the upgrade I figured I would need. The most rewarding part of this is the artifact search. None of them are insanely difficult to find, but hard enough to be very rewarding.

Most of the bosses, while good fights, were forgettable. The exceptions being Meta Ridley and Metroid Prime, both fun and challenging fights. For me the traversal and puzzle solving is the real star of the show.

The story is absolutely what you make of it. You get enough from the environmental story telling. Samus has crash landed on Tallon 4 and needs to find a way off. And that may be enough motivation for most. But, through its scanning system you can really dig into the lore of the Metroid universe and get smaller pieces of the story’s puzzle along the way. I apparently scanned about half of what was available (again crazy) and felt like I had a good grasp of the story and lore.

It’s incredible, playing this in 2023, noticing how influential it is. It’s interconnected map especially so when I think of FromSoft’s masterpieces. Now I need Nintendo to port 2 & 3! The twin stick controls make this game a dream to play compared to the GameCube.

I finished the game in 13 hours and 10 minutes with a 67% completion rate (I can’t believe how many missiles are in the game). For me it is my second favorite in the series behind Dread. But so far Metroid is a series where Nintendo does not miss period.