While I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for, it’s damn nice to play another Persona game.

I’m a relatively new fan to persona, Persona 5 was the first game I played in the franchise. As a high schooler at the time my mind was blown by that game and P5R went beyond my expectations and blew me away again. I never played the original P3 so have nothing to say about this game being a Remake and for the sake of this review I will do my VERY best not to compare this to P5R since I want to look at P3R as it’s own game. With that being said, Persona 3 Reload is an interesting game that does take inspiration from P5R. As always I LOVE the art direction for Persona. You go through the daily life of a high school student to hang with friends and study for school. You can join clubs which I thought was really cool. You also get to open up new social links to build bonds in these clubs. You can do all sorts of activities that can gain you new items or accessories or increase your social stats that can benefit you on the combat side of the game during the Dark Hour. There’s many mechanics for you to use to better yourself, your gear or your team. You can also explore and find Twilight Fragments around town which are very useful to open locked chests within Tartarus. Which brings us to combat side of things. Combat is so slick and fun. You’ll pretty much go dungeon crawling in Tartarus for a big chunk of the game where you fight shadows and get loot. Sometimes after a battle you’ll get Shuffle Time which is a system that allows you to choose a reward. These rewards can be anything from money or bonuses to collect or personas and buffs for your run through Tartarus. I really like the visuals and layout for Tartarus which the art direction does great on. I also do appreciate that different sections of Tartarus which would eventually change up the layout and halls for the floors you go through so that you don’t go through same hallways. It’s also good that more things open up in Tartarus so that you don’t always just do the same thing. Eventually you’ll have to rescue people that have wondered into Tartarus and you will eventually start to encounter Monad Doors which lead into a Red Area where you can fight formidable shadows for great rewards. You can also take on requests for Elizabeth where you have to do quests for her in daytime and during the Dark Hour. And with Elizabeth there’s indeed a Velvet Room to fuse your personas. While I did like Tartarus, I did get pretty bored sometimes since it got repetitive unless I had a challenging fight. And that’s an issue I had with Personal 5, Mementos felt like a slog and Tartarus did begin to feel like slog later on in the story. Also the soundtrack is AMAZING. Like in P5R, I loved to just randomly hang out just to listen to the music because it was so good. Atlus doesn’t miss with their OSTs.

Story wise, it was pretty good but I wasn’t all that impressed. The story was okay for the first 40 hours as we have a goal we’re set on but doesn’t do much with that goal other than having to go up Tartarus to find out more and recruit new members to help in our fight during the Dark Hour. After that, the story started to pick up for me, specifically when we started to learn more about the Dark Hour and started encountering the antagonists of the story. The social links in the game were hit or miss. Some will be “meh”, some will at least be interesting, and a few I loved. I didn’t really like Nozomi’s or Hidetoshi’s social links since they were either uninteresting or just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them. And then we have SEES, our team that fights to find out the secrets of the Dark Hour. The characters are well written and well voiced acted. Junpei is the only character I had a love hate relationship with. He can be funny but cringe most of the time for trying too hard to be funny. I also loved characters like Yukari because of her deeper connection to the story. I also love Akihiko for his cool and upstanding attitude. Or even Aigis for looking for her way of life which is interesting to see. And of course I can’t forget Mitsuru because, one I think she’s totally gorgeous, and two I really liked her social link. Besides all that, it’s really nice how you can just hang out with any of your crew members at the dorm, sadly this doesn’t increase your bond with them but you can still increase your social stats or get items like food or drinks from it. The remaining hours of the story were great and my goodness the ending hit me hard on the heart.

Honestly, I really couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for. Not sure if it’s because the story didn’t get to me as much due to pacing issues or if I felt like something was missing from the game. Nonetheless, I definitely recommend Persona 3 Reload as it’s a great game. There’s a lot to keep you busy and a lot to take advantage of.

Granblue Fantasy Relink is an incredible game that falls short from greatness.

I would say that I’m just a casual fan for Granblue Fantasy and this game truly makes Granblue Fantasy very exciting. I’ve watched the anime and it had okay action, but this game truly feels like it does justice for how amazing the action can be. The visuals and graphics for this game look insanely good. I can tell they put a lot of effort into the art direction. Granblue Fantasy has always had a beautiful and wondrous world. Everything from a vast flow of clouds to its various islands. Something Cygames nailed with GBFR is the exciting adventure. I loved going through different biomes and running through chaos from the many actions sequences you’ll go through. It really did feel like an adventure and that’s something I did appreciate. The combat is well handled, you can choose to play as many characters most of which you unlock by obtaining crewmate cards. You can use up to 4 skills and it’s cool how you can pretty much make everyone in your party as powerful as you want, but of course becoming powerful takes time. Honestly you can go through the story at your own pace. If you’re just here for the story, you can do that but if you want to take the time to do other things to beef yourself up you can do that as well. And that’s where the quest counter comes in. This is where I start to have issues with GBFR. Don’t get me wrong on one hand I do love the quest counter to under take quests. But overall, the quests are just repeats of story missions that you’ve already done which is a bummer to say the least. Other than that they weren’t all that bad considering these quests have certain challenges for you to meet such as beating the quest in a certain amount of time or defeating a certain amount of foes in which you’re ranked based on your performance. There’s also side quests which are a let down in my opinion. Every single side quest is just go fetch or kill a certain enemy quest and it didn’t help that they were SUPER easy to do. Most side quests I accept would already be done before even starting the side quest. It would’ve been really nice to at least get some story telling from those side quest. But where GBFR truly shines is the combat. Every skill, power or advantage is worth looking into to find a play style that best suits you. I played as Charlotta for most of the game since I love her rapid and bright attacks. It really wasn’t until post game that started to play as other characters honestly. And the Boss fights are GODLY! The boss fights have so much chaos and flashy moves that I really just don’t get bored of replaying to fight some these bosses which is an option after you beat the main story. Something I didn’t like about the combat is the lock on system. It’s important to lock on to enemies to get a good hit in but my goodness they way the camera works can make thing difficult not to mention frustrating. As for the post game content, I really don’t have much to say other than is not crucial to play this part of the game. I did it simply because the gameplay is fun and wanted more closure for a certain character.

As for the story, it was a decent one at best. Every single character is likable. Something that definitely made this game worth while is watching the anime before playing because you get to know some of the characters and how they met to become a group. I honestly don’t remember there being a character that I disliked or hated in the story. However, I dare say that Gran felt pretty questionable. I feel like Cygames just didn’t give him much to say and that really took away his personality from the anime. But of course you don’t need to watch the anime like me especially since the Quest Counter provides Fate Episodes which give you a backstory for every playable character. Unfortunately these fate episodes are just a voice over of text with a background shot. It would’ve been nice to actually get some cutscenes from the Fate Episodes. Luckily, every character does get 2 playable quests for the Fate Episodes and it’s probably still worth checking out some of these Fate Episodes just to increase your stats. Other than that the story is still pretty good.

Granblue Fantasy Relink is a worth while video game not just for its incredible gameplay but for its fun adventure. I’m sure Cygames is proud of this project and did for the most part do justice for the world of Granblue Fantasy. I can’t wait to see where the adventure of Gran and Lyria take them next.

Eternights is a solid video game for what it has to offer but deserves better.

This is the type of game that many should really ask themselves if this game is for you. I’ve played many games like this during my high school days and being the big weeb that I was, this game just SCREAMS your typical ecchi anime and I don’t mean that as a bad thing personally. So if you’re expecting this to be like Persona, Eternights is similar but generally does its own thing in comparison to Persona. Eternights isn’t nearly as dense or complex as a Persona game. Eternights has a fairly simple combat system, it’s an action game that tends to make you use your abilities at the right moment but doesn’t stop from using them when you want. You’ll have a skill tree system to upgrade your abilities but it really doesn’t get anymore complex other than that. There are enemy encounters that will challenge you, overall the challenges for me weren’t that difficult but I was still getting enjoyment out of it. You go through dungeons where you fight these enemies and solve puzzles which can be very easy and some will take a bit more thinking. I love the art style of this game. And no it’s not just because it’s anime. The cool thing about art styles and visual views in video games are simply that they can make the world feel more alive and that is something I believe Eternights did a great job executing. The atmosphere and vibrant lighting in this game really just made me love the visuals of this game. And that’s not to say that some visuals were undercooked but not necessarily noticeable. Something I definitely didn’t like were the were the facial animations. Some look really awkward and ridiculous and I wish they worked more on that. And you get a slice of life aspect to this game that I really enjoyed. You get to hang out with characters you can bond with and eventually romance. You can even train with the characters you meet in which you’ll play mini games in order to upgrade your stats for combat. The soundtrack is underappreciated, I found it really cool and relaxing.

Story wise, I had a few mixed opinions. I liked the story and the direction it was heading. It quite literally does have the kind of plot for an anime or manga but I felt like this story was a little too straightforward. For a story I did like, I just feel like there really wasn’t a big climax. When you get near the end of the story and can feel it coming and it’s just over. And that’s not to say the characters aren’t interesting because they are. I really liked Yuna and I thought at one point I would even romance her but Min was more of my kind of girl. For me Min is by far the most brave character in the game. We also Sia who’s very optimistic and we have Yohan who has some of the best voice acting, I just don’t swing that way with dudes, honestly. And we also have Chani who I feel like he redeemed himself to a certain extent and I wish there was more to him than that. We have more characters but they overall don’t have any depth to their characters. They have reason to be in the story but nothing that interesting or deep. It’s overall a basic and generic story. Besides all of that there is a lot of lewd humor for this game that will bother some people. And without saying much about the ending, it at least made sense and gives me closure. Not everyone will feel the same about the ending. So to speak, it’s arguable that this is one of those “opening endings” kind of thing.

Eternights is cool and a solid game and that’s great for a game that only cost me $30, unfortunately it does feel pretty dull at times. While the combat is at least fun it’s rough around the edges. If you’re looking for a short and fun game to play then I highly recommend Eternights but then again, don’t forget to ask yourself if this game really is for you. I can see a DLC or even a sequel for Eternights but even if there isn’t then I’m at least satisfied with the experience I got from Eternights.