Really cool little platformer, like they really didn't need to go this hard. It's really impressive how much content is packed into such a short little game. Each level is tightly designed with engaging action platforming segments, little hidden collectibles and lots of fun little references and easter eggs celebrating the entire history of playstation and a lot of its core series.

I don't think I've played a game that made as full of a use of its controller since ape escape. It's hard to describe what it is about Astro's playroom works as well as it does, it's just really fun and it feels like the devs had a lot of fun making it.

Astro's playroom is just super charming and cool. It doesn't take long to playthrough or even 100% and it's one of the best ways to introduce yourself to the PS5 library. If you have the means you should check it out. It's a game anyone can get a lot out of.

Ace Attorney, but British! I had never played a Layton game before PL vs PW, but this game left a very strong first impression with Layton trying to throw hands with a monster in the first 5 minutes. Going into the crossover, I was told it was much more of a Layton game than an Ace Attorney game. If that's true I'm excited to eventually get to the Layton series.

The gameplay is split about 50/50 between the Layton and Ace Attorney styles. You get your Ace Attorney courtroom scenes with (what I'm assuming are the standard) exploration and puzzle solving playstyle from the Layton series replacing what would be the investigation segments from the ace attorney games. The two styles mesh pretty well, and kind of works like the investigation segments from Ace Attorney 1 with added puzzles.

While I think the two gameplay styles fit together for the most part, I went in to this game primarily as an Ace Attorney fan, and I'd being lying if I said I didn't miss some of the added investigation mechanics from AA 2 and 3.

The story is pretty good and the character writing is all super fun. I can't speak for the accuracy of the Layton characters' portrayal, but Maya and Phoenix felt like they were plucked right out of the original trilogy. The way the characters all meet each other is perfect too, super funny!

I thought the story was really interesting and well paced. The writers did a great job of continuously escalating everything and making each plot point hit really hard and crazy. I'm not sure it fully sticks the landing and I think the ending reveal kind of comes out of nowhere. However, the reveal is used effectively in the final courtroom segment, so it's not a deal breaker for me.

The court scenes are pretty good as well. I've heard the new mechanics come back in future AA games so I'm excited to see how they are further developed. The new courtroom structure was interesting as well, and I had a fun time adapting to the new type of logic used in the new setting. I think the middle court cases felt a little too formulaic at times, but they contribute to the story in an interesting way. The new prosecutor is fun too.

Overall the AA and Layton crossover is pretty fun. It's got a lot of fun character interactions and the story gets really crazy really fast. I don't think it quite sticks the landing towards the end of the story, but it's more consistent in quality than Apollo Justice and is still a crazy fun ride a majority of the time.

I tried my best to go into reload relatively blind, I played FES beforehand but I didn't watch a majority of the trailers or any of the gameplay footage. Going in, I was expecting reload to be good and fix most of my issues with FES. After playing FES and reload almost back to back, I was surprised at how faithful reload was. Most of the changes made feel additive and serve to improve the pacing of the original game's story while also fleshing out a few characters' motivations.

My biggest issue with the original game was its over reliance on rng in the 100% experience. This is the biggest detractor for me whenever I think about replaying FES (just the thought of spending hours rerolling move inheritance while fusing personas hurts). As expected, reload fixes this by letting you pick the moves you want to inherit directly which I really appreciated. I was not expecting the game to go even farther and retool Elizabeth's requests that heavily relied on rng in FES. There's no more rerolling floors to try and get a gold chest to spawn only have another small chance of actually finding the weapon or item you're looking for. Additionally, while reload still has gold shadow requests, the shadows don't immediately disappear if you so much as look at them, so you actually have a good chance to hit them and not have to waste 30-60 minutes having to reroll floors trying to get them to spawn again. These changes alone drastically improved the completionist experience for me.

The original game is also notorious for having a strict time limit when going for max social links. Reload does a few things to alleviate the stress of trying to complete everything (more opportunities to increase social stats, hermit not taking up a whole day, etc.). I still ended up maxing my last link the day before the final boss, but my playthrough was very unoptimized. The game adds new hangouts/storylines for the male SEES members so most of the time I managed to save on social links was spent maxing these as well. I still really appreciated the added flexibility in maxing out all the social links and it only adds to the replayability of the game for me since I never felt the need to be super particular about doing every link on a specific designated day like I did on my 100% run of FES. The idea of replaying the game and optimizing my route just gives me a sense of satisfaction that I haven't felt since playing Majora's Mask for the first time.

Party members are controllable now, and while I am a defender of FES's battle system and think the hate for the AI party members is very overblown, I can't deny direct party control just feels better and helps speed up the pace of fights.

Tartarus has a lot of changes too. I ended up appreciating the new camera angle a lot more than I thought I would since it greatly reduced the amount of ambushes due to me swinging my sword too early or my aim being off by just a little bit. There's also more stuff to do in tartarus besides climb floors and fight bosses/enemies now plus a few new floor gimmicks to change up the gameplay every once in a while. Being able to run and fast travel on floors you've explored before are also nice QOL changes that help keep the pace of the game going. I liked tartarus in the original game, so I'm not sure if these changes are enough to sway the people who hated tartarus in the original game, but I'd imagine the QOL changes alone would greatly improve your tartarus experience if you hated the original.

If you're trying to get into the modern persona series, I'm not sure if reload is the best game to start with over royal. Reload is very faithful to the original game and the original persona 3 can be a bit of a slow burn. In contrast, I think royal's opening is a little faster paced and it's first conflict leaves a stronger impression/hook. If go into reload with this in mind, I think you'll really enjoy it.

To address the elephant in the room, it does suck that we still don't have a definitive persona 3 experience since reload lacks the P3P exclusive content, but with The Answer dlc being confirmed, I feel I can confidently say that reload is the definitive FES experience for me.

Overall, I really loved my time with reload. Persona 3 is just a really special game, and the new changes really enhanced the overall experience for me. I love the added character stuff and it only serves to help flesh out the world I loved from the original game even more. Reload might be the closest a non-pokemon rpg has felt to a comfort game for me. I know I'm going to replay it and experiment with new routes many times in the future.