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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My first experience with Dark Souls was definitely a very trying one. Before playing it, I was no stranger to games that were notorious for their high difficulty levels. Hell, this wasn't even my first FromSoft game, as I had just finished Bloodborne a month before playing through this game. However, the first Dark Souls still proved to be very formidable. Almost every moment of this game felt like an endurance test. Whether it was because of the shrewd level design, the cryptic progression, or the strict disciplinary methods to dying, the game always had a habit of presenting different obstacles to hurdle over. It was almost as if the game was intentionally throwing curveballs at me even when I got the slightest bit comfortable with it to keep me at a level of tension and frustration. Despite all of this, the first Dark Souls is still my favorite Souls game by a large margin and is one of my favorite games of all time. Even with all of the aspects of this game that made me want to chuck the controller at the TV, I never lost the will to overcome the seemingly impossible odds. Any other game of this difficulty would've made me question my choice to play video games as a hobby. However, there is something special about Dark Souls.

Dark Souls is not for everyone. Not everyone is willing to face a game that feels like the developers are putting someone through an experimental project to test the limits of a man's patience and what he will put up with from a video game. For those willing to be battered and bruised, we know that there is more to Dark Souls than just the difficulty. It's not as if every Dark Souls fan is a masochist (although if you are, we completely understand the appeal). Dark Souls is like the video game equivalent of a Tarkovsky film. It requires an extraordinary amount of patience to get through, but it certainly pays off in the end. Like the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Dark Souls has so much to offer in its esoteric presentation. Underneath the surface of a difficult video game, Dark Souls is decadently atmospheric, broodingly melancholic, poignantly symbolic, and emotionally striking. Dark Souls is a beautiful work of art.

Dark Souls is also admittedly pretty fucking hard. Most games will ease you into more difficult territory as you progress through the game, but the beginning of Dark Souls is just as brutal as the end. The main thing that makes Dark Souls so difficult is its lack of facilitation when guiding the player through the game. This comes as early as the tutorial level when the first boss suddenly drops down on you, and you aren't even equipped with a weapon. You'll notice that if you try to fight it with your fists that the damage that you'll do to it amounts to practically nothing, and you'll probably get trounced by the boss in a matter of seconds. You then realize that perhaps what you're supposed to do to overcome this obstacle isn't clearly displayed, and you must take another route. You'll realize that you find weapons, armor, and shields to equip along with health items called Estus Flasks in an area directly left of the boss. Once you acquire all of those things, you can even take a giant chunk out of the boss upon reentry as if to bombastically signify that you have a clear advantage over him now. Why doesn't the game give you all of these things initially to tackle the boss? Because that wouldn't feel gratifying enough once you finally overcome the odds. One of the biggest appeals of Dark Souls is the utmost satisfaction you get after conquering anything in this game. Nothing in this game is handed to you, and you must figure out how to do absolutely everything on your own. To uphold this sense of individual achievement, FromSoft made it so you can't even pause the game to look up what to do online. It seems almost cruel, but because of these tactics, no other game series has given me the same sense of achievement. The infamous YOU DIED screen may get discouraging after seeing it several times, but the one attempt that doesn't follow those two words and a loading screen makes you feel so accomplished. It makes you feel confident no matter how many times it takes you to do it.

Every single level and boss in this game is incredibly unpredictable, and you have to get through them without the slightest margin of error. Dark Souls relishes in being a "trial and error" difficulty type of game. The levels will constantly give you new obstacles to overcome like poison pools, darkness, mismatched jumps that make you leverage fall damage, and boobytraps that I'd be surprised if any first-time player would foresee coming. I certainly didn't. Not to mention that every type of enemy in this game is a ruthless, bloodthirsty savage that will hack at your corpse even after they've done you in. Each level is packed with a myriad of different enemy types, and all of these enemies, more often than not, will work as a team to bring you down. You cannot underestimate even the most unassuming enemies because FromSoft knew that you would and have made these seemingly timid creatures the most catastrophic of curveballs. One does not forget the first time they encounter the Basilisks in the Depths, the goofy-looking black frogs with big, red balloon eyes. Once they ambushed me by spurting their purple mist, I was cursed indefinitely, which meant my health was permanently halved until I found a cure. It was then that I knew not to fuck around with anything in this game and became alarmed after any Basilisk sighting.

The bosses are the pinnacle of the "trial and error" type of difficulty. None of the bosses have obvious weak spots, and finding out how to conquer them requires patience and attentiveness. Most of them are gigantic and can take away almost all of your health bar with a single blow. A lot of them will probably take so many attempts that you will start to forget what the rest of the game was like, but that sense of satisfaction upon beating them is something that hasn't been topped by any other game. It's even more satisfying when you devise your own methods to take down each boss. No one told me that the Gaping Dragon doesn't have eyes, so I could take advantage of it when it steamrolls itself in one direction. No one told me that the Capra Demon is most vulnerable after he takes a dive off of the staircase. No one told me to focus solely on Ornstein to make the second half of the fight easier. I figured out my own way to defeat every boss, and my own tactics have worked for me since. Someone might scoff at my methods claiming that something else worked for them, but that's the wonderful thing about combat in Dark Souls; whatever works for you is fine as long as it garners the same positive results.

Since Dark Souls is an action RPG, it naturally comes with the standard RPG trope of offering different classes to play. These different classes do not determine your experience for the rest of the game, as each offers simple base stats for first-time players. Your unique Dark Souls experience is rather determined by aspects like your armor, weapons, magic, and fighting tactics. Whether or not you will use a shield is also a vital aspect to your Dark Souls play-style. While resting at a bonfire, you'll use the souls you retrieve from defeating enemies to level up different attributes. Leveling up health and endurance is a must for any player, but other attributes like strength, dexterity, faith, attunement, etc. will contribute to your own individual play style. My own personal play style that I've become comfortable with is a dexterity build with a shield in one hand and a Uchigitana in the other hand. It's not a guilt-free build, as I had to kill a merchant to get it, but the Uchigitana has become my Dark Souls crutch. The weapon does a ton of damage, and I can combine it with a shield to alternate blocking attacks with dodge rolling. I also love feeling like I have a free range and fluidity of movement because heavy armor feels so awkward, especially when dodge rolling. I never use magic because it requires sacrificing attributes in other areas. Magic can also only be used sparsely, but there are plenty of powerful spells that can carry a player through the game. My build may seem inadequate to some people as their build seems uncomfortable to me, but as I've stated before, there is no right answer when it comes to playing Dark Souls. It's all a matter of what works for you. Some people bulldoze through the game using a broken sword and wearing nothing but a loin cloth.

The fluidity in Dark Souls doesn't stop at the gameplay. The land of Lordran is a sublime world filled with grassy plains, castles, forests, swamps, abandoned settlements, etc. It may have given me a few headaches trying to traverse it, but I'll be damned if Lordran isn't my absolute favorite world in any video game. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki has expressed numerous times that the focal point of Dark Souls is the world it takes place in, and I wholeheartedly believe it. The way that Lordran is designed is absolutely brilliant. The design philosophy in crafting Lordran is a very unique approach to something of a 3D Metroidvania. Typically, Metroidvanias are 2D games, and the sub-genre has seldom been shifted to a 3D space, but it has been done before. Metroid Prime is an example of this. Unlike Metroid Prime, Dark Souls doesn't have the same limitations in exploring the space. Many routes in Metroid Prime are still blocked, and you have to acquire an ability or weapon to proceed. This is naturally par for the course in the Metroidvania sub-genre, so it makes sense that Metroid Prime would adopt this. Dark Souls did away with the Metroidvania constraints and made the boundaries between sub-areas of Lordran practically seamless.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that Dark Souls is an open-world game as there are still constraints on where you can go. However, there are plenty of instances where you can wander off the beaten path. This starts as early as your first arrival to the Firelink Shrine, the cozy middle-ground between the other sections of Lordran. I, like everyone else, had no idea where to go, so I ventured off to a certain place with hoards of skeletons that hacked me to bits. I then realized after over 20 times trying to overcome the skeleton hoards to look around the Firelink Shrine. Over yonder, I found enemies with flesh on their bones and responded a little more to my sword hits. I then realized that I was supposed to go in this direction and go up to the Undead Burg. Of course, there weren't any walls keeping me from going deeper into the Catacombs. If I really wanted to, I could've endured the pain and gone through the entire level even before the Undead Burg. Why anyone would WANT to do that is another thing to ponder, but I absolutely love the fact that you can. In fact, you can go to several different places deviating from the standard route. You can fight several bosses like Ceaseless Discharge and Sif way before intended, you can immediately pick up some rare items in New Londo Ruins, and you can even ring the bell of awakening in Quelaag's Domain before ringing the one in Undead Parish. I don't recommend doing this at all if you're a first-time player, but doing so prevents the game from getting stale upon future playthroughs.

It's almost as if there isn't a concrete route through Lordran and the players collectively formulated the easiest route to take through trial and error. It's almost as if Miyazaki created this world long before he thought about implementing it into a video game. It's masterfully crafted, but it is very unconventional in terms of level design. It felt like the way you progressed through the game was circumstantial. Miyazaki had his world planned out, and all video game conventions be damned. If it's a tad askew in execution, then so be it. It might also explain why playing Dark Souls can feel so irregular at times. You'll find yourself on cliff-sides so narrow that you'll be hugging the wall, wondering if you're exploiting the graphical space you have to make it across. You'll find yourself jumping across broken bridges and onto platforms like you're Mario except for the fact that the jumping mechanic in this game is so rigid that using it never feels like the natural conclusion to progression. The bonfires, the checkpoints in this game where you can refill your estus and level up, would naturally pop up fairly often whenever you came across an unexplored area or just defeated a boss in any other game. Of course, Dark Souls is different. You'd be lucky to come across a bonfire on accident, as several of them are off the beaten path. There are also around only one or two bonfires per area, and some areas don't even have any. The scarcity of bonfires always makes preserving your well-earned souls borderline panic-inducing, especially if you don't know where they are. I don't think this was meant to stress the player out. Rather, I think it's another way of making the world seem organic. The bonfires are mostly found in tight, cozy crevices off the beaten path. This makes it seem like these bonfires are a natural part of the world, like other warriors have nestled here after a long journey far before you came along.

For a world as impressively organized as Lordran, it doesn't even grace us with the ability to see it all on a map. Having a map as a reference point would have been nice at some points, like navigating through the Depths or the Tomb of the Giants, but I think the game benefits from not having one. I rely too much on video game maps when they are available because I don't have a lot of confidence that I know where I am going, and I dread getting lost. Because Dark Souls doesn't have a map, I now know the areas like the back of my hand, and the world feels more immersive. Not having a map also doesn't sacrifice the spectacle of Lordran's world design. One of my absolute favorite aspects of any game is the attention to detail when mapping out the game's landscape, and Dark Souls accomplishes this in great strides. I remember at one point in the Darkroot Garden, I discovered a tower across from the pond with the hydra (and ran right the fuck past Havel. Don't worry, I came back for him). At the top of the tower, I unlocked a door that led me right back to the Undead Burg. It blew my mind that after all that progress, I was only around the corner from where I started. While traversing the darkness of Blighttown, you see the Undead Burg off to the side. The glowing lava of the Demon Ruins is visible from the Tomb of the Giants, AND you can even make out some of the familiar architecture. It feels as if I could map out the world of Lordran through my journey. The attention to detail is that impressive.

Video game tropes presented in Dark Souls never seem shoehorned in for accessibility. Dark Souls is mapped in such a deliberate fashion that it begs you to acclimate yourself to its standards rather than submitting itself to the normal conventions of other games. Like every other aspect of this game, Dark's Soul's approach to storytelling is also rather unusual. At the time, it seemed like video game developers were more readily focused on storytelling than actual gameplay. This was the era in gaming in which the industry figured that the best way to compete with the medium of film was to emulate it. Needless to say, Dark Souls decided not to do the same. Instead of having a story with a traditional progression in the narrative, Dark Souls tells its story through the player's progression through the game's world and interacting with its inhabitants. The only contextual information you are given about the game's world is presented with a beginning cutscene. It explains that Dark Souls' world is a mythical place called Lordran.

At the beginning of Lordran, dragons roamed the land, but their reign as the prime beings of the land was quickly usurped by Lord Gwyn, a human demigod with extraordinary powers and an army of knights. With the assistance of three other lords, they overthrew the dragons, and Gwyn was free to create his own powerful reign of Lordran thanks to The First Flame. After years of prosperity, The First Flame started dissipating and is now on its last legs. If the flame goes out completely, it will usher in a new age known as the Age of Dark, which will bring darkness and terror to Lordran (or at least darkness and terror compared to what is already happening). This weaker flame brands Lordran's denizens with a Darksign, which puts them in a limbo-like existence between life and death. If they die, they don't cease to exist, but it makes them more hollow and more inhumane in body, mind, and soul. Keep in mind that this is only the background lore presented as early as the first cut-scene. The rest of the game gives little to no context to the weight of your journey.

You play as the "chosen undead", the being that has been said to one day rekindle the first flame and bring light back to Lordran. However, it's not as if you are Link from The Legend of Zelda destined to stop a corrupting force from plunging the world into darkness. The world here is already hopelessly engulfed in darkness, and the real heroes have all gone mad or abandoned Lordran altogether. The darksign that brands you is not like the Triforce on Link's hand, and it does not elevate your importance. The fact that every other being in Dark Souls has one just makes you all the more insignificant. You are not chosen by destiny to rekindle the flame; rather, you are the only undead soldier willing to do it. You're like a glorified janitor assigned to mop up the remnants of the once mighty kingdom of Lordran and put them out of their misery. The dreary atmosphere that permeates Dark Souls is caused by the fact that any positive change you'll make to Lordran is weighed down by the inexorable death and decay. You're not bringing Lordran back to a time of light and prosperity, but rather prolonging the inevitable to make what is already hopelessly bad not get any worse, or at least for a while. It gives you a sense of borderline nihilism that is felt by every NPC you come across. They all have this awkward laugh after every line of dialogue which either signifies that they are all going mad or they are merely coping with their inevitable demise. Your existence and everyone else's is fleeting, and there is only so much you can do about it. There is no such thing as an incredibly hopeful outcome to your goal. There is only a spectrum of despair.

A common assessment is that this game is divided into two halves. This isn't technically true, but I can see why everyone says this. After Anor Londo, the objectives and progression feel completely different from what you've been doing. The first half is also perceived as the monumentally better half, and I'd have to agree. The first half of the game gives you a great sense of contextual evidence of the history of Lordran as you journey from the pristine heavens to the dingy bowels and everywhere in between. It showcases a poignant dichotomy between the areas of Lordran: life and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, beauty and ugliness, the bourgeois and the impoverished, etc. Wherever you are in this game, whether on either side of the coin, it is all a part of Lordran. It shows me that the reign of Gwyn, which is perceived as Lordran's prime of prosperity and growth, was only pleasant and prosperous for the chosen few. All of Lordran may have depreciated over time, but I think that certain parts of Lordran were always destitute. It shows that even in times of hope, there were still ugly sides to Gwyn and his reign that make you question your goal to rekindle his flame.

The first bell of awakening is located in the Undead Parish, which is accessed through climbing up the Undead Burg. The two areas are both designed like medieval-esque castles with rooms filled with wooden chairs and barrels. Undead soldiers are attacking you from every angle with spears, broken swords, and firebombs, but every individual enemy is easy to defeat if they don't ambush you. The defenders of the first bell are a pair of gargoyles that will introduce you to a "gank boss" in which you tackle more than one enemy with its own health bar simultaneously. It's a formidable fight and is often the first real challenge block that people struggle with. I know I sure did. It's a mix of having to pay attention to more than one enemy matched with their fire damage and not accidentally falling off the roof. Conceptually, the Undead Burg and Undead Parish are the middle ground between the two great juxtaposing areas of Lordran. The landscape feels depleted, but sunlight shines on both areas, and you can even hear birds chirping. It's a domestic area to ease the player into what will come in the future.

After ringing the first bell, you find a key that unlocks a door that will take you into the Lower Undead Burg. Immediately, there is no sunlight and no melodious chirping. This is where the descent into hell starts to take place. After defeating the Capra Demon, it unlocks the door that takes you to the Depths, a rank, labyrinthine sewer filled with rats of all sizes and the dreaded aforementioned basilisks. The only light in this place is the torches which give it a creepy, dank aura. The guardian of this place is the Gaping Dragon, an abomination with nothing but a gigantic mouth of over 200 teeth scaling its entire body. Those unfortunate enough to reside here drop raw meat down a convoluted series of tubes to the big area with the Gaping Dragon. They don't do this because they want to serve it, but because the sewer monster's hunger is insatiable, and they might be the next meal.

What could be more perilous than the Depths? Well, it gets much worse as you descend into a little place called Blighttown. Blighttown is infamous for being the bane of every player's existence. It's essentially the ghetto of Lordran, a shanty town built on a poisonous swamp that moved right past the crack epidemic and immediately started on bath salts. Every aspect of this level is frantic, including the darkness, infinitely spawning blood flies, the rickety, unstable structures you have to walk on, and the poisonous swamp that you CANNOT avoid being poisoned by. The worst aspect is the shoddy frame rate that pops up often. Blighttown was absolute hell the first time I played this game that almost made me give up. Note to inexperienced players: please, for the love of god, pick the master key as your initial item, so you only have to endure a fraction of this cesspool.

The guardian of the second bell is Chaos Witch Quelaag, and what better example to support my juxtaposition claim than her? She's a beautiful woman with smooth milk-white skin and long, silken brown hair covering her soft, bountiful bosom. The catch is that the rest of her body is a hideous, fire-spurting spider demon. The cut-scene that introduces her is even supposed to catch you off guard, making you think it's just another grotesque being in an area with nothing but. This all leads to an area past the second bell that is quite literally fire and brimstone and filled with demons. Your descent to Hell has been completed for now, but you will only know Hell if you can contextualize Heaven.

Once the two bells have been rung, you return to the Firelink Shrine and find a monstrously ugly serpent creature where shallow water used to be. This is Kingseeker Frampt, a Primordial Serpent with an unexpectedly polite demeanor and a voice that sounds like Patrick Stewart. He tells you that you must now go to Anor Londo to acquire the lordvessel. To get there, you must go back to the now unlocked gate behind Andre the blacksmith in the Undead Parish and endure Sen's Fortress. Sen's Fortress kicked my ass the first time I played this game. It's a dark obstacle course of booby traps ranging from pendulous axes, giant boulders, and switches that shoot arrows at you if stepped on. It doesn't help that this area is dark as the pits. Out of every level in the game, Sen's Fortress is the most brilliant in terms of individual design. It's the only area that can prove its worth as an individual level separated from the collective nature of the rest of the world without breaking that immersion. It's also hard as nails and signifies to me the onslaught of obstacles one has to endure to achieve anything great in life. In this case, what you achieve by conquering it is a flight to Anor Londo.

Anor Londo is the area directly on top of Sen's Fortress that the gods once resided in and looked down upon its denizens. It functions like the capital of Lordran in this way and the first time you encounter this level feels so well deserved. It's a great contrast to the dirty depths you had to traverse to get here. The architecture is immaculate and goes on for miles. The tangerine-colored glow of the sun is beautiful as it gleams off the architecture. The enemies are towering knights with gold-plated armor and gargantuan-sized shields. At the center of Anor Londo are Ornstein and Smough, two loyal knights to Gwyn and the guardians of the lordvessel. They are my favorite boss fight of the game as fighting both of them at the same time is never overwhelming, and both of them complement each other magnificently. Once you defeat them, you take an elevator up to see Gwyevere, a goddess that is also the daughter of Gwyn. Her presence is angelic and feels like a reward for a long journey. After going through hell, you have finally reached the apex of heaven. It seems like this is the only place that hasn't been sickened by the miasma of decay like in the areas below, but as it turns out, this is all a mirage. Anor Londo is actually perpetually dark as all gods jumped ship a long time ago, including Gwynevere. Her facade has been kept by her brother Gwyndolin who has managed the upkeep of Anor Londo since the time it started to fall. It shows the weight of the overall depression of the world in that a mighty place like this could succumb to the same level of despair.

Your journey through Lordran in the first half of Dark Souls runs the gamut of contrasting areas. It brings the question of what this world was like when the first flame was still growing strong. Was the entire kingdom as bountiful as Anor Londo and merely suffered greatly from the dwindling flame, or was it always wild and chaotic? Was Anor Londo ever great? The game's lack of a concrete narrative never elucidates these questions but can be supported if you explore the world inside a painting in Anor Londo. The Painted World of Ariamas is an optional area in the game, but one that I implore you to visit. It's a snowy land with architecture reminiscent of the Undead Burg. It also has an unsettling, creepy aura. Did you notice that there weren't any familiar enemies in Anor Londo? No dragons? No rats? No undead soldiers? Well, they are all here with some undead soldiers having poisonous growths protruding from their faces. It's an uncanny nightmare that is ironically so close to land that is so immaculate. That's just it. The Painted World puts everything into context. It's where all of the untouchables of Lordran are sent to when they get too close to the magnificent Anor Londo. Everywhere else is so far away from Anor Londo that it can't seep in, so Gwyn just lets it decay even during the height of his power. The most powerful presence in the Painted World is Crossbreed Priscilla, a demigod dragon crossbreed who is the daughter of Gwyn. She is condemned to the Painted World because she is seen as an impure abomination like the rest of the supposed filth of the land. It shows that before the flame was depleted, Anor Londo was the only great place about Lordran, and everywhere else was swept under the rug. Whether this was because Gwyn wanted to keep the illusion of Anor Londo being grand or because he's a tyrant, either theory could be supported. It certainly makes you question the morality of your journey and whether or not you want to renew something that is ultimately just a means to restore Gwyn's ego. It's almost as if the dwindling of the flame is a form of karmic retribution. Fortunately, you don't have to be the successor to Gwyn. If you give the lordvessel to another Primordial Serpent named Kaathe, you can bring about the Age of Dark. Frampt will get pissed and leave for the rest of the game, but there is no real dilemma to this decision. The game will support you either way.

...And then there's the second half of the game. I don't feel the overall game dips in quality to the point where you should stop playing like some people, but it does feel more underwhelming. Your objective is to gather the souls of the four main entities that helped Gwyn take his throne to power. In this, you venture to four different areas blocked from going to that stem off of familiar places. This and Sen's Fortress are the only times when the Metroidvania restrictions are implemented in the game's world, but it doesn't matter anymore. Every area you explore ultimately results in a dead end. Even the optional area of Ash Lake, breathtaking as it is, is just a dead end. Instead of backtracking, the game allows you to finally warp between bonfires. It's certainly convenient, but I feel it cheapens the impact of traversing the world a bit. Most of the areas in the second half are as painstakingly brutal as Blighttown and even feel a bit unfinished. It's not terrible, but compared to the first half, the progression is kind of flat-lines. The good news is that you can pick the order in which you tackle the Lord Souls, but every area has its own awkward quirks.

The second half of Dark Souls mainly falters due to gimmicks more than anything else. Whichever order you tackle the Lord Souls, every route will be filled with levels that are either totally dark or so jarringly bright that you could turn your TV off, and they would still be an eyesore. The Duke's Archives and Crystal Caves are the only exceptions, but Crystal Caves has a weirdly executed invisible platform gimmick. For some reason, several of these places require an item to traverse through. To traverse the abyss where the Four Kings reside, you need to get a ring from defeating a boss in Darkroot Garden (poor Sif). To endure the hardships of the excruciating Tomb of the Giants, you need to kill a maggot in Lost Izalith and wear a part of it on your head as a light source. Good fucking luck trying to get anywhere in that jet-black hellhole without it. The cheapest of all these gimmicks is in Lost Izalith, where you equip a ring to walk across the lava, only sustaining a middling amount of damage as if you're walking on some hot sand. I'd argue against the popular assessment that the second half of this game is unfinished, but it's hard to defend the design of Lost Izalith. Approximately 70% of this area is lava, with architectural islands serving as resting points for your feet.

The bosses in the second half range also range from being gimmicky to borderline insufferable. Seath, the Uncle Tom to the dragons of Lordran, seems menacing from the opening cutscene. The fact that you have to die to him upon your first encounter also seems rather foreboding, especially if you know that Seath has made himself invincible. In the real fight against him, the only thing standing between immortality and death is a glowing, paper-thin crystal that shatters in one hit. After hitting it, Seath is one of the easiest bosses in the game. The clam that often interrupts the fight is a more formidable foe than Seath. The mother of all Dark Souls gimmicks lies at the end of Lost Izalith in the Bed of Chaos, or as it is commonly known as the "Bed of Bullshit." It's an interesting experiment that went horribly wrong in execution. A Dark Souls boss that requires heavy use of the rigid jumping controls should have been scrapped immediately. On the other side of the coin, The Four Kings and Gravelord Nito are my two least favorite bosses in the game. The Four Kings can amount to a gank boss of overwhelming proportions if you dawdle. The only problem is each of them can take a while to destroy, and they deliberately fuck around by initiating practically unavoidable magic arrows and AOE blasts to prolong the fight. How clever of them. As for Gravelord Nito, it's hard to determine whether I hate his fight because of the area it takes place in or because of ridiculous factors from his actual fight. Between the hoards of skeletons killing me, the sodomizing long-range stab he does, or the fact that the fall to enter this fight depletes most of my health, I'd say it's due to several reasons.

What happened, FromSoft? It's not even a contest as to which half of this game is the better one. In fact, the game shouldn't have felt like it was split between two halves anyways, but it really does. The first half was arguably the best journey in any video game I've played, and the second half just feels underwhelming by comparison. Either the developers intentionally shoved all of their experimental flairs to the second half, or they ran out of time and cheaply implemented gimmicks to pad the game. Given all of the material in the second half, I think the latter is more likely. However, as a whole, it does not diminish the integrity of Dark Souls. It still feels organic and still has a great spectacle to it. Either that or the first half of this game is so damn good that it doesn't matter.

At long last, every Lord Soul is counted for, and you can fight Gwyn in the Kiln of the First Flame. The area is strikingly beautiful and covered with ash-like snowfall. It's a long route to Gwyn, but it lets you take in the scope of your journey. Your fight with Gwyn carries a plethora of emotions with it. It feels gratifying to finally get to him after all this time. It feels hectic because he's a relentless foe who will not let up and even let you heal. It feels sad because the once mighty king of Lordran has been reduced to being surrounded by the ash of his former greatness. This feeling of sadness is definitely elevated by the somber piano track that accompanies the fight. Once it is over, you have committed deicide, and it is your turn to take his place. Depending on your route, you either immolate yourself in what looks like a sacrifice to keep the flame or a group of Primordial Serpents gather around you to welcome the age of darkness. Either decision bears a great weight to it that makes you question your final actions. Is it better to claim something that isn't rightfully yours just to elevate your being to a fraction of what Gwyn was for minor preservation? Is it better to put this dying land out of its misery? At the end of the day, darkness might be scarier, but death is sometimes not the worst option.

A flawed masterpiece? A savior of the video game medium? A work of art that is heavy and dense enough to compete with any art house film? Perhaps it's a mix of all three. Since its release, Dark Souls has become one of the most celebrated games in recent history. It deviated from the conventions of all of its contemporaries and brought us a world and a type of gameplay that hadn't been seen before. Since then, it has spawned a genre of video games that is still widely popular. It's a game in which being more unconventional and esoteric benefited it. Whether Dark Souls had you immersed in its world, gameplay, bosses, etc., or all of these factors frustrated you, it was an experience that resonated with you all the same.

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

Donkey Kong was almost a relic of Nintendo's ancient history. The classic Donkey Kong arcade game was Nintendo's individual achievement back in 1981, but the introduction of the NES later in the decade ushered in a golden age for Nintendo as they became the dominant video game console producer. New IPs became the backbone for Nintendo's glory days and the character of Donkey Kong was left in the dust. Nintendo became a household name in only a few short years that it seemed unbelievable that they had anything to do with the Donkey Kong arcade game. For the longest time, Donkey Kong was relegated to Nintendo's pre-history. As influential as the Donkey Kong arcade game was, the NES period was a bad time to not get any limelight in Nintendo's back catalog. Ten years after the arcade game, Donkey Kong Jr.'s inclusion in the first Mario Kart game for the SNES was like Mr. Game and Watch's inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Melee; as a lark to showcase some obscure, historical Nintendo characters among more popular ones. It's insane how long Nintendo left Donkey Kong in the proverbial attic during their golden years. It might have been this way if a certain British game developer had left this unchecked. If you like Donkey Kong as the brawny, tie-wearing ape as we've come to know him, then you have Rare Studio's 1994 SNES game Donkey Kong Country to thank.

You might ask yourself this question: what was the impetus of resurrecting the titular ape of a classic early 80's arcade game? Donkey Kong just throws barrels and kidnaps people's girlfriends. Donkey Kong isn't exactly a complicated game with complicated characters. How could he fit into the landscape of the 16-bit era? Not to mention, Jumpman, or Mario as you might know him, had greatly transcended his role into bigger feats of saving girls from giant reptilians instead of giant apes since his first outing in 1981. Mario had completely separated himself from his first video game role so drastically that the fact that he was ever referred to as Jumpman seems like an esoteric trivia factoid. Obviously, a game two gaming generations later wouldn't be the same as it once was. The template for Donkey Kong Country wasn't to expand on the classic arcade game or the titular character but to emphasize the "country" part of Donkey Kong Country to give audiences a sprawling world that made sense putting Donkey Kong in. The presentation of this game, whether it be the level design, the music, or the unique art style, made this game stand out above the rest of its contemporaries and cemented itself not just as a comeback for Donkey Kong, but also as one of the hallmark games on the SNES.

The game begins as Donkey Kong is crestfallen at the sight of his massive banana hoard stolen by Kremlings, the alligator-like main enemies in the game, and Donkey Kong has to venture out into progressively more uncharted territory to get his banana hoard back. It seems like a silly setup until you realize that Donkey Kong is a giant ape and the only way he could be motivated to go on a daunting journey is bananas, not sex. After all, Donkey Kong's girlfriend, Candy Kong, helps you on your quest by providing the occasional save point. She definitely seems much more of a formidable person to capture than the frangible Princess Peach. Stealing a monkey's banana hoard is as low as taking the love of his life (which in this case, the love of his life is bananas, not his girlfriend, so I guess it's not on equal standing). Aiding Donkey Kong in his quest is his best buddy Diddy Kong. You simultaneously play as both Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong throughout the entirety of the game. In this case, Diddy and Donkey Kong are on equal standing in this game in terms of screen time. Diddy isn't just Donkey Kong's Luigi in that his existence doesn't fulfill a multi-player role for your younger sibling. Donkey Kong and Diddy balance each other out quite nicely. Where Donkey Kong is bulky, Diddy Kong is nimble. Donkey Kong can defeat a larger array of enemies because of his larger stature and Diddy Kong can access more of a level because he can jump higher. Both character's attributes are required to traverse through each level, so you'll always have to be careful because once one character is hit, they gasp and run away until you find another barrel to bring them back. The dynamic between Donkey Kong and Diddy is so simple, yet works so well in the game that it's practically perfect. Many platformers with more than one playable character around this time were repainted clones, but Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong legitimately feel different when you are playing as either of them. The contrast between the two makes the player utilize the strengths of each character wisely and also makes them careful which character is upfront before they get hit. Not to mention, both characters move incredibly smoothly and there are plenty of ways to traverse the levels as either character when you only have one of them. There is also a bevy of animal buddies that you can find at almost every level. Each of them is different animals with their own unique attributes that control just as smoothly as the two main characters (although I swear I made too many unfair missteps with that damn frog). The smoothness and variation of control are a testament to what makes a solid 2D platformer especially with as many playable characters as DKC has.

Before discussing the strengths of how the levels in Donkey Kong Country are designed, one just can't overlook the game's aesthetic. Instead of using 16-bit graphics as per the usual SNES games, Rare implemented pre-rendered 3D graphics and compressed them into 16-bit graphics to fit on the SNES. They look like the bridge between the then-current generation of graphics with the future of what was to come in the next generation of early 3D games. It's a style that is stuck in a state of purgatory between these two eras, but this is for the benefit of the DKC series because it makes the series look distinctive. This tactic also makes the DKC series the best-looking games on the SNES. I was always somewhat deterred by the graphics of the 16-bit era because they often look very "drawn on" thus looking very dated. I find the 64-bit graphics charming and the once rudimentary 8-bit graphics have become their own distinctive graphical style over the years, so the era in between still looks a little awkward to me. DKC's graphics don't quite fit the common aesthetic of its era, but it's all to it's the benefit. For some reason, the style still looks fantastic. Every character, whether it be the playable characters or the varied animal enemies, looks so animated and expressive. The backgrounds are lush and practically look like paintings and the foregrounds are just as vividly clear. Why didn't other game studios think of ever doing this? Accompanying the lush, sprawling world of Donkey Kong Country is the soundtrack, an element to this game that is just as important as the graphics. David Wise did an outstanding job at perfectly capturing the right mood for every single level in this game. A highlight track for me is "Aquatic Ambiance" because of how mesmerizing it is. As far as I'm concerned, it's up there with "Aquarium" from "The Carnival of Animals" as far as effective watery music pieces go.

The world, or should I say country, of Donkey Kong Country, is divided very similarly to Super Mario World. The hub world is a map of the entire game divided into seven or so sub-worlds each with a varying number of levels. The first Donkey Kong Country game on the SNES is much more consistent with the overall level themes than the other two in that it maintains its overall jungle/rural tone. It only deviates from this theme later in the game in the factory levels, but the factories are still overrun with kremlings and other animals from previous levels making it seem like the factory is still rooted in the rustic world of this game instead of contrasting it. Like other 2D platformers, the objective is to get to point A to point B. Donkey Kong and Diddy can jump on enemies and roll into them giving the player a nuanced way of defeating enemies rather than just using one tactic in conjunction with getting through the level. Ropes are strewn around the levels to climb further and to dodge enemies on a rail, tires act as springs like in Sonic the Hedgehog, and barrels will launch you in any direction. The barrels are definitely the defining platforming feature of the DKC series. Utilizing the barrels in levels would evolve as the series went on, but I think they were used the best in the first game. The barrel sections are tense and require the greatest use of one's reaction time. You cannot make any mistakes in this game when it comes to the barrel sections.

On the map, Donkey Kong has other friends that aid him in his journey besides Diddy and his animal friends. There is the aptly ape named Cranky Kong who is a tiny old curmudgeon that lives in a cabin. He doesn't so much help you as much as he calls you a candyass and tells you about a challenge involving beating completing this game in under an hour, a feat that he apparently did long ago. Cranky is apparently the original Donkey Kong from the arcade game as an old man, and the modern Donkey Kong that we're all familiar with is his grandson which only makes me ask questions about what happened to Donkey Kong Jr. The aforementioned Candy Kong will help you similarly save your game to Super Mario World in which you have to unlock the save point after a certain number of levels. Lastly, there's Funky Kong that lets you travel to different areas of the map.

You'll get to know Funky and Candy Kong really well from saving at any possible point and stocking up on extra lives. You're gonna need them because this game and the rest of the Donkey Kong Country games have a reputation for being quite difficult. It almost reminds you that this game was developed by the guys that made Battletoads. Although not as consistently frustrating as Battletoads, DKC has an incredibly steep difficulty curb as early as the second world with the notorious "Mine Cart Madness" level. Up until this level, the platforming was pretty fair and the obstacles could be readily combated without much trouble, but this level throws all of that out of the window. For the entire level, you are forced inside of a minecart that constantly keeps moving and never stops. You'll have to efficiently time your jumps at every step, there are stationary mine carts to jump over, and kremlings will be coming at you from the opposite direction. What's funny to me is that somehow, this level is much more difficult than the mine cart level much later in the game. It's the level that separates the men from the boys and after this, the game never gets easier.

Like classic Sonic the Hedgehog, the root of the first DKC's difficulty comes from the "blindspot" difficulty. DKC oftentimes makes you memorize the placements of the pitfalls and enemies because passing them smoothly requires a lot of trial and error. There are pitfalls at every corner in this game that can be quite challenging to get through. Oftentimes, the game throws more gimmicks at the player like a level on a conveyor belt and a level that is mostly in total darkness. Tons of different types of enemies come at you from every angle each with a unique tactic to kill you and the hitboxes are oftentimes questionable. I felt like I needed a referee to debate my untimely death every other time I died trying to jump on an enemy. "Mine Cart Madness" even has a fake-out kremling after the developers know you've taken a breath of relief. The worst offender of these blindspots is "Poison Pond" in which taking the incorrect route will ultimately result in the Kongs getting hit. It doesn't help that the correct paths are filled with gyrating tires with little elbow room to dodge and the final part of this level has fish coming at you in every single space that it's practically a bullet-hell section. The game makes damn sure that the player never gets accustomed to dealing with the obstacles in this game unless you know how to overcome every single one of them. Fortunately, the game gives you ample opportunity to stock up on extra lives through mini-games and banana collecting. The bananas in this game act like the coins in Mario in that collecting 100 of them will reward you with an extra life. They mostly come in singles, but there are plenty of bananas that are stacked in tens. The abundance of bananas in the levels shows a nice sense of self-awareness from the developers in that they didn't want to leave the player high and dry with the steep difficulty of the game.

The levels in this game are certainly daunting, but the same can't be said about the bosses. In fact, the bosses in the first Donkey Kong Country are pitifully easy. You know it's troubling when you strain yourself over the levels and a boss fight seems like a place of relief. The bosses are essentially larger versions of the standard enemies and they only take a few hits to defeat. The boss before King K. Rool is a giant black barrel with a skull and crossbones in the middle of it and it's just a simple boss gauntlet. The barrel doesn't even hurt you when it slams down on the ground. King K. Rool, the final boss of this game and the Bowser of the DKC trilogy, is a different beast altogether. Instead of going down after a few cheap hits, King K. Rool is a formidable foe with a few different phases that will test all of the abilities you've been using throughout the game. All of the blindspots in the game will also prepare you for the bizarre kremling kredits that roll after you think you've defeated King K. Rool before the final phase of his boss fight. I'm ashamed to admit, but he pulled me into a false sense of victory when these credits rolled and he stomped me into the ground. I feel like an absolute idiot for not getting the hint from the credits considering the Rare staff all have kremling names. I figured they were all foreigners.

Donkey Kong Country totally revitalized the character (or technically, revamped Donkey Kong as a younger, more acrobatic version of the arcade game character) and forever made Donkey Kong one of the prime faces of Nintendo's extensive back catalog. As for the game itself, it takes the influences from other 2D platformers of the time and still delivers something unique. The art style and music are still just as captivating as they were when the game was released more than 25 years ago, and it's also one of the smoothest and diverse games of the time in terms of movement. This game is now rightfully considered a classic, but for me personally, everything that made this game stand out was vastly improved in the next two games in the franchise.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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