What a shame this was.

I loved Cyanide's previous Blood Bowl games, for all their quirks; the shonky AI, the clunky interface, the bizarrely restrictive controls and camera. Despite that, they offered a faithful translation of the miniatures game to a digital format, offering dramatically sped up gameplay with the dice-rolling and maths done for you, and made arranging leagues and tournaments vastly easier than in-person-only logistics allow; I'm certain the two games were instrumental in Games Workshop reviving Blood Bowl as a going concern in tabletop form, and for that I'm deeply grateful.

So, I was really looking forward to Blood Bowl 3, only to be put off by the dramatic drubbing it got at launch. Buggy gameplay, gross monetisation, no league admin tools — it didn't sound great. But, after a year of patches, and some severe price cuts, I decided to give the game a try; getting to play Blood Bowl's modern ruleset digitally was just too appealing not to.

And, well, I wish I hadn't.

Upsides first:
The game looks quite nice! The first two were many things, but 'a looker' wasn't one of them; Blood Bowl 3 is a significant upgrade in that respect.
It applies the new rules successfully, as far as I can tell. So that's good.

Okay, that's the good news out of the way. Here's the less good:
Somehow, the AI has gotten worse. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but here we are. It's gone from idiotic to completely self-destructive, and renders all single-player modes — including the 'official campaign' — completely worthless.
On the subject of incompetence, I cannot believe how much of a step back the interface is. I've encountered poor UI's before, but I can't think of a single example in a video game that is worse than this. Tiny, unresponsive buttons pop in without ceremony and blend in with the background, leaving you wondering why a turn has seemingly frozen. Text is tiny and divided wildly about the screen; this is a PC game that will leave you wishing you had a lower resolution monitor so that you didn't have to keep scouring the screen for information. An auto-log that you can't pause, so it becomes impossible to keep track of events vs the AI (which doesn't pause between actions). Right mouse button as the default cancel and back button on any screen, which you can turn off, but can't then replace with any other button (like, say, escape). A need to confirm every move, every selection, by moving the cursor over to a tiny button or hammering the spacebar, rather than simply double- (or, say, right-)clicking, or rather than having the confirm option appear near where you clicked. Just astoundingly boneheaded design throughout. And of course the series' dedication to not providing a list of its keyboard controls or any remapping options remains impressive.
And then there's the bugs. Every game — including vs the AI — is 'online', which adds random pauses, weird teleporting lag and even outright crashes to menu from disconnections when the server is being flaky. Which, as far as I can tell, is All The Time. Not a great experience.
And finally, we have the infamous monetisation. And my goodness it's egregious. The game is so skinflinted with its doling out of in-game currency that you will need to become a whale even if all you want is to unlock the handful of extra teams available, never mind even considering the option to choose cosmetics for them. Cosmetics which, for maximum insult, are doled out one tiny, unimpressive piece at a time, and do barely anything to change the look of their players. Exciting new outfits these are not; you'll be lucky to even notice the difference between a fully kitted out character and an untouched one. I suppose at least that makes it easier not to care about how overpriced they all are! And that's without getting into the game's dedication to not having any female models in it at all (outside of the Witch Elf specifically, and cheerleaders), putting it at odds with the actual modern tabletop game.

So, yeah, not great stuff. Offensive monetisation, worsened controls and AI, and a laggy, buggy experience in every mode. I'd love to play a competent digital version of Blood Bowl 2020, but this ain't it.

I loved this. I didn't just finish it, I finished it five times, and am planning to go back for a sixth. This is a perfect example of a game which absolutely won't win over anyone who doesn't like its genre, but excels at what it does.

So what is it? It's an otome visual novel (read: a romance visual novel targetting a presumed straight female audience), with light life simulator (i.e. schedule management — think Persona's non-combat gameplay) and rhythm-action elements. You play a girl attending an all-boys' theatre school in disguise. It is ridiculously melodramatic, and by the standards of its genre very long (I'd put it at around ten hours per playthrough), and I love it.

It's just a masterclass in How To Do A Branching Romance, with clever framing allowing for minimal changes to the story (and the musicals you perform) while recontextualising things smartly, so that aspects of the character you're focussed on in any given playthrough are highlighted. It's just extremely well put together, and I was astonished to find that all five of the routes I've currently followed were equally engaging.

I'd have gone for the sixth (and presumably final) route as well, if it weren't for Persona 3 Reload coming out and distracting me, but I've had a brilliant time with Jack Jeanne.

The best-written Persona brought up to 5's level of polish and accessibility. Great stuff?

Well. The removal of friction of the game actually creates unwanted friction between narrative and gameplay, with pressure presented in the story no longer appearing in the game itself. Meanwhile, the more crummy aspects of the game's original fiction (such as the ever-delightful tropes of "let's have all these literal school children go to a beach and hot springs so that the player can be titillated by scenes of them in their underwear") remain present and correct. There's also the shame that the game elides both the second main character from Portable, and the optional ending of FES, leaving this feeling a distinctly non-definitive version of the game. At least I guess we should be glad it doesn't have the flippin' romanceable adults from Persona 5.

But.

For all that, the narrative still has its punch, the dungeon crawl still satisfies, and the life simulator (and associated social links) remains compelling. Only now everything looks great. Honestly, despite a couple of missteps in lighting (notably, unfortunately, in the dorm you'll be seeing an awful lot of), the game mostly looks absolutely gorgeous. Even down to some shockingly effective, very subtle low-level raytraced reflections. Oh, and of course the music is brilliant throughout.

The handful of new abilities you're given are good fun, the optional bosses are satisfying, and I had a very good time playing this through to utter completion. In the end, despite some missed opportunities and questionable decisions, I had a great time with the game: it remains a solid RPG paired with a great combat system, great story, (mostly) great characters and now all wrapped in a sumptuous wrapper. I would probably recommend it as the best introduction to Persona.