Playing through FES in 2022 was one of my favorite gaming experiences I've had in quite some time. I guess I didn't realize quite how much until hearing about this remake. No hesitation in wanting to replay a long game like this, and in fact, genuine excitement for what was to come. If this version in 2009 was already one of my favorite games of all time, what would this end up being?

The answer is a truly unforgettable experience, that cements itself as one of my favorite games of all time, and Persona as one of my favorite series of all time.

Everything here is improved, from the improved music, to the combat, to the visuals, to the links, to the voice acting. Almost nothing feels off here. The story remains excellent and in my humble opinion, the best of the big three persona games, with some of the best side links in the series, and some of the best female characters. Makoto is the best protagonist in the series, and, while this game can't quite hit the monumental high and achievement of Persona 5 Royal (including the best OST soundtrack in any game) this game comes damn close to me.

The final boss fight is one of my favorite in all of gaming, and is done total justice here, the game is accessibile and easy if you want it to be (a huge improvement from FES in that way without modding it).

Overall, this game is a dream come true, is probably going to be my GOTY, and quite frankly, one of the crowning achievements for video games in general.

Can't wait to see what Atlus does dipping its toes into the Old Timey Mystical genre next!!!

So first of all a giant thanks to my buddy Brandon for gifting this to me. Realistically if this doesn't get gifted to me I never play this game. The trails game (falcom other series) burnt me out. I had zero desire to play any more of their games. However this game was a delightful surprise in so many ways and fixes so many issues I have with the trails series.

First of all the comabt is way more fun for me. Just simple hack and slash and dodging around but super quick and easy to pick up. The story is really solid hear, it takes a while to cook (like all falcom stuff) but once it does it cooks hard. The characters are all great here. There's real consequence and meaning and sadness to the plot here, and at times reminded me of a final fantasy like story in that regard.

Being able to explore just a giant island and feel like a pirate was pretty cool. Finding all the people that had washed ashore kept it interesting.

I do wish the story got going sooner or some hours were cut here, and the map was finnicky and I wish was stronger.

There's some falcom jank here too (the slow pan introductions/the presentations/cheesy dialogue/everyone way too happy)

But overall this was a great game and one I can easily reccomened. Can't wait to check out ys ix at some point!

This one is so tough for me, and honestly, there is no way I can ever be 100% unbiased. Let's start from the top. OG FF7 is one of my favorite video games of all time. Between that and MGS it is what got me into gaming in the first place, and I can still remember sneaking up late at night to play more of these games on the PS1.

So when a remake of this was announced, I was obviously nervous, and oddly enough, the first Remake game did almost nothing to squash that even though I really did like it. It was clear they were going with a bold, new, different direction, and despite my squabbles, I couldn't help be just beyond in awe with what they were trying to accomplish, but it really felt like something I'd need to wait and see the whole way through before I could give a full opinion on.

Another game later, I still feel kinda the same way? I really do like this game, along with remake, I think they're both spectacular. I also think, they will NEVER live up or surpass the OG game to me, and that's okay too.

I do think this game is too bloated. It's also way too story light until the last chunk of the game. Really we don't get major story stuff until chapter 12 (though it starts getting better in eight).

I think the side quests are improved from Remake, but still not great here.

Also for the love of god, I like the mini games, but not EVERYTHING needs to be a mini game. Some sections were an actual slog cause of that.

The open world while solid and fun, does nothing that hasn't been done before, and can't match some of the top tier open worlds to me (RDR2, Horizon FW).

What this game excels at is the world, and character building. It's tremendous. It makes you really fall in love with every one of these characters, and shines a light one more time on Aerith, one of the greatest female characters in video game history.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this game, even more than Remake (even though I think Remake does somethings better). I think this one will grow on me over time, and maybe even increase in score, and who knows, maybe after the third game, I'll learn to love them all even more.

How do you review an utter masterpiece like this? Like for real.

It's just perfection. MGS 2 is a fantastic game but ruffled a lot of feathers at the time. So this was Kojima "apologizing" for that and making the most bad ass, james bond like Snake game he could.

This game has the greatest video game song ever made IMO, one of the best openings and a heart tugging emotional, amazing conclusion. The story is peak, the characters are fantastic and the boss fights are so so good (on the same level as 1 if not better for best in the entire series).

All of the survival elements are well ahead of their time, well thought out, and done very well.

I don't know man. I could go on and on. This game is a masterpiece though, and one of the greatest games of all time. God bless Hideo Kojima.

This was kind of a banger. I really enjoyed my time here more than I was expecting. Kind of a tale of two games though, the original persona 4 arena story was a little messy, and a chore to play through, but the overall story was good and I enjoyed it.

The new "ultimax" content though, was really great, and was tied together in a much better way, and a better flow to it. It was great getting to see the persona 4 cast again, but even more so, it was SO great seeing the Persona 3 cast again, and getting an update on them being older, and what they've been up to since the events of Persona 3. I really wish some of the persona 5 spin offs would have given us this, but they didn't go in that direction for whatever the reason.

The actual fighting game itself? It's fun. I'm not a GIANT fighting game fan, so I won't pretend to know if this is peak quality or not, but it was fun, the graphics were really gorgeous, and a lot of unique characters and way to play in it.

Overall, a fine send off to persona for me. I've played almost everything I've wanted too now (besides Persona 2 and the Q games, hoping they get ported/remastered). But that'll be it for now, with a 5 Royal replay likely in my future.

Bless Persona. The second greatest video game franchise of all time!!!

So this is a big beautiful and sometimes messy game that's hard to articulate into words just what it's all about.

First of all, let's start from the top. The gameplay here is so much improved over LAD7 (which was already fantastic) and Hawaii is just a wonderful sandbox to explore, this was exactly the shot in the arm this series needed.

The story is fantastic most of the way here, there are some dumb things here and there (like every yakuza game if we're being honest) but just such an incredible amount of heart to go along with this. Ichi is an amazing protagonist, as much as I love Kiryu he's totally captured my heart at this point and will hopefully be the guy going forward.

I do have some issues with this game, the biggest one being how bad the game is at telling you things. The final dungeon had no level requirement, and I was a few levels under, making it very difficult to complete. There are many side quests that you do, and if you do them too early you get wiped and the game offers you no way of knowing this. Stuff like this was a massive time waste, and unfortunate, but not enough to hurt this game overall.

The ending is....interesting. I can't say I love or hate it, I have to see where it goes, but it left more questions than answers for me. It still brought out tons of emotion (as did this entire game) and I can't wait to see exactly where they go from here.

I think realistically, this is certainly a top tier Yakuza game, and I wouldn't be shocked at all to see this one go into people's top spot. For me, it's just going to miss out on that, but a genuinely incredible game, that RGG cooked on.

Oh Suicide Squad. Where do I even begin with this fucking one.

Let's start at the top. I genuinely think this game got did dirty by gaming journalists, and just gamers in general. I think 99% of the hate from gamers come from people who have never, and have no intention of playing this game.

My background. I'm a primarily SP gamer, who does not like live service, does not play online, and really never been into loot score games. That being said, as a GIANT batman fan, and a rocksteady fan, I had to go into this one and give it a fair shot. And to be honest, most of what was here I dug.

The story is genuinely great. It's hilarious from start to finish, the suicide squad themselves are written great (Boomerang and King Shark are easily the highlights here). Getting to go around and fight each justice league member as the bad guy, as a young Addi's dream come true, and was so awesome to experience.

All the boss fights were really fun (and just the gameplay in general, it was really fast, responsive and felt slick to traverse.) I mained as Harley, and I love how you could have a totally different experience depending on who you played as.

Now some negatives:

First of all, I had to drop the game for a period because of a "loading metroplis" bug. Un acceptable, no reason this game should be always online. The side quests, are really bad. I love them introducing Penguin, and a really cool new version of Ivy, but then doing jack all with the character development. It was clear this game was tugged in SO many different directions, and really didn't know what it wanted to be at the end of the day.

Honestly I was at a very solid 7/10 for this, but I had to drop half a point for the ending. Just totally anti climactic, and clearly content was cut for future live service stuff, which I have no interest in taking a part in.

This game is a giant mixed bag, and it's such a shame because there's stuff here I genuinely love, but stuff that also frustrates me that could have been easily avoided. Overall though, I still enjoyed my time with it, and it's no where NEAR as bad as people are making out it to be.

Give it a chance yourself sometime, I certainly, won't root for Rocksteady to fail, the sauce is still here, they just need to be more focused, and commit to more of a sp vision next time.

Oh childhood nostalgia how I love thee.

As I get older and reflect on some of the amazing games I've played, very few stand out to me like Super Mario RPG. Self admittedly, I'm not the biggest Nintendo fan, especially now a days, as I prefer a focus on story, and narrative over gameplay and "fun" which Nintendo seems to excel at. However, this game longs from my childhood as one of my favorites, and something that (along with FF7) introduced me to JRPG's probably one of my favorite genres of games.

Re-visiting this now, while it doesn't hold up quite as well as I remember, it's still easily one of my favorite Nintendo games ever, and a true triumph for Square, especially for the time period.

The combat is nearly unmatched, and it's insane that more JRPG's don't use the timing mechanic (shout out to Sea of Stars for lovingly ripping it off and putting their own spin on it).

The story here is easily the best story in a Mario game, and it actually does perhaps the unthinkable, give a personality to Mario. All of the companions here are fantastic, and it's a true love letter to Mario, even today.

Now I do have some issues with this remake. I think overall I do prefer the original graphical style. While this is no doubt gorgeous (and pops on the OLED) there's just something so wonderful about the OG style I can't help but adore even more. Also the music, while again I like it, and it's great, I think I prefer the OG (thankfully that's easy to toggle on).

Overall though, I still really like this game quite a bit, even if it might not be one of my favorites of all time anymore, this is certainly a trip wroth taking once again, and a must play for anyone who has never experienced it.

Wow what the actual fuck. I did NOT expect this to go so fucking hard.

As a long time yakuza fan (I've basically played everyman line game, the judgment games, and pretty much anything I can that has been imported) I had been feeling a bit down on the series lately. Lost Judgment was one of the weaker entries for me story wise, and Ishin, was just down right bad IMO. The creator of the series gone, Kiryu back for some reason, the entire thing was making me nervous, and while I was going to give Infinite Wealth a chance, I had penciled in that might be my last yakuza game.

When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. This is not only a fantastic game, and one of my favorites of this 2023, but one of my favorite yakuza titles overall. The combat is super fun (not quite on the level of Lost Judgement, but certainly better than Yakuza 6), the story is fantastic, and is a perfect bridge story to explain what's going on in the story, and really why Kiyru is back at all.

For a game that was going to be a DLC, this turned out excellent (and probably would have been my favorite DLC of all time if it was)

As it is, it's a fantastic entry, a great story with so many loving throwbacks, and a perfect step forward for the future of this series.

Fuck you Sega for not releasing a physical copy in the west though.

Well this was something that was unexpected for me this year. I've been on a massive JRPG kick recently, and I really did want to get to this game eventually, but I didn't have time, didn't want to buy it day one, and planned to hopefully play this at some point in 2024. However, thanks to my wonderful friend Poot, who gifted me this game for my birthday I was able to give this game a shot much sooner, and I'm really glad I did as it's easily one of my favorites I've played this year.

First of all, from a visual/art style perspective this game is absolutely gorgeous, and everything you'd want a throwback JRPG to be. The art style is stunning, the combat is some of the best I've ever played in a JRPG style game (why don't more games rip off the super Mario RPG style it's SO GOOD). I loved the characters here, grew to really enjoy them all (Serai is a stand out) and the story while it gets off to a very slow start ends up cooking by the end.

Most of my complaints with the game are nitpicks, some more valid then others. Fast travel is something sorely needed much much earlier in this game, and back tracking can be a miserable time. A better map system would have been awesome too.

I would have LOVED to do the true ending stuff, but I feel that collecting 50 shells is a brutal requirement, and something that I'm not committed to do right now, but in the future, when I have more free time between these gauntlet of releases I'll try and get back to it to complete. The ending we get here though, is quite nice. A bit rushed at the end, but sombre, and a perfect throwback to FF endings.

I really adore this game, and it's about as close to a 4.5/5 for me without being able to give it that due to some minor complaints. But this game is outstanding and 100% worth your time.

Wow what a little piece of gaming history here. Look, I went into this game expecting to either drop or get filtered right the fuck out of it. This game is ancient after all and while the pixel remaster did have some modern boosts here, it's still dated, and I figured that this was gonna be a problem for me.

And to be honest I almost did. I got my ass handed to me in the Marsh Cave a few times, and I quit the game, uninstalled it, and was ready to move on. However, something pulled me back a couple hours, and I'm so so glad I did. This game is genuinely really great for it's time, and it's clear why this series has lasted for as long as it has from the very start.

Obviously the story here isn't anything too special, in its humble beginnings, but it's fun making up your own storylines as you go, with your party members. It's so cozy, and the music is wonderful. The combat is super simplistic but quite fun in a weird way, and even grinding is made to be enjoyable here.

This is where I embark on my journey of playing 1-6, and if this is the starting point, I can't WAIT to see what some of these future games have in store for me. Banger.