As with many players, my introduction to the franchise was through Persona 5. During the pandemic, I played the game, and it quickly became my favorite of all time. It was somewhat amusing because I'm not typically into JRPGs or Japanese culture, but Persona has something truly unique about it. That's why Persona 3 Reload was my most anticipated game of the year, despite being a remake of an older title.

It's nearly impossible to review Persona 3 Reload without comparing it to Persona 5. Since its announcement, Persona 3 Reload seemed like the kind of remake that the Pokémon Company used to do with its older games. And I was right: Persona 3 Reload takes everything developed for Persona 5 and creates a true and good remake.

Persona 3 Reload is a classic Persona game that divides into two parts: your normal life as a student, and a hero's journey to save the world. In the first part, you attend school to study and interact with friends, while in the second part, you face enemies called shadows.

The social aspect of the game is particularly enjoyable. In addition to your duties as a student, you'll need to socialize with various characters from the school and rest of the world. Each character has a unique story, and you'll need to meet them multiple times to complete their storylines. This mechanic is called social links. Compared to Persona 5, I found these stories even more engaging.

The "hero part" is a turn-based RPG. I know that many people don't enjoy games of this style, but Persona games offer dynamic combat. Personally, I'm not usually a fan of turn-based games, but Persona takes the genre to another level.

Despite the game being split into two parts, they converge seamlessly. The interactions you have with friends will make you stronger to face enemies. The game operates on a calendar system, allowing you to decide when to hang out with friends, study, battle against enemies, or improve your social attributes.

The main story of the game starts strong, slows down a bit in the middle, and finishes perfectly. While I still prefer Persona 5's story, it's incredible how Atlus is able to create such incredible characters that are truly charismatic and make you care deeply about them. I enjoyed learning about their lives and backgrounds while also worrying about their futures.

I do think that Persona 3 Reload has some minor issues, such as poorly placed activities in the calendar system. There are moments where you have nothing to do for a few days, followed by days where you're overwhelmed with tasks. This became a problem near the end when I had enough money and maxed out all my social attributes. Additionally, I didn't appreciate how much time it took to start social links with party members, and that it was limited to just the female characters.

Another thing that is truly incredible in this franchise, and it holds true here as well, is the soundtrack. Persona 3 Reload boasts one of the best soundtracks ever in the gaming industry.

It took me 75 hours to finish my first playthrough, and I almost completed everything that could be done.

In conclusion, Persona 3 Reload is one of the best games we've had in recent years, but I still prefer Persona 5. If you enjoy JRPGs or Japanese culture, it's a must-play game. Even if you don't, I recommend giving it a chance, as I promise you won't be disappointed.

I can't wrap my head around this game, honestly. Starting off with things I am sure about:
The gameplay is okay, it's rather simple and doesn't pretend to be more than what it is. It feels a bit of a chore most of the time and it's a bit all samey.
I really like the setting and the premise, I could feel the sadness and heartache between the dream and irl sections, it was well crafted.
The ending is... somewhat peculiar? There's a twist that changes the story completely and I'm not too much of a fan of it. It's not a bad ending per se, it might just be something I have to mull over. It definitely didn't go with the easiest and straightforward way and, although it's less satisfying to me, it tells a darker and more unique story that makes this game special, which is something that I can't argue with.

Meh it's good but this game has glaring issues at difficulties 8-9 and in general :

-90% of weapons being straight up useless
-Most stats on items are hidden or don't work (armor)
-Endgame gameplay is mostly sneaking to the objectives(yes this is fun for like the first 2 hours then it gets quickly annoying)
-Mission variety really isn't a thing
-Mission modifiers make the game less fun overall
-Some ennemies are just not fun to play against and make the lack of weapon viability even worse (chargers, rocket launcher hulks, spewers and bile titans with their weird ass mouth hitbox)
-Most stratagems are garbage too, barrages are litteraly griefing
-Talking about griefing they dedicated a whole stratagem type to this: the sentries, at best they will kill 5 ennemies and get two shot later or will just be a team kill simulator ( props to ems for being decent i guess)
-Robots are way easier than bugs overall at max difficulty and i have no idea why they made bugs this cancerous at higher difficulties

But yeah the game is good could be better if they fixed all this shit tho.

A perfect combination of Dark Souls, Elden Ring and Sekiro combat. It feels extremely good to play and it makes Dark Souls/Elden Ring combat feel neutered. You get a lot of customization and change of progression of your basekit. It takes some stuff from Souls games, such as elemental buffs, and makes them part of your kit, without consumables, it takes weapon durability and makes it engaging and dynamic, and it also takes weapon arts and makes them not dependent on having to manage a different type of flask or whatever. The bosses are fun and a good challenge; I've had a lot of fun fighting them switching from a Souls playstyle to a Sekiro playstyle or back depending on how comfortable I was with a certain attack. The maybe most interesting thing I can say about this game is that it's fairer than FromSoft games, meaning that, while the game does expect you to learn and master your kit, it meets you halfway, it's more forgiving. I know it's extremely subjective and honestly a terrible way to put it but the best way I can describe it is that there's very little "artificial" difficulty. One thing I really like about this game is that if you finish your healing, you can earn back one at a time if you do enough damage, it's not a straight up "Well, good luck buddy". The few bad things I can say about this game are: there's too much of a gap between low hp fodder enemies and high hp bigger enemies (not necessarily a bad thing but it didn't feel right); the respawning takes too long; the exploration looting is underwhelming; and the one instance where the game helps you too much: very frequent shortcuts. Ending on a list of bad things doesn't give the right idea so I'll say this last thing: I think in many ways this game is better than the Souls trilogy and Elden Ring, and if you enjoy these games, you'll probably love this one. It's an incredible achievement.

I have never oscillated between completely loving and absolutely hating a game more violently than this one.

Is it edgy? Yes. Funny? Yes. Horrifying morally and visually? Yes and yes.

I loved how this game messed with rpg tropes such as rest points being safe, and your main character getting more and more powerful until eventually killing a god at the end. I was honestly worried my character wouldn't make it to the end.

Remember when Ocarina Of Time 64DD was cancelled to make Majora's Mask? Well they went for another half assed bonus expansion version of an insanely successful game and actually went through with it this time.

Swaps the tranquil minimalism of BOTW with a chaotic amalgamation of conflicting ideas that ultimately feels like a DIY craft kit full of mismatched pieces shoddily pasted together by thick green glue.

Story had one good idea and fumbled everything else. Already messed up the new timeline that was established just last game.

Beat the game in 80 hours in a little over 2 weeks. Objectively the most interactive of the Zelda games, but tonally a complete zombified Frankenstein monstrosity.

This game makes me actively angry. I am no longer a zelda fan and I should have bought physical so I could resell. I am so sick of talking and hearing about this game

Played Leon, saving Clair for a later replay. Incredible game overall. I hate horror games, but I loved this one as it rewards methodical map memorization. Leon is my spirit animal. He says the immediate first thing that comes to my brain when playing this game. RE2 blends camp and cheese with horror and serious tones with such effortlessness that never seems to devalue either.
human deformed monster jumps out "What happened to you?!"
zombie shambling towards you "What the hell? Shit! Goddamnit!"
mysterious person appears "Who are you?!"

I love how it progressively increases the testing of map mastery/memory. You go into a new area and have to figure it out while clearing enemies, then new elements are introduced that test your execution in navigating the map in progressively more challenging ways.

My favorite thing is that there are (to my knowledge) no magically spawning enemies. Once you see a zombie, if you kill it (like completely) it will always stay dead. Blow off its leg and remember what room you left it in and it will always be there. The only exception to this is if more zombies crawl through a window you leave open and wander around. (or if other enemies crawl in through holes in the ceiling/walls that you can't patch, trying to not spoil anything). I really felt like I was in a real space that I had learned to navigate and it was very rewarding. I was surprised how much of this game felt like a zelda item trading quest with the environment, but I really enjoyed figuring out how everything fit together. Has a really solid story overall and the controls are just iconic and so effective. Loved this game way more than I was expecting to when I decided to force myself to play a horror game to completion.

Highly recommend sticking with it even if you are scared of horror games. 80% of the time jump scares are on you because you didn't board up a window, forgot you left a zombie alive, or you were just sprinting through an unknown space.

A genuinely fantastic game with two major issues.

The issues: (1) No mid-late game map & (2) Unclear ability gates

The fantastic: Pretty much everything else
The movement is pretty boring at the start and finding movement upgrades is really unintuitive and difficult, but once you have a lot of abilities unlocked the movement is absolutely transcendent. I haven't had this much fun in a 3d platformer since Mario Odyssey. The music is great, the enemy designs are interesting (but I wish they were a bit better themed per zone and consistent narrative design). The world design is very fun and had a lot of "I'm not supposed to be here" type of moments where I felt like I was moving around a pre-existing world that was not created for my character to be in. Not in a bad game design sense, more in the cool and inventive ways I was able to use the movement to get around the existing world. I love the low frame rate animations and the low poly/texture aesthetic. It looks and plays so well. This game does so much right.

Going into specifics on my criticisms:
(1) No mid-late game map.
This is a self proclaimed metroidvania and therefore the player should be rewarded for memorizing the map and how it interconnects. Having no map is an interesting choice as the world feels expansive and undiscovered and the mental mapping of the terrain is a fun way of going about it. Unfortunately while the zones themselves are visually unique, the way each room connects to the next in each zone is not distinct enough to be mentally mappable. The doors that connect each room are mostly identical and fog covers anything past the door itself. This leads to constantly being turned around and not knowing which mystery fog door connects to which mystery box room and stringing them all together to get anywhere new feels exponentially incomprehensible. Castle Sansa and Sansa Keep especially are a nightmare to navigate given the amount of identical doors and small rooms. Mid to late game navigation turned into 15 minute excursions of wandering around hoping to find that one place I had been hours before with very little success. An unlockable and detail limited map for each zone would be a great collectible item that would go a long way I feel.

(2) Unclear ability gates.
MILD ABILITY AND END GAME GOAL SPOILERS
The platforming in this game is fun execution testing that never felt too hard for me. When I was platforming each challenge with the abilities they were designed for. Certain movement abilities are not clearly visually explained which challenges are designed for them. Specifically the wall cling gem and the fourth wall kick have zero visual indicator that you might need them for a specific section. This leads to platforming challenges feeling not impossible, just incredibly difficult. As an example of this, I was trying to get the Major Key in Sansa Keep but didn't have the wall cling gem yet. Using every other ability except the two abilities I mentioned, I was able to get almost to the end of the challenge, just barely. Using the wall kick I was able to complete sections of that challenge that felt hard, but doable. But the doable kept getting reduced bit by bit as the challenge continued until it was just actually impossible (unless you are a cracked speedrunner lol) with my current toolkit. But it felt like it was just a more narrow timing requirement that I wasn't quite meeting and just needed to get better at. Almost every other ability gate was clearly conveyed so I didn't waste my time on them or I at least knew I was trying to sequence break. The inconsistent way ability gates were presented lead to a platforming difficulty that felt very erratic and sometimes lead me along only to drop me off a difficulty cliff with no other options in sight. The way to fix this I would say would be to make it abundantly clear if the player is missing an ability in the menu screen. Like in Ocarina of Time where each item slots into an empty mold on the key items screen. We don't have to know what it is, but knowing I'm not yet fully equipped, plus making the start of challenges have more visual distinctions (such as a white paint on the walls for the wall cling gem) would have made this much better.
SPOILERS END

Overall this game is so much fun and if these two issues are addressed I would be absolutely over the moon about it. I still recommend it to support the dev, but it feel like a bit of an early access game with my current two criticisms in place. If you love good movement and the incredible retro presentation and are willing to accept a few major rough edges I very highly recommend this game and I'm looking forward to what the dev makes going forward!

Side notes:
The combat is completely adequate with some unique ideas. Dropping your sword from getting hit, throwing your sword, giving up power/range to heal. No major issues, but I would love to see more R&D put into the combat and it could be something really special. Also the lock on never worked in a way that felt helpful for me.
The story felt like a lot was left unused/explored. Felt like there was a great setup to a interesting loose/minimal story and then nothing was done with it. I would love just a tiny bit of additional context/lore and I would be satisfied.

Took me a little under 9 hours to get 90% completion and roll credits.

Going around this small yet dense part of a destroyed city, all you see is misery and how people cope with it. You, who should be one of the people that bring order into this mess, are yourself a broken man. You were broken and as soon as you wake up the world demands you to stand up and recover and do your fucking job. There are awful people in this world but none of them are like that without reason, not even you. Every character has depth, some try to hide it in order to keep up a facade, and they all try to take advantage of you, not because they hate you, but because they have to. All this chaos is also represented by the staggering amount of quests you get that often need a long time to complete. But one by one you solve each loose thread, slowly you start to understand why people are the way they are, and one thought at a time you start piecing together who you were and why you are. The end of the game, despite all this, is the most hopeful message I've seen in media, all the more powerful thanks to everything that came before it. Life in Martinaise is about failure, but success, despite how low the chances may be, is always possible.

I hadn't heard much about Quake 2 before playing it, other than that it was a bit of a black sheep and that people didn't really like it. I played the Nightdive remasters of both Quake 1 and 2, and for Quake 1 I didn't enable any of the new effects the remaster added as I thought they looked kind of tacked on and like an afterthought, but with Quake 2 I kept most of the new effects on as they fit much better with the game's artstyle this time around.

I was shocked when shortly after starting Quake 2 I learnt that it wasn't a traditional mission-based episodic structure like, well, pretty much every FPS of that era, but instead they were interconnected levels with somewhat open-ended exploration, backtracking, and unlocking shortcuts. This is a game that predates Half-Life by two years and yet I rarely see anyone bring up the level/world design of it. On top of this the levels are also a notable evolution. Quake (like many other shooters) had levels that were more abstract series of corridors and brushes that were supposed to represent an area, but Quake 2 levels feel real, they feel purposeful and functional, which is something Half-Life is often credited for being the pioneer of.

The guns are a bit of a mixed bag compared to Quake 1, which had a relatively quaint but functional roster of weapons, Quake 2's weapon selection feels bloated by comparison, and it's detrimental in multiple ways. The most immediate one is that several weapons step over each other in terms of usefulness. The grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and railgun all feel like they're used for the same purpose, same with the hyperblaster and chaingun, both are guns with notable wind-ups (and downs) that do heavy damage and chew through ammo. The shotguns, machine gun, and BFG 10K are the only weapons that feel like they truly stand on their own and aren't competing for usefulness (also small tangent, but the super shotgun in this game is absolutely godlike. The sound design and animation is incredible and several stronger enemies get visibly staggered and knocked back by it if they don't get gibbed altogether).

Another new thing introduced by this game is how power-ups are used. If you've played any 90s shooter you are well aware that power-ups are just something you generally pick up and they're instantaneously used on the spot, you have a limited amount of time to make do with your newfound godhood and that's completely fine. Quake 2 shakes things up, now you have an inventory and power-ups get put straight into it, waiting to be used for later. There are things I like and dislike about this system. Obviously it adds a layer of strategy to using power-ups instead of just going hogwild whenever you come across one, and also stops that horrible feeling when you clear a room of enemies, explore around for secrets, and then find a quad damage you could've used on them but now there's nothing around anymore. But this design was very intentional, FPS games of the time would design encounters around this limitation to make exploring more rewarding or making cathartic rooms where you get something like a quad damage and just unload on all the enemies around. In Quake 2, nothing can be balanced around power-ups, as there's no guarantee as to if you'll be able to use one or not. This also means intentionally difficult sections can be cheesed by popping a quad damage. This isn't a horrible drawback for a game like Quake 2, as even on hard it's not a very challenging game (and that's fine), but it is something lost from shooters of its era.

Story is not worth covering, it's about as light as any other 90s shooter, although it is slightly more in your face instead of just being delegated to a manual or end of episode text block, and it's told more diagetically as well.

The visuals are similar to its predecessor's in some ways, mainly in the color choice of browns and grays, but the environments are a tiny bit more varied. The music is where the real split in presentation between the two games occur. Quake 1's OST was a masterclass in atmosphere and immersion, being famously composed by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, it was industrial, ambient, and harrowing, and I often found myself being unnerved by some songs. Quake 2's is quite the opposite, being composed by Sonic Mayhem, it's much more traditional, being full of blood pumping and memorable tunes. I don't like one more than the other, both fit their respective games incredibly well, and I wouldn't change anything about either of them (but Quake 2's is probably the one you'd catch me actively listening to).

Overall I enjoyed Quake 2 more than the first one, it was an incredibly enjoyable and fairly unique experience that I'm glad Nightdive has put in the spotlight. The remaster is only 10 dollars and comes with 4 or so expansion packs and a port of Quake 64 as well, which is a whole other (yet more traditional) beast.

why do i feel like all the bespoke queer games ive seen that came out in the last 10 years have been just so saccharine? this isn't really a knock against the game itself, and I don't really fault anyone who enjoys these types of games, its just I really want more games about being gay/trans that isnt just like "I'm a girl and I can kiss girls!!!!!!" I want a game thats bespokely queer, but through the lens of someone whos gotten past the initial euphoria of figuring out your queer identity, like a story thats about people's real world struggles and how they intertwine with their queerness to where its the focus? they speak from the abyss seems to fit that bill from what I've seen, maybe something like that? this is a genuine question btw. and hey maybe if this game eventually does become what im describing then i'll give it another go! i really just wasn't feelin it chief.