Like Persona 3 FES and Persona 4: Golden, P5 Royal is a remastered edition with extra features to the base game sold separately years after the release of the original. Atlus seems to love making everyone who buys their games immediately feel like suckers, but every Persona fan buys into it nonetheless, and we knew that they were going to release something like this years ahead of time. P5 Royal adds new characters, new gameplay modes, and new battle features, and a whole 20+ hour chunk of time to the base game by adding a third semester after December. The refurbished versions of each Persona game are supposed to be the optimal versions of each subsequent game, but considering how the original Persona 5 immediately became one of my all-time favorites, were all of these changes necessary? Not really, but since I've played Persona 5 Royal, I can't imagine the game without these changes. I've been spoiled, and I'm loving it. Technically, Persona 5 Royal has now dethroned the original Persona 5 as not only my favorite Persona game, but one of my all-time favorites.

I initially thought that the changes that P5 Royal added would just amount to what seemed like what could have been DLC added to the end of the game. I thought that it would be like "The Answer" in Persona 3: FES. I'm glad I was wrong because Atlus somehow improved what was already solid in the base game and made it practically flawless. The additional district of Kichijoji is swanky and robust and incorporates a dart mini-game that is actually quite enjoyable. Each partner immediately has the ability to baton pass diversifying the range of team building at any point in the game instead of unlocking the ability through ranking up confidants. You don't have to unlock the escape option, but ranking up Hifumi's confidant gives your partners the ability to swap each other out of battle. If you don't select the optimal response during a confidant, Royal gives you a second chance with extra points through phone conversations after every confidant. Morgana/Futaba will tell you the temperament of a shadow to make it easier to communicate with it. This list of changes continues of course, but my main point in highlighting these is that these weren't needed to improve on the original game, but they are certainly welcome because they make the experience much smoother. The only major gripe, as I initially said about the original PS5 was juggling time management. This was the only negative aspect of Persona 5 that I thought Personas 3 and 4 had the advantage over. However, Royal's time management is much more lenient. Even after you've been in the Metaverse, you can still raise your stats at home without having to call Kawakami. Thank the lords. My one major grievance was annulled and now this game is perfect. Right?

...It's all a little too perfect. The caveat for all of these smooth changes is that they've made the game a little too easy, and I don't think it's because I've played through this game four times. I even played Royal on hard mode and it only felt like a substantial challenge at certain points rather than offering a consistent level of difficulty. Of course, Persona 5 was already easier than the previous two games, but not to the point where I questioned the quality of it. In the social-life aspects of this game, the more accessible route of having the player raise their stats anytime at home makes the time crunch of raising your stats with ranking up confidants in one playthrough much less strenuous. I'd argue this is a good thing, but the whole process felt less rewarding to me. In battle, you'll unlock "showtime moves" in which two of your partners perform very flashy, over-the-top finishing moves targeting one enemy. These new battle mechanics are entertaining, but they are all incredibly overpowered and occur so often. It happens so often that it feels like the game is bailing you out of getting a game over. In fact, the showtime move seems to trigger almost every time you might be on the verge of dying. It's a shame that these moves get so tiring because of how well they fit with the style of this game.

The new characters added to the base game worried me a bit. The story of the original Persona 5 is one of my favorites in any video game I've played and adding characters to an already established story can verge on the uncanny. Judging from the quality of both Metis and Marie, Atlus have struggled finding a comfortable spot for the additional characters, but this is not the case for the new characters in P5 Royal. Altus managed to organically place these new characters without disrupting the pacing of the story. It also helps that these characters add an extra layer of depth to Persona 5 and it's premise that I had no idea that it needed.

Dr. Takuto Maruki is the new guidance counselor at Shujin Academy that provides his aid after the Kamoshida palace. I guess it would make sense to hire a guidance counselor on short notice considering what Kamoshida did. There are many points in which Joker and his partners seek his aid throughout the game (even Yosuke who despite not being a student at Shujin is fascinated with the man and wants his input anyways as a way for every partner to become exposed to him) and Joker's confidant with him involves helping him with his research in cognitive psience. He's a young, tall, clumsy, unassuming man that fulfills his role as a high school counselor adequately (always complete with an assortment of healthy snacks). However, if these games have taught me anything, it's to always keep a watch out for the ones that seem the least assuming. Maruki made me indifferent about ranking up his confidant during the base game, but visiting his office is more than worth it as we see Maruki's character arc unfold in the third semester.

Kasumi Yoshizawa is a first-year transfer student at Shujin Academy. She goes to Shujin Academy on a gymnastics scholarship giving her a prestigious role in the school. This reputation only garners contention from her peers and puts a lot of pressure on her as well. I was worried about Kasumi being introduced in this game because I knew that she was going to be the new inclusion to the Phantom Thieves beforehand. This game already had issues with introducing characters after a certain point in the story (Haru), so I didn't have exceeding expectations for a character that I thought was going to be shoe-horned incredibly late into a story that was already finished. Fortunately, Kasumi is introduced as early as the first palace of the game and makes an appearance every so often that the player will naturally become used to Kasumi being in the game even if they played the original Persona 5. Now if only they could have done the same for Haru. I started to get attached to Kasumi every time she'd whisk Joker away to have the player explore more of her character arc (and as not to disrupt the flow of the already established base game). She's spunky, polite, motivated, and wears an adorable, radiant red ribbon in her hair. If things had gone as planned, I would've romanced her and only her in my first playthrough of P5 Royal.

The changes to the base game are merely small hat to the real meat of the P5 Royal experience. The third semester of this game is by far the main selling point. It is here that I have a confession to make: I had to play through Persona 5 Royal twice to unlock the third semester. In the first run of any Persona game, I mainly focus on leveling ups stats and focusing on confidants pertaining to my party members so they aren't useless in battle. To unlock the third semester, you have to fully rank up the confidants of the new characters, Dr. Maruki and Kasumi, and Akechi who does not rank up automatically like in vanilla Persona 5. The only character I maxed out was Kasumi because of course I'm going to max out the cute new girl. Dr. Maruki at least had some useful perks, but didn't entice me enough to keep visiting him. As for Akechi...well, I fucking hate Akechi. I'd rather have Ohya throw up all over me than have to hang out with that smarmy psychopath, so of course I ignored him. Persona games have many routes that lead to undesired endings, but not ones that lock you out of the good/true ending several hours before the game ends. I prepared myself for another 100+ hours and unlocked the third semester on my second playthrough of P5 Royal.

The third semester essentially revolves around the three new confidants available to rank up during the base game. It makes sense given that the game locks you out of it if you don't rank up those specific three characters. Firstly, if you rank up Akechi's confidant, he'll take your place in a holding cell to testify against Shido. You get to revel in holiday festivities with your friends, but you wake up on New Years Day in an episode of The Twilight Zone. A hunky anime boy with blue hair is sleeping in your bed and people that are supposed to be dead are up and about without anyone questioning it. However, everyone seems to be extremely happy with this alternate reality, so you just let everything be. The only person who is aware of how bizarre things are is Akechi who has miraculously gotten himself out of jail. You work together with him to find out who is behind all of this in a new palace that has somehow materialized outside of the metaverse. To no one's surprise, the palace's ruler is Dr. Maruki. With the completion of his cognitive research, he has created the ideal alternate reality for all of the Phantom Thieves (ie. Shiho is out of the hospital, Morgana is human, Futaba's mom is alive, etc.) He has taken the Holy Grail's place as the ruler of the metaverse and is using his new ability to adulterate reality to the point where everyone is happily living their ideal lives. Once you go around being a total buzzkill, your friends come to their senses and help you bring reality back to what it was and stop Maruki from getting too ahead of himself more than he already has.

The content of the third semester had to be gigantic in scale. Every ending to a Persona game involves killing a god, so how does one top that? How does Maruki compare to Yaldabaoth as a worthy opponent to end the game on? Also, while examining the content in the third semester, I struggled to find the relevance that all of this had to the core themes of rebellion in the base game. It more or less reminded me of of the themes of Persona 3 and 4 in that the characters are masking their grief by divulging in this fabricated reality. The theme of rebellion is only present as the palace progresses as you reject every proposition Maruki gives you to accept this reality. If you accept his proposal, the ending you get isn't even really a bad one because everyone (literally) lives happily ever after. It should be obvious at this point of the game that you're supposed to oppose this reality and fight Maruki, but your choice isn't as obvious as it was with other palace rulers. This is why I'd argue that Maruki is the best villain in the entire game because he isn't as cartoonishly evil as the other villains. His motivations for using the metaverse are seemingly selfless and the game takes several instances to make you reconsider what you're doing. As you progress through his palace, you learn that he has used his research to aid trauma victims in coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, and quite effectively as well. He uses it on his ex-girlfriend who was shaken up by the demise of both of her parents. More importantly to the plot, he used it on Kasumi, or should I say Sumire, after she indirectly caused her sister to be killed in a traffic accident. Yes, that's the big reveal behind Kasumi's character. She has taken the role of her sister because she feels like she caused her death and thus ended her potentially lucrative gymnastics career. To end her guilt, Maruki convinces Sumire that she is Kasumi to take her stead as the gifted gymnast so she can live out her destiny. The moment when Sumire remembers who she really is during Maruki's palace is quite shocking and makes quite the argument for Maruki and his research.

Ultimately, to get the true ending of the game, you have to rebel against Maruki and fight your way back to the less than optimal true reality where people have died and or suffered. Unfortunately, you have to do this with Akechi by your side and he's just as insufferable as ever. He's past the point of being prim and proper and just acts like the fucking lunatic he is. The problem is that he really puts it on heavy with the psychotic ramblings as he never shuts the fuck up during battle. He constantly laughs maniacally and never stops saying edgy things that make me wince. He's one step from being a smarmy Shadow the Hedgehog. Akechi, you don't need to prove to anyone how damaged and crazy you are. Your performance in the boiler room of Shido's palace was convincing enough. To make matters worse, he is your only partner for the first few hours of the third semester, so you can't swap him out for someone else. I'd say something like "kill me now", but I don't want to give Akechi the satisfaction.

If you need a reason to oppose Maruki besides the fact that the game wants you to, take a look at his palace. It's white all over without even a speck of character making it look eerily sterile like a doctor's office with too much lighting. It's what I imagine the inside of the Scientology headquarters to look like. In fact, Maruki's vision of himself and his desired reality is a bit like Scientology. He wants to wash away people's humanity by offering artificial bliss. There is even a "garden of Eden" section of this palace where Maruki's patients are in a place of eternal ecstasy. Didn't I read about this on a pamphlet at some point? Even Maruki might seem benevolent, his ego makes him a borderline cult leader. His final boss is even just as grandiose as Yaldabaoth making a case against Maruki and giving us a final boss as satisfying as the previous one.

200 hours later, I can hardly remember what the original Persona 5 was like without the changes and this was the game that immediately became one of my favorite games over night. Persona 5 Royal eclipses the original in every single way even with the questionable changes. The new characters are great and the third semester as a whole is fantastic. It's like Atlus pampered every Persona fan and now we're spoiled. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking Ryuji to the cleaners in a game of Tycoon in the Thieves Den.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/

It's a shame that Fox won't pull the plug on The Simpsons like the collective video game market did on their video game licensing. Even though there are now 31 seasons of the Simpsons TV show, there hasn't been a proper Simpsons video game since 2007. It still utterly baffles me that The Simpsons are still on the air because I can't imagine anyone watching it anymore. Perhaps Fox thinks that there can be a Simpsons renaissance? Not likely. Absolutely every Simpsons fan clamors on about the golden age of the show in the 1990s and barely even considers anything onward to even shine the dimmest light on the show's lasting legacy. I don't think I need to appraise the show for what it once was because that has been repeatedly solidified. The line of Simpsons video games, however, has the opposite reputation. Since the show's inception, there have been several shoddy attempts at adapting the world's most popular animated family into the video game medium. The 1991 arcade seems to be the only exception, but it's not hyperbole to say that some of the other Simpsons games stack up to be some of the worst games of all time. Considering how many games were released, there are many contenders for the absolute bottom of the barrel in the video game medium.

The Simpsons: Hit and Run is the exception to the unexceptional slew of Simpsons video games. It's the Simpsons video game that I was fortunate to grow up with alongside being a huge fan of the series around the same time. If something like Bart vs. the Space Mutants came out when I was a kid, I probably would still have played it despite its questionable quality. I was fortunate enough for the licensed Simpsons game of my generation to be the only good one. One could argue that this game is just a GTA knock-off with a Simpsons skin, but the prevailing trend of Simpsons games seemed to be skins of other popular games. What made Hit and Run so special? Isn't this just another case of the developers putting a Simpsons skin on another well-known franchise? The answer is yes and no. Yes, The Simpsons: Hit and Run is structured exactly like a GTA game, but as it turns out, the open-world GTA-esque format works wonders with the world of The Simpsons.

If you've ever played a GTA game, you know that one of the most appealing things about the franchise is how expansive the world of each game tends to be. The franchise has even broken some ground in surpassing the limits of how big the world in any game can be. If you've seen the opening of every episode of The Simpsons, the sky is panned open to the expansive city of Springfield. The opening is mostly focused on each member of the Simpsons family, but we see plenty of sites and people that we all recognize just as much as the core family of the show. We all know sites like the Springfield Tire Fire, the Nuclear Power Plant, Android's Dungeon, etc from decades of Simpsons content and all of the supporting characters just as well as the Simpsons family. The beauty of the open-world game is that the player can revel in the expansiveness that something like GTA organically delivers. Players tend to get lost in the world presented to them, and the available objectives don't seem as immediately imperative compared to a more linear video game. Considering how long The Simpsons have been on the air and their iconic status as one of the greatest television shows of all time, they've built up quite the world of sites and characters. The ability to explore the world of The Simpsons is an incredible experience for any Simpsons fan such as myself. Once you play the game, the comparisons between it and GTA start to become more thinly veiled as you realize that you are playing an interactive Simpsons tribute with the GTA open-world as a template. This is how Hit and Run excels above the other licensed Simpsons games because it's for fans of The Simpsons, not just to cash in on the craze of the GTA franchise in the early 2000s.

This game is brimming with so much Simpsons history that I think it would be difficult for someone that hasn't seen the show. Of course, I think that the strength of every great licensed game is to appeal to the fans of the source material instead of cheaply trying to re-paint an already existing game with another medium's source material hoping that people are too dense to notice. I'm thoroughly convinced they thought they could get away with that with every preceding Simpsons game, but it turns out that gamers aren't as dumb as the corporate fat cats thought they were. Hit and Run is the first example of a licensed Simpsons game where the developers actually tried, and boy does it show.

Plotting out the town of Springfield is something I think I could probably do in my head for about 10 minutes until it gets all too complicated, so I'm glad that the developers of this game did it for all us Simpsons fans and did a damn good at doing it. The world map is divided into three different districts of which I can differentiate the three locations between the standard types of human settlements. The first area is the suburban area of Springfield. It's most likely the first area because the Simpsons live in this section of the town and lets the game start organically by having the family start off the game at their house. This section also has the Kwik-E Mart and Springfield Elementary, which gives this level a cozy feeling fitting for the first level of a video game, in which the game makes several meta jokes involving the typical tutorial level in a video game. I don't remember the power plant being as dark and dim as it is in this game. The second level is the urban district has Moe's Tavern, the DMV, the town hall, the hospital, etc. It feels like an entirely different place to traverse through than the first level as it feels far more crowded. All it does is make me impressed that Homer goes the distance to drink at Moe's almost every single night. The third and last district is the more rural area showcasing Springfield's beaches and mountains. It also showcases plenty of urbanity with Krusty-Lu studios, Mr. Burns Casino, and Barney's Bowling Alley. It vaguely looks like Los Angeles, but it always seemed like a pocket of Springfield had a ritzy celebrity bubble in the show. Unlike in San Andreas, you can't travel to these districts seamlessly. Instead, each of these areas coincides with a level for a certain character. You visit each district at least twice, probably due to technical limitations, but different parts of each level unlock around the second time they are played. If this game was made in 2013 instead of 2003, the developers would probably make traversing through each district of Springfield seamless, but this would probably result in some of the town of Springfield feeling empty and artificially placed to divide space. Each level is designed superbly, with each section brimming with life and charm. It also helps that each level is designed like a circle, and you can easily get back to one section pretty quickly, making every level traversal smooth and accessible.

The "Simpsons tribute" that I alluded to a few paragraphs back doesn't just stop at recreating Springfield. They could have done a lackluster job with just placing buildings in the world and slapping a familiar name on them, hoping that we would accept them as is, but The Simpsons fan base is rather sharp and would certainly notice the lack of effort IF that was the case for this game. The history of The Simpsons is littered throughout Hit and Run through almost every facet of its presentation. In every level, there are a number of gags that you can trigger that are all Simpsons references. Some of these references in the game can be pretty obscure too, some that you'll blink and miss while watching the show like the brick tied to Homer's workstation or the midget skeleton in the robot in Android's Dungeon. Maybe I'm underestimating the Simpsons fan base, but the developers of this game certainly didn't. Why else would there be references at every corner of the game? This level of fan service doesn't just stop at the gags. There are collectible trading cards in each level that usually coincide with an object related to the character in that level. There is even a description and a line of dialogue pertaining to the card that you can check in the pause menu. It may seem like just another collectible made to pad the game's content, but as a huge Simpsons fan, I can't deny how excited all of the different cards make me. I'm such a fucking dork.

Almost every single vehicle in this game is a reference to the show. You start the game with Homer driving around his trademark pink sedan. It makes perfect sense that Homer would be driving around town in his car from the show, but what fun would it be if Homer was confined to just his car in a game as expansive as this one? You have the ability to take cars from the street like in GTA, but you can't steal them. Instead, the driver of the car can chauffeur you around to all the wacky mayhem. To make up for this PG rated, disappointing switch, the developers made up for it by incorporating seemingly every vehicle from the first eleven or so seasons from The Simpsons. It would be mind-numbing for both me and whoever is reading this if I listed off every single vehicle that you can unlock, so I'll just list some highlights: Mr. Plow AND the Plow King, the Globex Supervillain car, and The Car Built for Homer complete with "La Cucaracha" as it's horn. Wow. To make things even better, there is a novelty car in every level that are all also references to the show like the rocket car and even the fucking monorail (which is located right by the "Matlock Expressway". All of the references in this game make me giddy as a schoolgirl if you haven't noticed already).

I don't know if this needs to be explicitly stated, but this game isn't just an open-world driving simulator with Simpsons references making everyone point everything notable out like a seven year old at Disneyland. There is a story in this game and it is probably the grandest Simpsons story ever made at that point in time. Only the video game medium could let the writers produce a story as topsy-turvy as the one they came up with. It's also one of the funniest stories from the early 2000s era of The Simpsons to the point where I wonder if the writers of the show put all of their effort into the script and story of this game instead of the actual show. Or, there could be a total other possibility that the show-writers had a little "assistance" in writing the story for this game.

The story begins with a queer looking robotic wasp flying into the Simpsons residence. Homer destroys the wasp and falls back asleep. The first level is Homer performing a smattering of wacky tasks to procrastinate from going to his day job at the Power Plant when he sees a black van spying on him at home. He follows the black van and makes some erroneous claims that Mr. Burns is behind the spying phenomenon around Springfield, but is dead wrong. Meanwhile, Bart hooks school to try to find a copy of Bonestorm II (more video game meta humor occurs), but gives up on his task once Professor Frink gives him the opportunity to create the Truckasaurus, a familiar creation from the early Simpsons seasons. Once the Truckasarus is made, Bart escapes from his own creation and is abducted by aliens. Lisa then tries to find Bart and find him on a boat unable to speak anything but gibberish with the occasional subliminal message. Marge then tries to find out what happened to Bart and learn what caused him to only speak in tongues. Once she finds out that it involves a conspiracy involving crop circles and the new brand of Buzz Cola, she goes to Apu who has been selling the cola in large quantities through the Kwik E Mart unknowing of the cola's secret properties. To cover his tracks, he tries to find out who is responsible in making the cola that he has been distributing when him and Bart find out that Kang and Kodos have been making the cola to make people act feral in order to make their Earth reality show "Foolish Earthlings" more interesting for their intergalactic viewers. Remember when I alluded that the writers in this game might have had some assistance when writing the plot for this game? I'm referring to this plot reveal. Remember the South Park episode from 2002 called "Simpsons Already Did It" that tributes The Simpsons, but also conveys the idea that nothing is truly original? Well, the plot of this game might be a case of "South Park did it". In the same year that Hit and Run was released, South Park's seventh season debuted with an episode called "Cancelled" in which the characters find out that the world they live in serves as an entertaining reality show for the rest of the universe and that the intergalactic producers are desperate to boost ratings. It's hard to say who stole from who considering both the South Park episode and this game came out the same year, but the plots of both are too similar for it to be just a coincidence. Perhaps the writers of this game were giving homage South Park the same way South Park did for The Simpsons? It's a clever set-up for sure, but I'm not sure who to give credit in this situation. Anyways, the rampant popularity of the mind-altering cola results in turning the citizens of Springfield into zombies (yes, literally zombies) giving the developers a ploy to create what is essentially an interactive Treehouse of Horror episode. It's a more condensed version of the suburban level with Evergreen Terrace we've seen twice already, but the level acts as an homage to the Treehouse of Horror segments that the show releases every year near the Halloween season. Did I mention that there are also loads of Treehouse of Horror references littered throughout this level? It makes me so happy,

It goes without saying that most of the gameplay in The Simpsons: Hit and Run involves driving. No, it does not also involve shooting down characters of The Simpsons because although a lot of us would probably like to get our sick kicks out of unloading rounds of bullets into the denizens of Springfield, driving in an open world is the extent of the GTA template that this game borrows (you do get to kick the crap out of tons of Simpsons characters which proves to be somewhat controversial for some characters like Homer kicking Marge No one seemed to care that you can sacrifice Marge and Bart to the alien ship in one of the last missions in the game. I guess the only type of controversial spousal and or child abuse is one that holds some ground in reality, but I'd imagine that if someone sacrificed their wife or child to aliens in real life that no one would be pleased with them. Besides being recognizable from the show, all of the vehicles in each level have a large array of different stats for the different missions types in the game. Some cars are fast making them great for races, but aren't very durable for missions where you have to smash up another car or find collectibles. Some cars are giant, indestructible tanks that you wouldn't dare doing a race with unless you wanted to get floored by the competition. I really enjoy the fact that the game makes all of these vehicles more than just a novelty because the missions give you an incentive to check all of the other cars to aid you in certain missions. It isn't like in GTA where the car you drive is meant to get you from point A to point B and have it parked there while you do the mission. You actually have to consider the right options for each mission instead of just picking a favorite vehicle for the entire game based on superficial design.

Hit and Run doesn't just confine the Simpsons family to their cars in this game. For the most part, you can also slowly but surely navigate the town of Springfield on foot as each character is just as readily mobile in that regard as well. The time you'll spend on foot in this game is spent retrieving collectibles, destroying wasp cameras, talking to people to start missions, selecting a new car etc., but most of this game is in a vehicle. Each character plays exactly the same on foot with a kick move, a jump kick, and a ground pound in their arsenal of moves, but they aren't really that practical unless you are dealing with the wasp cameras. There are only a couple of missions that involve being on foot, but these are sprinkled into the game on very rare occasions and they are usually pretty simple. For the most past, you'll be progressing through this game in a vehicle. It almost makes The Simpsons: Hit and Run a crossbreed between a driving game and a 3D platformer. My guess is that they needed to implement more palatable features to the very M-rated label the open-world game was heavily associated with at the time. They needed to think of another direction to go with the PG-13 quality the Simpsons are known for, and mowing down enemies with an AK-47 didn't seem too appropriate.

Ironically enough, the missions don't have the same variety as the mechanics of the vehicles. I can list every type of mission in this game on one hand: racing, destroying, following, escaping, and collecting. I'd say that this game felt repetitious, but it didn't for some reason even though I was well aware that the missions kind of started to blur together after a while. I guess this game compensates for being funny making the tedium seem less grating. It always seems like you're doing a different mission when you're doing it with a different context every time. Most missions later in the game incorporate two or more of these game styles in a single mission to make it more challenging, but I feel as if this is a shallow way of implementing difficulty as the game progresses. Not to mention, almost every single mission in this game is timed which is the real difficulty juggernaut in this game. The game sometimes fails you if you didn't get in your car with a certain time constraint. One would think that the natural progression of difficulty with this time limit in mind would result in tenser time limits later in the game, but even that aspect is inconsistent. In some missions, the game rewards you with more time after completing a certain objective but in other missions, you have to do a handful of objectives under one time limit. I can speak for everyone that has played this game that every mission with one consistent time limit prove to be the hardest ones in the game by far (Never Trust A Snake and Set To Kill come to mind). These missions aren't even in the final level, but scattered all over the game. It's hard to say whether or not the game gets harder as you progress through it because there are difficulty curves so steep that the game will start to look like a wave. In every single level in this game, there is a mission that is way harder than the other ones while there are stupidly easy missions even in the last level.

I have to mention a special detriment to this game that I feel it excels in for better or for worse: this game is glitchy as hell. It's buggier than Ooogie Boogie from A Nightmare Before Christmas. You'll hit an number of breakable objects that won't hit, textures sometimes never load, you'll be talking to invisible characters to start missions, you can do one-time bonus missions again, some NPCs will be floating in the sky, etc. It's laughably bad considering how often these glitches occur. When trying to play the game straight, these glitches oftentimes break the immersion of the intended experience. However, like in the GTA games, Hit and Run comes with a multitude of cheat codes that revel in the awkward mistakes the developers didn't bother to patch. The cheats are fun for a while until you inadvertently break the game by using them usually resulting in your character plunging into an unprogrammed oblivion making you have to restart the game. It's a cheap thrill with a fleeting level of enjoyment.

My general attitude of licensed games wasn't nearly as jaded when I was a kid. Most likely, this was probably because I was the target demographic for the industry to milk money out of because I didn't know any better. Wouldn't it be soul crushing to buy a game based off of something else you loved from another medium just to have it be the worst thing you've ever played? That probably would've been the case if I had bought any previous Simpsons game before Hit and Run which would've soured my love for The Simpsons and maybe even for video games. That might have been a bit of a drastic result for a hypothetical, but after learning about the negative reputation most Simpsons games have, I am relieved that Hit and Run was the exception that I got to play as a kid. It may have it's limitations to the open-world game play and all of the glitches make this game objectively flawed, but it is the best Simpsons experience in the interactive medium by a large margin. All of the humor and charm from the early seasons of the show are omnipresent in every aspect of this game which gives it the strengths that the other Simpsons games don't have. It's almost as if I can use this game to make the point that licensed games aren't inherently bad and that the correct way to execute them is to heavily consider what makes the source material resonate with the fans.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/

DLC is still a relatively new concept in the world of gaming. It's been around for several gaming generations and is generated consistently for most modern video games. I guess there still isn't a concrete purpose for DLC content, or at least there isn't a strong consensus for why it exists. Is it to artificially prolong the longevity of a game to keep people playing it? Is it cheaper to produce than a full sequel? Is it to add content to a game as an afterthought? All the same, it's not a simple update. DLC still costs money. It's not the price of a full game, but everyone always feels cheapened when they don't get their money's worth. Great DLC should expand on the base game while having its own merits. It shouldn't feel tacked on or like the developers are tricked into buying a piece of the full game separately. Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss is definitely not a cheap add-on. It's an exceptional portion of the game. Some even say it makes up for the lackluster second half of this game. I'm not one of these people, but it stands up with some of the best areas, bosses, and lore building from the base game.


To access the DLC content, you must do a few extra steps in the base game. Off to the side of the Darkroot Basin where you fought the hydra, there is a crystal golem on the water. The only difference between this one and the ones at the base of the area is that this one is orange. Once you defeat it, a woman named Dusk appears, thanking you for freeing her from her prison (the orange golem you just defeated, if that wasn't clear). She claims to be a princess from a far-off land and from a time long, long ago, and she hopes that you will aid her in helping her land. Once that is done, you must kill a strangely placed crystal golem in the Duke's Archives to acquire an amulet. Once you have that, you return to the same place in Darkroot Basin and find a strange purple wormhole where Dusk once was. Once you approach it, a hand pulls you into the wormhole, where you are transported to the mysterious land of Oolacile.

Immediately as you warp to Oolacile, you are greeted by a boss. If there is anything that would make a Dark Souls DLC worth your money, it would certainly be the bosses. Fortunately, each boss in this DLC is a grand titan starting with the Sanctuary Guardian. There are no gimmicks or artificial gank bosses, only mighty foes that will test your skills to their limits. The Sanctuary Guardian is fast and has an arsenal of skills ranging from long-range lightning to short-range poisoning. He's quite the challenging foe and a great way for the DLC to begin.

Oolacile is very strange. Places like the Royal Wood feel like something out of a Lewis Carroll novel or from a quirky 1970s progressive rock album. I feel like Genesis-era Peter Gabriel would sing about the disjointed tin men that come at you with pitchforks and hedge clippers. The Royal Wood is also as dense as Darkroot Garden and has an unnatural feel. The sun is (literally) setting on Oolacile, but the light isn't reflected on any area of the Royal Wood. It's like an ominous setup for the darkness to come.

When you are playing the base game of Dark Souls, you get the impression that the depleted land of Lordran was once a mighty kingdom. When you explore it, it is obviously past the prime of its former glory, and the game revolves around the premise of you extinguishing Lordran step by step to mercifully put an end to everything. Between the glory days of Lordran and its more barren days of decay, there is a time in the middle that isn't explored: the point when everything started to go to shit. It is set in a time that hasn't quite reached the point of layers of inexorable despair stacked on one another. This is a time when at least people had a sense of hope that everything would patch itself up nicely. However, Artorias, the hope of this world and the character in the DLC's title is your next boss.

Remember the giant sword from the Sif fight in the base game? Remember how there was a giant gravestone? Well, it turns out that the gravestone and the sword both belong to the grand knight Artorias. During the time of the DLC, he was a strong, courageous knight who confronted Manus, the father of the abyss and the cause of the darkness surrounding Oolacile. If there's any indication that he failed to stop the abyss, he's skewering an Oolacile citizen with his mammoth of a sword when you encounter him. He also emits an oozy, darkish purple glow and roars like a beast when he sees you. Whatever force the abyss is, his presence makes it seem terrifying. Artorias the great warrior is long gone, and now you must put him down. It's not an easy task, however. When you fight Artorias, you'll soon learn why everyone relied on him to save them. His attacks do a ton of damage, and he's as relentless as Gwyn. It's a great fight that will test your patience and reflexes.

You might notice that the progression in AotA is awfully linear compared to the base game. The only exception lies in the one optional boss, Black Dragon Kalameet. You encounter Kalameet once in the Royal Wood as he establishes his gigantic, looming presence. To make him more formidable, the giant Gough gives more insight into his legend and states that even Gwyn never dared to fuck with Kalameet. That's how fearsome he is. Even though all of this is meant to intimidate you, you can fight the legendary black dragon. After all, you want to get your money's worth out of the DLC, right? Taking him down isn't that simple. Kalameet is so strong that Gough needs to wound him by shooting him out of the sky with a gigantic arrow before you can fight him (which is the coolest moment in the game). You then find a route off the beaten path and see Kalameet emerging from the waterfall with a limp. Thank god for Gough because even when he's wounded, Kalameet still proves to be the hardest fight in the game. He's unpredictable, fast on the ground and in the air, and his magic is almost as unavoidable as the Four Kings. He also has this move where he lifts you up with telekinetic power that makes you take double the damage. If he successfully executes this move on you, it's time to restart. It's really something that the only optional boss of the DLC is also the most difficult in the entire game. It's almost a test to see which Dark Souls players are the most hardcore, the ones that will endure the most pain even when they don't have to.

The epicenter of the calamity in Oolacile resides in the Township. The citizens have morphed into what can only be described as emaciated apes that look like someone with trypophobia's worst nightmare. They are a little more deranged and spunky than the pitiable hollow soldiers, so I guess this means that curse that brands them is a relatively new one. Also, like the undead soldiers, their strength lies in overwhelming you as a group. The sorcerers are a different story. Their purple magic meteor spell is guaranteed to take out more than 80% of your health if it hits you, and I swear to god it sometimes homes in on you. The worst part is that these bastards cackle every time they kill you. They are definitely my least favorite part of the DLC. The Township is a long endurance test where you will encounter hoards of both of these enemies at every single corner.

The Chasm of the Abyss caps off the DLC at the bottom of Oolacile. It's another dark area after a tiring slew of dark areas. Unlike those areas, the darkness isn't a negative aspect. The darkness here gives the area a sublimely creepy and ominous feeling. It also helps that this level is short, and the only enemies are slow walking shadows (with a few enemies from the Township). At the pits of the Chasm lies Manus, the father of the abyss. Everything about his fight makes you feel trapped. The arena is suspended above total darkness, and Manus is so intimidating that it never feels as if you're far from him enough for comfort. The only indication of how close you are to him is his multiple bulging red eyes. Nevertheless, he is my favorite (solo) boss in the game. As perilous as his fight is, he's very learnable. He is somehow a challenge of your strength and endurance without ever seeming unfair. After vanquishing the scourge of Oolacile, you'd expect the skies to clear up and have a celebration. That is, you'd expect this from any other game that wasn't Dark Souls. Princess Dusk appears in the arena, lying on the ground, weeping inconsolably. She is surrounded by nothing but darkness, and it seems like even though the menace is gone, it didn't matter at the end of the day. The harrowing doom that surrounds her kingdom cannot be stopped, and it will only worsen. It's a very devastating scene to end on. It almost makes me feel bad that I can teleport out of here back to the base game.

Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss is practically the best DLC content. I'm not speaking in terms of the series but in terms of DLC content in general. The content provided here is just as solid as anything from the already fantastic base game, and it feels totally separated from it all the same. The levels, bosses, and world-building are all incredible, making this worth every cent. It's almost as if having the DLC is essential for any Dark Souls experience.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/

In April of 2018, I purchased this game as a birthday gift for my then-college roommate. I wasn't all that familiar with this game, but I did know that my roommate's friends were raving about it and that my roommate didn't own it. He seemed excited about the game when I gave it to him, but he only played about 10 hours of it (which, if you've played this game, you know that progress time isn't even a sizable dent). Half a year later, I came home after a long night, and my roommate wasn't there. I decided to check out his game as a lark, and immediately after the opening disclaimer that starts this game, tons of thoughts ran through my head for the few hours I spent playing Persona 5:

Wow, this game is so vibrant! Even the menu items pop with style!

That introduction was so enthralling! Wait, the majority of this game takes place throughout recent past events told by the main character? That's a lot like Sly 3, which is one of my all-time favorite games!

Wow, that gym teacher is a total fucking asshole! I can't wait to see what's coming to him!

Just like that, a game that I revved up in my PS4 one night out of slight curiosity became a constantly invigorating journey that took up a non-consecutive 100 hours throughout the first third of 2019. I enjoyed this game so much that I played through it again immediately after finishing it, which is something I seldom do with any video game, much less one as long as Persona 5. Through the course of those two playthroughs, I fell in love with Persona 5 to the point where it is not only one of my favorite games released in the past 10 years but one of my all-time favorites.

So, why did I fall in love with Persona 5? Well, why did everyone else fall in love with Persona 5? This game was a massive hit unprecedented by anything else Atlus had put out over their 30-year course as a company. Until then, Atlus's franchises naturally fell into the cult classic territory. Persona 4 and its remastered version P4 Golden were pretty major hits, respectively, but the success of Persona 4 was mere pennies compared to Persona 5's goldmine. Persona 5 is by far the best-selling game that Atlus has ever released. Suddenly, a giant influx of new fans who weren't even slightly familiar with the previous Persona games or Shin Megami Tensei (myself included) started heralding this game as a masterpiece and as the gold standard for not only the franchise but for the JRPG genre. This massive success for Atlus does not come as a surprise. With all of the delays juxtaposed with the quality of the game's final release, it's obvious that Atlus crafted this game to ooze style and made every single aspect of this game immensely durable regarding its story, characters, gameplay, and design. Since playing through Persona 5 twice, I have also played through Persona 3 and Persona 4, the other "modern" Persona games, so my recent revisit of Persona 5 not only serves as a means to compare Persona 5 to its predecessors but gives me insight on how Persona had grown as a franchise and how savvy I've grown to be with this game revisiting it compared to when I was clueless playing it for the first time.

I've already used the word "vibrant" to describe this game, but it bears repeating. Persona 5 is probably the most vibrant game I've ever played. I don't think there is a single audible or visual aspect of this game that is underwhelming. The opening of the game before the main menu is a strikingly attractive color palette of bright crimson red on a base of white (which, personally, the two-color base white on any other striking color is a great way to get my attention for anything) and the opening theme is upbeat and infectious. Overall, Persona 3 may have my favorite soundtrack, but Persona 5's soundtrack is probably the most consistent in genre and tone. In terms of genre, Persona 5's soundtrack is somewhere in between jazz-fusion, acid jazz, and lounge. It's always in the sweet spot between Bob James, Jamiroquai, and Stereolab with some vocal jazz leanings oftentimes. The soundtrack to this game is hip, it's cool, it's smooth, and no matter what scene the soundtrack is accompanying, it stays consistent in its overall core style. I like how there's more than one piece of music to convey tension in this game rather than Persona 4's constant piano track (you know the one).

I never thought I'd be praising a game for its menus either, but that's the level of detail that this game upholds. Every time you pause in this game, the menu with all of the options makes a strangely satisfying THWAP sound that never gets tiring no matter how many times you use the menu to navigate items, skills, confidant rankings, etc. Each menu item has its distinct features where Joker and the other characters are displayed in a comic book-style animation with different poses oftentimes differing on the selected menu item. Sometimes after quitting the game for the day, I'd take the last few moments to navigate the menu because even the menus were fun to scroll through, which is a rare aspect of any game. The in-game selections are just as vibrant as well as the blue-on-white color pallet in Takemi's clinic, with a silhouette of her posing when selecting items to buy. This game also chose to switch the character dialogue models to the bottom left corner of the screen. It's not a major change, but it's still somehow much more attractive than how it was in the previous two games. The characters also look much less chibi than they did in the previous games, borrowing the art style of Catherine, another non-Shin Megami Tensei-related Atlus game. Ultimately, the changes in Persona 5 are wonderful but also necessary to modernize the franchise with the current generation. Atlus took a franchise that was already brimming with personality and elevated it to an unprecedented height not only for the series but for any video game. It is no hyperbole when I say that Persona 5 is one of the most attractive video games of all time.

The game's merit doesn't just stand on its style alone. Its story is one of the best I've played through in any game despite it also being the longest story I've played through in any game. In the 100 hours it takes to play through this game, the story never faltered, and I never became bored with it, unlike some points in the stories of Persona 3 and 4. Personas 3-5 almost act as director Katsura Hashino's "Three Colours Trilogy," in which each entry's tones and themes coincide with the ever-present base colors in each game, signifying the common tropes represented with each color. If Persona 3's blue represents grief and sadness, Persona 4's yellow represents exuberance and light, then Persona 5's red represents anger, passion, and rebellion. Those three signifiers associated with the color red are used to great effect in this game as the general theme of Persona 5 is upholding justice and rebelling against the seemingly impervious forces in society that abuse their power to constantly suppress those weaker than them.

Persona 5 starts with a mysterious, cloaked young man being pursued through a casino by shadows and what also seems like a heavily armed SWAT team. As he finds an escape route, he's holding a briefcase in one hand while his silhouetted teammates try to help him from afar. As he makes a crude exit by jumping through a stained glass window, the SWAT team overwhelms him with size, and he is taken into custody. While being interrogated, he's roughed up and drugged by the SIU agents who try to make him sign a confession for all of the hefty crimes he's allegedly committed (this is the most unorthodox way of a Persona game having you enter your name and I enjoy this way of introduction). Before they tear his limbs off, an attractive young prosecutor named Sae Nijima arrives at the interrogation room to inquire the young man about his shifty past. The beginning events of the game chronologically occur seven months earlier as the protagonist does a reverse Persona 4 and moves from the country to Tokyo, the pinnacle of a bustling city metropolis. A few months earlier, the protagonist was wrongly charged with a count of assault when he was trying to prevent the man who charged him from raping a woman. Because of his newfound criminal record, his parents kicked him out of the house and forced him to move to a quiet area of Tokyo under the custody of Shojiro Sakura, a seemingly stern owner of Leblanc, a cafe whose attic is now the protagonist's new home. The protagonist enrolls in Shujin academy, where he is already treated like a delinquent. On his way to his first day of school, he encounters a beautiful blonde girl, a floppy-haired gym teacher, and an indignant blonde teenager named Ryuji. All of these factors culminate in a phone app transporting you to seemingly another dimension in which Shujin Academy becomes a castle. Upon venturing inside, you discover that the castle's ruler is the floppy hair gym teacher you encountered earlier, except now he's donning a crown, a leopard-skin cape, and a pink thong and is also acting like a cold-blooded tyrant. Before he attempts to kill the protagonist and Ryuji, the protagonist stops him by awakening to his persona. Upon exiting the castle, they encounter a strange cat-like creature named Morgana imprisoned in a dungeon cell. Morgana explains that you're in a place called the metaverse, a cognitive otherworld represented by the reality of what people feel about themselves and the people around them. In Kamoshida's case, the castle his cognitive self was ruling over is known as a "palace," a structure created by someone with distorted desires who usually does something harmful to others or themselves in the real world. In Kamoshida's case, it is in the form of physically abusing his students and sexually harassing teenage girls. The only way to stop them from enacting these harmful things is to make them have a change of heart by stealing their treasure at the core of their palace, which would get rid of their distorted desires. . After their first job, the protagonist, Ryuji, Morgana, and the pretty blonde girl named Ann, form The Phantom Thieves of Hearts to pull off more jobs in the metaverse by changing corrupt people's hearts to reform society.

If that base plot summary sounded long-winded, it's because this game has giant stretches of exposition. This is no more apparent than in the introduction of this game which spans from the future casino escape to getting a deadline to finish Kamoshida's palace. If you thought Persona 4's opening was a long span of exposition, you're in for a real treat with Persona 5. The introduction/tutorial in this game is long enough that you almost feel like you could've completed another game in the time it took to finish this introduction. I certainly didn't mind, however, because the introduction was all this game needed to get me hooked initially. I loved the fact that the first scene of the game only foreshadowed what was to come many hours later in the game, and I had to work my way up to find out what was happening. I also loved that most of the game's story is being told from that future point by the protagonist like in Sly 3 (or probably in better examples from other media, but Sly 3 was the first video game I saw with this narrative mechanic). The events in the introduction that leads up to the first moment of normal Persona gameplay are consistently invigorating as I wanted to know more about the metaverse and what was going to happen once they stole Kamoshida's treasure and changed his heart. Once the introduction ended, and the game lets you loose, I was a little intimidated by the time limit, but I was sure that the game would give me enough time to complete the palace.

This leads to my first criticism of Persona 5 that I can state now that I've played through the other games: this game has the worst time management out of all of the "modern" Persona games. This is largely due to the vast amount of exposition throughout the game contrasted with the fact that there is so much to do in seemingly so little time. Like Persona 4, the otherworld you visit where the RPG gameplay is can only be visited in the daytime, so the character is "too tired" at night to do anything else if he has visited the otherworld previously that day. It's more of a problem in Persona 5 because there are plenty of confidants (social links), the stats are more difficult to improve, and besides the palaces, you also have to spend a lot of time in Mementos. Mementos is essentially this game's version of Tartarus except explored by descending it instead of climbing it. Mementos act as the general public's cognition in which you take on requests from the Phantom Thief Aficionado website that Mishima makes after completing the first palace. The requests are usually unresolved domestic squabbles, but they tend to get more intense as the game progresses. It's a wonder what line the game draws in discerning who is fucked up enough to get a palace because some of the people you face in Mementos are seriously disturbed. Many confidants also require you to fulfill requests in Mementos to max them out, which involves a lot of time spent in places during the daytime, which makes you unable to do anything at night. This can be resolved through a certain confidant, but you need a certain level of guts to call her to request her service, and you have to max out her confidant as well. This is why whenever you schedule a day to do the palace, do as much as possible on that day until you run out of SP. Leveraging SP in a palace can be hectic at times, but it's the only way to sufficiently give yourself enough free time for the requests, stats increases, and confidants. During my first playthrough, I had no idea what I was doing and didn't give myself enough time to raise my stats or most of the confidants. Now that I consider myself a Persona veteran, I now think that the time management factor was better implemented in Persona 3, and Persona 5 got a little too ambitious with trying to cram in all of the aspects from previous Persona games with the new features. At least you can read on the subway on your way to school to raise your stats sometimes, I guess.

I suppose that it's a good thing that the palaces in this game are always really invigorating since they are the top priority of your time spent in this game. Persona 5 swaps the randomly generated dungeon crawling format from the earlier Personas in favor of making the central palaces like Zelda dungeons with a series of different floors with different gimmicks, the occasional puzzle, and the overall multi-faceted layout that most 3D Zelda dungeons also have that make them feel so rich and engrossing. Like in Persona 4, each palace is themed and requires you to beat them in a given time or else face a colossal game over that will send you back hours of progress if you don't meet that time limit. In the case of Persona 5, there is another aspect at play with the time limit for each palace. Even though the game sets a concrete date for when a person's heart will be changed, the game recommends that you complete the palace a few days before the set date because you will need to issue a calling card. As Morgana explains, the treasure can only materialize when the person knows that their treasure is going to be stolen, so they send a calling card that looks like a ransom note on a red business card which activates the main boss of that palace, which in turn completes it upon beating the boss. Zelda dungeons WISH they could be this circuitous. Inside these dungeons are shadows, but unlike the third and fourth games, where they are an array of familiar enemies that get a tougher re-skin/color as the game progresses, they are cognitive blobs that take the form of familiar Personas during battle. Persona 5 makes a surprising move back to the original two Persona games by having you exploit the enemy's weaknesses, hold them up, and then negotiate with them to join your Persona roster. Thank god they implemented this feature back into the franchise because the shuffling mechanic in Persona 3 and 4 was bullshit. However, it is fairly difficult trying to guess which dialogue option will suffice for the specific persona even though they give you a vague personality type to work off of. It's still better than gaining a new persona by chance. On average, you will end up fighting these shadows more than the ones in the other worlds of Persona 3 and 4 because they are much more difficult to get around. To fit the theme of thievery, Persona 5 implements a percentage meter that ostensibly grows whenever the guards catch you either while trying to avoid them or if you failed an ambush. I've found that this alarm meter is more bark than bite because I swear I got the level up to 100% once, and the game did not kick me out of the palace. It is still very annoying, however. What's even more annoying and slightly hectic is the fact that you have to earn the ability to escape battles by leveling up a particular confidant that isn't even available until you finish the third palace. I understand that the game has to give you some incentive to rank up the confidants, but that's like having to unlock the ability to pause the game. It's just one of those features that shouldn't be compromised.

On the other spectrum of the game, the areas of Tokyo you visit somehow balance looking faithful to their real-life locations while still feeling like they were made for this game. What better city to base the setting of an incredibly vibrant game on than arguably the most vibrant city in the entire world? Yongen-Jaya may seem quiet for Tokyo standards, but everything from Leblanc, the clinic, the batting cages, etc. is still so lively. Shibuya is the central area between your home in Yongen-Jaya and Shujin, and it is always packed with people night and day. The subway channels are only needed a couple of times earlier in the game, but they are a nice feature that makes the city seems livelier. Shinjuku is a swankier area lit up in neon red, and Akihabara is a ward filled with arcades and electronics stores. Other than the free-roam areas, there are also "hangout spots," which include a fishing pond, a park with a big lake, a giant bridge, a couple of amusement parks, etc., which are mostly used to hang out with confidants to rank them up, or they are used as brief places in the story. Shujin Academy is underutilized in this game compared to Gekkoukan and Yasogami. The protagonist still goes to school like the others, but none of the social links/confidants are from school clubs like in the past two games thus, going to school just seems like every morning exposition before leaving the school to start your plans for that day. Most of the confidants are people outside of school except most of your partners.

I generally like the main cast of Persona 5. Each of them is likable in their own right, and they work off of each other pretty efficiently. However, as a group, I don't think they work as well as the Investigation Team in Persona 4, but they're not as sterile and formal as the members of SEES in Persona 3. Many of the main characters are more fleshed-out and likable versions of the main characters from Persona 3.

Ryuji is the dumb best friend character more similar to Junpei from Persona 3 than Yosuke in Persona 4. He's essentially the comic relief character, and I enjoyed his presence the first time I played through this game. After playing the other games with similar characters, I don't like Ryuji as much as I once did. Junpei may have been obnoxious and dumb at first, but he grows as a character over time and becomes much more likable by the end of the game. Ryuji, on the other hand, stays the same obnoxious, boorish idiot as he was on your first day of school. His constant banter with Morgana is always amusing, and he's a lively character, but realistically, if I had a friend like Ryuji, I'd want to kick his ass after a while. The stupid best friend trope was done so much better in previous games because they weren't used solely as comic relief.

Morgana is a talking cat you meet in the metaverse while exploring the first palace in the introduction. He fervently claims he's not a cat, but he is indeed a cat. Essentially, he's Persona 5's Teddie. He's a mysterious creature that comes from the other world, he's an animal (or in an animal's form), he's the team navigator for a little while until someone takes his place, and he has amnesia. Morgana forms your group as a means to help him gain his memory back and possibly turn into a human. Besides being the navigator and one of the first party members, he also turns into a car in Mementos which is surprisingly incredibly smooth to control. The only difference between Morgana and Teddie is that Morgana follows you around like Ash's Pikachu at every waking moment of the game after the introduction. If this was the same case as with Teddie, I'd eventually have to murder him, but this is not the case with Morgana. Morgana is not a character without his flaws. He's not as annoying as Teddie; however, he has a habit of acting like a smarmy, know-it-all shithead a lot of the time. As I said before, his banter with Ryuji is always amusing, but usually, it's debatable whether or not Ryuji deserves it or not. I guess two strong personalities measured up with an extent of insecurity on both sides usually clash together. Morgana also has a crush on Ann that is never resolved and usually results in tons of embarrassing moments where Morgana proverbially tips his fedora to Ann in almost every scene where they are together. It's like your meme-spewing, crusty friend going after the hot cheerleader. You don't say anything for the sake of their feelings, but every interaction between them makes you cringe.

Speaking of the hot cheerleader, Ann is the last original member of your group after another confrontation in Kamoshida's castle in the introduction. She's like Yukari in that she's the pretty, fashionable girl with a quarrelsome dynamic with the idiot best friend character with some slightly hinted sexual tension. Unlike Yukari, Ann is much more tolerable as a person. She's a girly girl, but she has a strong, willful demeanor that makes her likable (and doesn't act like she has a giant stick up their ass like Yukari). She expresses that her struggle comes from being so naturally beautiful that all the girls resent her and the boys are too intimidated to approach her. I'd argue that this situation is unrealistic, but maybe it's different in Japan. Her will comes from her strong relationship with her friend Shiho which becomes greatly tested during the Kamoshida arc in this game.

Yusuke is the first member to join the group after the Phantom Thieves are established. He's a tall, lanky blue-haired boy with a deep voice who attends a prestigious neighboring academy on an art scholarship. He encounters the Phantom Thieves after pursuing Ann to potentially paint her nude. In my Persona 3 review, I mentioned that Yusuke reminded me of Akihiko because they were both stern party members, but this comparison doesn't hold true to me anymore. Yusuke is an eccentric who lives in his isolated bubble, giving him a passionate but skewed perspective on everything. He's also a tad flamboyant. He's a character that fits the group dynamic just fine, but I was always a little hesitant to hang out with him as a confidant.

Makoto is the next member to join your group and my favorite party member. She is also the younger sister of Sae Nijima, the woman that has been interrogating you for the duration of the game thus far. She reminds me a lot of Mitsuru from Persona 3 in that she's the student council president, and her social link/confidant involves her breaking out of her shell. Unlike many of the other members, she's the only one with a solid character arc. She starts as a threat to the Phantom Thieves because she's been sent by Shujin's principal to do some snooping work to find who they are. She seems like a prudish, nosy bitch until upon discovering that she wants to join your group to take down Kaneshiro. Once she joins your party, she gains a badass nuclear bike persona with a skin-tight spike studded outfit to boot. She becomes so much more likable throughout the game that you tend to forget the bad first impressions that you had of her. Her insight and acumen also lead her to become the de facto co-leader or advisor of the Phantom Thieves as well.

Futaba is a shy, petite red-headed girl who becomes the metaverse navigator after completing her palace. She's also very timid around people she doesn't know due to past trauma and her incredibly sedentary lifestyle. Let's just say she's the hermit arcana for a reason. When she's around friends or her adoptive dad Sojiro, she tends to be quippy and brash. She's also a nerdy tech whiz whose skill far surpasses mostly anyone in Tokyo. She's a vital asset to the team and has an endearing charm to her.

Haru is the daughter of the CEO of Okumura Foods, who joins your party in the middle of the game when her father becomes the top targeted person on the Phantoms Thieves website. She mostly joins the team by circumstance in a confusing scenario where Morgana brings her into her father's palace, and her persona is only half-awakened somehow. Haru is the only weak link in this game's party members as she joins the team way too late into the game to establish herself as an interesting character. It worked in Persona 4's case because Naoto was already an established character before she joined your team, and she has some stake in the ending events of the game, but with Haru, it's not the same case. Like Fuuka, she's shy, polite, soft-spoken, and submissive, especially in the case of her arranged fiance. Her confidant also involves becoming better at cooking which has already been played out to death in these games.

The other non-party member confidants/social links kind of pale in comparison to the ones in Persona 4, but they aren't as insufferable as some of the ones in Persona 3 (except for Ohya, who is like hanging out with your drunk aunt). The most notable ones are Sojiro, your guardian, and Sae, the woman who interrogates you after you get caught by the police. Unlike Dojima from Persona 4, who automatically feels some connection to you through being blood-related, you have to earn Dojima's trust and respect. For the first half of the game, Sojiro treats you like dirt because of your criminal record and takes you in seemingly as a way to challenge himself and out of pity for you. He even utters a mumbled groan every time you return to Leblanc in the evening. As the game progresses, you learn that Sojiro is nothing but a big ol' clueless softy, and his newfound liking for you is both adorable and gratifying. Sae's confidant is a special one because it ranks up automatically, and her interrogation serves to divide the game into chapters. This happens every time you conquer a palace or start a new confidant. Some of the flash-forwards into the long interrogation scene start to get ridiculous; however, in particular to Shinya and Haru, in which Sae essentially screams at you and says, "WHO TAUGHT YOU HOW TO COOK VEGETABLES AND PLAY VIDEO GAMES!? ANSWER ME!' Go home, Sae. You're off this case.


As for the rest of the non-party member's confidants, they range from being fairly interesting to being underwhelming. They also range in terms of usefulness, so I'd skip some of them if it's your first playthrough of the game to rank up on stats and other confidants. Many of them also involve changing someone's heart in Mementos to fully rank up their confidant, so that will take even more time out of the game. The most useful ones to rank up are Chihaya, Kawakami, Hifumi (this is where you will get that precious escape battle "skill"), Takemi, Yoshida, and Mishima. Yes, I know Mishima is hard to stomach because he's a sycophantic dweeb, but his confidant perk is incredibly useful. There is also a disturbing amount of dateable older women in this game. The nurse in Persona 4 was ready to jump your bones from the moment she first saw you, but even then, the game wouldn't let you do it. Persona 5 is a different beast, and you can screw the older women to your heart's content.

I'd be remiss if I didn't discuss the villains, considering they are at the forefront of this game and its themes of rebelling against society. This game also has a thematic trend similar to the seven deadly sins. The PS4 trophies tell you what each main palace villain's sin is, but I disagree with some of their assertions.

Kamoshida is the first main palace villain in this game, and I'll be damned if he isn't the strongest in his plot arc. He's a former Olympic gymnast turned high school volleyball team coach that seems like the golden nugget of the prestigious Shujin Academy. He also physically abuses his students to the point where they have very dark visible bruises on them, and he's a sexual predator who tries to sleep with an array of Shujn girls, namely Ann. When Ann refuses his advances towards him, he beats the shit out of her friend Shiho to the point where Shiho tries to commit suicide by jumping off of the top floor of the school. He also leaked Joker's criminal record to the school, giving him an immediate bad reputation, and he crippled Ryuji for a while because he saw that the track team rivaled the attention of his "glorious" volleyball team. This game makes you hate this man so much, and it's so effective at making you want to get back at him for everything he's done. He is a fantastic villain to start the game off with. He represents the sin of lust because of his pervy attraction to the underage girls at Shujin and his lust for glory to build his illusions of grandeur.

Madarame represents the sin of pride (no, it's not vanity as they say because vanity is not a specific deadly sin). He's a famous Japanese artist and a teacher who has taken Yusuke as a pupil and is also housing him. It turns out that Madarame is an untalented hack who steals from his students to make a profit off of them and get receive credit for them. When I was first playing through this game and learned that the next target was also a teacher that was abusing their students, I thought this game had already become stagnant, but that was not the case. It was at this point that I started to fall in love with this game. The moment where Ann is trying to distract Yusuke by agreeing to be painted nude while Morgana tries to open the lock on the door with Joker and Ryuji outside of the door in the palace was like something from a final operation in Sly Cooper, and it's one of my favorite moments in the game.

Kaneshiro is a mob boss who represents the sin of gluttony. Whether it's because of his insatiable appetite for money or because he's fat is up to the player. His heinous crimes include not only being a huge factor in the Tokyo underground drug trade but forcing students into debt and having them work it off through human trafficking. When Makoto forcibly encounters Kaneshiro, this is what he intends to have her do until they change his heart. I don't if it's because I don't find a bank to be a particularly interesting place to explore or because Kaneshiro isn't all that interesting, but his palace is not one of the highlights of this game for me. Maybe it's because of Kaneshiro's strange lisp.

Futaba's palace may be a change of course for this game, seeing as she's not a villain, but her palace is my favorite nonetheless. Futaba represents the sin of sloth as she depreciates in her room due to unresolved trauma involving the death of her mother. This is when Persona 5 takes notes from Persona 4 and blows every partner-themed dungeon from that game out of the water. Futaba's palace looks fantastic, the theme is one of my favorite tracks in the game, and it expertly mixes dungeon layout with puzzles incredibly well. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of this palace's boss, however. An evil giant beast with Futaba's mom's human head on it is kind of gross.

Okumura's palace seems to be the unanimous least favorite among fans of this game. For one, Okumura doesn't seem as insidious as a villain as the other three. He represents the sin of greed as he works his employees to the bone, but there is no real underlying scandal except if you count his ties with Shido. His space palace is a long arduous task, and the final space vent puzzle can fuck right off. Even after three playthroughs of this game, I can never tell if I just have luck on my side when I finally accomplish this

Sae Nijima, yes, prosecutor Sae Nijima, is the host of the casino palace where the game comes full circle to the present day. She, of course, is not an insidious villain, but she is an obstacle for the Phantom Thieves hence why they choose to steal her treasure. She represents the sin of envy as she envies the men in her field who she feels have an easier time becoming successful in her field than she does or ever did. Her palace is a casino because of the outcome of her work standing becoming up to a game of chance. This palace does have its tedious moments, but it is probably the most vibrant palace in the game,

Shido is the most popular candidate in the election to become the future prime minister of Japan and is the last formal palace in the game. He's also a complete homicidal sociopath who represents the sin of wrath. He's also the man who is directly responsible for coordinating the mental shutdowns, and he's the man who pressed charges on Joker, ruining his life and giving him a criminal record. He is not someone to be taken lightly. His palace is a cruise ship that represents his prestigious status and also his plan to steer the country after he gets elected, mostly for his benefit. Shido's palace is easily the longest one and also the most difficult as you have to fight five different mini-bosses to get to Shido, and there are also long periods where you are transformed into defenseless rats and can't fight. The length alone of Shido's palace certainly makes him feel like a formidable foe if all of the other factors don't already.

The is another important character in Persona 5 that is in a league of his own. He's both a partner and a villain, but not either all the same. His name is Goro Akechi. Goro Akechi is a celebrity teenage detective, kind of like Naoto in Persona 4, but his popularity is also due to his appeal to younger audiences. I guess to make teenage girls interested in what's going on around them, you have to have an inoffensive effeminate teenage boy at the helm of political media discourse. Once you meet him at the TV station, he sort of becomes Joker's rival, whether he's aware of it at first or not. He also publicly disapproves of the Phantom Thieves' actions, swaying public opinion because of the moral grey area of their actions which surprisingly makes the Phantom Thieves questions themselves. In reality, it's to take the attention off of himself. It's alluded to early in the game that another person is using the metaverse to conduct mental shutdowns. We see this first hand when a tall black figure shoots Okumura dead in his palace, and then he dies in real life. After this happens and the public turns on the Phantom Thieves, Akechi aids them in taking down Sae's palace, but this is only to organize the SWAT team that ambushes Joker and takes him into custody. After the interrogation is finished and the events of the game come full circle, Akechi enters the room and shoots Joker dead in the face revealing himself to be the person who set the Phantom Thieves up and the person who enacted the mental shutdowns. It's no surprise that Akechi is the one who betrays the Phantom Thieves. Anybody as delightfully positive as Akechi is suspect, especially in a Persona game.

The surprising part is how the Phantom Thieves combated his schemes. After Joker is shot in the head, he is presumed dead by everyone, but his teammates had a trick up their sleeves. They already suspected that Akechi would betray them, so they set up an elaborate scheme in which Akechi would shoot the cognitive version of Joker in the metaverse, and Joker would just sit back and laugh. Why did they suspect Akechi? Because several months earlier, he heard Morgana talking about pancakes meaning that Akechi had already been to the metaverse earlier than he stated. This twist plot reversal is known to the player after everything had already been done, so the first time I played through this game, I was astounded at how they set this up and the reason why they did. Once Akechi figures out that Joker is still alive and the Phantom Thieves are still together, he follows them into Shido's palace and tries to finish them using all of his power, revealing himself to be a psychotic brat. So much for the charming persona he upheld. Through the battle, you learn that Akechi is just a sad young man who just wanted to be loved and accepted, and he thinks he's accomplished this by heeding Shido's whim, but as he is lying there defeated, Shido's cognitive version of Akechi comes to finish him off. It's quite an emotional rollercoaster. Surprisingly, I liked Akechi much more as a character when he revealed his true motivations. I felt like I had to stomach the smug bastard whenever he came up to me and combated my hostility towards him with a smile and a passive response. He's much more of a threat in the game than Adachi ever was because Akechi is far more capable. Akechi is a gifted mess, and his character brings an interesting point of having talent and potential being corrupted by adult figures in their formative years.

By the end of Shido's palace, it seems like the biggest enemy has been conquered, and the Phantom Thieves can disband. However, we all know that every Persona game ends with killing God, so you know that the game isn't over yet. It's here where Persona 5 goes full Thomas Hobbes on us with philosophies dealing with free will and human behavior. After defeating Shido, his cronies desperately backpedal to cover their asses, so they sway public opinion away from the Phantom Thieves making it seem like they never existed. The Phantom Thieves investigate the root of this problem in the depths of Mementos to find a giant holy grail figure, the general public's treasure. This holy grail puts the general public in a state of tranquility, free of any tangible desires, because humans are full of sin and will innately act on those twisted desires if not kept in check. The grail proves to be too mighty as it seems to erase the Phantom Thieves. Joker appears in the Velvet Room as Igor wishes to have him executed for failing to stop the "ruin" of humanity when it's revealed that Igor didn't get a new voice actor. The Igor you've been interacting with IS the holy grail in Mementos, and he was using Joker and the rest of the Phantom Thieves to enact the ruin of humanity. Never trust anyone in a Persona game, kids. The real Igor is revealed after the Velvet Room twins dispose of the fake. Real Igor also brings the Morgana arc full circle by announcing that he was created to help Joker stop the holy grail. Once you defeat the holy grail, it turns into Yaldabaoth. His fight is grand, and he is the only main boss in this game. I had to grind for a bit before defeating him. As far as a god figure representing a core theme in the game, I'm not sure if he's as satisfying as a conclusion to the game as Shido. This is the point where Persona 5 airtight story starts to lose momentum. It's not that the holy grail doesn't fit the game's themes, but it feels like such a pace breaker in the middle of the game. It does feel satisfying to finish off the final boss with a kill shot while everyone is cheering you on from the streets below.

I'm glad that Atlus took their time with this game. I feel that if this game had come out a little after the release of Persona 4, the game wouldn't have been as stylish, intricate, and invigorating as it proved to be due to technical limitations. This was Persona for the next generation, and it delivered something that I would consider to be the full potential of the franchise. In the first few hours of this game, I couldn't take myself away from it, which led to a constant feeling to play it even more and find out what was going to happen and then play it again soon after to pick up the missing pieces. Every Persona game I've played has its strengths and weaknesses, but Persona 5 is what I consider the gold standard for the franchise.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/

You hear the argument that video games can be art because of a smattering of game mechanics and story elements, but have you ever listened to the argument that video games are art because they can make you...cry?

The first Persona game I played was Persona 5, and due to the style, story, characters, and gameplay, I fell in love with it. Because I loved Persona 5 so much, I decided to go back and play the previous two titles to satiate my Persona fix that playing through Persona 5 twice didn't even satisfy. Yes, I was well aware that the previous two Persona games would've been much more primitive looking and lacked the style that made Persona 5 so stimulating. However, I understood that these games still carried the same dungeon crawling, paired with Japanese high school life like Persona 5, which is one of my favorite dynamics of the franchise.

I then went to Persona 3 before Persona 4 because I knew the least about the game initially, while I knew a bit of Persona 4 and wanted to start something that seemed a tad more fresh in my mind. I played the FES version on the PS2, which is arguably the game's definitive version. Even though the graphics made everyone look chibi, the style similar to the one oozing through the pores of Persona 5 is generally present here. This game also has stylish menus, daily pacing throughout the in-game months, the cutscenes with characters' caricatures moving enough when they talk to look life-like enough, and anime cutscenes sprinkled in whenever the game wants to that are always a nice change of pace.

The story and characters, of course, are what make each Persona game special. This game, for brevity's sake, is edgy as fuck. It's the dark Persona, the bleak game of the franchise in which ultra-serious tones and themes take center stage despite the lighthearted nature Persona games tend to have in contrast to Shin Megami Tensei's hardcore appeal in style and substance. Every Persona game, especially 3,4 and 5, has a consistent color scheme, and this game's primary color is blue for a reason. The game's overarching themes are depression, grief, loss, and death, with death being the core theme surrounding everything else. The people of this world are coming down with something known as "apathy syndrome," and the people who succumb to this phenomenon become one of "the lost." If that isn't an obvious metaphor for depression and suicide, then I wasn't paying attention. The main characters of this game activate their persona by shooting themselves in the head with a fake gun. Need I say more? "Apathy syndrome" is caused by something called "The Dark Hour," which takes place every night between 12 AM and 1 AM. Most people don't notice this hour because they are asleep/stationary in things that look like coffins. Those conscious and aware during this hour have something called "the potential" and are obligated to stop The Dark Hour by scaling the tower of Tartarus where the Dark Hour shadows live. The people with the potential in question are a group of high schoolers who go by the group name of SEES, and their leader is a goofy long-haired man named Itkusuki. Others who have this potential are in a group called Strega, who use The Dark Hour to carry out assassinations and use The Dark Hour as a cover-up. The protagonist becomes a member of SEES when he moves into the dorm and discovers that he has "the potential" while being attacked by shadows during a full moon which is when the shadows from Tartarus attack civilians. Your goal is to erase the Dark Hour by defeating these shadows while maintaining a social life and keeping your grades up at day. Yeah, I guess the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comparisons are pretty apt.

As far as the day-to-day activities are concerned, I think this game is much better at time management than 4 and 5. Instead of going to Tartarus during the day as you would go to the TV dimension or a palace/Mementos, you go to Tartarus at night. This game's mechanic for "tiring out the protagonist" isn't forbidding you to do anything else after exploring the other world but making you more vulnerable in Tartarus. Even though being tired is hair-raising, I prefer it to the way 4 and 5 carry about dividing time between the natural world and the other world. You can still do three different things throughout the day, making raising your stats much more manageable.

While being cool in concept, Tartarus is a bit of a slog. It's this giant winding tower with randomly generated rooms. The objective is to find the stairs in each room to go higher and higher, and it remains that way for 250+ floors. I like the Tartarus theme (it sounds like something from Techno Animal or another industrial hip hop artist), and it has a creepy, warped nature to it across every section. However, there is little to no variety at any point in the game. The first floor of Tartarus has the same design, objective, and goals as the last level of Tartarus. Tartarus isn't optional either, there isn't a deadline like 4 and 5, but you need to do it to grind levels, especially later in the game. I thought getting to the highest floor I could get to was enough, but I struggled on some full moon bosses whenever I didn't grind.

Every 10th to 15th floor of Tartarus, a floor boss keeps you from going onward. These are pretty easy if you can find a weak spot initially, but some floor bosses are bad motherfuckers who should not be approached lightly. I'll use this as a way to air the one major grievance I have about this game: you cannot control your partner's actions during combat. Sure, you can command something in the proximity of what they do in the tactics menu, but it only goes so far. Full Assault may or may not involve any of the partners consistently hitting them with a physical attack or a Persona ability, which makes a big difference considering some enemies absorb or block different kinds of attacks. Commanding them with the heal/support option also doesn't mean that they won't try to attack the enemy at first and fuck something up when I commanded them not to attack (I'm looking at you, Yukari). Essentially, you cannot rely on partners to do anything you want, but you're going to have to anyway because you'll run out of SP quickly, and SP items are scarce. This torrent of disobedience will put you in a spiral of frustration, especially with the floor bosses who do not fuck around. Grinding, building strong personas, and saving the game often is the way to survive in this game which can sometimes be an exercise in withstanding tedium.

During the day, after the school day, six days a week, you can choose to level up your stats or build your social links. Both coincide as you need to level up your stats to start some of the social links, and you need the social links to level up personas. These social links are found throughout the game map, with the mall being my favorite location because of its theme and the hub for stacking up weapons and items. Like the other games, you can date any female social links (except for the little girl at the shrine, obviously). Still, this game takes in-game adultery more seriously, as dating more than one girl at a time can lead to another social link with a girl souring to the point of no return. Somehow, I romanced four different girls and got away with it. There wasn't even a funny cutscene at the end involving them finding out. Huh, funny how that works.

Some social links level up naturally, like the Fool social link, which includes all of your partners in SEES. Initially, your partners reminded me of ones from Persona 5. You have the dumb comic-relief best friend (Junpei/Ryuji), the fashionable, attractive girl with a bit of an attitude (Yukari/Ann), the stern, but passionate straight man (Akihiko/Yusuke), the sheltered over-achiever (Mitsuru/Makoto), and the shy, petite support member (Fuuka/Futaba). One of my favorite aspects of 4 and 5 were the chemistry and banter between all of the playable characters as they seemed like natural friends, which in turn gave the game a bit of levity and comic relief. Because of Persona 3's pacing, their relationships do not blossom until much later in the game. There are moments where these characters play off of each other, but they are few and far between, probably to maintain the bleak tone of the story.

As far as the individual SEES members are concerned, some are great while others vary in quality. I hated Junpei at first because it seemed like the game wanted him to be the comic-relief friend like Ryuji, but he just came across as a douchy dipshit. As the game progresses, I end up liking him more than Ryuji because he becomes delightful and well-rounded after his romantic subplot with Chidori . He's also the best support player in battle. Yukari was my initial dating choice because I thought she was cute, but her nagging attitude grated on me as the game progressed. She's arguably the best at bantering with the other characters, though. Akihiko is cool, confident as hell, and isn't a total sperg-lord like Yusuke. Mitsuru is like a less exciting version of Makoto, and her spamming of Marin Karin during battle pissed me off. Fuuka is forgettable, Koromaru is a dog (a good dog at that), and Ken essentially serves as a plot point during mid-game. The less said about Shinji, the better for the game, and if you're reading this after playing Persona 3, you know why. Do not become tempted to use him too much in battle. My girl of choice in this game and my favorite character overall is Aigis, not only because she's a unique character, but because she possibly has the best character arc not only in the game but in the entire series. She's a humanoid robot designed by the Kirijo group specifically to fight shadows, so it's no wonder why she's a valuable asset to SEES in combat. Her position in SEES in terms of the narrative is about as flat and...well, robotic as you could imagine. The only quirk she possesses is a borderline creepy commitment to protecting the protagonist, to the point where she watches him sleep every night. As the game progresses, Aigis keeps her redeeming qualities while steadily becoming more human-like, fitting in better with the teenage characters. Her steady transformation into speaking and acting more like a human is so smooth that the instance where the boys meet her on the beach will feel like a whole lifetime ago. In a game with dynamic characters, her arc is the most dynamic. I also find her quirks much more endearing and interesting than the more irritating one from the other SEES girls.

The other social links in the game also vary in quality. Half of the other social links are fine, but some are downright insufferable. I liked the Hermit one where you find out your homeroom teacher is playing an MMORPG with you on the weekends, and then she becomes flustered, ashamed, and enraged when she finds out that it was you she was talking to AND that she has developed a crush on you. Kenji needed to be smacked around, Tanaka is a greedy, aggressive piece of shit, and I hated the authoritarian hall monitor. Still, the worst one of them all is fucking Nozomi. Holy shit. In real life, as a player of this game, I felt embarrassed to be around this character while ranking up his social link even though I was playing this game alone in my living room with no one else around. He's an arrogant, snobby, pretentious fat cocksucker with no redeeming characteristics at all with one hell of an anger streak. He refers to you as your "little brother" as he starts to like you as if you were having a hard enough time trying to stomach this kid. You're saving the world and sleeping with half of the female cast of this game, and he's stuffing his fat face with his fifth bowl of large ramen—what a condescending shithead. You then learn that he's also a thief and a doomsday cultist, to make matters worse. When you max out his social link, he doesn't understand a damn thing even after he's confronted for his actions and wets himself in fear. You get the option to say that he's "irreplaceable," but I chose this option thinking that it said that he was "irrevocable" because that would've made more sense.

The player will become familiar with every social link the game offers because there isn't much else in the game in terms of exposition. Besides ascending through Tartarus on a nightly basis, the dark hour only offers intrigue every full moon. This monthly event is when SEES fights an immense shadow that coincides with a specific type of arcana. These are the sections reminiscent of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as many teenagers fight the unspeakable oddities of a paranormal world in their town at night after school. These full moon bosses are the reason for spending so many hours fighting shadows in Tartarus because these arcane behemoths will test the skills of any player. The Hanged Man boss especially resonates with me because I had the most challenging time with his Sister Mary shields. If the player dies during one of these bosses, they'll have to go back to earlier in the day because there are no save points. This penalty means they'll have to sit through the exposition they already saw each time. Of all the times the game finally offers some exposition, a point without the ability to save is the most egregious. As I stated before, these bosses only occur every full moon, which is roughly once a month. The lenient amount of time gives the player ample opportunity to prepare in Tartarus, but it also means that the only real source of exposition for most of the game happens only once each month. Persona 3 has a very languid pace that turns some people off. I don't mind doing everyday activities without any substantial interruption, but there were times that I admittedly wanted the game to move quicker. Some of the full moon encounters didn't even satisfy my need for exposition, making me yearn for more to happen.

The pacing of the game kicks into high gear around November. The player still has to do all of the things during the day that they've become used to, but there is way more going on in the game's narrative to break up the usual affairs. Once you defeat the last big shadow, it is revealed that Itkusuki misleads you and the rest of SEES into defeating the big shadows not to conquer the dark hour but to bring all of these shadows together to form a being called Nyx and bring forth the end of all life on Earth. Itkusuki dies while trying to sacrifice you to it but takes Mirsuru's father along with him. In the next month of December, a new kid named Ryoji arrives at school. He becomes acquainted with the members of SEES except for Aigis, who seems very wary of his presence. After Aigis tries to fight Ryoji, the game reveals that he is the personified version of the arcana Death, the missing arcana in the equation to make Nyx. He is also the grown version of Pharos, the kid visiting the protagonist throughout the game. His being is also carried inside of the protagonist. They have to choose to kill Ryoji to prolong the inevitable and become oblivious to the Dark Hour and any memories involving it or take on a seemingly impossible foe at the end of January. If you choose to let Ryoji live, he turns into the persona Thanatos, and you have a month to prepare to fight Nyx. January is only one month, but it feels like the longest month in the game. There is a lingering melancholy in the air as everyone is dreading what seems inevitable, so they try to stay strong and appreciate each other before the time comes. This moment is when the SEES members seem like genuine friends instead of associates. Once you fight Nyx, the end of the world still seems like it's coming no matter what SEES does until the protagonist seals Nyx away, not defeating it, but prolonging its return. Months later, the protagonist sheds his human form in Aigis's arms as he becomes a martyr to protect people from Nyx until the time comes again that it will destroy humanity. The final month in the game is easily the most poignant moment. After so many months of hunting large shadows, seeming like it didn't add up to anything, something with enormous stakes finally makes the player feel the same sense of weighted dread as the characters do. The player will go day by day doing what they've been doing for the whole game, but a looming sense of melancholy and dread adds a certain sense of impact to it. Once the final month culminates into the game's falling action with the final boss and the ending, it is emotionally heavy, and maybe a tear will run down your cheek.

Persona 3 is great but flawed, and those are two adjectives that don't usually mesh together concisely but seem necessary in this case. I can't excuse the game for not allowing you to control your partners in battle. It always resulted in a highly frustrating and unnecessary obstacle that I felt I had to overcome with every boss in this game. The characters aren't consistently pleasant or well-developed like in the other games, and the pacing leaves a lot to be desired. However, I can see that the pacing led up to something fantastic that will resonate with me longer than most video games I've played. Persona 5's ending was bittersweet, but the end of this game was an emotional punch in the gut that left many questions unanswered. However, it doesn't mean that I wasn't satisfied with what was presented to me as those questions I had unanswered leave this game ever-present in my mind long after I've completed it, and that's what good art should do.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/

I refuse to submit the popular opinion that this game and its sequel suck. I refuse to do this for anyone, including people on the internet, my friends who had this game when they were kids like I did, or my Genesis-era older cousin who used to tell me that this game sucked when I was eight. This newfound, seemingly unanimous opinion of the Sonic Adventure games does not sway me even a little. Sure, after coming back to this game since I was a kid, I'll admit that some of the aspects of this game are a lot to be desired, but they do not compare to the more recent abhorrent dumpster fires that have been tainting Sonic's legacy. I guess it's just easier for people to group the Sonic eras between his early 2D games and his later 3D outputs, which is probably why the Sonic Adventure games are grouped in with the appallingly bad 3D Sonic games.

Sonic Adventure is certainly flawed for sure, but I've heard so many people regard this game as the proverbial guillotine to Sonic's run as a beloved video game character. This game's bad reputation is due to what Sonic became of after the Adventure games rather than the direct point of it. I'd fervently argue that the early Sonic Adventure games are exceptions to the unexceptional 3D Sonic games (with Generations and Colours being a few exceptions, but Sonic has had tons of bad 3D games at this point, so the exceptions are very few and far between). Am I defending this game from the barrage of negativity because the Sonic Adventure games were the Sonic games that I grew up with and bear a great level of nostalgia for me? Yes, admittedly so, but nostalgia only goes so far. The heightened feeling of nostalgia only works if whatever it is that you're being nostalgic for still upholds some sort of quality. If it's complete shit, then you just laugh and feel like an idiot for liking it. Nostalgia aside, Sonic Adventure, in my personal opinion, is one of the best Sonic outings to date and a marvelous jump to converting 2D Sonic gameplay to 3D. Still, there are plenty of deterrents that also make this game a flawed experience. I guess I'll play devil's advocate trying to defend my favorite Sonic game from its bad reputation in this review.

The late 1990s were a revolutionary period in video games. The radical shift from 2D to 3D became the norm, and franchises from the 2D era needed to adapt to this change or become outdated relics. Super Mario 64 is probably the most notable example of this shift to 3D because it was one of the first to make this transition and laid out the design on which almost every 3D platformer of this era was based. Sega developed a Sonic game for the Sega Saturn, which didn't see the light of day because the Sega Saturn was a short-lived console that got beat out by the competition. A few years later, Sega released the Dreamcast, which also became a short-lived console and the console swan-song of the once almighty Sega. For the short time that the Dreamcast was the exciting new thing, Sega decided to use Sonic Adventure as a stepping stone for the desired success for the console, just like Nintendo did for Super Mario 64 for the N64. As far as I'm concerned, Sonic's first 3D outing has aged much better than Mario's initial stepping stone into 3D. Is this probably because the Dreamcast was technically a much more advanced system than the N64? Probably, but this still holds to be true. Sonic Adventure looks better, feels better, and was much more ambitious than Super Mario 64 in several other aspects as well. Sonic Adventure, at the time, was the cornerstone of what the 3D platformer could do and was also a great shift for Sonic into the prevailing 3D world.

One of the most ambitious aspects of Sonic Adventure was the story. In previous Sonic games, the plot mostly revolved around Sonic stopping Eggman from building a robotic empire made from fellow animal creatures from his homeworld, Mobius. This was generally the plot of every 2D Sonic game with maybe an additional character or another kooky Eggman invention to shake things up. In Sonic Adventure, Eggman is searching for the seven chaos emeralds to feed Chaos, a creature entirely made out of water standing on two legs. Eggman's objective this time is to use all of the chaos emeralds to achieve Chaos's full destructive potential to take over Station Square, the city in which the game is set. It's funny to me that after so many attempts to conquer entire worlds, Eggman decides to downscale in taking over some nameless city with a casino, an amusement park, and a beachfront. It's like a mad scientist trying to conquer Atlantic City. I guess having your diabolical plans constantly being thwarted by a blue hedgehog isn't exactly a confidence booster. Sonic's objective is to stop Eggman from getting all seven chaos emeralds while he learns about the history of the creature Chaos in the process. Already, the story sounds like the standard Sonic fare of Sonic stopping Eggman's evil deeds from coming to fruition, but the story itself isn't ambitious; it's the way that it's presented that is. Besides playing as Sonic, you also get to play as five other characters that you unlock as Sonic's story progresses. These characters consist of familiar faces like Tails, Knuckles, and Amy while introducing new characters like Big the Cat and E-102 Gamma. I'll get to each of these characters' individual stories eventually, but the entire game as a whole presents these stories as interwoven sub-plots that connect ala Rashomon. I thought this plot mechanic was brilliant when I was a kid. Even though I've seen other media that have this interwoven style of plot presentation (like the previously mentioned film Rashomon), I can still appreciate the bold choice of presenting the plot of a 3D platformer like this. Is it presented consistently well? Not really. There are several cracks in the story due to trying to keep the interwoven stories connected, which leads to needless repetition. If you see three or four different characters in the same scene, you will be seeing this scene two or three more times guaranteed. I could've gone without fighting Chaos 4 three different times, believe me.

Like Super Mario 64, Sonic Adventure implements a hub world that the action stages stem. The hub world is divided into three different areas: Station Square, Mystic Ruins, and the Egg Carrier. Station Square is a relatively bustling metropolis with the aforementioned amusement park, beachfront, casino, etc. As I said, think Jersey City without the used needles washing up on the beach's shores. Mystic Ruins is a forest/jungle area directly based on real-life ruins in Latin America and is probably the most sprawling area of the three hub worlds. This isn't always to its benefit, as the deep jungle area where Big the Cat lives is like a maze. Unless you're a character that can glide/fly, good luck trying to find your way around it. The Egg Carrier is Eggman's giant flying ship equipped with a swimming pool, an arcade, a very "Lost in Space" 60's space station, a retro-looking bedroom pad, and a smattering of defense weapons, including several turrets and a giant laser. Essentially, it's Eggman's bitchin sky crib, and the blue fucker Sonic couldn't let him have that either. I used to like the hub-world in this game when I was a kid, but that was back when I used to have fun dicking around as all of the characters were without a concise objective over my head. As an adult, I'd rather jump into the action immediately. I can see why the hub world was implemented because of the intricacies of the interwoven stories, but the hub world as a whole feels awkwardly small, empty, and geographically inconsistent. For a Sonic game, it's merely adequate.

Another ambitious, albeit hilariously bad, aspect of the presentation in this game is the voice acting. I can't exactly confirm this to be true, but apparently, there was little to no direction during the recording sessions for the voices in this game, so the voice actors just winged it. It's not like it's any worse than the voice acting from many other games during this time, but it still isn't very good. I'm convinced that no one can pull off Tail's voice without sounding like a crackly pre-teen, and Knuckles is about as wooden as a cardboard box. Bless John St. John for taking on the role of Big the Cat. I definitely wouldn't want to be him during those sessions. The only voice that stands above the rest is the voice of Eggman. The quality of the graphics can be excused, but the character animations tend to be choppy and heavily exaggerated. The overall dated presentation of this game tends to be the most common criticism, but I think that it stems from being a product of its time. The other common and egregious criticism I see about this game is the glitches. I've had this game for 17 years now, played through the story so many times, re-played the levels hundreds of times just for the hell of it, and have NEVER encountered these glitches, not even on accident. I know the glitches these people speak of from watching videos, but they must be exploiting these glitches with some effort. If I couldn't activate these glitches by accident, it is not a valid point of criticism.

The game's story is divided into seven different parts, one for each playable character and a finale that is unlocked after beating each character's story. Sonic's story is naturally the one you can access first, and it is also by far the best section of the game. I've mentioned before that this game might be the best Sonic game there is, but I say this with confidence under a technicality. If this game was only Sonic's story, it could rightfully be considered the best Sonic game. Sonic's gameplay translated marvelously into 3D to the point where I believe it's much better than the gameplay in the older 2D games. One thing that I never cared for in the classic Sonic games was the trial and error type of gameplay that is presented. I'm not sure if this type of gameplay was intentional in the classic Sonic games, but it comes naturally when you're in a 2D environment with several obstacles with a character that moves so blazingly fast. Sonic's speed in the 2D games is always compromised with all of the blindspots present in every level, which I never thought was fair to the player, considering Sonic is supposed to be going as fast as possible. In a 3D environment, there is much more spatial awareness. Sonic's speed isn't compromised, and the player isn't punished for trying to take advantage of what Sonic is supposed to excel in. To aid in this, Sonic now has a homing attack to lock onto a chain of enemies, which greatly aids with the pacing of the fast gameplay. Sonic also has access to most of the levels in the game, and every level in his story is excellent (except maybe Sky Deck). There are rarely any awkward pace-breaking obstacles that punish the player for going too fast, and they are all varied and versatile. I'd state my favorites of the bunch, but they are all so good.
Sonic Team knew how to make the best of their blue boy in 3D and made something that hasn't been beaten since.

Oh yeah, and there's the rest of the game...

I wish I could declare Sonic Adventure as the best Sonic game there is based on the Sonic gameplay, but that would be like hiding circumstantial evidence from a crime scene at a trial. The other 70% of the game experiments with other gameplay styles in the 3D environment in the form of other Sonic characters' stories. Honestly, I don't mind any of the other character's stories all that much, but some are better than others, and none of them are even worth the tattered rubber peeling off of Sonic's running shoes.

First up is Tails, a familiar face from the older games that you unlock as early as the first action stage of the game. Tails crash lands on Emerald Coast trying to use a chaos emerald as a power source for his newest flying machine. He pairs up Sonic for the first half of Sonic's story until they both crash, falling out of the sky and trying to intercept the Egg Carrier. Tails flies solo (ah-ha, get it?) for a while, trying to find his path and prove to himself that he is capable of great strides in heroism without Sonic aiding him. He proves this to himself at the end of the game when he stops Eggman from detonating a bomb in Station Square. . The concept of Tails trailing behind Sonic is heavily present in the core themes of Tails not only in the story but in his gameplay as well. The objective of every action stage for Tails is to chase Sonic to the end of the level hence proving he is perfectly capable of besting Sonic at his own game. No shit, Tails, you can fucking fly. This is probably why I've never lost a race against Sonic in this game, not even when I was seven years old. Tails can just easily cheese through levels that were designed specifically for Sonic, so they turn out to be insultingly easy. Tails' story is fine, but his stages are severely broken.

Knuckles is another series mainstay that makes an appearance in this game. Like in Sonic 3, he protects the Master Emerald on the floating Angel Island when the island suddenly crashes and lands in the sea one night. A perturbed Knuckles finds Chaos emerged from the Master Emerald as it breaks into pieces as Knuckles has a scuffle with Chaos. Knuckles' story involves him finding the lost pieces of the Master Emerald and restoring order to Angel Island. Knuckles has always been a fun character to play as in any Sonic game's a very versatile character in movement and action. He can dig, glide, and climb up walls. I would say he's also a strong character because that's what he's known for, but his strength doesn't matter in his gameplay. In the Knuckles stages, there are three master emerald pieces per level to collect with the assistance of a radar. These levels usually take about a minute or two to complete because the radar lets you know where any emerald piece is, and the levels aren't big enough, so the emerald pieces are always sort of near each other anyway. As a kid, I liked playing as Knuckles in the hub world because of his diverse move set, but should that count for anything? His story is alright, but it could've benefited from providing a greater challenge that arguably doesn't come up until Sky Deck, which is Knuckles' last level.

I generally don't like Amy as a character. She's essentially an archetype of every bad teenage girl trope but with pink fur. She's whiny, vapid, and usually serves as a damsel in distress. In her story, she finds a bluebird that seems to be lost. She is then chased down by one of Eggman's robots named Zero, whose mission is to capture the bird. Amy's mission is to then protect the bird from Zero and reunite the bird with its family. I'd argue that Amy's story is the worst in the game from a gameplay standpoint. If you don't like the other character's gameplay (except for Sonic), at least the action stages are brief. The same cannot be said for Amy's action stages which are all much longer and slog on because Amy moves like she's on quaaludes. Amy's action stages seem a bit directionless as it's hard to pinpoint exactly what type of gameplay they were going with here. Does it seem like Amy's levels were scrapped Sonic levels that fit a slower character? Amy moves like she's dragging through the mud. The gimmick of Amy's levels is that she constantly has Zero tailing her at every level. Zero makes a raucous every time he's on-screen, but he never poses a threat. He makes his high pitch robot shriek, targets you, and winds up his cabled robot arm. The only way you would get hit by Zero is if you went to get a snack and forgot to press pause. Amy's story is a total bore.

If you already know about this game's reputation, you already know that it gets worse than Amy. After Amy, the game introduces Big the Cat, aka the Jar Jar Binks of the Sonic franchise. I cannot fathom why Big the Cat was deemed a necessary addition to this game by the developers. He is a completely useless character in every single way imaginable. Firstly, he has absolutely no stakes in the grand scheme of the story. He's a lazy fat feline with questionable cognitive abilities who lives the simplest life imaginable with his friend Froggy who for some reason in a world filled with anthropomorphic creatures is just a simple frog. Froggy has an encounter with Chaos the night he breaks free from the Master Emerald and swallows a Chaos Emerald possessing him somehow (even though I'm not quite sure of that anyway). Big the Cat's story is him searching for Froggy...and that's it. Big is the only character with no stake in the interwoven story structure except for the short moment when he tackles Tails and Gamma steals Froggy from him to take him to Eggman. Do these even count as spoilers? . He's about as aware of what's going on around him as The Dude from The Big Lebowski is, except, in this case, it's a frog and not a rug. He's just a simple creature who got caught up in something that I'm not even sure he can fully comprehend. His gameplay is a poorly executed fishing game that controls horribly, but at least it's quick if you know what you're doing (point the control stick down when Froggy bites the hook, dammit). Big also has a total of one boss fight that only takes about 10 seconds to beat. Fuckin A, Sega.

After Big the Cat comes to another new character that is surprisingly a breath of fresh air and is one of my favorite Sonic characters. E-102 Gamma is a robot made by Eggman in a series of robots that look-alike named after letters of the Greek alphabet. E-102 Gamma proves to be an exceptional robot to Eggman after defeating his robot brother Beta and capturing Froggy. He is placed on the front lines of the Egg Carrier while his brothers go AWOL or are remodeled. After Amy gets captured, Amy senses a glimmer of compassion and strength in Gamma uncommon in Eggman's other robots. Amy befriends him and saves him from getting destroyed by Sonic and Tails when they fight on the Egg Carrier. After the Egg Carrier sinks, Gamma turns against Eggman and searches for his brothers to save them from Eggman's captivity in the form of destroying their robot bodies. The final fight is against an upgraded version of Beta and after his mission is complete, he destroys himself revealing that he's a bid underneath his robot form and somehow related to the bird Amy has been protecting. It's an emotional story that has its strength where the other non-Sonic stories don't. . As a kid, playing as a gliding robot with an arm cannon was a blast, but like Knuckles, his action stages are completely underutilized. Every action stage with exception of Hot Shelter, the last one, is incredibly brief and easy. It's a shame because racking up points with Gamma's arm cannon is fun.

After playing through every character's story, there is a seventh story unlocked called SUPER SONIC with a big golden question mark (as if we don't know what Super Sonic looks like). I forgot to mention another aspect of the interwoven stories because it doesn't matter until this final section of the story. In random instances with every character (even Big), they are transported to a mysterious time and place that looks like the Mystic Ruins before it became a sprawling jungle. From what I gather from these flashbacks, the Echidna civilization that used to preside over the ruins tried to forcefully chase Chaos out of their village when all Chaos wanted to do was to protect the Chao creatures that resided around the Master Emerald in Angel Island. The only member of the Echidna tribe supporting Chaos is a young Echidna woman named Tikal, who is also the voice of every glowing hint spark in the game. In the past, the Chao is killed, which angers Chaos to the point of wiping out the Echida tribe in a watery inferno. In the present day, Chaos goes rogue and finds the last chaos emerald for himself, completing the set. He becomes a watery behemoth that completely obliterates Station Square. It turns out that Eggman was never controlling Chaos as Chaos was becoming more powerful as a means to destroy humanity again, stemming from his contempt for the Echidna civilization hundreds of years ago. Tikal appears from the past and gives Sonic the ultimate energy from the chaos emeralds to turn into Super Sonic to beat Chaos. It's an easy but epic final battle. The story concludes by revealing that Chaos wasn't inherently evil but misunderstood creature that was a victim of xenophobia that made him resentful. It's a pretty satisfying ending to this game, but after playing through all the milquetoast non-Sonic stories, it feels a bit disjointed playing as Sonic again.

The shift from 2D to 3D proved to be quite a daunting one for many game franchises. It proved well for Mario and Zelda, but what about the blue blur? In my opinion, not only did Sonic make the jump to 3D with flying colors, but it is the most exceptional offering that Sonic has. However, it's also a game that is a product of its time as people were still figuring out the staples we take for granted these days like character animations and voice acting. It's also a very ambitious game that bit off more than it could chew. A shitty game misses the mark completely, and judging by Sonic's gameplay alone, they translated Sonic very well into the burgeoning 3D gaming world. This is a game that I feel a great amount of warmth with, and I don't think it's just regulated by nostalgia alone.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

In my review of the first Sonic Adventure, my goal was to issue a claim that one of my favorite games as a child wasn't a hot, steaming pile of garbage that everyone made it out to be. I thought I'd have to do the same for its sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, but this game has an entirely different reputation than it once did. For years, both games shared the same negative reputation of ruining the Sonic franchise by being cheesy, heavily flawed, and retrospectively starting the worse things to come. I felt like I had to defend the first Adventure game, one of my favorite games of all time and the one that I prefer between them because this reputation is still strongly felt. Meanwhile, the sequel is now lauded as not only one of the best Sonic games but also as the ONLY good, no, even passable 3D Sonic game. I played both of these games around the same time as a kid, so I have quite a bit of nostalgia for them. I always favored the first Sonic Adventure for plenty of sound reasons. I'm sticking with those reasons to highlight not why I think Sonic Adventure 1 is the superior of the two but why Sonic Adventure 2 is just as cheesy and flawed as the game that came before it despite garnering a reputation as the better Sonic game among public opinion.

By the time I played both of these games, the Dreamcast was dead and gone. I had never even heard of the Dreamcast when I first played the Sonic Adventure games as a kid. The impact that the first Sonic Adventure had on the system was something that I learned about from the internet. Sonic Adventure 2 came out at the end of the Dreamcast's initial life cycle before it was crushed under the mighty weight of the PS2 and the original Xbox. Both of these games were ported to the Gamecube as Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. I point this out because contextually, in Sonic's life cycle, both of his 3D outings were the introduction and the swansong of a short-lived console that turned out to be the last faint hurrah for the company that once made Nintendo's brow sweat profusely. Both of these games hold significant historical importance in not only Sega's history but Sonic's as well. As much as this was a revolutionary time in Sonic's life, this was also a fleeting period due to Sega's inability to keep up with the competition. After Sega's demise in the console wars, Sonic didn't have a place anymore. It was like the previous king's throne was usurped, and he remained in town only to shamelessly beg for money as he slept on the streets with nowhere to go. From here on out, Sonic was a multi-platform franchise which is probably why the games faltered as a result. Sonic didn't have the same backbone as he once did when he was being backed by Sega on his console. The Adventure games were the last point in which he did, so the point of contention about where Sonic lost his luster is after Sega dropped out of the console market, not in his jump to 3D. However, this doesn't mean that the Adventure games don't have their awkward foibles. I've already discussed this in detail with the first Sonic Adventure, so now it's the sequels that turn to be dissected for what it is despite the nostalgia I have for it and despite how much I just defended its legacy.

One thing that Sonic Adventure has over its predecessor is a better sense of organization. This is apparent in many aspects, including this game's story. Unlike how the first game divided the story by characters, the game is divided into the factions, "Hero" and "Dark," with a final story at the end after beating both of them. If you play Hero first, you'll have no idea what's going on because, like the first game, the game's overall plot is interwoven between the two stories. The story begins in the Dark section as Eggman is storming a military base. Yes, for the first time, you can play as the mad doctor in a mainline Sonic game. In this military base, he's looking for something referred to as the "ultimate lifeform." He is shocked to find that "the ultimate lifeform" is a black hedgehog that looks exactly like Sonic. This black hedgehog, however, is named Shadow. Shadow defeats the military's defense bot and makes a deal with Eggman to find more chaos emeralds to power the "Eclipse Cannon" that was made by Eggman's grandfather on a space colony called Ark. At the start of the hero story, Sonic is being taken to a prison by helicopter when he escapes. He confronts Shadow and gets caught by the military. It turns out that the military has mistaken Shadow for Sonic as Shadow has already stirred up enough mayhem to make the military chase after him. Tails busts Sonic out of the military prison with Amy alongside (don't worry, Amy isn't a playable character in this game. Thank god). What exactly is Eggman's plan for this space cannon? Well, he's feeling a little more ambitious this time around as he shoots for the moon...literally. To display the power of the eclipse cannon, he blows up half of the moon and sets a timer for 24 hours until he blows up Earth (or at least a planet that greatly resembles Earth. The geography of the world is a little askew) unless they comply with his demands of world domination. Of course, it's up to Sonic and his friends to stop Eggman before the time runs out.

Like the first Sonic Adventure game, the story is interwoven between the characters but is much less of a cluster fuck because the story is divided into three chapters and not six. The three stories are "Hero," which involves Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, "Dark," which involves Shadow, Eggman, and Rogue, and the final chapter involves playing all six of them. Even though the story is much more organized, there is still plenty about the story overall that bothers me. Overall, this game still has the same charming cheese factor that the previous game did, but what irks me is the overall tone of this game. This game is laughably edgy and pretty melodramatic. I guess I could chalk this up to the game being a product of its time. 2001 was a pretty edgy time in American pop culture, with nu-metal/alternative metal and industrial rock being some of the dominant music genres during this time. A lot of the soundtrack in this game even sounds like Nine Inch Nails. Even the returning characters like Sonic and Knuckles seem a little tenser. Maybe that's why every character constantly keeps interrupting each other in every cutscene (which is hilarious btw). No, I think that the reason this game has a darker, edgier tone than any Sonic game before is due to the new playable characters: Shadow and Rogue.

I do not like Shadow the Hedgehog. I know the overall opinion pertaining to him among Sonic fans is divided, but I thought I'd just get bluntly express my opinion of him right out of the gate in case anyone was wondering. No, it isn't because of his self-titled game (even though that game is dreadful) or because of his other iterations. I don't like Shadow the Hedgehog even in his first appearance in Sonic Adventure 2 because his edgy persona makes me wince. He's got the dark, arrogant aura that only a pre-teen would gravitate towards, and I didn't even think Shadow was cool when I was that age. One could argue that he's supposed to be a foil to Sonic, but is that accurate? Contrasting the two, Sonic is like the guy who gets too drunk at a party and tries to jump off the house into the pool, and Shadow is like the kid with the Katana collection who may one day tell some of the kids not to come into the school one day. Sure, they may lead different lives and hold different values, but they are still insufferable jackasses at the end of the day. The only difference is that the world in a Sonic game is supposed to fit around Sonic's character, and having Shadow in the limelight clashes with what Sonic is supposed to feel like. Every time the laughably dreadful Maria plot point comes up with Shadow, I have to remind myself that this is a Sonic game and not Final Fantasy. It's just not that deep, Sega.

Rogue is a tad different of a case, but her presence throws off the tone of the game just as well. Rogue just doesn't have any redeemable qualities either. She's supposed to be an independent character like Knuckles, only working in the other character's interests whenever it's convenient, but her own independent story does not paint her in a positive light at all. Rogue is a treasure hunter like Knuckles, but her specialty is jewel theft. The entire time she's trying to steal pieces of the master emerald just made me annoyed with her, and her partnership with Eggman just exacerbated this annoyance. She's supposed to also be acting as a government agent assigned to spy on Eggman but doesn't seem to be doing that well at her job. It's hard to tell exactly whose side she's on, but really, she's incredibly self-centered and doesn't care what diabolical schemes Eggman is up to unless she benefits from it, even if it is as insidious as blowing up a planet. She's also supposed to be a voluptuous, sexy femme-fatale character as well, which does not fit the tone of Sonic either One of my friends growing up admitted that his first erection as a kid was caused by Rogue, so what does that tell you? I don't mean to be a prude, but she seems so ill-fitting in the world of Sonic. Her self-centered personality does not help her case either. I will admit, however, that her stages include some of the best music in this game (Dry Lagoon especially).

The levels in this game also seem to be better organized by sections in the story, fitting level layouts that coincide with a general level of difficulty (for the most part, Eggman does visit Space Colony Ark way before the other character do). As this game's story progresses, the game goes from city levels and jungle/military base levels to the more difficult sand levels and space levels instead of having a smorgasbord of different level themes like in the first game. A stream of levels between the two stories fits where the characters are in the overall story. Each character in the story also has a gameplay mode with a boss every so often to break up the pace. Sonic has essentially the same type of gameplay as he did in the first game, with Shadow following suit. I may not like Shadow as a character, but if his presence in this game allows more Sonic gameplay, I'll take it. The Sonic levels are just as good as they were in the first game, with City Escape arguably being the greatest level in any Sonic game. Shadow's levels are just as exceptional, but they are generally a little harder than Sonic's, which seems to be a prevalent occurrence between the two factions. Every "Dark" character's gameplay serves as the marginally harder version of the "Hero" side's equivalent. This also goes for Tails and Eggman's gameplay which seems to have adopted the E-102 Gamma style of shooting chain-combos until they reach the end of the level. I'm glad they changed Tail's style of gameplay from the uninspired flight races of the first game and that they found a way to incorporate Eggman as a playable character, but these levels are just okay. The mech-walkers that both characters use are clunky, and their levels can be painfully long due to the slow pace of their gameplay. Knuckles is again finding pieces of the master emerald after a scuffle with Rogue and Eggman that shattered it. It might be the same gameplay style, but it is greatly improved from the first game. The levels are much better designed for Knuckles, and the levels aren't as easy as they were in the first game providing a substantial challenge instead of running through each of his levels with too many easy hints. One of the hilarious aspects of this game is the choice of music for all of the Knuckles' stages. For some reason, Sega found it apropos to incorporate an entirely hip hop latent soundtrack for each of his stages, ranging from jazz-rap of Wild Canyon, light horrorcore of Pumpkin Hill, relatively abstract leaning Aquatic Mine, the even smoother jazz rap of Death Chamber, to the cloudy production of Meteor Herd. His main theme in the first Sonic Adventure game had some rapping and a heaping amount of soul, but now Knuckles has evolved into a total motherfuckin G. I'm going to try to sound least racist as humanly possible, but was this Sega's attempt at appealing to the "urban market"? Did they get statistics stating that Sonic Adventure didn't sell well in low-income urban areas? It still baffles me to this day why they decided to do this for Knuckles, but each track spits absolute fire. . Rogue takes the difficulty curb to the next level. Except for Dry Lagoon, her levels are the harder versions of Knuckles. Egg Quarters and Mad Space still infuriate me to this day, and no, Rogue's stages do not have a hip-hop flair, but they do kind of sound like the music in a Persona game.

The final level after beating both stories is a tense race using an amalgamation of each character's gameplay styles to beat the clock and save the world. Sonic destroys the Eclipse Cannon, but Eggman's grandfather has another backup plan from beyond the grave. In the case that Space Colony Ark failed, he rigged it to collide with Earth to spite all of his rivals by killing all of them. Now we all know where Eggman gets it from. All six characters race to the cannon's core, where they find the Biolizard, the actual "ultimate lifeform." They destroy the Biolizard and save the world, but Shadow uses up all his energy as his version of Super Sonic and falls to the Earth. Poor Shadow. I guess we won't be seeing him anymore cough cough. I think the ending chapter of the first Sonic Adventure is sweeter, but the finale of this game is much better executed. Cannon's Core is one hell of a level that combines every gameplay style to the best of its abilities and not just a final boss battle as Sonic. Just make sure you have all of the upgrades before attempting this level. After all, I was stuck on the Knuckles portion of this level for a long time because I didn't have his air necklace. As far as the final boss is concerned, the Biolizard is a hectic experience. Suddenly, you have to worry about blind spots everywhere that will kill you instantly if you're not careful, and his last two phases with the pink eggs/balls are a testament that the homing attack needed to be worked on. It's a boss that becomes frustrating due to the game being awkward and not because of organic difficulty. The last phase of the boss with Super Sonic and Super Shadow is a piece of cake and will take you about two minutes. It practically serves as a relief from the previous fight.

So, now you've beaten every story. Now what? Well, there's plenty more to do in this game because it's a completionist's wet dream (or nightmare, depending on your perspective). Every level has four more submissions to complete, along with earning awards for getting all A-ranks in them. This is all conducted in the level select map, which I think is a much more organized improvement than the first game. I much preferred the open world in Sonic Adventure 1 as a kid, but this couldn't have been feasible in this game. A vast portion of this game takes place in space, after all. The map is convenient and appropriately fits this more linear style of Sonic game. Believe me, you'll visit the stage select map quite often to improve your grades. Yes, if you've played any modern Sonic game, this is where the grading system for each level started. If I grew up an anxious perfectionist, then I hold this game responsible. The Sonic games have improved on this system over the years, but the grading system is quite harsh in this game. If you die even once at any stage in this game, it is guaranteed that you'll get a D or an E. If I got a D or an E in school, I'd get grounded, so subconsciously, I thought the stakes were as high to get good grades in this game too. Getting A-ranks in all of these missions will take you an incredibly long time to do, but if there's one thing keeping you from achieving that 100% rank and unlocking a 3D Green Hill Zone as your reward, it's the Chao Garden.

The Chao Garden is a virtual pet simulator exclusive to the Sonic Adventure games. In retrospect, this was Sega's attempt at competing with Pokemon, which was a global phenomenon at the time. If they had kept up with the Chao Garden in subsequent 3D Sonic games, it might have had more of a lasting impact because many people that played this game seem to remember it fondly. There was one in the first game, but I didn't mention it at all in my review of it because I never bothered with it. With the Chao Garden in this game, however, I spent countless hours training and forming sentimental bonds with the adorable creatures. The Chao Garden seems cute and appealing on the outside, but as it progresses, you start to realize that it's all kinds of fucked up. Firstly, once your Chao's evolve from their initial childhood state (although who could ever tell that they got older), they can evolve into hero chaos, dark chaos, or remain neutral. The hero Chaos are adorable little cherub-Esque creatures with halos, wide eyes, and happy expressions. The dark chaos looks like little deviants with menacing grins and spiked balls over their heads. How it is that an infantile creature like a Chao can gain some perspective on morality and use that perspective to shape their adult lives is beyond me, but that isn't the worse part. Once this happens to one Chao, you unlock a hero garden and a dark garden. The hero garden is an immaculate place with a heavenly fountain, structures that look like they are from renaissance paintings, and everything is so damn pleasant. On the other hand, the dark garden has a spooky aura, ominous bat hills that overlook the garden, a diminished version of the music in the first garden, and a pool of blood. Yes, your cute little chaos can go to either heaven or hell. What exactly could a Chao do in childhood that commends him to heaven or condemns him to hell? I have no fucking idea, but it's all very disturbing. With the heaven and hell concepts, you'd think there wouldn't be another level of Chao evolution after essentially the Chao afterlife, but you'd be wrong. After a certain point, your Chao can grow old and die. Yep. Not even Pokemon had the balls to pull that off in their games. My first Chao was a white hero Chao named Yosh. He was not the strongest Chao or the most capable Chao, but he was my favorite of the 25 or so chaos I had. One day, three years into playing this game, he found his own little corner to himself in the hero garden, sealed himself into a droplet casing, and then disappeared forever. Even though I reloaded the game several times to try to prevent this from happening, it was inevitable. There is a chance that your Chao can be reborn and become a child again, but it is too late. Fuck this game.

Lastly, if you are the completionist type of gamer and getting all A-ranks wasn't enough, you are in for a treat with the challenges the Chao Garden has to offer, and by treat, I mean vexing horror. To get all of the remaining emblems in the game, you have to train your Chao with the animals, fruit, and Chao drives to beat every single racing league and best every Chao at Chao karate as well. The only thing is, you can't just raise any Chao to their limits and have them come on top. As the races and karate matches progress in difficulty, your Chao will face other Chaos that look a little off, to say the least. They look this way because these kinds of Chaos are an advanced breed that will best any regular Chao at anything regardless of the Chaos level of skill. To combat these Chaos, you will have to breed several Chaos to finally get one with perfect stats. Once you start this daunting task, you will drastically shift from a loving pet owner to a ruthless Chao farmer. First, you will have to wait for the Chaos to grow into their second phase. Next, you will buy all of your genetically inferior chaos fruit aphrodisiacs to make them breed so their child will have marginally better stats than they do. If you don't want a cluster of inferior Chaos littering your garden, you will have to send them away through the machine in the garden, which is like this game's equivalent of taking Old Yeller out back to put a double-barreled shotgun bullet to the back of his head. After several painstaking hours and several misplaced Chaos, the game will finally grant you the perfect Dr. Manhattan Chao, but it's not enough that he's the Chao ubermensch. You still have to level up the Chao like the others by giving him Chao drives and animals which requires heavy grinding sessions through the action stages. Once this is over, you will have completed the game, but the Chao Garden will have become the Chao abattoir in the process, and there will be films documenting your atrocities. My advice is that getting Green Hill Zone in 3D is overrated and to treat the Chao Garden casually because the completionist route is a grueling process in more ways than one.

I must admit; that even though the first Sonic Adventure game is nearer and dearer to my heart, its sequel is the better game. It took the foundation of the first game and organized its presentation, gameplay, and overall mechanics, which is what a good sequel should do. No, it is not the ONLY good 3D Sonic game, as some might say. It has plenty of awkward aspects to it that the first game presented much more effectively. Maybe I liked the first game more because it's Chao Garden didn't traumatize me like this one. It's certainly a possibility.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/