"We must appreciate the fact that the world allowed us to exist."

This is one of the highest peaks a JRPG can reach with a narrative and character-driven story, yes, it has both.

t-h-a-n-k y-o-u

The Legend of Ar tonelico.

The best series I have consumed in the last 11 months, and I'm so happy that I finally had the courage to play it, and the fact it's this incredible.
Four-dimensional characters (saying they are only three-dimensional is disrespectful).
Impeccable and frenetic writing, it doesn't divert the focus for a single minute, having perfect pacing.
AT's soundtracks are the most unique you're able to listen in the medium
there is no comparison.


It's better than its successor in literally every aspect and literally even improves a little on the first game's plot.
Jakuri and Croix my GOATs
Luca and Cloche's relationship is one of the BEST RELATIONSHIPS I'VE EVER SEEN IN A JRPG
In this story we see what it really means to be human. Ar Tonelico would be the first story I'd present to a robot. Its ability to have explored the human mind, our greatest flaws and goods, is something I have rarely seen in any story I've ever read. Even a robot would've a doctorate in the human mind after finishing this game.
It's a dive into the human mind, into our deepest depths, into our greatest perversities and evils, but also into our greatest brilliance as a human being. What an immersive experience that leaves me speechless.

All characters have masterful writing. Through the music, manages to increase the impact of its plot and twists beautifully.
A great conductor in worldbuilding, Ar Tonelico has its mastery especially in music. It's a game about the art of music.
Those songs are among the most beautiful and well-written songs I've ever seen in gaming medium, and only playing it to understand, I'm saying this as a person who has a high understanding of music and experience in orchestras, as I am a violinist although not a professional one

Just
Unique.

The story is dense, complex, extremely creative and with heaps of dynamism, between the characters themselves and the world itself, which has a wonderful construction. There are literally no bad or irrelevant characters, everyone fulfills their role, everyone has their reasons, they are ALIVE and are part of this journey.

For me, this game becomes a classic of the century among JRPGs, a hidden gem that I hope one day will receive more applause and recognition for conveying such a fantastic story that I've only praises.

The creator of this story, genius Akira Tsuchiya, created an entire new language for the game called Hymmnos, is the official composer of Ar Tonelico, director and writer of this story, who spent 5 to 6 years writing it.

Thank you, simply thank you. For me, you wrote one of the greatest JRPG classics and marked your story in my books.

"My song gives you endless courage."

Alas, people won't make all the right choices in their lifetime... Though luck always seems like it's on your side.

You will keep winning, having never lost before. But why you? Why... must it be you?

If all your luck is built on the pain of someone you love, on the loss of dozens more - if these windfalls, these jackpots aren't a gift from Gaiathra- if all they are is a long string of meaningless deaths...

R-E-P-E-T-I-T-I-V-E
Persona series overall is letdown, but P3 is actually a waste of a masterpiece, and I'll explain why.

Narrative structure: Its ending shines. I completely kneel for the last 10 hours of the game, Burn my Dread is one of the COOLEST final battle themes I've ever listened (the lyrics, oh my God), and all the meaning of the journey was top. I love how, for example, how P3 deals about facing fears, and living each day as if it were your last.
HOWEVER, the entire beginning and half-game are terrible (except for the Aragaki scene middle game). The stories of Persona games are NOT bad, but they are kind of destroyed by its own structure. They are not long stories, but the structure makes it long, bullying the pacing of the games. You have 90 hours games that could be 30 or 40, but due to you needing to live every single day of the month, farming points, seeing useless social link or characters, and discarding your time instead of investing in more things to improve what is going to come (or just skip all that), the series insist that you need to grind useless no matter what. Because of this, I genuinely find impressive anyone who completes a Persona game without finding it a tiring journey, as Persona is the most repetitive series I've ever consumed. Not only that, also its worldbuilding is too simple (still efficient), and the story overall is shallow, as it's not of the interest of the creators diving into a well deep and explored narrative. It has good moments and very good connections, but the construction of the scenes are very flawed and superficial (I still remember the grotesquely bad script of Fuuka's persona presentation).

Characters: with very fun interactions, the characters are cute, cool and stylish, but they can't sustain this structure for most of the time. They're not deep and they're not incredibly well developed. They are, de facto, good characters, some unique and ones that I really like, but this does NOT carry a story for 80 hours or more. There will come a time when everything will be a record played again. Repetitive. Also, I'm already tired of saying Persona protagonists are completely bland (making a slight exception for Amamiya Ren), but I don't even care anymore.

Gameplay: The gameplay that exists is that you climb a tower with 200 floors identical to each other to kill mobs. With the exception of this defect, it's fun. Okay, serious now, the battles are very interesting. The battle system is one of the strong points of Persona games.

Soundtrack: Unique, beautiful and fantastic. A very beautiful mix of elements such as rock and jazz to create compositions that anyone in the world could familiarize themselves with in just one listen. I love Persona soundtracks. For anyone who have complained about the remix, go fuck yourself. In Reload version, the songs were better and cleaner than in the original versions. And even if you didn't like it, you're a fool for complaining. The original soundtracks already exist, the new ones give a new perspective and fresh air for those who want it to have that air.

The Art Direction continues to astound, consistently elevating the Persona series with its stunning visual presentation. Since Persona 5, it has showcased a breathtaking artistic vision that truly makes the game shine. Paired with its exceptional soundtrack, the art direction are the heart of the series.

For all that, this franchise could be much better than it actually is, but I know that will never change. The flaws will continue, and I will always be complaining, because it'll never get there. I know Atlus is like the RGG studio that likes a bit of a comfort zone, and won't change their games much.

In short, Persona is a series that is destroyed by its own exhausting structure that seems to want to suck you in at all costs, but still it's overall a fun experience with a good message.
I tried gaslight, but when a game is objectively mid, not even my gaslight can help it.

Persona is the biggest collective delusion I've ever seen, I find it unimaginable that the majority of people acclaim this series and don't point out any flaws, not even the elitists or people that know how to write good reviews. It's unbelievable to me.

This game is FUCKING CRAZY. I was skeptical over whether they'd top Sky the 3rd yet they somehow did.

I don't know how they did it, they somehow made three back-to-back 5-star, 10/10 games. This has NEVER happened to me in another series, even my favourites.

It's extremely emotional, the artstyle is awesome, it's fun to play (the small gameplay additions compared to Zero are appreciated), the characters are all awesome, they throw so many twists at you, the likes of which I haven't been this affected by since finishing my top 10 favourites across all media, that you can't help but binge. The backtracking is some of the least tedious in the entire genre from what I've seen. This is one of the closest things I've seen to perfection, from concept to execution, in my life. My only actual complaint is that the difficulty curve is kind of unreasonable in the last few fights of the game, but who cares, it was really hype.

And oh my GOD, the music... Trails already secured its place as #1 in terms of OST, beating Umineko, but this is on a whole other level. You have so many bangers, like the Azure Arbitrator or Mystic Core, but they're far from the only ones.

In terms of favourites, I'd place it around Utawarerumono 3. It's just that good.

I will be slowing down with my Trails binging and going through Cold Steel at a more leisurely pace so that I don't burn out but... wow, I'm definitely a fan.

PROJECT SEKAI

When I first started it, at first I noticed a lot of melodramatic or cliche narratives choices which weren't healthy for a solid series. On the other hand, as events unfolded (specially nightcord at 25am), my opinion has changed because the game changed itself. Idk what the author was thinking during his early journey through the writing for using those lazy narrative ideas, but after the prologue ended, it turned into another title.
When I first came back to it, I wasn't that hopped in the game, so I began looking for clues in the plot to make myself curious (as I already said here I have difficulty with no-goal rule), and then, before I even realised, the goals were slowly appearing, one by one.... surprise after surprise, the characters were growing inside me (this is such a gay affirmation). Project Sekai is not strong at first, but all in all, a title that gets strong. So don't give up until you see new genesis, then you shall see how far they can go with such a simple story

NIGHTCORD AT 25AM

An experience 'outside' of the external world. Here we're swimming through the darkest memories of girls having a battle with their mental selves. Cinema 4, I can't decide my favorite character because each arc seems like one of them becomes my fav and then another arc come and other girl is my fav lol, they all are great and solid characters, but Mafuyu is without a doubt the most well explored and done character of they all excuse me. Such a great suspense they were planning how to do it for already many events, the build up was so well done, everything went so well that even the production suddenly improved af just for that arc's end. For the time I write this, I don't know if wxs will be able to beat it, but this journey was wholesome and worth it. It's kinda hard to put into words, but even so little time spent with those characters, I already felt like I was in such a journey of various things, accepting the way we are, being there for another person, that FIRST YOU FIGHT, THEN YOU RUN, AND THEN YOU FIGHT AGAIN like a cat. Seeing everything that happened with Mafuyu makes me reflect again on why I will always prefer to be sentimental for the rest of my life: because acting with the heart is acting with what we know best, it's acting with our true selves.

A BATTLE FOR THE HOPE - When I see nightcord at 25am, I think of ourselves working together to encounter that paradise, and that all of that is a journey meeting the true light. Find yourself with your own heart.

a part of niigo soundtracks are solid compositions (I even talk about bgms here) because they can really transmits what they want to, those songs helps to create this feeling of hope through the darkness using very interesting tones with the piano
also it has such great leitmotifs, and prob my favorite from the series after the title screen

It's also the best production in my opinion, every CG is absolutely cinema, and the soundtrack is really a degree above all the other groups

It's impressive how good the cast of characters is, from every group I played. There is not a SINGLE character there that I could think "ok this dude or this girl is the worst character in the cast", NO. All of them are lovable, consistent and well written characters, having great personalities and goals. Your affirmation of saying those characters are alive was really true.
I think project sekai suffers the same from other gacha games like blue archive and genshin impact. Maybe they all don't have a strong early story, but after some chapters they definitely step up a gear.
During niigo's half point, I already thought what to expect from the rest of the entire journey (the other groups' story and niigo's ending arc), but damn it was flying colors

WONDERLAND X SHOWTIME

Life is a journey of spectacle, as we're right now on stage performing our moves. Four members with different dreams came together to help each other get there. Even though a parting is near to come, the final destiny must be an ultimate reencounter. We manage to learn their development in evolving as a person (damn I remember nene being so shy at the beginning and already in one of the final events she was so proactive). I always wondered what the goal of WXS would be, and it seems it was a coming of age all this time. One of my favorite messages in fiction was when I learned we people live or for our dreams or for love. In WXS we could see that everyone there are living to accomplish their dreams. Tsukasa was the most enlightened protagonist of the series, but I want to draw attention to Emu, who is the personification of innocence and humility. Basically, THE PERFECT PERSON DOES EXIST.. IT'S HER... There is still a lot to explore from all of them. I believe WXS has more to say about the characters than the other two groups I've read.
On the other hand, I thought the coming of age was done too quickly (as I'm used to very big stories), so it wasn't enough for me to get emotional or feel much affection for the characters.
Therefore, the strong point of this group for me was the well-executed shows, mainly the one where Tsukasa sounds through the eyes (WE DON'T CRY!!!!!).

A COMING AGE THROUGH THE LIGHT - When I see wonderland x showtime, I think of ourselves being in the paradise, living our lives at the triumphant level searching for our dreams. Live your golden time, flourish your best moment, till it turn into memories.

LIGHT UP THE FIRE: VIVID BAD SQUAD

The best and most emotional event in the entire game for me, period. I'm getting chills just from writing it right now. This was PEAK Project Sekai, it PEAKED right here. You transform a story that had a boring objective with no expectation of improvement, where everything remained the same, into the tracks to compete among the best stories in the game. A single, JUST A TINY SINGLE twist made VBS story go up to tiers of the top of this series.
This story completely deceived the viewer with a totally unexpected tale that is a spectacular shock factor. On a path towards success in a calm and hopeful way, a major revealing obstacle brings us back as if to the beginning itself. Through this, we see how we were deceived from the beginning and the entire direction that the VBS story was taking was practically all justified and everything makes sense. Futile flasbacks that looked like it were going nowhere? Just random events of they improving? IT WAS THE HISTORY BEING WRITTEN as a beautiful passing of the baton to the next to continue the LEGEND of those who marked a generation. A group where their side characters are FUNDAMENTAL in the plot, showing truly the definition of Passion. The whole drama was spectacularly well created and reminded me a little of KEY during its golden age.
Throwed half of project sekai weakness to hell. It didn't failed building up even for a bit, the structure worked because the events were mostly long, and the fast and consistent pacing that marked the event being completely solid from beginning to the end.
Though, it's kinda bizarre to notice why the fuck An is not the protagonist of this group. Maybe they are planning something for Kohane, but in my eyes it doesn't make sense so far. It should've been between Akito or An, both fundamental characters of the group, while Kohane and Toya works more like supporting ones. Or for the better, let's just say the protagonists were RAW Weekend all this time
bro *********** in the final part of light up the fire was the most emotional part of the entire game imo
and yeah this group has the best side characters of any other, without ANY doubt. It's not exaggerate to say that Vivid Bad Squad is a story about side characters.

Obviously, a single event does not justify the flawed pacing of everything that has happened so far, but it's a game changing, and standalone the BEST event story in the game. Light up the fire saves Vivid Bad Squad once for all, with a masterful writing.

THE LEGEND IS PASSED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION - Never forget the flame that fuels your passion for what you love, the fire whose warms for the sake of responsibility as you carry the dreams of those who can no longer.

Catching the last hand of this adventure, it's a thorny one, as the series' main problem is its structure since the beginning. It doesn't has an immersive writing imo, and most of the things are extremely direct and simple. Even though they build a character progression for an entire arc, they don't build the scenes very well due to the fact the medium they are in has limitations. It wouldn't probably be that good putting monologues or these things to enhance a scene for kids or in a gacha (?) idk, but I think you understood about what I'm coming here. In short, I found the build up scenes too superficial, even though it's a solid character development. Like, tsukasa crying scene, he basically said about his inspirations 30 minutes before that, so it wasn't enough time for me caring the much he cared about it, unfortunately. The literally only exception to this was mafuyu with her mom and mostly the legendary VBS event
And yeah the fact we don't care that much of some bands too 💀 💀

Overall, from a series that I never thought I would read, to the best gacha game out there

my favorite characters were tsukasa, emu and mizuki, these are the top 3
FAVORITE GROUP ORDER: Niigo > VBS > WXS
niigo is finished as the first, best in almost everything, with also the most interesting conflicts in project sekai.
VBS is being the 2nd option you guys still don't understand how epic that event was, MAYBE ANIMA-KUN UNDERSTANDS A LITTLE BECAUSE I SPAMMED HIM 250 MESSAGES WHILE HE WAS SLEEPING, it delivered a thing that was out of the world, that was project sekai at its 100%
WXS the third, even though more consistent than VBS, it was not as emotional or impactful, even though the cast of characters are almost a pair with niigo.
It's only the beginning. I'm really feeling the best of project sekai is yet to come, and I wll be there no matter what.

Such a minuscule text is not enough to say all the good things about this game, but consider this as a humble letter from someone who liked it 🧎‍♂️🌹

Is your heart still asleep?

Fine. It can wait for a bit. My wish doesn't have to reach you just yet. Not until you wake up.

Whether yesterday was unhappy. Or today is unhappy. Or tomorrow will be unhappy...

For every tear that is shed... rather, because tears will be shed, there may still be smiles in the future.

There's no law that enforces kindness in the world. The world is empty. The world is unreasonable. But, however, because of that...

You must give meaning to your tears through your will. You must give meaning to the sadness and pain you endure. Because it'll be unrequited. Because it is unfair.

Most importantly, use your tears to smile. I'm sure your future will be wonderful.

So give meaning to the tears.

You get exactly one paragraph on mechanics from me: It's repetitive cornmeal. I don't care HOW much of a mechanics-focused action game or RPG labber you think you are: You aren't finding anything special here. Trust me, I tried. All you need to know is that everything works in a (to my experience) bug-free manner, but the actual design is still frustrating (such as attacks not properly snapping to enemies and with imprecise controls). You spend way more time in repetitive dungeon-crawling than the systems' depth support, so if you play this game, you are doing so for experience of playing the story on offer. Hell, I even recommend setting the difficulty to easy so you spend less time on the dungeon crawls.

That aside, let's talk about other stuff.

There's no way I can be objective or measured about this: Crystar is one of my favorite games of all time because of literally everything besides the act of playing it, and that's saying something coming from me, someone who's about gameplay first and foremost always. The game presents a compelling story about death, grief, mourning, and how sorrow can transform us for better or worse. And it does so with fleshed-out characters that never feel too far into anime stereotype territory and a plot that isn't afraid to do great and terrible things to them. What's more, the plot is both complicated and sensible, with threads being resolved in intuitive ways full of twists that don't even feel like ass-pulls (at least for the bits that really matter).

This is to say nothing of the presentation: The English voice dub is excellent, so much so that I hesitate to think of playing it in Japanese on my next playthrough (especially when the game has that age-old problem of not translating combat dialogue and whatnot, which I feel gives a degree of context and personality to the characters). Brianna Knickerbocker absolutely kills the role as the main character Rei Hatada, with every sigh, gasp, sniffle, sob, and line delivery perfectly capturing how she's feeling at every moment. The rest of the cast does some real heavy lifting too.

The Sakuzyo soundtrack is also a delight, delivering tracks ranging from sadly beautiful to exciting when the time calls for it. And the art is just genuinely gorgeous. Both these things especially come together in Rei's room, the main menu that may seriously be my favorite main menu in video games now, presenting little "slideshow" vignettes of what a depressed, heartbroken Rei does at home in her room all day.

As someone experiencing a great deal of grief right now myself, this game just hits different, now. All its themes of depression and survivor's guilt and grief transforming us in great and terrible ways speak to me on a visceral level that I appreciated before, but not quite as much as I do now with intimate knowledge of how it feels. Being brutally honest, I was sobbing my eyes out during the credits, even though I already knew how the story went from my first playthrough going on almost 4 years ago, now.

I know this is all honestly a bunch of word salad, me blubbering about how much I love this game without actually getting into specifics, and I'm sorry about that. I'm truly not at my best right now. But I had to get something out there the same day I beat the game: Crystar is a rare example of a game that comes around once in a blue moon, seemingly nothing special on the surface, but truly one of the most magical experiences you can have while playing a video game that's less than stellar to play. I used to tell people I can't recommend it to anyone, but now I instead say:

Give it a shot. You might find something special here.

After several weeks of playing this game, I’ve decided to actually give Blue Archive a somewhat proper review.

To be honest, I was very distant to Blue Archive when I first started it up. After all, I only really downloaded the game to see if Eden Treaty really was top tier storytelling like I’d heard it was. Pretty much everything else was an afterthought, and I was able to get away with this mindset for a decent amount of time, that is until that one specific story episode that forced me to actually build my characters and level up my account. I absolutely resented BA for this and I still think it was a bit of a fucked up move by the devs, but it also kinda acted as a blessing in disguise. It led to me getting much more involved with the game’s systems, I started getting invested in characters who weren’t in the main story that much, and I was able to derive at least some enjoyment out of the game’s combat. It’s amazing what a great story can do to my motivation.

So now here I am, 64 levels deep, listening to Alkaline Tears and After School Dessert almost daily whilst Ayane’s sweat soaked face graces my main menu. Definitely not the position I was expecting to be in when I saw Mika’s design for the first time and thought she looked pretty.

The story is definitely as good as people say it is. Of course Eden Treaty was fantastic, mainly because the Make Up Work Club is literally just my four favorite characters in a single group, but the other Volumes were no slouch either. After playing Genshin and getting consistently frustrated with how much its writing prodded on and on and on for no reason, a concise story that makes its points quickly while knowing when to have some fun is exactly what I needed. Whenever some goofy or chaotic moment happens and it actually becomes an element of the plot I’m always left with a wide grin on my face, aside from that one case where I both smiled and cried a little (I will never look at ski masks the same way ever again). I once heard the plot be called a children’s story for adults and that’s actually pretty accurate. A chapter will put Sensei and their students through utter hell as they deal with extremely stubborn corporate greed, generational hatred, crippling distrust/paranoia, and the horrors of nihilism, before ending with everyone gathering together to best all the odds as someone declares “THE BLUE ARCHIVE IS REAL”. This is only a slight exaggeration. Also, the characters fill me with so much joy and I would legit take a bullet for about 98% of them.

I will say though, the last thing I expected from this game was me loving Sensei and their role in the story as much as I do. Despite being a self insert, they actually get a decent amount characterization as a bad spender with a childish imagination who is sorta kind of a degen. Basically, your average gacha player. However, in the land of Kivotos where most adult figures for the students are either non existent in their lives or are manipulative bastards, Sensei acts as the guiding light that actually teaches them how to grow and learn from their mistakes, and is willing to put a lot on the line to do so. This does end up leading into most of the students fawning over sensei in some way, shape, or form, sometimes in rather suggestive ways. While this quasi-harem comes off as a bit tacky at first, as time went on I began to completely understand the girls’ feelings, especially after reading Where All Miracles Begin because goodness gracious it cannot be underestimated how life changing Sensei’s actions are there I’m choking up just thinking about it. Shit, I’d probably fall head over heels for Sensei in the students’ position too.

Even though i’m docking a star off for the Hell BA put me through to see through its story, don’t be mistaken. I adore this game about as much as my 5 stars, and am genuinely so happy that I was convinced by the dozens of pieces of Mika art being shoved down my throat to give Blue Archive a shot.

Azusa best girl btw
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Edit: I’m bumping the rating up to 4.5 stars because I get happy every time I think about this game and just 4 stars doesn’t feel right