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.

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

There isn't a clear franchise favorite among those in the Persona fanbase. My favorite is Persona 5 because it introduced me to the franchise and has so much material and polish that I can even argue that it's the best Persona game on an objective scale. Nevertheless, most people that love the series as much as I do will disagree with me on my favorite just as much as I will disagree with theirs. Usually, it's always between Personas 3, 4, and 5 because they are the games in the franchise that created the mold and foundation for the contrast between overwrought, otherworldly world-saving, and Japanese teenager life. At the same time, the first two Personas are pretty rudimentary in comparison. I always seemed to get the impression that Persona 4, most people's favorite Persona game, even after Persona 5, in my opinion, has perfected the formula that Persona 3 and 4 founded. Persona 4 was also the last Persona out of 3,4 and 5 that I played, so I have plenty of room to compare the 3 games and judge Persona 4 on its own merits. I almost expected that I would enjoy this game just as much, if not even more than Persona 5 because of its high reputation among Persona fans, but that didn't quite happen. I enjoyed my time with Persona 4 like the other games, but it has flaws that cannot be ignored.

Persona 4, or "country-ass Persona" (the unofficial name I have coined myself), has the reverse set-up from the other Persona games. Instead of the protagonist moving from their quaint town to the big city, you move from the big city to the quiet town of Inaba. It's as if the protagonist of Persona 4 moved to the Japanese equivalent of my hometown and went to my rural public high school (even though they still wear uniforms). Instead of going to malls, clubs, and crowded city cafes, you hang out on riverbeds, peruse little shops, and frequent grocery stores with outdoor seating. Yep, this sounds a lot like my hometown, alright. The protagonist stays with his police chief uncle Dojima and his seven-year-old daughter Nanako. During the stay, Dojima is investigating a string of mysterious murders that have been occurring in town. The first victim was a female commentator recently in the news for cheating on her politician husband. In your first week in Inaba, another murder occurs, but this time it's a high school girl that discovers the body of the commentator. The husband is perceived as the murderer until some inconclusive evidence emerges that leads the police to believe that he isn't the culprit. Meanwhile, you discover something called "the Midnight Channel," which depicts people from Inaba silhouetted in a shadow exposing personal desires and details about themselves. You start to notice that the people appearing on this channel are the people that have been showing up dead, so you start to make connections that this channel may have something to do with the murders. Once you and your friends discover that you can go through the TV dimension, you try to save those who are appearing on the Midnight Channel, starting with a girl from school named Yukiko. Throughout the game, several people appear on the Midnight Channel, and it is up to you and your friends to save them, discover the secrets of this mysterious channel, and find the culprit behind the murders.

This game is more often than not compared to Scooby-Doo. This is mostly a joke, but I can see some validity in comparing the two. Unlike the gloomy, melancholic atmosphere permeating Persona 3, Persona 4 is the exact opposite. This game is very bright, cheerful, and happy. The soundtrack also follows the same course as it is incredibly poppy and cheerful as well. There is a reason why the color scheme is bright yellow. Yellow is a color that is bright and sunny, which is indicative of the joyous atmosphere that the game revels in. Persona 4 isn't all fun and games with friends however, there is still a murder case to be solved. Just like how Persona 3 juxtaposed the lighter moments with the darker foreground, Persona 4 juxtaposes the darker moments with the lighter foreground. This amounts to Persona 4 having quite a few issues with its overall tone. The tone is often a little too light-hearted for its plot. How can I giggle with the character's banter after seeing a lifeless teenage girl wrapped around a telephone pole? It's probably the ghastliest image in the entire series, and the characters don't seem impacted by this in the same way as I was as the player (except for Yosuke, but that's well after the fact). They just lace up their proverbial bootstraps and say, "let's solve the mystery, guys!" like the characters in Scooby-Doo. It feels odd because there feels like there should be some edge and impact to what is going on around these characters, considering the nature of the circumstances. Because Scooby-Doo doesn't have this impact because it's a kid's cartoon, the tone feels unbalanced. The jovial nature the game tries to convey contrasted with the grim, serious nature of murder leaves the game feeling a little weird and creepy. Sometimes it works, making the creepiness of the game a point of interest for me, and other times the Scooby-Doo comparisons are pretty apt. This brighter tone works much better during the breaks between the plot, like the camping trip and the beauty contest, because these are light-hearted romps that warrant a more comedic tone. It's at this point that the overall tone of the game becomes infectious, and I had a lot of fun with the game's presentation.

Regarding the gameplay, Persona 4 plays almost exactly like Persona 3. Both games were on the same system, so I suppose it's pretty natural that both games would play pretty similarly. Regardless of the system, a sequel should build off of the foundation laid out by the previous titles and expand upon it, and Persona 4 does that only slightly. However, those slight changes make a world of difference. In my Persona 3 review, I mentioned that being unable to control your partners during combat made my blood boil. During the first TV dungeon, when Yosuke automatically did Garu on an enemy, a pang of dread rushed throughout my body. My anxious feeling was relieved when I discovered that you can fix this by choosing to control each partner in the tactics menu once they join your team. Although, why anyone would choose to let AI control your partners is beyond me. You have the option to guard against attacks now, which is a godsend, and there are now special moves your partners can learn through social links that knock the enemies down. The overall control in this game is also a lot less stilted than in Persona 3, making navigating through menus and such a lot breezier. Thank God for all of these changes. No longer would a partner's Marin Karin cost me the battle making me lose my progress and my sanity as well.

As per usual, Persona 4 is a gameplay balance of otherworldly dungeon crawler and Japanese high school life. In the real world, you work on increasing stats and establishing bonds with the characters surrounding you, including your partners. In terms of this aspect, Persona 4 executes this much less favorably than Persona 3. For one, instead of going dungeon crawling at night like in Persona 3, you go to the TV world during the day, which is when most of the social links are available. There are two more total stats to increase than in Persona 3 and some of the stats have selective opportunities to be increased, making it much more difficult to max them out by the end of the game. It also doesn't help that the protagonist can't (technically) go outside at night throughout the entire game. This is because of a plot mechanic that involves your ignorant but concerned uncle not allowing you to roam around outside because there is a murderer loose in town and he works late, so you are obligated to watch over his daughter after dark. However, you can accept night jobs working in a hospital, accept a tutoring job, and go fishing. You just have to select which of those you will do at the front door of the Dojima residence rather than going to the locations yourself. Is the protagonist doing this behind Dojima's back or does Dojima not care that his nephew is in potential danger roaming around outside as long as he is being responsible and making money? Either way, I vastly prefer being able to manually visit certain areas at night on my own. At home, you can increase some of your stats and rank up the Nanako and Dojima social links. You can also increase the chance of ranking up a social link randomly sometimes by dreaming about a certain person. In my own experience, dreaming about someone makes your relationship more perturbing than enriching, but at least Persona 4 makes an effort to increase your stats while trying to juggle their plot-enforced curfew.

On the other side of the Persona coin, the action, dungeon-crawling gameplay is in the TV world, a yellow, staticky place that looks like a TV studio with a thick fog covering it. Once someone appears on the Midnight Channel, their levels open, representing their internal feelings and desires. These levels are themed and range from castles hot springs, strip clubs, etc. Overall, the TV world is the most underwhelming dimension out of Personas 3, 4, and 5. I don't know whether or not I've been spoiled from playing Persona 5 first, but the themed dungeons aren't very intricate because their progression is randomly generated like Tartarus in Persona 3. Only some of the levels, like the retro, 8-bit level, and maybe the secret laboratory, are the only levels that warrant a labyrinthine design, while the others don't. What strip club is hard to navigate through? I think that this works better in Persona 3 because Tartarus was a steady climb upwards, and it had a dark, surreal nature to it that warranted unpredictability in its design. Persona 4's dungeons feel like they should be complex and multi-faceted like the palaces in Persona 5 but play exactly like Tartarus, which is why this didn't work for me.

Unlike Persona 3, the individual level and its boss must be completed by a certain date or else the human host of the level will die. Unlike Persona's 3 and 5, there is no countdown in the top right corner signifying how many days you have left to complete the boss. Rather, the game implements a weather mechanic that states that the dungeon host dies after continuous days of rain. This is rather confusing because the game doesn't tell you that "continuous rain" means two days of rain and that the last day for the boss is on the second rainy day, not the day after. This is something that you'll get the hang of as the game progresses, but I much prefer the countdown like in the other games because it's much easier to measure how much time you have left. The pacing of the dungeons is a little easier than in Persona 3 but adds plenty of confusing aspects. If you were determined enough to get to the highest level of Tartarus in one day, you absolutely could. You could grind and return to the entrance whenever needed if you got to a floor with a teleport gem. In Persona 4, it's a little more complicated. You can leave the dungeon whenever you want, but to leave, you have to have an item called a "goho-m" unless you want to persevere and get to the last floor before the boss. The game doesn't tell you that you have to buy these items at the store in town, which is something I wish I knew beforehand before starting the first dungeon. Once you return to the entrance, your HP and SP are not restored like in the previous game. There is, however, a fox that joins you after the first dungeon that replenishes your SP, but it is very expensive. The only way to knock down the price is to complete requests that coincide with fox's social link. Needless to say, I found all of these extra steps to be cryptic and unnecessary. Speaking of cryptic, unlocking the dungeons in the TV world is probably my least favorite aspect of the game because they are always so painstakingly cryptic and circuitous. You look around town asking people about the missing person and looking for clues, but most of the time, you already know plenty about the person in question, and the game isn't very straightforward about who to ask for information. Instead of wasting your time asking absolutely everyone in Inaba, look up a guide that tells you who to talk to because you can waste precious time doing this that should be used traversing the dungeon if you don't know what you're doing. The time to traverse the dungeons is sparse in this game, so you'll need all the time you can get.

The gameplay in Persona 4 may not excel above the other entries, but one aspect that I think Persona 4 is the grand champion in regards to its characters. For a podunk town like Inaba, it sure has a lot of colorful people in it. This is well apparent in your Scooby-gang "Investigation Team," which might be my overall favorite ensemble in the Persona series.

Yosuke is your first party member and fills in the trope of the "dumb best friend" characters like Junpei and Ryuji. However, unlike those two, Yosuke isn't a loudmouth clod. Rather, his clueless behavior stems from being anxious and having a low sense of self-confidence. He's the son of the manager of Junes, the popular mega-store in the game that also serves as a hideout and is a means to enter the TV world. He is not respected by his co-workers as they try to take advantage of him, and once his co-worker/obvious love interest Saki Konishi dies, he feels as if she resented him because of his lack of confidence in himself. His emotional social link revolves around his feelings, and completing it made Yosuke seem much more well-rounded and well-meaning than the other "idiot best friend" characters.

Chie is in the game for the same duration as Yosuke but gains her persona a little later. She's a girl with short hair that loves kung-fu movies, steak, and kicking ass. A lot of the humor in the game also stems from her banter with Yosuke making their dynamic the main source of comic relief in the game. She is also the only (human) party member to not have her dungeon. Rather, her shadow is a mini-boss in the middle of Yukiko's dungeon. Chie's life revolves around her friendship with Yukiko, the host of the dungeon, to the point where Chie is overshadowed by Yukiko in terms of her popularity and her looks, making Chie feel insecure. Chie is funny, spunky, sweet, and reminds me of the girl I had a crush on in high school. Her "galactic punt" move never gets old, and she is my favorite character in the game. Don't worry so much, Chie; you've certainly won me over.

Yukiko is the first party member you "unlock" by completing their dungeon. Yukiko is a pretty girl at school whose family runs a prestigious inn in town and is also Chie's best friend. On the Midnight Channel, she is depicted as a princess, and her dungeon is in the form of a castle which signifies the scale of the inn her family runs. Her shadow conveys Yukiko's feelings about feeling repressed by her obligation to care for her family's prestigious inn instead of doing normal teenage girls' things like dating. Once you unlock her, it's revealed that this pretty girl with a prestigious status is a goofy klutz. Yukiko is alright but pales in comparison to the others. I kept her on my team during battle because she's the main healer.

Kanji is an absolute doll, and I love him. He's seen as a delinquent because of his attitude and also because of his hot temper. On the Midnight Channel, his shadow is a flamboyant, loin-cloth-wearing sexual deviant signifying not only Kanji's true sensitivity but his ersatz homosexuality. Once you save him, he says the root of his problem was his fear of girls, but I'm reading between the lines here. I guess it would be too bold to put a gay character in a video game circa 2008, so the game half-steps, but I know better. Kanji's social link is also an absolute delight.

Rise, or Risette, is a teenage celebrity (or idol) that moves back to her hometown after being disillusioned by fame. Her shadow on the Midnight Channel is an exhibitionist stripper that says that she's going to strip down when the fog happens, signifying everyone's collective lust for her. When you save her, you find she's pretty down-to-earth, but she's still bubbly and flirty like her shadow. If Chie wasn't in this game, I'd say Rise was my favorite female character.

Naoto joins your party pretty late into the game, but you get to know her throughout the game regardless. She is a stern, no-nonsense student detective determined to succeed in the male-dominated occupation of detective work, so much so that she poses as a man until her dungeon shadow reveals her true identity. It was bold enough to have a gay character in a video game, but to include a TRANS character in a video game would've blown everyone's balls off. Don't tell me that the operating table with the large machinery at the end of her dungeon doesn't signify a want for a sex change. As far as her character goes, she's certainly interesting and furthers the plot immensely near the end of the game. She is also well-endowed, according to her medical records. Good for her.

Teddie is the non-human character of the game that watches over the TV world and is the only party member in the game that I am a bit iffy on. He's like Spongebob if Spongebob got horny (ew) and his constant horniness and bear puns got old quickly. After fighting his shadow in the strip club, Teddie appears in the real world and Pinocchios himself, so you get plenty of time with him in both forms. Teddie's social link levels up automatically throughout the game as his character arc involves Teddie finding out the truth about his identity. At a pinnacle moment in the story, Teddie realizes that he's a shadow that morphed into something pleasant like a plushie bear to assimilate into the society he wishes to fit into. Despite the bear puns and the uncanniness of his human form, I grew to like Teddie, although I can't exactly explain why. He is a good vehicle for wacky antics; I'll give him that. As a whole, the partners are cheerful and silly almost to a fault. I don't buy all of these teenagers having the time of their lives with a seven-year-old girl, but they seem pleased with everything not involving the investigation. Either way, the cast is eclectic, fleshed out, and works well with each other, and their interactions with each other are always endearing.

There are plenty of other social links throughout the game with characters that are as endearing as your partners (or at least almost), and they are a total improvement on the social links in Persona 3. Each social link holds a substantial weight to it that gives this silly game the emotional depth it needs. These social links range from other classmates at your school to a lot of older women. Unlike Persona 5, you can't date any of them, but they are still interesting characters nonetheless. The social links that hold the most weight are the Dojima and Nanako social links. Both social links revolve around the tragic death of Dojima's wife/Nanako's mother after she was hit by a car. Dojima is still grieving over his wife's death and frustrated with himself because he can't seem to find out who did it. Nanako can't quite comprehend what happened to her mother because she is so young, but her mother's absence added to her father's constantly having to work late hours, making her very lonely. She also doesn't fully understand the implications of life and death and her social link revolves around you helping her cope with the darker facets of life. These social links almost make up for the fact that you can't go outside at night because their emotional impact resonates strongly. Other interesting social links are Ai, Shu, and Naoki. The Devil social link was the only one that rubbed me the wrong way, probably because the nurse rubs you the wrong way, if you know what I mean.

As the story progressed, the scope of the TV world and the mystery kept befuddling me, and not in the way that a good mystery should. It's not that the TV world isn't too far-fetched, but there was something about it that I just couldn't put my finger on. I thought that it would be explained neatly as I played through the game, but it was never that air-tight. When I was finishing the game and wrapping up everything that had been presented, I realized that I'd have to do some outside-the-box thinking about the substance of Persona 4 and its TV world premise. I realized that the themes are very Fahrenheit 451-esque. The very prevalent theme of "finding the truth" is juxtaposed with the fog that surrounds the TV world in the sense that television and mass media creates the fog that keeps people from finding the truth. It creates a veil of superficiality, which the game contests is dangerous because the TV world kills those that fall into it. The shadows seen on the Midnight Channel are versions of that person that the public cynically surmises about, or at least that's what the game reveals near the end of the game. I, however, have some discrepancies with this because it isn't that consistent. I can understand this being the case for Rise because she has a lot of pervy fans who want to see her naked, but the same doesn't work for the others. Kanji is perceived as a ruffian by the public, and no one knows about his sensitive side that is reflected by his shadow on the Midnight Channel, so how does that reflect how people perceive him in the real world? It makes more sense that their shadow reveals their true feelings like an uncomfortable nakedness of one's self rather than how the public perceives them After the killer is revealed, there is a secret boss at the very end of the game if you manage to get the good ending. It turns out that the gas station employee that you talked to once you arrived in Inaba is a God that created the Midnight Channel as a way of giving humanity an easier, more superficial life because of the truth about themselves and the people around them is too ugly and scary to confront. This clarifies my assessment of the game, but I think it can be further supported.

My thesis about the TV world can be effectively supported by two characters: Nanako and Adachi. In Nanako's case, I sensed a bit of a "think of the children" message with her. She's a lonely, innocent little girl who spends most of her time in front of the TV. Nanako is captured and brought into the TV world. Even though the Investigation Team rescues her, she remains in critical condition in the real world and dies in the hospital bed. The other characters that were murdered by the TV world were supposedly murdered by the shadows, but Nanako succumbed to the effects of the TV world itself. If you're on the path to the good ending, Nanako miraculously recovers once you search for the truth and don't cave into your preconceived notions about who the killer is, even though it might seem obvious at that point. It expresses that young children are the most vulnerable to the effects of a superficial world because they don't know any better, and they are the ones who should be living an organic substantial life with close relationships more than anyone. Or else they might end up like Adachi.

Finding out that Adachi was the killer wasn't exactly a surprise. For one, I knew better than to trust the first red-herring the game gives you because Persona games never end in August. Secondly, it would've been disappointing if Namatame was the killer because he was the person that everyone suspected at first and his vague salvation initiative wasn't substantial enough to warrant being the killer for the game's sake (for being a red-herring, his boss fight sure is a bitch). The game apparently wants you to suspect Adachi as the killer as well because if you don't choose him as a suspect, you won't get the good ending. I always had my suspicions about Adachi. He's a bumbling fool, no doubt, but his mannerisms screamed more to me like he had something to hide rather than he had no idea what was going on. He was always around the corner at every pivotal point in the plot, so there had to be some significance to that. Once you confront Adachi, he slips up and reveals that he is the killer. You follow him into the TV, where Adachi reveals his psychotic motives for throwing people into the TV. What motive does the killer have? Nothing. Adachi discovered his ability to traverse the TV world when he accidentally pushed the first murder victim into the TV while assaulting her at the Amagi Inn. He pushed in Saki Konishi for the hell of it too. He then convinced Namatame that by putting the people that show up on the Midnight Channel inside the TV that they would be safe, knowing that the TV world would kill them and having someone else inadvertently commit the murders would cover his tracks, and he could just watch the chaos ensue with a golden view. At first, it kind of seems disappointing that the main antagonist of the game has no clear motive for murdering people, but it does make you consider his character deeper.

Adachi reveals that he resents Inaba and the people in it because he prided himself on being a top-class detective whose potential is being sullied by being put in a podunk town where nothing happens. To stir up a commotion, he made his work more interesting, and there was finally a subject of interest in town. To coincide with my TV world thesis, Adachi represents the factor that TV can make you a callous individual. Adachi is not a respected person in his line of work. He seems to be like a wart on Dojima's ass. He has no friends, he garners zero respect from everyone, and he has none of the integral factors that an honest, organic life that everyone else in the game with strong relationships has. He represents the dissociative factors that television can create, and his line of murders creates a sense of sensationalism that is often a factor of television as well stemming into more corrupt territory that deviates from the truth.

Persona 4 is a great game, but it's flawed, which is exactly what I said about Persona 3. I am eternally grateful that Persona 4 took the foundation of the previous game and improved on its gameplay, social links, and characters, but I'm not sure everything else is substantial enough to make it better than Persona 3 overall. With all of the improvements P4 Golden added, maybe that will change, but for now, I can still see why this is a lot of people's overall favorite in the franchise. It's a charming, jovial game that still has everything I love about the Persona series.

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

Cuphead’s promise of additional content was as long-awaited as the base game was years ago. As the whimsical, visually-striking indie title created an inferno of praise and notoriety since its release in 2017, we had forgotten the game’s humble, hellish production that deferred it for so long. Downloadable content for most triple-A developers is churned out within the year the base game is released, sometimes with multiple offerings in the case of Dark Souls III or The Witcher III. The Delicious Last Course was in production for so long that it risked being the first example of DLC with potential “Duke Nukem Forever” syndrome. The developers might as well have used the assets of the DLC to create a sequel, but what they released in that long swath of time only amounts to enough content to supplement the base game. However, this doesn’t mean that I am disappointed, as The Delicious Last Course offers enough to satisfy anyone who has been hankering for more Cuphead content.

Ms. Chalice, a minor character in the base game, seems to be the biggest focal point of the DLC. Cuphead and Mugman are escorted to the fourth isle of Inkwell via a Charon-esque boatman to procure a body for the incorporeal Ms. Chalice to inhabit. A chef on this isle named Saltbaker claims that he can create a body for Ms. Chalice, but only if the porcelain duo retrieve the ingredients by defeating every boss in the isle. A new charm allows the player to play as Ms. Chalice, and she isn’t just a female Cuphead like Mugman is his Luigi. Ms. Chalice can use every weapon the boys can, but she comes with a few quirks of her own. For one, parrying as Ms. Chalice involves dashing into a parryable object instead of simply jumping. Ms. Chalice possesses two new super arts which include a heart that allows her to take a hit of damage like Aku Aku and one where a goddess charges an army of spirits. Her energy beam super art will be more familiar, but it blasts vertically instead of horizontally. Naturally, the charm used to play as Ms. Chalice connotes that any charm formally equipped will be voided, but she can still execute an invisible dash by rolling. Additional perks also include a double jump and four heart points instead of three. Normally, I’d treat Ms. Chalice’s inclusion in Cuphead with stark cynicism and claim that she’s an attempt to cater to the more “casual sensibilities” of girls, but Ms. Chalice is different enough to where a new learning curve is needed to play as her for veteran players like myself.

If the player doesn’t feel comfortable acclimating to the quirks of a new character, the DLC offers plenty for both Cuphead and Mugman. Porkrind’s store is restocked with a smattering of new shots and charms for the boys to have a whack at. Converge is a three-way electric bolt, Twist-Up is like the Spread with less of a solid trajectory, and the Crackshot is like a more powerful version of the Chaser. Out of all of these, the only one I found useful was the Crackshot and have placed it amongst my key shots in my Cuphead repertoire. The most useful new charm is definitely the heart ring which can replenish the player’s HP after successfully parrying a certain amount of times. I mainly stuck with what I was already familiar with, but it’s admirable that the developers included more of these features for the player to experiment with while not deviating too far from familiarity.

Being apprehensive to experiment with the DLC’s new features was not due to being a creature of habit. As proficient as I am with Cuphead now, I cannot forget how this game put me through the gauntlet of pain and suffering upon my first playthrough. I had a feeling that considering Cuphead’s bread and butter are boss battles that the developers would craft some of the game’s most daunting boss fights that make most of the bosses from the base game seem like a cakewalk. Six boss battles await the player on Inkwell Isle IV, and each of them are formidable foes that encompass the full extent of Cuphead’s gameplay. Like the bosses in the base game, each offers a unique theming. Moonshine Mob is a prohibition-themed fight against a recycled, unused spider model and his voguish gang of insects. Mortimer Freeze will shift his frigid form to a snowman, fridge, and a snowflake. Rootin-tootin cowgirl (emphasis on cow) Esther Winchester is the sole biplane battle in the DLC while The Howling Aces uses the theme of dogfighting (emphasis on dog) as an aerial background. Besides the inherent unfamiliarity, the core aspect that makes these bosses more difficult is how amplified the bullet-hell aspects of Cuphead are here. The screens of most of these bosses are more congested than the streets of LA and the player will feel as if they will need the peripheral vision of a fly to see everything zooming around them. Each boss clutters the screen with hazardous objects, but the worst offenders are Glumstone the Giant and Saltbaker once he reveals his insidious intentions with Ms. Chalice’s spirit.

Cranking up the busyness of each boss seems too easy to implement for a simple difficulty increase, but the DLC offers more than this. A ladder descends from the sky on Isle IV to carry Cuphead and Mugman up to a royal-themed mini-boss gauntlet similar to King Dice’s casino-themed cronies. The gimmick with all of these bosses is that the player can only harm them through parrying. Each of these five bosses are as unique to one another as all of the main bosses in the DLC and do not have to be defeated sequentially without dying with King Dice. Defeating these bosses also nets the player some coins to purchase the new items. For some reason, all of the content outside of the five main bosses reminded me of the Chalice Dungeons from Bloodborne in that their hidden location and optional precedence upheld more intrigue to the DLC.

There is a part of me that feels as if we waited too long for more of Cuphead just to receive some paltry DLC, but then that statement feels a bit ungrateful. The developers evidently worked as hard and as diligently on the DLC as they did on the base game, and this shows through the overall quality of the bosses and extra content that is totally unique from the base game. Cuphead’s narrative and gameplay was not open-ended enough to add onto it, but the extra content served a purpose in satiating my hunger for more of this unparalleled gaming experience. I needed to be humbled by Cuphead again after feeling as if I had mastered it after all these years.

------
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.

------
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.

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