Oh no.

I was going to start this off by saying that I've personally dealt with a lot of the subject matter that was tackled in the game and that's why I think it's abysmal but I don't even think you need that to recognize how awfully mishandled pretty much everything is. The whole game feels like it's PSA video on bullying/suicide/parental abuse/whatever else they tried to shove in here that was specifically made for middle schoolers. It's so distilled and surface-level that it would've been insulting had it not been for the almost satirical performances and downright cringey writing. It's also a mess on the gameplay front. The environments are pretty to look at but what's there to interact with isn't interesting and the chase sequences are not only devoid of scares, they're incredibly unfun because they're based on trial and error more than anything else.

Kind of obsessed with how bad this was.

Bayonetta 3 is an absolute blast to play. The combat’s as good as ever, and the new demon summoning mechanic works surprisingly well with the flow of combat. It is a shame, in my opinion, that this is the worst Bayonetta game by a very large margin when it comes to pretty much everything else.

Bayonetta 3 is one on the most visually unpleasant games I’ve played in recent memory. The character models and the environments constantly clash, and the image quality is just sad. It’s the worst looking Bayonetta by far, which is insane because the first game came out in 2009. There are plenty of set pieces in the game (almost one per chapter) but none of them hit because none of them are visually impressive. Kratos was fighting hordes of enemies on the moving back of Gaia and Nathan Drake was hanging on to an airplane that was falling apart in games that were running on weaker hardware and they still looked a lot better than anything in this game. Even the set piece in Bayonetta 2’s prologue was more visually impressive and memorable than anything here. Is sliding down buildings on top of an infernal demon really that big of a deal when the buildings look like cardboard cutouts begging to go out of frame?

Then there’s the story, which is…sigh. Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that the stories in the first two games weren’t hot messes, but they were the fun, campy kind of hot messes. Bayonetta 3’s story is just kinda…bad. The game tries to do this whole multiverse (ugh) thing, but none of the universes you visit are actually all that interesting save for one, and you never stay in any of them for long enough to get an actual feel for the world. Then there’s pretty much all the characters feeling…a little off. Bayonetta feels like a different character at times, and it’s not just because of the VA change (Hale does a good job FWIW, but there’s no beating Taylor). She feels a lot more subdued and generally a lot less fun here. Same goes for Jeanne (I need to have a conversation with whoever came up with her design this time around to try and understand the thought process behind it because…) and Luka. Then there’s Viola, a terribly voice acted 2D cardboard cutout of a character that unfortunately ends up having a big role in the grand scheme of things. Then there’s the ending, which is insanely abrupt and is only made worse by the post-credits scenes that follow it. The game also has the worst soundtrack out of all of the games. It’s still great and there are a couple of bangers, but I genuinely thought Moonlight Serenade’s rendition was a joke when I first heard it.

There’s also a weird amount of padding in the game that really wasn’t needed. The Jeanne missions are…there but they at least try to mix up the gameplay a little as opposed to Viola’s missions, which had me constantly questioning why the game was forcing me to play as a clunkier, less-fun Bayonetta.

Again, Bayonetta 3 is an undeniably fun game and I still had a good time with it overall, but the first two games are some of my all-time favorites and this one just simply failed to measure up. It’s probably the most I’ve been disappointed by a game since Zero Time Dilemma.

I'll start with the good, which is the fact that this game is absolutely gorgeous, and the gameplay's great. Most of the maps are pretty good, and the combat improvements are wonderful. I liked Three Houses' combat system, but I'm glad they brought back the weapon triangle. Break is also a pretty interesting mechanic and the engage mechanic, while absolutely broken at times, is always fun to use. This game feels like it should the blueprint for FE going forward gameplay-wise.

Then there's everything else.

I have no idea what happened, but in terms of story, characters and writing, this is easily the worst in the franchise (from what I've played) and a huge step back from Three Houses. The main premise of the plot feels like it came straight out of a Musou/Warriors game in the worst way possible, the tone is half saturday morning cartoon half anime political thriller (it's as terrible as it sounds), the characters are incredibly lifeless and unbelievably boring, and the writing is laughably bad. This is all incredibly shocking especially after Three Houses, which absolutely nailed those things imo. I still remember Three Houses' cast (Black Eagles forever). I'm going to be shocked if I remember any of the characters in this game by the end of next week.

As I said, the gameplay's fantastic but the absolutely awful, bottom-of-the-barrel...everything else makes this my least favorite Fire Emblem game I've played.

It’s a full moon again.


I’d like to preface this review by saying that Persona 3 FES means the world to me. You’ve probably heard a version of this statement from a lot of different people about a lot of different games so I’ll spare you most of the details, but for a long stretch of time it was my favorite game of all time and, even though it was eventually dethroned, it’s still sitting very comfortably at number 2. I’ve loved a lot of games, but none have been as formative as P3 FES was to me. I played it when I was young (younger than I should’ve been) and I don’t think a single piece of media has influenced the way I navigate life as much as P3 FES has.

Writing about games I love is always hard because I constantly feel like I’m not doing a good enough job at translating that love into words. It’s difficult. It’s difficult to put into words how much I adore P3 FES to the point where it feels like there aren’t any words that could describe it, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it if I haven’t been convincing enough.

This preface is part of this review because I’m very well aware that no remake of Persona 3 in any shape or form would have ever satisfied me completely. I’m not delusional, even if I had personal input on the remake and decided to keep everything from Yumi Kawamura to the animated cutscenes to the original voice cast intact, I would have still ended up dissatisfied. I say this because I feel like I’m about to rip into Persona 3 Reload, but it all comes from a place of love and I can tell they at least tried to recapture the magic of the original in some areas. Nobody likes being a party pooper and I genuinely went in wanting to love it as much as FES. Even though I didn’t, I still ended up having a great time with it (as can be seen from my score) and I genuinely hope in my heart of hearts that people end up adoring it.

This preface is also here because most of this review is going to be comparing this game to FES. It’s impossible for me to put myself in the shoes of someone experiencing Persona 3 for the first time through Reload nor do I want to, which means it’s also impossible for me to judge Reload as a standalone game. It is a remake and unlike something like Final Fantasy VII Remake which had no intention of being a 1:1, faithful remake of the original, Persona 3 Reload has every intention of being a faithful and modernized version of Persona 3, and I will be judging it as such.

Alright, preface done. Let’s get into it.


You can’t plug your ears and cover your eyes.


Persona 3 FES opens with what honestly might be my favorite cutscene of all time. The intense sound design coupled with the unique framing of everything happening on screen is fucking enchanting. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. In Persona 3 Reload, this scene is recreated but…something’s missing. The sound design is less effective, the framing is less interesting, there’s now dialogue in it that kind of ruins in the tension, and it’s cut in half with the latter part of the cutscene being replaced with an in-game sequence. This is how I feel about Reload’s presentation in general. It’s mostly not bad by any means, it just constantly feels like something’s not quite right. The cutscene direction is lacking (at times severely) compared to the original (the awakening scene, for example, is nowhere near as effective as the original’s) and the visuals themselves are a mixed bag. Persona 3 FES isn’t the most gorgeous PS2 game, but it’s consistent at the very least. In Reload, it’s very normal to go from an area that looks absolutely gorgeous to something straight out of Pokémon Sword and Shield within the span of seconds. It’s mostly due to the lighting, which ranges from impressive in locations like Gekkoukan High, to “Nintendo hire this man!!” Unreal Engine™ lighting in locations like Tartarus (with the exception of a block or two), to some of the worst, straight up atmosphere-killing lighting I’ve seen in a game in locations like Yakushima and the dorm, the latter of which being the most important location in the entire game. The game’s also obsessed with using green and blue filters, the former of which is used during Dark Hour sequences and looks fine, and the latter being used in some nighttime scenes and looks abysmal. Persona 3/FES had a certain je ne sais quio which managed to elevated its atmosphere that is not only missing from its sequels, but also unfortunately its re-releases.

It's not all bad on that front, though. The new character models need some getting used to due to the change in art style (Soejima is no longer the lead artist) but they look absolutely gorgeous and are among the best I’ve ever seen when it comes to this type of art style, and the UI is absolutely wonderful and manages to, in my opinion, edge out Persona 5’s which is quite a feat. You spend most of your time looking at menus in turn-based RPGs and Atlus is seemingly one of the few companies out there that understand that.

Gameplay is where Persona 3 Reload shines bright and completely eviscerates its prior iterations. I’ve never hated FES’ gameplay (I’m pretty sure 95% of the people that had issues with the party being controlled by AI never actually played the game and were regurgitating what they heard online because the game was balanced around it, but I digress), but Reload plays like butter. Tartarus has been given a facelift worthy of being on a second season of a Real Housewives franchise, the combat is snappy and really fun to look at (SHIFTing feels so much better than Baton Passing and it’s all in the animations), the fatigue system has been thankfully removed, teleporters are a lot more plentiful and a lot of the additional content from P3P has been carried over like rescuing people that have wandered into Tartarus. All of the quality of life improvements on the life-sim side that were introduced in Persona 5 have been carried into Reload as well, which makes that portion of the game feel a lot smoother as well. Out of all the improvements, Social Links now being fully voiced might be my favorite one. It genuinely breathes life into characters I never cared for in the original and it’s going to be tough going back to earlier Persona games which only had voice acting for specific ranks. Not forcing the MC into a romantic relationship with female Social Links is also a fantastic change.

The new “Linked Episodes” introduced in Reload are absolutely fantastic. I still wish the male party member Social Links were carried over from the FeMC route, but this is a good enough compromise and to my surprise, most of it is actually brand new stuff and not distilled versions of their Social Links from P3P. I found Ken’s Linked Episode in particular to be fantastic. The new Strega scenes are a nice touch as well, though they do little to improve on what has always been the weakest part of Persona 3’s story. Still, they’re relatively harmless so it’s ultimately a good addition.

Next up is music and well, this one’s a bit of a doozy.

Yumi Kawamura is Persona 3. She was always Persona 3. She will always be Persona 3. End of Statement. For those that have never played a Persona game and don’t understand the importance of the vocalists in these games, they are what Utada Hikaru is to Kingdom Hearts, except if you heard Utada’s voice most of the time while playing through the games instead of just the openings and endings. Yumi, Shihoko and Lyn (alongside Shoji Meguro) were all integral to their respective games. Replacing them would be unthinkable and yet, with Persona 3 Reload, the unthinkable has happened. Yumi Kawamura has been replaced with Azumi Takahashi and in a ballsy move, they sound completely different than one another. Gone are Yumi’s rough and energetic vocals, replaced with Azumi’s soft and youthful vocals instead and the results are, well…interesting to say the least.

In new tracks composed specifically for Reload, Azumi shines. Tracks like “It’s Going Down Now” and “Color Your Night” sound absolutely wonderful, the latter of which has become one of my favorites from the entire series. Things get complicated, however, when we look at the tracks that were initially composed with Yumi Kawamura in mind. Tracks like “Want to Be Close” still manage to sound absolutely wonderful, but not all of them were so lucky. Tracks like “Memories of You” and “Paulownia Mall” lack some of what made the originals amazing but still sound relatively good while tracks like “Mass Destruction” completely miss the mark. “When the Moon’s Reaching Out Stars,” one of the best songs from the original game, got dealt the worst hand. I truly haven’t heard a song get this butchered since Fergie sang the national anthem at that NBA game.

Since we’re on the topic of audio, let’s discuss Reload’s English dub.

Persona’s dubs have always been exceptional. Persona 3’s dub was very impressive at the time, Persona 5’s dub was fantastic, and Persona 4 might genuinely have my favorite dub of all time. They’ve never been perfect, mind you, as there’s always been a character or two that had weird or funky dubs like Fuuka in Persona 3/FES, Chie in the original Persona 4 (I said it!) and some of the confidants in Persona 5, but in general it wouldn’t be controversial to say that the Persona franchise was the gold standard when it came to this type of stuff.

It pains me to say that Persona 3 Reload’s dub is extremely hit-or-miss. Atlus West and Sega, for some odd reason, decided to go against what Atlus Japan did and overhaul the entire cast, recasting all of the characters in the process and the results are all over the place which, for a franchise like Persona, is a little shocking. There are some characters that are straight-up upgrades from the originals like Yeung’s Fuuka, some that are indistinguishable like Clark’s Mitsuru and Robinson’s Junpei and some that sound completely different but still end up working like Saab’s Akihiko, Solcum’s Shinjiro and Lee’s Ken.

And then there are Yukari and Aigis, two wonderful characters with troubling performances (for different reasons) and the reason this has its own section in the review. Let’s investigate.

Case 001: The Case of Heather Gonzalez’s Yukari Takeba

Due to the way it’s structured, Persona 3 has some of the franchise’s best character arcs because it doesn’t rely on social links/confidants for character progression and instead does all of it in the main storyline, which is something that P4 and P5 mostly moved away from to their detriment. Yukari’s arc is simple but effective, and I’ve always thought she was a shockingly realistic portrayal of someone who has gone through a lot of trauma. Michelle Ruff’s performance in the original Persona 3 perfectly straddles the line between mean and sincere and is genuinely a perfect fit for the character. Yukari in general is, in my opinion, one of the original game’s best parts.

I say all of this because Yukari in Persona 3 Reload is not nearly as good of a character and it is solely due to Gonzalez’s performance.

I don’t know whether to pin this on Gonzalez’s performance or Arem’s direction, but…there’s no way around it, Yukari in P3R just sounds poor. Not only does Gonzalez fail to straddle that line, it feels like she never even attempted to get on it. The cadence in which she read her lines in is incredibly annoying, her vocal fry sounds unpleasant and feels put on, and her acting in general feels like it’s a step below the rest of the cast. She sticks out like a sore thumb and it’s heartbreaking. I’ve seen and heard a lot of recasts in my life and I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I’ve never seen one completely demolish a character and their arc like this. None of Yukari’s emotional moments (like her wonderful scene in Yakushima) are as effective as they should be because the performance is just not up to par.

Case 002: The Case of Dawn M. Bennet’s Aigis

If Yukari is one of Persona 3’s best parts, then Aigis is unequivocally the best part of Persona 3. She’s the heart of the game and probably has the best arc in the entire series (she also happens to be my all-time favorite Persona character so I’m a bit biased). One of the best parts about her character was her voice, which slowly and subtly transitions from extremely robotic to almost human. It legitimately is one of my favorite parts of FES and a large part of why I adore the character.

In Persona 3 Reload, Aigis does not sound like a robot. Her voice has been changed to sound like a modern AI’s (which doesn’t make sense because the game still takes place in 2009, but sure) and the slow transition, while not completely removed, has been downgraded. This is not on Bennet nor Arem, but instead on the Japanese team that wanted the performances to be more faithful to their Japanese counterparts^, because Aigis’ voice slowly transitioning was a fucking masterful decision that was made by the localization team back then. Now that it’s no longer there, it feels like part of the character has been completely gutted and it sucks. Unlike Gonzalez and Yukari though, Bennet’s performance is actually quite good. It’s just the shift in performance that’s a shame.

^This is speculative on my part, but Atlus Japan was pretty hands-on with Persona 5’s dub based on some interviews I’ve read and seen (see: SEH-Kamoto gate), and I assume this carried into Reload.


The Arcana is the means by which all is revealed.


In 2009, Atlus released a version of Persona 3 that ultimately failed to capture a lot of what made Persona 3 special due to extremely scaled back presentation. Still, it’s worth a play due to all of the additional content and much improved gameplay. It is an okay version of Persona 3, but FES is still superior.

It is now 2024.

Atlus has released a version of Persona 3 that ultimately fails to capture a lot of what made Persona 3 special due to extremely different presentation. Still, it’s worth a play due to all of the additional content and much improved gameplay. It is an okay version of Persona 3, but FES is still superior.

So where does this leave us? A version of Persona 3 with all of the original creative intent including voice acting, dialogue and general presentation in addition to an epilogue but relatively dated gameplay, a version of Persona 3 with modernized gameplay but presentation that fundamentally changes the entire game feel for better and for worse, and a version of Persona 3 with a completely unique protagonist that has a different set of socials links that cuts back on the visuals in a major way to its detriment.

There is still no definitive way to play Persona 3. Moreover, the best (in my opinion) version of the game is still (and now forever will be) stuck on the Playstation 2 with no modern ports. I can’t lie and say this isn’t endlessly frustrating. The charitable read on this, however, is that Persona 3 has three different versions that all genuinely offer completely different experiences. I really can’t think of anything like it. I know this, though: if there’s any game worth experiencing three times in three completely different ways, it’s Atlus’ magnum opus.

I won’t sugercoat it, though: if it hasn’t been clear already, I think Persona 3 Reload fails to hold a candle to Persona 3 FES. The new visuals and lighting kill some the atmosphere, some of the new performances disappoint, the quality of the redone music is inconsistent and it overall just feels a bit…cheap at times. I think Persona 3 Reload is the best way to play Persona 3, no question about it, but I’m almost prepared to say it’s the worst way to experience it, though I’d have to revisit P3P before putting a statement like that out into the universe.

But I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve been entirely fair if I’m being honest.

Playing through Persona 3 Reload was joyful in many ways and heartbreaking in many others. How can I fairly judge a remake of something that I’m as intensely connected to as Persona 3? It’s a nigh impossible task. Even after all of this, I still don’t know how to feel about Reload, not really. I don’t even think I ever will but that’s okay, because regardless of what version of Persona 3 I’m playing through, the first three notes of Memories of the School are enough to make me well up. Maybe, because I love Persona 3 so much, I’m getting too caught up with what Reload is going to mean to other people versus what FES meant to me. Maybe, because I don’t think it’s as artistic, atmospheric, emotional and effective as FES, I’m scared people won’t like it as much.

But maybe I should be thankful that Reload was at least good enough to not sever the connection I have to Persona 3. Maybe that’s all I needed it to be.

Maybe that’s enough.

The wind... It feels so nice...

Probably the best 2D Mario game since Yoshi’s Island. Granted, the bar was in hell because “depressing” wouldn’t even begin to describe the state 2D Mario was in but still, I give props when props are due and Super Mario Bros. Wonder manages to breathe new life into a series that has been absolutely stale since 1995.

The amount of creativity on display here is impressive. Not all wonder flower gimmicks were created equal (I’d even argue the game peaks on the second level in that regard) but it was always exciting to see just what would happen when you touched one even if the result was kinda disappointing. The badge system is also pretty interesting because most of the badges are kinda useless but I don’t think I can play another 2D Mario without the parachute cap and the grappling vine badges. They completely change the pacing of the levels for the better.

The music is, sadly, quite forgettable. I can’t really remember any of the tracks aside from a couple. I also found the visuals to be a bit eh. The new character models look great and a lot of the backgrounds are full of life but the game still kinda just looks like the New Super Mario Bros. games with a slightly prettier coat of paint on it. I also find it puzzling that a game this jam-packed with creativity still manages to have terrible boss battles.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is no Tropical Freeze or Rayman Legends. Quite frankly, it’s not even DKC Returns or Rayman Origins. 2D Mario is still way behind, but Wonder has put it back on the right track. I wouldn’t say I’m excited for the future of 2D Mario just yet, but I’m at least hopeful about it now.

Went back to this after being gravely disappointed by Bayonetta 3 and wondering if I was looking at it through rose-tinted glasses and...it's a definite no. Bayonetta is still fucking incredible.

This was alright. The setting's fantastic and the rats are genuinely very impressive, but the game never manages to shake off the “The Last of Us/God of War at home” vibes. It also seemingly can’t decide if it wants to be a walking simulator or not, because it gives you a really cool arsenal to approach encounters with but the encounters themselves are so incredibly rigid and usually only have one solution so it ends up not mattering all that much.

The story is fine up until a certain point where it kind of goes off the rails but the characters are great and the voice acting is genuinely fantastic across the board. I really loved Hugo and Amicia’s relationship, but I feel like that has more to do with me and my relationship with my big sisters as opposed to the game actually making me care about them, because you don’t really see their relationship progress naturally like you do in something like The Last of Us with Joel and Ellie or other games of this ilk. Things are weird between them and then they’re not, and then they’re weird again and then they’re not. It never felt natural to me.

I don’t know, it was a perfectly good experience, I’m just a little whelmed given the insane word of mouth this game got.

Out of the 29.8 million people (fresh stat from Google) that have bought and played Breath of the Wild, I might be in the top 5% of people in terms of just how much I dislike it. I think it’s an okay game, but I despise it. I feel like Nintendo took Kylo Ren’s advice a bit too seriously and completely blew up everything I loved about the franchise, gutting everything fantastic like some of the excellent level and visual design found in the dungeons to the timeless music in favor of “look, if you burn the grass it creates an updraft!!!” and music that sounds like someone accidentally sat on a piano aside from a few cases. I get that it “redefined how you can approach exploration in video games” and [INSERT IMPRESSIVE SOUNDING PHRASE HERE] but that meant nothing to me because that wasn’t what I was looking for. I just wanted a 3D Zelda game and as a traditional 3D Zelda game, Breath of the Wild was absolutely joyless and devoid of soul in my opinion. I still remember how crushingly disappointing the divine beasts, the very thing that was put in the game to “please traditional 3D Zelda fans,” were to this day.

Tears of the Kingdom does a decent amount of work to alleviate that feeling, but part of why I enjoyed it a bit more is because I accepted that 3D Zelda is never coming back. I will never feel the same type of wonder I felt while exploring the Ancient Cistern again, not from a Zelda game at least, and that’s okay because going forward, 3D Zelda games are going for a different type of wonder that does nothing for me but checks other people’s boxes.

That’s not to say I like it more just because of that, though. Not at all. The big one is that yes, Tears of the Kingdom has dungeons. In actuality they’re “””dungeons,””” nowhere near as elaborate or as good as the ones found in traditional 3D Zelda titles in general but much better than the divine beasts. They’re themed, have puzzles you can’t break, have central gimmicks that aren’t boring or annoying and have actual boss fights at the end of them. There’s actually a good story this time around as well. Most it is, frustratingly, told through flashbacks again but the way they tie them into the present day events is actually very, very smart. Just like BOTW, most of the flashbacks are optional but they are much, much easier and a lot more fun to find. Shrines also make a return and they’re basically the same, but the puzzles are a lot more creative by virtue of the new toolset.

The new tools are honestly pretty incredible. Ultrahand alone is more impressive than the entirety of BOTW’s mostly boring toolset, and Fuse is also mindblowing at times. Recall and Ascend are mostly situational and are just there for the most part, but they’re still impressive. I constantly forgot about Ascend though, but that’s probably just a me thing.

The open world is mostly the same, but feels a lot more…intentional this time around for lack of a better term. There’s a sense of direction there that simply wasn’t in BOTW and it makes it feel a lot more well designed. It might be due to the addition of the sky islands (which are pretty great) as well as other areas, but I honestly can’t really put my finger on it. It felt like there was a lot more to do this time around as well, as I was constantly stumbling upon caves and the like.

Most of my issues with the game are unfortunately carryovers from BOTW. The weapon durability system is still frustrating and the fuse function doesn’t go a long way to help with it, the music is once again mostly ambient/nonexistent aside from key story moments, the horse controls are still really weird and traversal in general isn’t as fun as it can be, and the combat just doesn’t feel as fun or snappy as it does in the older titles. The English voice acting is once again not the greatest and genuinely dampens some otherwise great story moments, which is really disappointing. An issue that’s unique to this game is that there seemed to be a larger focus on resource gathering this time around which led to some infuriating moments here and there, especially when it came to bombs. TOTK fixes a lot of what was bad about BOTW, but there’s still plenty of glaring issues that were just not touched on at all.

As a traditional 3D Zelda superfan, BOTW left me absolutely hopeless, so much so that it knocked the franchise out my top 10 and down to…God knows where. TOTK, on the other hand, has given me hope. It’s just a small glimmer but maybe, just maybe, Nintendo could merge the best parts of those games with modern 3D Zelda successfully. I couldn’t see it before but I can see it now. We’re not there yet and we won’t be there for a very, very long time, and it’s going to take a lot of refinement and a few games until we potentially get there but…maybe it’s all going to be alright.

I'm still in the midst of figuring out how I truly feel about the story, but it's a truly phenomenal game overall. I don't think it's as good as the first one, but it comes damn close.

This was fine. Gameplay is simple but enjoyable, but the lack of a map makes navigation a pain and puts a hamper on the experience, especially since a good amount of the environments look the same.

Very few games fire on all cylinders as well as Bloodborne does. Fascinating lore, excellent combat, killer art direction, incredible music, tight level design (I think Yharnam might be my favorite tutorial/first area ever?), well though-out boss encounters and brisk pacing. Chalice dungeons feel a little unpolished, but they're completely optional and are still kind of a fun time. This, to me, is easily From Software's best game and it's not even close.

2016

I would've liked this even more had it not been for the absolutely terrible final boss. Still, it's an incredible blood pumping experience. Short and sweet.

An incredible, gripping, stunning experience start to finish and unequivocally one of the best sequels of all time. Takes everything good from Control and Alan Wake and just mashes it all together and the result is fucking fascinating. I typically find this level of "it's meta dude!" annoying, but Remedy managed to approach it with such an immense amount of care and subtlety that I can't help but adore it.

That's not to mention everything on the visuals and sound side of things including the visuals themselves, the cinematography, the excellent yet campy FMV implementation, the amazing sound design and just...the atmosphere of it all. This game looks and feels like an HBO show and that's one of the highest compliments I can give it.

if I had to criticize one thing, it'd be Saga's case board. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but I wish there was actual puzzle solving involved. The ending's also a tiny bit unsatisfactory, but Remedy's building this massive story across multiple franchises so it's not unexpected. On the technical side of things, I found the HDR implementation frustrating and there's one very nasty visual bug on PS5 that's apparently related to FSR, but it's only in one small area so it's no big deal.

Other than that, I'm honestly head over heels in love with this and can easily see this turning into a 5/5 with time. Control put Remedy on the map for me and this game shot them up my favorite devs list. I can't wait to see what's next from them.

This is the first time I've actually played The Lost Levels past the first world, and...If this isn't the poster child of bad level design, I don't know what is.

A massive leap in storytelling, but a step back in...pretty much everything else. The new leveling system is unique and I can appreciate it even if it didn't work for me, but the dungeon design is horrendous and the encounter rate is even more unhinged than the first game's. Still, for what is regarded as the worst mainline Final Fantasy game, it's not bad at all.